And so ...
On the Friday night of Terry’s last game, I was headed to dinner chez Richard the Tigerheart. I stopped at Woolworths Marrickville for a tub of pure cream to accompany the prune and pernod tart with which I planned to please Richard and his Tigress. I waited in line. In front of me, a track-suited woman (fancy tracksuit!) dumped piles of wrapped chicken packages and pressed meats onto the cashier’s bench and, as she fondled her gold buckled purse, she revealed immensely long, claw-like, false fingernails, painted in … tiger stripes. She almost roared goodnight as she left.
George answered the door. I delivered tart and cream and black and yellow striped candle I had found, by chance, that day (the Eaglet insisted it was navy blue and yellow and therefore rightfully his!) I confessed to George that I had just that moment realised I was wearing my electric blue clogs and a copious, red wrap. Oops. Bulldogs colours. He, a fellow Swan – we colluded not to mention it.
We sat around the table for three courses that night, a Swan, two Tigers, two neutrals and a mate in from New York, and I slipped my toes in and out of my clogs under the table. We all know the result that night.
The following morning, the Eaglet and I headed south to the country for the long weekend. At the south end of Rockdale, I slowed for a red light.
‘Look Mama, a fire truck.’
One of the pumper trucks from Arncliffe - poetry for a four year old. We pulled up directly adjacent and framed in the front passenger window, in bright white letters on fire engine red, the number 29.
‘Look Omar, it’s the Marty Mattner fire truck!’
Poetry for a thirty-five year old.
After two or so hours going south, you take the right after O’Keeffe’s Lane, Jaspers Brush, to get to my parents’ place.
*
Sometimes, during winter, I can’t help feeling that I am living in some kind of pervasive football aura. At times, a season grips me, draws me into a kind of supernatural orbit, weaves me unwittingly into itself and itself, in return, into my terrain. There are weeks when it feels like a form of synesthesia – the neurological phenomena in which the stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway involuntarily leads to experiences in another sensory or cognitive pathway. You may have heard of synesthetes who see numbers as colours, or days as shapes, or sounds as tastes or smells.
I suffer from a form of synesthesia, in which ordinary objects or daily decisions, usually requiring minimal cognitive and even less sensory engagement, activate images of football.
The links are not overwhelming or constant. They are not sought. They simply appear, like objects irritating your peripheral vision – not centre screen but you can’t ignore them.
And so, in winter … we don’t live in No 1, we live in Barry Hall. The redbacks on our front verandah are not merely venomous spiders, they are Bombers. I heat the Eaglet’s post pre-school MILO for 37 seconds on high – Goodes is near perfection. I cast 29 stitches onto my knitting needles rather than 30 – Mattner more aesthetic than Roberts-Thompson. I lay up a graphic design on a 6mm grid cause it requires Bolts’ solidity more than O’Keefe’s mobility. And I’ll use a 19 point font.
Where’s Wally is no longer a guy who is hard to spot in a crowd, he is a Swan. While the black swan on the side of my fruit box is not the emblem of WA. It’s Goodes or O’Loughlin. And I turned over every bubble-packed bike chain at the ‘Discount Variety Store’ looking for the right combination. When I was to find myself haggling at the splinter-ridden leg of some park table, trying to release the Eaglet’s orange ‘Destroyer’ in the just started rain, I wanted something I would remember, rely on – 3124 – the stoppage kings, Brett Kirk and Jude Bolton.
It extends beyond the red and white too, triggered by just about anything.
I bookmark my book at page 23, not because it’s the one before 24, but because it’s Lance and Rocca and it’s the Eaglet’s birthday and it’s Kosi and McLeod. The Peugeot in traffic is not a French car, but a Lion.
A GIVE WAY sign is the Saints and the DIP is the Tigers. The Pies only go ONE WAY. A green light would be the Dockers … if you added red, white and purple. A Greek salad IS a Docker if you use purple oregano. And a banana split is the Hawks.
The key thing about true neurological synesthesia is that it is involuntary. I have it, for sure.
Others have delicately suggested that it could be an obsessive compulsive disorder. Poor Eaglet – there is evidence both are hereditary. And it is certainly catching. Lucie is probably outside RMIT right now, filling her lunch break with the particular mugs of passing canines.
But the more I think about it, the more I reject the notion of this kind of winter behaviour as pathological. The more I think about it, look at the symptoms, the more I come to recognise it as … possibly … love.
Love, when everything is filtered through the image of the beloved, everything tinged by the hues of the muse, everything seen through the rose (red and white = pink) coloured glasses of admiration.
If it IS the case that this synesthetic winter caul is simply my passion for footy, that it is the passion spruiking my imagination and revivifying the paths I know, the tasks I perform, the colours I see – it’s pretty impressive really – to be still afflicted. Name me another 10 year old relationship that still causes such positive unsteadiness?
