Instagram

 Not everyone wants to be on Instagram. But I post a lot of photos there of my travels (which are 98% on foot just around Hobart). And a few tiny drawings and paintings of similar landscapes. Here’s the last few months as teeny thumbnails. You can find me there @4boat4boat.

Final thoughts on the World Cup Final

I haven't watched it and maybe never will. I did watch highlights of the Argentina v Netherlands quarter final. It was a pulsating game full of incident and spite, but one thing will rankle with me forever (over and above my general Qatar ranklement). 

The world’s greatest player, Leo Messi, handballed deliberately in clear sight of the referee and did not get a yellow card.

He later did get a yellow, which if it had been his 2nd would have seen him sent off and miss next game. Argentina went on to win the game, putting them into a semi against Croatia which they won, thanks enormously to the not-suspended Messi.

On the other side of the draw, the heir to Messi's crown, Kylian Mbappe of France, helped his side beat Morocco in the other semi to set up a dream final, Argentina v France.

The evidence of my eyes, and the deeply contrived nature of this whole World Cup convinces me that referees were instructed to miss anything that might bring about suspensions to the superstars. I believe that the Qatar WC committee did what they needed to do to engineer the ideal final.

And – the final which played out has been described as the greatest final ever, maybe the greatest match ever. I have read a match report, it was certainly a ding dong battle. Played in a stadium that owes its existence to cheating and human rights abuses. 

This is probably the biggest win ever for sportswashing and a huge incentive to others with the cash to do the same. For me it's a dark day and another nail in the coffin of my love for international football and sport generally.

AITA on Facebook?

There’s a popular website called Am I The Asshole where people relate stories from their life to establish who, in the story, is the asshole. Invariably the teller of the story does not think they are the asshole but is open to the possibility that maybe they are, after all.

Now I am wondering AITA on Facebook. I have an account, I have Facebook Friends but I rarely read and even more rarely comment on what everyone is doing. My main purpose is checking to see if Sunday's kickabout in the park is on and confirming I'll be there.

To everyone that I have worked with, shared rentals with, and been to school with that’s on Facebook but who I am not in touch with – I hope everyone is doing well. We’re all pretty much in our fifties or older now and our parents are getting old and frail; our kids are getting their licences and moving out of home; our cats and dogs are reaching their natural life spans and leaving us completely legless with grief without their unconditional love.

Weirdly, I am happy to write about this stuff here. I'm happy to make a pissweak passing joke about it on Twitter to an audience of strangers, who have become friends over my 12-or-so years on there. But I just don’t have any urge at all to share it on Facebook. Am I The Asshole? I don't know.

2023 marks 40 years since my cohort finished high school. There’s a reunion but I don't have any real wish to be back there. High school was pretty horrible at times; although I found some amazing friends, and we have walked alongside one another ever since.

This is my Grade 7 soccer team from 1980. I remember the names of all these guys. If I bumped into any of them I’d drop what I was doing to spend time with them, and I'd help them out if they needed help. But there is no way I am walking into a room full of 90 people from high school 40 years ago.

And no, I don't know why the soccer team posed with a volleyball.

World Cup Boycott Exemption

I decided a few years ago I would have to boycott the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar. For all the reasons that are quite well-known. My main reason is that it was awarded fraudulently to a nation completely unsuited to hosting the event that was put out to tender. And all the other scandals, injuries and deaths that followed flow from that. 

Once awarded the summer World Cup, Qatar said "oh it will be too hot so we'll do it in winter" and FIFA said oh sure, we'll just get every league in the world to have a massive mid season break. So Qatar imported thousands of guest workers to build eight stadiums in their small country.

My boycott has been pretty hard, especially missing Australia's games - they have won two out of three (I expected one draw at best). I'm avoiding the football podcasts I would usually listen to, not reading about it; just denying FIFA my eyes and ears as much as I can.

Does this do anyone any good? It's just a line in the sand for myself really. The absence of this massive quadrennial event in my personal memory will be a reminder of what is important to me. Football has been very important since I started playing as a kid but integrity and human rights have to come before football. That's my personal standard and I do not mean to impose it on anyone else.

