The Jellies in town

Today we had a visit from fellow blogger and Richmond Tigers man Dugald Jellie of Tiger Tiger Burning Bright, and his lovely family Clare, Alistair (Ali) and baby Marcus. I got to know Dugald over the interwebs through the 2013 season, and enjoyed his writing very much. His passionate and thoughtful writing was always supportive, win or lose, and articulated the feelings of the regular folks in the outer. He did not have any special access to the players, and made a point of respecting their privacy, but at the same time he was able to get insights into what makes them tick, and their relationships with one another.

Dugald was actually at Presentation Night #2 but although I thought I covered the room pretty thoroughly, I didn’t track him down. He had long planned this visit to Tasmania with his family, so at last we had a chance to meet. His main purpose in visiting Hobart was catching up with VFL legend Brent Crosswell. 

“Tiger” Crosswell played in nine VFL Grand Finals, winning two each with Carlton and North Melbourne. He was a unique character in footy, quite the intellectual. And he was Dugald’s geography teacher! He suffers from Meniere’s Disease these days, and is quite reclusive. I understand that Dugald had a few ups and downs trying to get a visit organised, but it did finally happen the day before we met, and was a great success. I am sure Dugald will write about it in time.

When they arrived, Ali (who is 3) made a beeline for the boys’ corner, and was very happy there playing with our Marcus and with Michael. We have regular 3-year-old visitors in Finton and Arthur, and still have plenty of cars, trucks, blocks etc that a knee-high person usually enjoys. Marcus Jellie is a very well-adjusted baby, who seemed to spend most of the visit just beaming and chuckling.

Elf made a highly-praised flourless orange cake, and we all got on like a house on fire. Clare works as a historian at Monash Uni where she specialises in Black American history between the wars; the Cotton Club in Harlem and the like. I am very interested in American history. After the bicentennial in 1976 I was completely sick of Paul Revere and George Washington (who popped up in everything from the Brady Bunch to Archie comics) and generally felt like American history was something to avoid. Whereas I am now addicted to a podcast on the Civil War, and one of my favourite authors is Sarah Vowell who writes popular American histories such as Assassination Vacation.

Dugald and I talked about all sorts of things including but not limited to footy. We ran through the footy cards and discussed one of my favourite aspects; the mechanics of taking the photos, which I have rabbited on about enough here.

When it was time to move on to their next engagement, lunch at Snug, we all looked over and Ali was horizontal on the floor, drowsily driving a truck back and forth. When roused he said “But I haven’t played with this car, and this car. And I haven’t played outside!” So we took them out for a bit of a bounce on the trampoline before we waved them goodbye.

Dugald in his TTBB outfit. I love his typography.

South Hobart go to the Chess Nationals

Marcus and I had a couple of days in Melbourne with the school chess team, at the National Schools Chess Championships. The team was Marcus, Fergus, Joe and Tom. The Ed Dept rules say that all interstate school excursions must be accompanied by a teacher, so the principal Cathy Franz decided to come with us. She reasoned that she could do a lot of her work remotely, unlike class teachers. Cathy actually paid her own way to Melbourne as well as personally donating to help cover the families' costs. Our former principal Greg Turner also donated.

Cathy picked up Marcus and I and then Fergus at 4.30am. Joe's dad Andrew dropped Joe and Tom off at the airport shortly after we arrived. All aboard with no problems. I sat with the Grade 4s Ferg & Tom, who played iPhone games. Cathy sat behind with the Grade 6s Joe and Marcus, who had a couple of games on the magnetic chess board as we crossed Bass Strait.

Last time I was at Tullamarine I waited half an hour for a cab, but we had no trouble getting a taxi van to Queens College, our home for the next 2 days. A nice fella named Ross intercepted us on our way in and showed us the ropes. Magnetic keys etc. Rooms were small but fine, with very high ceilings. The college is quite fetching, castellated buildings in classic Oxbridge style. Our rooms were just a short walk across the quad from the dining hall which was also the competition venue.

We had a bit of settling in time, then Day 1 of the tournament kicked off. The day panned out like this;

• Marcus: win loss win win
• Tom; loss loss loss win
• Joe: loss win loss loss
• Fergus: loss win loss win

Tom’s third game was one he should have had no trouble with - but he was very tired and a bit headachey. He had a panadol and came out very well in his 4th game. After winning his first game, Marcus was sent to the Nº 1 table to play the top seed, Kris Chan. He aimed to hang on for 20 moves and just managed it. (Marcus is rated about 940 and Kris about 1550).

Joe and Fergus (both mid 600s) lost a couple of games against high 800 rated players. Considering our early start to the day, it was great to finish off strongly with three wins from the four final round games. In all we scored 7 points from a possible 16 and were placed 17th of 23 schools at the end of the day. Our boys were all hoping to get at least one win in the tournament, and they had all achieved that by the end of Day 1.

