John and Carmen

One of my longest-time buddies John was in town with his wife Carmen over the weekend. Sadly they were here to see John's dad who is in a specialised dementia care place. He still lived on a property where John grew up, on the far North West coast, but keeping it all together got beyond him. He was such an independent and capable man - it's a bugger of a thing.

I left work a little early so we could come home and walk the dog around the neighbourhood before it got dark. Melbourne has it's charms, but it is quite flat, so to hike up and down some hills and see water views and bushy slopes seemed like a good outing for them.

It would be something like 10 or 15 years since I had dinner with John, so it was a special occasion. While Elf and Carmen caught up generally, John and I had an intense discussion on music. [We have both been listening to a lot of early 80s live recordings on YouTube - there is some amazing music up there. I find things and then just enjoy the audio while I work, lately Talking Heads' concert in Rome, 1980.]

It was terrific just to be together for a while, but I was keen to be grown up and cook a decent dinner and keep myself nice. Next time I'll get a slab of Boags and four or five bottles of wine and we'll do it good and properly.

Carlton 23.12 (150) d Richmond 9.13 (67)

I hopped over to Melbourne on Thursday afternoon for the first match of the new football season, Richmond v Carlton at the MCG. The hype leading in to the game was massive, with tickets sold out. I tipped the Tigers to win by 11 points. While I was making a toasted cheese sandwich I had a very strong premonition of Mitch Morton kicking six goals.

It was Ben Cousins' first game for Richmond after being sacked by his old club and then copping a 12 month suspension from the AFL, for lying about his drug addiction. Cousins would be lining up against his former West Coast premiership captain Chris Judd, now with Carlton. Apart from this drama, everyone was expecting both sides to be big improvers this year, and to put on a good show.

John picked me up at the airport. He works in the area, and we swung by his office on the way into the city. All around there are acres and acres of office buildings, warehouses and workshops that look like they dropped from the sky overnight. It is all very new, and feels like a hastily populated paddock. Even when you are walking down a glossy marble-floored hallway on the second floor of an office building, you still feel that you are in the hinterland of a large pastoral holding.

The drive through the city took over an hour. The Grand Prix is in town as well, and with a crowd of 90,000 heading for the football like us it wasn't surprising we crawled along. John had teed up with a friend to use her parking spot in a back lane about 5 minutes walk from the MCG.

While John and I were shoveling down large mediocre burgers from a food van, Alex and Michael arrived. Just as we were getting toey about the time, the fifth member of the party, Vincent rang. He was standing near us somewhere in the crowd so I waved my hand above my head to help him zero in. I happened to have two tickets in my hand and I had to rebuff a few people who thought I was a scalper.

Once we were all together we surged in and up, up, up. We got to row Z in the Olympic Stand and kept climbing. At last we reached our seats in DD. The MCG is simply massive. As always its so impressive how the opposing fans mix so peacefully. Vincent and I were backing Richmond while John, Michael and Alex were there to see Carlton do the business. Its common to see couples or whole families with split allegiances.

Richo hit the post after about one minute. The next four scoring shots were Carlton goals, all from Richmond turnovers in defence. From the very beginning Richmond's skills were woeful. The headline in Friday's Herald Sun was eloquent; STILL LAZY, SLOPPY & INCOMPETENT. As Elf said, the word that hurts most there is "still". Carlton won by 83 points, and it would be very surprising if Richmond are not bottom of the ladder after round 1. Oh, and the super recruit tore his hamstring early in the last quarter and is out for 4-6 weeks. Mitch Morton kicked 4 - the toasted cheese oracle was just a little off.

As it was a work night, Vincent and John excused themselves and took off afterwards. Poor Vincent, he could have had a lovely quiet night reading a book or cleaning the fridge, and I dragged him out to watch Richmond. Michael, Alex and I snudged off along Swan Street looking for and failing to find coffee. No, I didn't know that was possible in Melbourne either. I ordered a round of soft drinks at the Post Office Hotel, and chatting to the barman about the game mentioned I had come over solely to watch Richmond and would fly home the next day. He gave me the drinks for free. Richmond are literally that pitiful.

Carlton 17.16 (118) d Richmond 12.16 (88)

I went over to Melbourne for the day, to join in Richmond's centenary celebrations. They joined the VFL in 1908. Apparently they wore insipid striped jumpers in the first two seasons, which made a comeback for the occasion on Saturday (with 21st century advertising superimposed of course). They were playing the old enemy Carlton, in a game with a lot of genuine importance for both sides' finals aspirations, over and above the centenary guff.
The morning before the game there was a merchandise-fest at the Punt Road oval, beside the MCG. Joe went over for the day too, and I met up with him and his Launceston mates there, where they were queueing for something or other. There were a range of queues to join. Some tired looking older gentlemen were signing autographs - I didn't actually recognise any of them, so I bailed out of that queue. After I had soaked up some more Punt Road atmosphere I thought it was time to move on.