But – I have been imposing it on my family. Marcus is going away in March, and chances to do things together are precious. He has been watching Australia's games on his own; and now we have our biggest match since 2006 he wants to watch it with me. He went off and did some research on who is doing good work on human rights in the Middle East, and he suggested we both donate to Amnesty International, then watch the game.

So that's it, for as long as Australia continue in the World Cup I will be treating it as pay-per-view. We play Argentina on Sunday morning our time – go Socceroos!

Boa Vista Road

This is Boa Vista Road in New Town, five minutes drive from the centre of town. 

I catch a bus up this way in my lunch hour sometimes and walk back into the city. The bushy hill is the Queens Domain. This road corkscrews up, over, down and around to the right to meet Park Street. A few metres beyond Park Street is the busy Brooker Highway. Then above that Cleary's Gates Road runs through the bush (lined with parked commuter cars). And even further up the hill is the jogging loop track.

I like doing these urban landscapes and like most artists I shuffle the cars out of the scene because they spoil it. 

I took these progress pics as I went. The red and blue one is the source for the animation below.

In the finished painting above, an old homestead snoozes in a quiet street with apparently untouched bush in the background - a total lie! I like an uncluttered landscape. But at the same time I really love the way the movement of a car across the surface of the earth can highlight the topography. 

I don't know where I am quite going with these experiments. This may just be too noisy with too much squiggle. My boss years ago said one project coming up "might suit your 'crappy style'" and I've always thought fondly of that. At least I have a style.

Cement mixer on an overpass, 1991

 When I lived in Melbourne in 1990-91 I went out to Sale on the train to visit my friends Phillip and Andrea. It was about a three-hour trip. I must have been in a particularly visually suggestive mood because I saw two things that have stuck with me.

One was Loy Yang power station. I had it etched on my brain afterwards. I cranked out a series of drawings and paintings and eventually had an exhibition in 1996 of variations on the theme of a simple scene: land, sky, monolith with lit windows, and four chimneys belching steam. (It wasn’t etched in my brain very accurately because Loy Yang does not have four chimneys).

I can safely say I've got that image out of my system now. The other thing I saw was a cement mixer approaching the train line on an overpass. Its barrel was revolving as it drove along. As my carriage went under the overpass, the cement mixer passed overhead. That’s it. But … it was beautiful. It was like ballet.

I don’t have any interest in making narrative film but I have a real itch to film and animate scenes like this. It has only just occurred to me that I can literally Blutak my phone to the car window and capture reasonably smooth and useable footage for projects like this.

In 1998 I had a second exhibition of drawings and two short film clips. I shot this footage with a borrowed video camera riding in a car with Mum (North West) and in the tray of Nick’s ute (North Hobart). It's painful to recall how ignorant I was and so how work-intensive my methods were.

I feel ready to throw myself into some new experiments in movement.

After Twitter

I spend a lot of time on Twitter; I post maybe 5 times a day on average. Just little observations in the main. I don't know how many followers I have, but I have good friends I met there and in most cases have never met in real life. The ones I have met; Josh and Sean and John and Craig and Dugald and Andy and Andy and Cheryl and Sue and Christine and Belinda and John and Dave and very briefly Ryan – all lovely people. All add value and meaning to my day.

It's a last day of Grade 12 vibe in there at the moment as everyone exchanges addresses, and we’re nervous and excited and sad. Elon Musk has purchased Twitter and rapidly driven it out into a paddock where it’s got four flats, smoke coming from the engine and the diff ripped out on a tree stump. Who saw that coming?! [Everyone].

The good thing if Twitter dies is I will maybe spend more time here expanding thoughts into larger forms and getting more practice actually communicating an idea in writing. The bad thing is communities will fracture, many people and groups and organisations and movements will lose their main or only voice.

Australia's soft plastics recycling industry has just gone public with the fact that they stopped recycling 6 to 9 months ago and have just stockpiled every bread bag I have given them since. This is dreadful news but it has also made me look at yesterday-me from before the news broke and say to him "oh you thought it was that easy eh? Buying everything in plastic is fine because the recycling fairies will turn it into park benches for old fellows to sit and play chess".

Similarly this rapid disintegration of something I had come to rely on too much for news, friendship, ideas and novelties has got me thinking "Oh you thought it was that easy eh? One website for touching farewells to beloved pets and news snark? And interacting with your favourite musos? And jokes?