Cathy paid for a wristband to have access to the "VIP Suite", where one-on-one coaching and seminars were offered. Marcus went through his games with a coach; later Joe took the wristband and listened in to some seminars on strategy and tactics.

We had penne bolognaise for dinner, floppy penne but good chunky sauce - needed black pepper though. Boys all seem happy with the food, apparently it is superior to that dished up on the recent Canberra trip. After dinner we just took a walk around the University area, then put everyone to bed by 8.30. The boys each had their own room; we considered pairing them up with mattresses on the floor but they were all content to be on their own. Neither Cathy or I heard a peep all night.

Day 2 of competition turned out to be very tough. Tom improved on his Day 1 effort, getting a win and a draw. The other boys only mustered two draws between them, for a return of 2.5 points from a possible 12. We slipped to finish 22nd - which was disappointing after such a good Day 1, but reflected our position as equal 5th in Tasmania. The boys were not downhearted and showed excellent sportsmanship.

We walked them down to Lygon Street for ice-cream, and a visit to Readings bookshop, which was our only off-campus excursion of the two days. On the way we talked about the differences between Carlton and South Hobart – I think the preference was for South Hobart. When we got back to Queens it was time to head to the airport. Although worn out, the team were well behaved and I was proud to be out in public with them.

It was a great experience for the boys and hopefully will have good spin-off effects on the rest of the school as well. Thanks to the parents, the School Association, staff and students and especially Greg Turner, Cathy Franz and school business officer Bev Thomas for supporting our trip.

New Rees Design website

Hey there internet friends. I have a new website for my professional activities – graphic and interactive design, motion graphics, illustration and the t-shirt biz. Why not pop over and have a look, tell your friends, and if you have any feedback I’d love to hear it.

Readers

All four of us are pretty constant readers. We all read at breakfast, occasionally at lunch and once in a while someone asks "Can this be a reading dinner?" and we even read through that.

I have three history books on the go at the moment. Suspect History by Humphrey McQueen is a defence of historian Manning Clark. It’s actually a bit of a giggle because it deals with a time not that long ago when Australian academics were deeply and seriously ideological, and accusations flew around of this one or that one being in the pay of the KGB or CIA. The whole book is essentially dealing with an allegation that Clark once wore an Order of Lenin medal to a party.

The heaviest is Civilization by Niall Ferguson. A study of the big question, why did Western civilisation win out so completely after 1412? Jared Diamond puts it down to things like Eurasia’s fortune in having useful indigenous grasses and mammals. Ferg thinks northern Europeans were just better at organising, and his six ‘killer applications’ include property rights and the work ethic. Good book but I really hate his attempt at co-opting IT jargon to make his book seem funky and with-it.

The other book is Curtin’s Gift by John Edwards. Turns out that we have been lauding John Curtin (Australian wartime Prime Minister) for the wrong things all this time. Edwards says that many of his wartime achievements are over-estimated and misunderstood, whereas what he really did was set-up Australia’s postwar success. Conventional wisdom says he brought Australian troops back from the Middle East to defend the homeland against Churchill’s wishes, and moved Australia into the US orbit by inviting MacArthur to take command of all forces in the Pacific. Edwards says Churchill suggested the first and was a supporter of the second. The really big achievements are all in economic policy such as getting control of the banks, taking income taxation rights away from the states, and establishing full employment as government policy. “His enduring achievement was not saving Australia from Japan but in creating modern, postwar Australia.” 

With the nation at war, he was in a position to ring the changes with minimal interference, as all of these reforms were declared to be essential for the war effort. Even so, he was a masterful manipulator of his party and the parliament, especially considering he was leading a minority government from 1941 to 1943. He died in office just six weeks before victory over Japan.

This morning when I got up to the breakfast table, my Curtin book had an extra bookmark in it. I was astonished that Elf has been reading it (she loathes politics) but it turned out that it was Marcus! I said he had probably found it boring, but he said in fact he had read the first dozen or so pages and thought it was OK. He and Michael are addicts of the Horrible History books and TV series, so they have absorbed a lot of background knowledge that gives them a leg up when they are consuming history in a less fun-packed format.

So yeah - 11 Year Old Reads Serious History Book Shock. Oh, and Marcus thinks John Curtin looks like Kochie off Sunrise.

Tasmanian Interschool Chess Finals

We went up Launceston last Monday for the State chess finals.Our team was Marcus, Tom, Fergus, Joe and Izzy. None of the other parents could make it, so Elf came along to share the driving and supervising/encouraging duties. And that meant Michael had to come along too, and he fell into his accustomed low-key support role combined with some puppety bouncing around. The school paid for us to hire a people-mover for the day, which was really good of them.

We started brilliantly. Our captain Marcus won his first 4 games, and everyone had some points after round 4 (one point for a win, half for a draw). Our newest player Izzy had 2 wins, and some of the boys started to get nervous they might miss out on medals. Team score is based on your 4 highest scorers, and if the team places, only those 4 get the medals - always a tricky situation. The team as a whole were doing so well that medal allocation seemed like a problem we may well be dealing with by the end of the day.