I met Alex, John, Carmen, Michael and Cooper, (all Carlton fans) at a pub in Swan St for lunch before the game. Alex was tardy, Michael and John have a running punt on how late exactly he will be for each event. We wolfed down some very good pub food (even pricey pub food is much cheaper than AFL prices) - then got moving. We had tickets just along from Joe in the new Ponsford Stand, roughly where I had sat with the family at the Adelaide match 3 weeks prior.

We flowed into the MCG among a massive crowd. Soon after we got settled the Tigers ran out onto the field, and the huge atmosphere went flat. Their jumpers! Holy hell, they looked terrible. The sound was that of 73,503 people turning to the person next to them and saying "Oh - they look like Hawthorn don't they?" I just hope the marketing geniuses were there to see it too. Something that looks great when paraded up close in front of the media might be worth having a look at from a distance, next time.

The foolishly stripey Tigers were the better team through the first half, as they were against Adelaide. Kelvin Moore was having a blinder on Fevola, who had no impact at all. Richmond goaled after the siren at the end of the first three quarters, but going into the last only led by a point. Carlton kicked 7 goals to two in the final quarter, with big fat Nick Stevens getting 12 touches. At one stage he smothered a shot on goal, then gathered and passed out of defence, to set up a Carlton goal. Alex remarked Stevens has been bulking up on burgers to become a smother specialist.

I have now seen Richmond play maybe ten times, for a total of one win. Obviously I should stop going. For some reason, it just didn't bother as much as it should have. I actually found the inevitability of their failure somehow soothing. I was among friends I don't get to see very often, and they were being fairly gentle with my feelings. And I only had to squint slightly to imagine it wasn't happening to Richmond at all - it was actually Hawthorn on a bad day.


We went to a different genteel pub after the game, where we were the only football fans. It was quiet and dark. I took off my scarf and slurped a flat white. The MCG seemed a very long way away. John and Carmen dropped me off in the city where I rejoined Joe and his pals. I thought the 4 of us could share a cab to the airport as they were flying out just before me. But they had come in on the Skybus, and had return tickets - those muppets. I don't know why anyone catches the Skybus unless they are travelling alone. So I shelled out for the Skybus too.

I had ages to wait at the airport, and the place was practically all closed. I had nothing to read except the Footy Record. Its always such a mind-numbing read, as everything is the official AFL opinion. Guess what - everything's great! It's pretty sad having to read about what a mouth-watering prospect a game you have just seen was. After an hour or so of reading very obscure stats in an enormous half-empty airport, I realised I am actually a bit sick of football.

Saturday in St Kilda

The next day it was time for the now-traditional post-ATOMS St Kilda brunch with some Melbourne-based buddies.

I had a terrible nights sleep at the Hotel Victoria in Little Collins Street. It's a friendly but slightly shabby place, with mis-spelled signs and strangely random lifts. The swearing in the street below my window punctuated the night, and slightly overlapped with the roadworks which started at 6.00am. The swearing was pretty much over by seven.

In any case, I got myself to Fitzroy St and had a lovely long chinwag with Michael, John, Carmen, Suparna and Alex, over a good greasy breakfast, at a friendly place called Banff.


I haven't seen John and Carmen since their wedding, so I had commanded that they take me home and show me their world (..er, and take me to the airport after). Carmen has three daughters aged 16, 14 and 11, from her first marriage - Alana, Elise, and Carla. The girls are John and Carmen's life to a large extent - driving them here, driving them there, arranging and encouraging and cajoling. A logistical challenge, at the very least. I admire John for the way he has parachuted straight into the emotional minefield of a houseful of strong-willed women, and has just unpicked his parachute and turned it into a set of curtains and a very serviceable pair of pants. Well done sir! He has a shed which I suspect he would defend to the death if it came to that.

The girls are all lovely - the two older sisters talk a mile a minute. When I said I always remembered their names as "Uh-something", "Uh-something else" and "Not-uh", they didn't throw me out, which was nice.

John drove me to the airport via his workplace, which is in the Tullamarine area. He has a surprisingly nice drive through the country (featuring cows) to get to work. Now I can picture where he is when he gets these confusing and inappropriate emails at work.

I caught up on some sleep on the flight home, but even now 48 hours after the awards I am feeling fuzzy, blurry and ... tired.