*
I’m sure that, if I were to pay close attention, I could sing these swirling signs into a seasonal narrative. After all, I live in a house on the corner of South Street and Crawford Lane. My living room ceiling is moulded in Swans. Our little family once tried to get to Bondi Junction using only streets whose names related to footy – we didn’t get further than Shaw Street.
If I persevered, would I navigate my way to a clearer sense of each season, making and reading and singing its songlines – the colours, emblems, numbers and trajectories of 16 teams – across my urban landscape. Would it make me be better at tipping?
I hope not.
As we left Jasper’s Brush on the public holiday Monday, the Eaglet noticed that 210 Strong’s Road had a black and white striped mailbox and on the adjoining fence, tail up in the afternoon sun, a Magpie lark.
Hopefully it’s just about the love and not knowing which way it all will go.
Happy tipping!
1. What is the difference between sweeping handballs and raking handballs?
2. Is the Swans club psychologist still employed?
3. Has Guy McKenna secured Israel Folau as GC17’s marquee player in 2011?
4. Will the Tigers change the sash from yellow to jade for the rest of the season?
5. Are Tyrone Vickery and Nick Natanui aware of what happens to outspoken sportsmen with dread locks in this country?
6. Can Geelong use more than 500 handballs a match by Round 22?
7. Wallace. Laidley. Should we start a spin-off tipping comp on which coach is next to go?
8. They’ve done Indigenous All-Stars v the Rest. They’ve done VIC against the Dream Team. What about The Oldies - 200+ gamers v The Youngsters - under 50 gamers?
9. Can anyone catch Kirky on tackles for the year, no, the decade?
10. Can anyone get Catherine T to come to an actual game?
11. Will GC17 have a meter maid as its mascot?12. Where would that leave Western Sydney?
13. If they can’t have ‘the G’ have the AFL thought of moving the Round 14 St Kilda/Geelong clash to western Sydney?
14. With stadium deals ‘killing’ them, have underdog teams with financial struggles considered selling ‘2nd Team Memberships’ to sympathetic punters of highly successful outfits.
15. Could the Collingwood coaching position for 2010 be solved in a jelly wrestle – Malthouse v Buckley?
16. Have any of the commercial networks started formulating a hidden camera show for Ben Cousins to host?
17. Why didn’t we get to see the re-break of Chris Judd’s nose in a Channel 7 Saturday night special event?
18. How many more games will it take for the Weagles to win outside of WA?
19. Has Port’s Daniel Motlop considered the possibility that he was heavily voodoo pinned after ‘that You Tube video’. He suffered an ankle injury the following week and, after only 1 full game, is now out for 2 months with a broken ankle.
20. Could the Eaglet (with his morning Motlops) be a backyard sharman?
21. Do ex-Roo coach Dean Laidley’s wife and children really want him to spend more time with them?
22. When will the League have its first Indigenous coach?
... and one thing I’m sure of - a statement not a question - I will never stop loving Paul Kelly!
Not only has Coach Ian been grappling with keeping a team together, functional and even successful, but he has been giving middle-of-the-night thought to the future of the game. Adrian Andersen is not the only man with ideas on potential rule changes. Stuff the expanded interchange idea … Here are Coach Ian’s suggestions:
'I’ve been obsessing on two variations on Australian football.
The first involves the introduction of a second ball, simultaneously in play. The game would commence with parallel bounces halfway between the existing central circle and the wing.
The second involves reinventing the game as a three-team contest, played on a perfectly round field, with goals set equidistant around the perimeter. Teams would not defend a goal per se, but would attack a designated goal. The game would be played in thirds, with the target goal rotated each ‘third’. Each bounce would be contested by three ruckmen. The whole game would be an orgy of attack. No central corridors, complex zoning, strategic alliances and so on. Perfect for big round grounds.
A third variation involves an elaborate overhead rig and bungy cords, but I haven’t thought it all the way through yet.'
'In the mining areas of Britain the rat pit was an accepted sport, and matches were regularly held to see which dog could kill the most rats in a given time ... a very famous dog named Billy is said to have dispatched one hundred rats in eight and a half minutes ... needless to say, apart from the thrill of the fight a great deal of wagering on the result took place. One of these early dogs, famed for his prowess in the rat pit was also a very good rabbiting dog and the experiment of crossing this dog with a Whippet resulted in a strain of dogs in the Manchester area which were faster and more refined and became known as Manchester Terriers.'from ‘A Standard Guide to Pure-Breed Dogs’ by Harry Glover