A lot of us are going to have to work a lot harder to stay connected, stay informed, stay amused. But hard work is good, right? And Elon Musk, who in many ways is a world-historical idiot, is down $44 billion. Worse things happen.

A couple more paintings/drawings

So I am continuing to bang out these very small drawings and paintings. I have finally reached a lull in the freelance work (that has been a surprisingly big thing in the last 6 months). So the time is there, and the motivation(s).

1. Gifts for friends. I can slot these into the little 7cm square books I found at Artery, with some ephemera and nonsense.
2. Instagram. I think some of these are nice and they tie in (and are often based on) the photos I post all the time of landscapes and buildings and weird corners. And I love to have a nice Instagram profile to scroll back through but I also enjoy the positive comments which are nice without being too gushy. I don't think I'd ever make a thing of posting art on Twitter or Facebook – which are places for arguing (T) and getting rid of furniture (F).
3. It just feels good to be making art, and this is low-stress, low-cost and very portable. Work is quiet at the moment and because the whole kit takes up hardly any space I can easily squeeze in a bit of a paint at my desk. Living the dream! 

I am trying not to second-guess the whole posting-to-Insta-and-enjoying-approval thing. Whatever gets you making art is good, right?

The wide paintings below are about 130mm x 65mm, designed to be cut in half* or folded and slotted into the little square scrapbooks.

Bowen Rd, Lutana and Mt Direction

Opposite All Saints, South Hobart

Liverpool Street, West Hobart

T&G and SBT buildings from Trafalgar car park

*I can't really imagine now cutting them in half

A nice things about the tiny scale is when you scan/photograph the work and look up close it paradoxically seems quite loose and free, thanks to my shaky hands and being out of practice.

Bagpipers in the precious sunshine

 It's been raining cats and dogs in Hobart, as it has been up and down the east coast of Australia. We have been spared the serious flooding that has occurred in northern Tasmania and in other states - but the Hobart Rivulet near our house has been a mighty brown torrent.

Yesterday was Sunday, and appropriately the sun came out for the first time in a week. I genuinely didn't know what to do. There were various house things that needed doing, washing to get on the line etc. But maybe I wanted to read a book in the sun? Then there were a couple of DIY things to sort out. I actually got myself into an anxious state, upset with myself that I didn't have a plan in place to make best use of the sunshine. 

It seems ridiculous, but I confessed it to a workmate this morning and she said she had felt the same. The rain is coming back for the rest of this week, and we both felt "oh no, I have a small window of precious sunshine and I MUST NOT WASTE IT". That anxiety is ridiculous but when you are in it it's very real.

In the end I went off to Bunnings Hardware. When in doubt, just pretending to be a normal Australian man for a while is not a bad strategy. On the way I went past the soccer fields which are not in use now it's spring, and two bagpipers in plain clothes were bang in the middle playing at top volume. I think that was when I started feeling better. I bought some timber and drain plugs and solar lights and non-slip stuff and solvent and had a sausage and onion in bread.

I also had a walk in the sun around the old Showgrounds behind Bunnings, which is a very odd place indeed these days.

I got home, made an extension to the front yard handrail and put non-slip strips on the steps. Then I sat down to watch the Richmond women's team qualify for their first finals series with a thrilling draw. And I am back on the rails.

The floodlights for the Showgrounds' greyhound track

Last time I sat here was to watch diving pigs in 2011

Poplars on the Hobart Rivulet track

Scenes from our walk to work.

Above 20 July, below 11 October

 

Little watercolours

I walk around the city at lunchtime and in odd moments on weekends, and document that on Instagram here. I take photos of very ordinary things.     I made myself a target of posting a drawing or some sort of art for every fifth post. This was to give myself an incentive to keep drawing, even if they were just small scribbles. And I have tried to ignore quality control; just post whatever is new in the notebook.

I found these tiny 7cm x 7cm blank books at Artery. The paper is very thin but they are fine for micro-scrapbooks so I am doing some drawings and paintings to that size.

Above is the corner of Devonshire Square and Browne St, West Hobart.
Below is the bottom of Warneford Rd, South Hobart where it meets the Hobart Rivulet,
with houses in upper Liverpool St in the background.