Marcus was still unbeaten after 6 games and in equal 3rd. His 6th game was a superb win against a quality player rated well above Marcus. Marcus knew the other boy sometimes ran into time problems (each player has a 15 minute limit) and so he just kept setting up awkward situations where his opponent had to spend time deciding what to do. One rushed poor decision put him into an unwinnable position, and he resigned.

Meanwhile Joe who had a slow start was winning and not worrying so much about medals. Izzy plateau'd after her early success then won, and won again. Fergus had 5 points after 7 rounds and looked like a million dollars. Tom won his first 2 then lost 4 on the trot, and was starting to think about missing medals again.

At one point the team were equal-3rd. In the run home Marcus lost two in a row. He felt they were opponents he should have beaten, but he didn't make mistakes - he was just outplayed. Joe ended up winning his last five straight! Tom bounced back and won his last three. The sky had seemed the limit for Fergus but he lost his last 2 matches. The scores we finished with were Marcus and Joe 6.5, Fergus 5, Tom 5 and Izzy 4.

We were a little disappointed to have slipped in the placings - at some stage I think each of us had started to dream of getting a podium finish. As we sat and waited for the tallying to be completed, Marcus was a little emotional. Michael made us very proud by comforting him, and said quietly to Elf "I think when you are very good at something it must be hard when you don't do so well".

We finished in equal 5th, but 6th on countback. As the top 5 qualify for an invitation to the National Interschool Finals, I thought we had just missed out. Some of the kids thought it was announced that we had qualified, but when nothing came in the email during the subsequent week I told everyone that I didn't think so. And in fact I was a bit relieved because I (and I'm sure some other parents) didn't fancy finding money for flights and accommodation at short notice.

Then to my surprise, an email came yesterday, 8 days after the finals, with some details about the Nationals - which are in just 4 short weeks. I got in touch to clarify, and it turned out that if teams are equal 5th, they are all invited and countback is ignored. So we were in! I dutifully emailed the school and said I was prepared to go with the team, but we had better get fundraising pronto if we are going to get a team over there. I imagined parents thinking, like me, that it's lovely to earn an invitation but it's just money we don't have to spare.

Lo and behold the school, the school association and our sensational ex-principal have all today said they are so delighted the school chess team has achieved this, that they are going to contribute what's required to get us over there. There may have been school sports teams travel interstate before during our 8 year-long involvement, but I can't actually remember any. This is quite a big deal, and I am blown away that everyone is recognising that.

Backyard cricket season 2013-14 commences

I just vanquished a very old and stubborn blackberry plant. Finally got out the huge root ball after years of giving up and chopping the vine off somewhere above. To celebrate, Marcus and I had a quick backyard test match on the deck.

He is 11 now, quite big, and there is officially no longer any such thing as "bowling too fast" at him. In any case the stiffness in my shoulder doesn’t really let me whip my arm over the way I once would have. Michael was hopping around like a sparrow as our sole fielder - with no interest in personally batting or bowling (or catching) he was more of a dedicated fetcher and general pep-merchant.

I batted first and made a solid start, bapping the tennis ball back past the bowler (hollow plastic bat) for a couple of lovely straight driven 4s. Then I was caught at silly mid on by the wheelie bin for 11. Marcus took time to find the right line as my wily variations came at him from anywhere. Then I slipped in a slowie and he spooned it back to me, for 2.

We played 4 innings each. As I went in for my last bat I led by 16 and stated my intention to bat until sundown. I was out caught behind (by the railings) 2nd ball, wafting at one well outside the corridor of uncertainty, that I should have left alone.

Marcus came in chasing 17 to win, and carted me into (but not over) the back fence for 5. Then I gave him a half volley and he lifted it over my head into the neighbours yard for the classic 6-and-out. So a satisfying win for the Goodies Generation, as we now move to the 2nd Test.

Big questions, bad timing

I was trying to explain to someone the other day how kids will always ask a huge question just at the worst possible time. I made up a crummy example on the spot. But a true classic example came along this morning.

SCENE: I am reading while finishing my breakfast, but nagged by two things. One, a dog, who also wants breakfast. Two - which I don’t even realise until I am organising dog and cat food, is that I am busting to go to the toilet.

MY INNER MONOLOGUE: Just need to get this meat in the bowl, OK, now, the biscuits, OK, I’ll run hot water into the mucky dog food tin, OK, put the bowls down, nearly there, just put away the cat food ... 

MARCUS: Dad - what is communism?

Gapless

I put a bunch of Ian Rankin short stories on Marcus’s iPod to listen to while I mowed the lawn. But thanks to ‘gapless playback’ it smoothly fades the start of the next story in over the end of the previous one. 

"So in fact Inspector it turns out that the murdere ... Mrs Phipps fed the cat and took out the garbage. It was a lovely day..."