1. WHAT MOVIE WOULD YOU SCREEN FOR THE TIGERS THIS BYE WEEKEND?
'Born Free' - Anna
'The Combination' - Mic
'A Bridge Too Far' - James
The ‘Lorry one’ from the red Thomas the Tank DVD - Omar
'The Mighty Boosh - series 3'. They need some cheering up - Lucie
Andrei Tarkovsky’s 'Stalker' - Patrick
'Broken Hearts Club', about a gay baseball team that never wins a game ... plus some stuff about friendship.... - Stuart
'Salo' - Mark
'Deadwood' - Paul
David Attenborough’s 'Life of Mammals' - Mathilde
'Tiger Shark' (1932) dir. Howard Hawks - up until the weekend I thought Hawks could give the Tigers a lesson - perhaps not - Gai
The Way We Were - Peter
'Back to the Future' - Richard
2. TO WHAT SONG WOULD YOU CHOREOGRAPH THE SWANETTES' REVIVAL PERFORMANCE?
‘We are Family’, Sister Sledge - Anna
‘Last Dance’, Donna Summer - Mic
Verdi’s Aida Wedding March - James
‘Born to be Alive’. Still makes me laugh after all these years - Mark
‘Dance Dino, Dance Dino’ - Omar
‘Hero’, Bonnie Tyler - Lucie
‘I Need a Hero’, I think sung by Bonny Tyler, just cause - Stuart
‘Optimistic’, Radiohead - Paul
‘Oh Mickey’ - Mathilde
‘Swaneees, how I love you, how I love you, my dear old Swaneees’ - Gai
‘Money Can’t Buy Me Love’ - Peter
‘Tigerland’ - Richard
‘Shake a Leg’, AC/DC - Patrick
3. MEAT PIE OR SAUSAGE ROLL?
It’s not that simple - Richard
Pie from Paris Cake Shop - Patrick
Lamb sausage roll from my local deli or a chunky beef pie with mash, mushy peas, onion and cheese sauce from Harry’s - Stuart
Always sausage roll - Lucie
Ditto - Mathilde
Pie, always - Mic
Pie - James, Peter, Gai
Pie with tomato sauce - Omar
Ditto - Anna
Pie. Sausage rolls are never food. Pies can be - Mark
Science has proven a direct correlation between the meat pie and what is known as the ‘footy brain’ - Paul
4. IF YOU WERE A CAR, WHAT WOULD YOU BE?
Jealous of bikes - Lucie
French and flogged - Mathilde
Trebant - Anna
Alfa Romeo - Peter
1987 Range Rover Classic with the mighty 3.8 V8 the greatest engine ever built. I am my car. She is Betty! - Mic
Peugeot 504 - James
A Bristol. Hand-made, expensive and a pleasure to drive - Mark
A Toyota - Omar
Probably a useful, reliable Volvo. Next life a Jag - Gai
In America the ‘code’ for jeep is apparently ‘horse’. They actually changed the headlights from square to round because of this. I would be a car for whom the code is ‘turtle’ - Paul
An Aston Martin, cause hot spies love to drive me ... or the G rated reason is because they’re sleek and sexy, how I want to be - Stuart
Stolen, dumped and torched - Patrick
There are days when I feel like a crushed wreck on the bottom layer of a truck-load on the way to the scrapper. Worse maybe. At least its going somewhere! - Richard
5. WHICH PLAYER WOULD YOU GO TO A DRIVE-IN WITH?
Mickey O, of course, in the Trebant - Anna
Goodes - James
Brett Kirk - Gai
Jason Akermanis. If the film was dull, Aker’d be good for a streak - Mark
If that’s code for ‘who is the least likely to sexual harass a woman in a car during an outdoor movie’, I can’t think of anyone - Lucie
Daniel Giansiracusa (on the cover of the 2009 AFL Sticker album) cause I like the look of him. He looks a bit serious - Omar
Ryan “bubbles” O’Keefe, I love him so much - Stuart
Cuz. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas maybe ..... - Richard
Tom Harley. The thinking woman’s footballer. We could chat ... - Mathilde
Can I make a request for Chelsea the only female goal umpire? - Patrick
What about a player’s wife??? - Mic
Katherine Hull - Peter (FYI - she’s a golfer!)
Nahas could probably fit in the boot and I wouldn’t have to pay for him - Paul
6. WHO WILL WIN THE FLAG?
Reluctantly, Cats - Anna
Swannies! - Mic
Geelong - James, Mathilde, Paul
The Dogs - Mark
Geelong or the Saints - Gai
The Saints - Omar, Lucie, Peter
I hope the Bulldogs but think the Cats will probably do it. - Patrick
God - I’d forgotten there was a flag. The Tigers can’t win it, but they can still make the 8.... Saints I think. Another year that Geelong didn’t follow through? - Richard
Kylie or Lady Gaga - Stuart
and if the Panthers can do this ...
... could the Tigers do this? - tm
My first thought for a tiger video was also Tarkovsky – The Sacrifice.
ReplyDeleteAnd from Terry to Terrier! Go the Mancurians ...