1 Malunna Crescent - the front yard and the street

These are all my memories of the house we grew up in. I lived there from about 3 months old to just before I turned 18. Mum and Dad sold it in 2000 or 2001, and this what it looked like in 2010.

We always had two cars in the driveway. Dad had a white Kingswood HR wagon with red upholstery called Humphrey, and mum had a white Fiat 124 called Giuseppe that had belonged to dad’s father Didds. Later Dad bought a new yellow Fiat 128 called Sophia which arrived on a ship at the Port of Burnie, that was around 1975. By 1985 Dad had a dark blue Datsun 260C, unnamed. Mum later sold the white Fiat and regretted it. I drove it a bit on my Ls and I loved it. It had old-fashioned H-harness seatbelts in the back, and on the dashboard a squashy trilby-hat shaped rubber thing to squeeze to spray water onto the windscreen for the wipers.

We crammed into Sophia for regular one-day round trips to Launceston to see dad’s mum Ibey, and for him to mow the lawn and pick fruit. We occasionally stayed overnight but it was nearly always up-and-back. Dad had a St Christopher medal stuck to the dash. It seemed to work, we survived all those trips.

The Wescombes lived to our left and the Westbrooks to our right. The Wescombes had a line of dark trees much higher than in the photo above, on the north side of us: so our driveway was mostly a dark spot. Our lawn was split in half by a short concrete front path. The sloping left half was always spattered with gumtree detritus and quite mossy as it was overshadowed by a very big spinning gum. This was a great climbing tree but we needed a stool or a ladder to get started. You could sit up there quietly and people would pass below you, unbeknownst.

We had a fire hydrant in our driveway, and quite often in summer we had a fire engine parked there using it. The grounds of Marist college would mysteriously catch fire regularly.

We originally had a white timber rail fence, and I think I remember a front gate. But they went at some stage. We had dogs but they were kept in the back yard. Later the big gum become dangerous so it was cut down and mulched. 

The flat right half of the front lawn had a camellia growing in the middle of it. I grew up thinking of this as the 'mulberry bush', because we went round and round it. All it was good for was going round and round.

There was a "pebble garden" along in front of the house, sloping up to the front door. We had a piece of driftwood in it that looked like a seal. And red/pink fuschias with sweet nectar. It was originally very stark and low-maintenance but became more "planty" as years went by. There were two steps up to our small front porch which was held up by a square post with a healthy jasmine growing around it. Our front door was quite distinctive, it was dark green with three portholes in it.

I played cricket alone on the front path, with a “superball” - hard compressed rubber, very bouncy. I'd bowl it at the step, trying to get it to bounce back to me so I could take spectacular return catches, falling away down the slope to the left. Quite often I pitched it wrong so it would miss the steps and bash into the screen door. Quite often. Bash…bash… … …… bash.

I also would stand on the nature strip by the telegraph pole (imaginary stumps), throw a ball in the air and heave it to the legside, across the street into or over Gilmores’ front fence. My score advanced only by 4s or 6s.

At one time our front path had standard roses down each side. The tree shading the nature strip in the photo above might be one that mum planted which I remember as a liquidambar (but I know very little about trees). There were no trees then on our nature strip or further up to the right either; nature meant strictly "grass". We rode bikes and scooters down nature strip unencumbered, and also had thrilling sprint races complete with a handicapping system orchestrated by my friend Macca (his dad trained professional runners). Between our house and the Tolunah St corner were a silver birch and a woolly-barked red flowering gum.

For the record the neighbours going up the hill on our side after the Westbrooks were the Kellys, the Fords, then Hardings, then Murfett's until they moved across the road. Up the top on the bend were the Beaches and the Millars (including my soccer coach and music teacher Gordon). I thought of Mr Ford this morning – he had a very generous wave. I think he had survived a heart attack and seemed to be determined to spread happiness in his small way when he had an opportunity. 

At one stage I had a friend at kindergarten named Elizabeth, and she lived around on the other side of the block, in Paraka Street. One day we discovered a shortcut between our houses but it required going down the Ford's driveway and through a little hatch in their back fence.

Directly across from us were the Reardons (Mr Reardon gave me a chest expander) but they moved out and were replaced by the Boss-Walkers. Up from them were the Gilmores, then Murfetts and a bit further up a fascinating man we think was a retired seaman – with many chickens. He had long black hair, was quite weatherbeaten and I think had a dog who matched his hair. Pippa escaped and caught one of his chickens once and mum had to return it to him, deceased.

