Mark Twain, A Race and a Footy Match

Well today is a Public holiday in Melbourne. There is an event that happens here every year on the first Tuesday in November. A horse race called the Melbourne Cup.

I guess it is somehow typical of Aussies that one of our biggest public holidays, a spectacle that brings the state to a halt, is a horse race.
And I really mean to a halt. Today is an official public holiday which means employers are obliged by law to pay anyone working today two and a half times their normal pay. Not surprisingly most businesses shut up shop for the day.

To be fair “The Cup” has a long tradition as a big event, this year sees its 150th Anniversary.
Mark Twain was in Melbourne in 1895 and he said of the day:“Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal—and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme it has no rival.”

Now that is all I have to say about The Cup. I enjoyed the day off but I didn’t go to the Flemington Racecourse to watch the race run.

Instead I will talk about another sporting event that would arguably be even more important to Melburnians. The Aussie Rules Grand Final which happens at the end of September.

In Victoria there are two sports that really grab the public attention. Cricket in the summer and Australian Rules Football (or footy) in winter. Footy would be the closest thing there is to a universal passion in Melbourne. If you want to have a conversation with a Victorian a good starting point is almost always footy. The passion for the sport somewhat bewilders me as I am from Queensland where Rugby is the local "footy" and I have to admit I am not much interested in that either. I maintain I am the quiet writer type :-)

However this year Deb and I went to the Grand Final.
Deb is a big fan of The Saint Kilda Football Club and they were playing. More to the point Deb was given a pair of corporate tickets worth… Well I dread to think what they were worth, the face vale was $345 each but I know they always sell for $700 - $1500. Safe to say we wouldn’t have gone unless we had been gifted the tickets.

So the big day came Deb and I arrived very early to avoid the worst of the crowd. We walked from Flinders Street Railway Station towards the Melbourne Cricket Ground the home of footy (the MCG also affectionately known as ‘The Gee’). We used a footbridge to cross the lines running into Flinders Street.
The view from the footbridge back to the Melbourne CBD

As you get close you realise just how big the stadium is.When we arrived the stands were fairly empty.The teams came out on to the ground to warm up.Deb snapped this shot of me to prove I was there.

“Entertainment” was provided like this ‘footy’ shaped hot air balloon.One of the coaches discussed kicking with Nick Riewoldt the St Kilda Captain.
Who then had a go himself.INXS played their hit “Suicide Blonde” as the ground continued to fill.They are starting to look like old rockers.
QANTAS did a flyby with their latest Super Jumbo.And the players (who had disappeared as INXS played) made their formal entry to the field.
The first ball up was held by one of the referees (there are four on the ground plus two goal keeping umpires) and the game was on.I won’t even try to explain the rules, the game is very different to any other form of football (the closet is Gaelic Football played in Ireland). If you want to get some idea of the rules you can go here.

Probably the most important thing to understand is the game is fast, very fast. Often scores of 130 or 150 are achieved by both teams.It is also very intense as you can see by the face of this St Kilda player.The ball flies high and the players leap high into the air to try to ‘take a mark’ which gives them a free kick.The whole crowd scream their heads off. Deb screamed (so much she lost her voice that night), and even me, the least football minded person on the ground, ended up screaming my lungs out.

The writer in me has filed this experience away. The atmosphere is amazing, very much as I imagine the feel at a Roman spectacle must have been.

The result a draw!

Collingwood kicked 9 goals and 14 behinds for a score of 68, while St Kilda kicked 10 goals and 8 behinds for a score of 68.Under AFL rules the teams would have to come back to play again the next week. This is only the second time this has happened in over 100 years!

A word about Aussie crowds, as you can see when the ground is at its fullest fans of both teams are intermingled. There seems to be little or no ill will between the supporters of each team.
I think this has two causes: first Aussies tend to be relatively laid back, we aren’t generally aggressive to each other; and with such high scores the supporters of both teams get plenty of outlet for their passions!

So that was the (first) Grand Final of 2010.

The day had a final treat in store. As we walked back towards Flinders Street the evening light and a rapidly approaching storm did wonders for the light over the city.The Eureka Tower in particular looked spectacular.The colours of the building have some symbolism. The gold face represents the gold of the 19th century rushes. The red represents the shed blood of the Eureka rebels and the blue and white stand for the colours of the Southern Cross flag they fought (and died) under. I may say more about the Eureka Rebellion around the anniversary later in the year.


Ps. In the replay St Kilda were defeated by Collingwood (but as Deb is still smarting I won’t say any more).

Madder Than a Cut Snake

Well I’ve officially gone mad.

“Whadda ya mean gone mad? You’ve always been madder than a cut snake!”

Uncle Harry, I hate to say it mate, but as a figment of my imagination you’ve probably proved the case.

I seem to have been doing almost anything to avoid finishing off the corrections to my manuscript suggested by Cheryl some weeks ago.
For a while I was fairly diligent, now I think I am only a few hours away from completing. My problem is I just seem to use any excuse to avoid those last few hours of work.

I don’t count blogging, although it is dangerously addictive. Some of my avoidance tactics have been fairly constructive such as: researching for the sequel; a little writing of the sequel; house work, mowing the lawn etc.

But most of them have been a sheer waste of time, like watching TV including: Aussie Rules Football (I don’t even barrack for a team) or Netball (ditto).

In short I have been procrastinating.

I thought I would share one of my procrastinations.
In a supreme effort to waste time I have designed a cover for my novel.

Mind you I haven’t the foggiest notion of why I think I need to design a cover.

Here are a few of the reasons I don’t need a cover:
- I haven’t got an agent yet, let alone a publisher.
- When I finally get a publisher they are not likely to be at all interested in my design.
- My artistic tendencies are in writing not graphic design.
- I don’t think I am likely to self publish.

But reason be damned, I was doing one anyway.
The creation of this piece has been a supreme effort of procrastination. Initially, a rough idea for the cover popped into my head: I thought it should feature a vivid blue eye because one of my leading characters features an impressive pair of peepers; then the working title is Veiled in Shadows so the obvious thing was a veiled face with a blue eye.

So armed with this nugget I went searching through stock photos.
I eventually found this image and bought a $5 limited licence.
I cropped it a bit and added some text and had a first draft, so to speak.
While this said “veiled” alright it kind of didn’t quite work for me.
So I had to add something but what?

Then quite by chance I happened to walk past a little militaria shop in Melbourne. In the window I saw among other things some Nazi documents.
I bought this one for $45 (as an aside is anyone’s German good enough for a translation? I have a minute amount of German and much of the officialese in this goes right over my head)

So after a fair bit of scanning and learning how to drive a photo editor to (do more than crop), coupled with a lot of hair tearing (my procrastination can be carried to absurd levels) I ended up with this.
To which I have added a spine and a back cover. The blurb probably deserves an apology; I really struggle at distilling 120,000 words and multiple sub-plots to half a page of text and at the same time trying to make it catchy. I hope I haven’t made the work sound trashy, I don’t think it is.

Now I have to go because I have procrastinated long enough.