When I started primary school, the Waterfall bus stopped right in front of our house, and it cost 5¢. This shortly went up to 7¢, which meant there was double the chance of losing a coin and having to go and ring the doorbell while panicking the bus would come. The route changed later so our nearest stop was around in Paraka Street.

Macca and I played footy and cricket on the street. It was very quiet except at the end of the school day, as Marist College is just behind the houses across the road from us. We would have a crate for wickets and pick up and move when a car came. I remember at least once we were kicking end to end and talking about god knows what (probably cricket gloves or bats or footy cards) after the street lights came on. Which seemed very grown up.

I had a scooter but didn't have a bike until turned 9. I don't think I ever went too far in the scooter years, although I remember riding it down the steep and sweeping grassy hills around the Marist football ground. Coming down the nature strip, Ford’s driveway created a bit of a lip you could get a decent jump off.

I was intimately familiar with my grassy side of the street and all the driveways that crossed it; but also every paver on the other side, and where drains lay in wait to take a tennis ball. You could heave off the drain cover to make a daring rescue in some cases, but not all. If I had gone on Mastermind in 1976, my special subject would have been the surfaces of Malunna Crescent under my feet. I looked down a lot.

This is not our Kingswood but these pics do spark up some memories.

Premiers

 Let’s play Who Can Think Of The Most State Premiers? Is it fun? No not really. Just a quiet day at work and I am trying to keep my brain flexible by testing it occasionally.

I've got 54. I gave myself a bit of leeway – if I could picture them and remember half their name, it counts.

• SA: Playfair, Dunstan, Rann, Olsen, Weatherall, Hall, Malinauskas (7)
• WA: Richard Court, Sir Charles Court, Forrest, Lawrence, Burke, Gallop, McGowan (7)
• QLD: Bjelke-Petersen, Cooper, Ahern, Goss, Bligh, Newman, Palaszczuk (7)
• VIC: Bolte, Thompson, Cain, Kirner, Kennett, Brumby, Bracks, Andrews (8)
• TAS: Dry, Bethune, Ogilvie, Reece, Neilsen, Lowe, Holgate, Gray, Bacon, Lennon, Bartlett, Giddings, Hodgman, Gutwein, Rockliff (15)
• NSW: Askin, Wran, Greiner, Carr, Iemma, Rees, Unsworth, Kenneally, Berejiklian, Perrotet (10)

Lip Sync Battle + Music Quiz Ordeal

I will try to wrap up last night’s Lip Sync Battle + Music Quiz ordeal briefly so I can go to bed. Every moment since the ordeal ended has been precious and I really consider how I am spending my time, now. 

An old friend rang early in the afternoon yesterday and invited me and the family to a quiz night. Yeah, we love quiz nights, count us in. But also; this evening also included a lip sync battle - a kind of mime talent show. Of which one of the 3 judges was Miranda. So off we went. The friend that rang was Miranda's dad Simon; so our team was Simon, Mary, Marcus, Michael, Elf and I.

Elf was not aware it was a music quiz or that there would be performing when she signed up for it, so she was quietly furious. I am not going to mention the details of the battle or the venue because I don't want to upset the organisers if they were googling themselves and came across this. But here are some points of difficulty and exasperation.

• There were not enough chairs, so Marcus had to sit on a high stool and felt extremely exposed.
• The questions were very long and convoluted. They were often preceded by some editorial background that did not form part of the question but was just stuff the host wanted to get off her chest
• A friend of the host was trying to check people’s tickets which had QR codes etc; it was all very complicated and didn't work. She had had a few drinks. As the night wore on she continued to help but also to yell comments and occasional quiz answers. We appreciated very much the work of the host's other friends who managed to distract her and limit the damage.
• Simon had snaffled a "good table" which meant we were about 6 feet from the stage; and Michael and I were the ones who ended up on the stage side of it. This meant ladies and men dressed as ladies were miming at us from about a pool cue's length from our faces. We are both socially anxious and spent a lot of time looking at the ceiling and the very interesting curtains etc.
• The host was at times making effort to move things along, but at other times would go into a bit of a reverie. We started late so it soon became clear this was a marathon not a sprint. One of the host's team of friends and supporters did excellent work telling her to snap out of it, when she would drift into self doubt and start thinking aloud about what would have been a better way to do things.
• At the end, the merciful end, they collected all the answer sheets but could not add up the points. Drunk lady asked Marcus for help, while also clarifying unasked that she was "not retarded". He could not help because of the amount of numbers just written everywhere that no-one could explain to him.
• Quiz results were announced anyway. The team that was awarded first were gobsmacked and quite certain that they had not come anywhere near first. Host said "OK, I think this is right", as she handed out inexpensive prizes sourced from the Tip Shop, "but check our Facebook tomorrow for the final results and if you need to you can all meet for coffee and swap prizes or something".
• The lip sync 3rd prize winner was called to the stage and given the first prize, which was then removed again but she was very brave about it.
• This 3rd rate shemozzle ended with the host announcing that this was her first go organising an event but keep your eyes peeled for her new event management business called ___ (bad pun on her name). She was serious.

The lip syncing was mostly fun, people had put effort into costumes and practising. Thank you sincerely to the lady who played the parts of fox and hound for one song; you gave me and many others a reason to go on living. I seriously felt my soul leaving my body a few times during the night.

I will continue to support local events like this but I will insist on having a seat near an exit in future.

Overheard at work

"I actually have a Masters in Calabrian Literature but I just did a beginners course in Italian. It was because ... well Dad's friend was the mayor, but not really the mayor, sort of the mafia mayor."

Overheard at work

“Well, back to the stinking bunker of gowns”

ODFA Grand Final, Bothwell 13.11.89 d Campbell Town 7.9.51

Nick and I went up to Oatlands for the day to see unbeaten Bothwell Rabbits play Campbell Town Robins in the 2022 Oatlands District Football Association grand final. I have paid a lot of attention to the ODFA this year because after a few years on the wane it grew from five to seven teams in 2022. Oatlands itself was back, and my faves Woodsdale also came out recess.

It's true Oatlands did not win a game all year, and Woodsdale only beat Oatlands. But you have to start somewhere, and both clubs seem really well set up for future success. In a five-team league last year Campbell Town also went winless, and yet here they are in a grand final 12 months later. That's country footy.

We had to queue to get into the ground because the process of paying for admission, a Footy Record and some lucky tickets was so inefficient. Possibly the first queue that's been seen in Oatlands for a while. It was a warmish late winter day so everyone was in good spirits.

I had guessed that as hosts of the grand final (every year since 1979), Oatlands would have a state of the art electronic scoreboard by now. But, we were delighted to see the old faithful is still there!

Woodsdale FC had responsibility for running the canteen and the scoreboard on the day, and I chatted to the scorer who I think was John Treasure. In 2007 Roar Film made a 4-part TV series about country football called Alive and Kicking which featured John and his club’s run to the grand final.

Before play we settled behind the northern goals, peppered with local lads kicking miracle goals from the boundary line. A little toddler was nearly smacked in the head by a ball descending from a great height; her mum or auntie who'd been crouching by her turned and yelled at the boys "you nearly hit me on the arse!!"

Bothwell started better and kicked straight. We expected to see Tyler 'Snork' Ford run riot at some stage – he kicked 24 in one game earlier this year. An extraordinary looking young man; about 6 foot but skinny as a rake. He kicked two but never got off the chain. 

Late in the first quarter Campbell Town bottled the ball up in attack but didn’t kick straight. And that was it for the day really; the Rabbits looked sharper, had more bodies at the fall of the ball, took their chances and just edged away each quarter. We watched from various points.

At half time we joined a big queue and got pies and coffee. More than any other ground I’ve been to, this was a drink-and-smoke-anywhere venue. I’d guess the crowd at 1200. With both sides in red and black it was hard to tell who was supporting who but there was enough club merch to tell that Campbell Town had brought a fair contingent down the road for the day.

Grim attitudes in the Robins three quarter time huddle

The 2nd half played out like the first and the Robins never seriously threatened, and Bothwell's 7th ODFA flag was richly deserved. 

Swansea were a late withdrawal for this season, but hopefully the Bulldog Swans will take the field and bring it up to an 8-team comp in 2023.

The final score