Road to Wollongong: Prologue

For a while I’ve been thinking I needed another mountain to climb.  I believe I’ve found one.

You remember that I said I while ago that I wanted to try a lot of new things?  Things I’d not done before?  That was brought back into mind recently by something that happened at SES.  One of the newer members who I helped train last year came back from the summer break sporting a healthy pregnancy bump.  This rattled me a bit.  I couldn’t figure out why.  I only know her as a fellow volunteer.  I don’t know anything at all about her private life.  So, why should it matter to me?  The best guess I could come up with was a sense of life leaving me behind.

This lead me to consider finding myself another mountain to climb.  Happily, this didn’t take long.

The Australasian Police and Emergency Services Games are held every two years, and this is one of those years.  The games are open to (inter alia) “registered volunteers … from eligible emergency service agencies across Australasia, including New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and South East Asia”.  Since I don’t meet the criteria to compete in the World Police and Fire Games, this is as high a level as I can compete at.  Further, they’re being held in Wollongong, on the New South Wales coast south of Sydney.  This is reachable from where I live (flight to Sydney; train to Wollongong).

The event I've set my mind on is my preferred race distance, the half-marathon, which will be run on Friday 23 October 2020.  This is 8 months away, and I'll be training up for it: I want to put up the best time I can while the chance presents.

So, expect this blog to get a bit running-heavy for the next few months: Let's see where this road can go!

An Adventure in Speed Dating

I tried something different last Friday evening: I tried a speed dating event at a bar in Fitzroy.

Melbourne's heavens opened late that afternoon, so that was a challenge: I knew I'd be sporting that "drowned rat" look.  I'm not going to lie: I was a bit nervous.  I summoned up my “just arrived on scene at roof damage leading a good crew" look: the impression I was going for was of a man in control of my surroundings and his reactions.  Certainly after thinking this for the tram ride I was at least feeling like that!

I imagine the format of speed dating is well enough known not to need setting out.  Each date was about 15 minutes with changeovers notified by text message.  Matches seemed to be basically set by age, which saw me meeting people at the high-30's end of the age range (this suited me fine).  All of the matches seemed like good people, even if not uniformly appealing.  One or two had personalities that left no mark.  More tragic were the ones who seemed to have long ago sold their identity to their work and to have no real core of their own to express.  On the other hand, others were fascinating to talk to and one at least had had much the experience with her ex I've had with mine: there were no more fights over their child; it was easier just to get on with the business of being irrevocably part of each others life for the next umpteen years.

Oddly, one of the best conversations of the night was with a young lady of 31 during the meal break.  Each of us was enthusiastically consuming sausage rolls and chicken wings in the knowledge we wouldn't be paired and therefore there was no loss about scarfing down food in front of the other.  She remarked that her reason for being there was in large part that her parents want grandchildren!

Not many people hung around afterwards and so I contented myself with ordering the best Bloody Mary I've had since I was last in New Orleans.  On the walk home I stopped for drambuie in the Lord Newry Hotel, began a draft of this post and reflected on the experience.  Something that struck me was the randomness of it all.  My last date of the night was the belle of the evening, a professional lady who looked a bit like Natalie Dormer.  With a little Dutch courage on my side, I asked her why she was single: she was certainly attractive and intelligent.  She replied that she'd just never 'clicked' with anyone.  Perhaps I'm missing the point of all this (quite likely) but a 'click' seems like an alarmingly random way to decide matters like this: no wonder, perhaps, that so much sadness comes into the world from relationships.

Too Much Spare Time

Here I am on a Wednesday evening feeling a bit lost.

It's been a good couple of days: I'm getting back into the swing of things at work and also feeling a bit more like myself again.  I ran home from work last night, which was good even if I was left with a painful twinge in my might knee.  Melbourne is very smoky although going along the Moonee Ponds Creek you don't really notice it (mainly because the creek smells so much worse than the smoke).

Tonight, as I said, I'm a bit lost on account of unexpected free time.  This afternoon the weather bureau was prognosticating a bit of a weather apocalypse, and so I left work early.  Well, early for me (about 6:30pm) in expectation of callouts. 

In the event, there were no callouts which left me at a bit of a loss.  I couldn't run because I did that last night and want to do so again tomorrow night.  I settled for a yoga routine from my phone followed by TV and dinner, but it all felt somewhat unsatisfying.  At least the yoga seems to have sorted my knee out.

Unusually for me I actually felt like to talking to other homo sapiens and browsed my contacts on various social media platforms without finding anyone I can really talk to.  So that was a bit depressing.

Leading me to now: wine and a stiflingly humid room at my digs.  Roll on tomorrow.

An accident at Mornington

On Saturday I went for a leisurely wander through the Melbourne General Cemetery.  Any cemetery wander is a history lesson and today was just such a day.  This was the headstone that caught my eye -

Mr Nunn, as the headstone says, was killed while "aeroplaning" at Mornington (how long, I wonder, was 'to aeroplane' a verb?).  The fuller story, however, is somewhat more tragic.  The report in the Argus (3 January 1920, p.14) stated that he had long been trying to obtain a flight in an aeroplane and had persuaded the pilot in this case to take him on a series of afternoon flights in a Sopwith Gnu (the type of aircraft is identified in a report of the Defence Science and Technology Organization).

Sopwith Gnu (Image from here)

As the aircraft approached Mornington it snagged on a telegraph wire and overturned, injuring the pilot and causing Nunn fatal injuries.  Painfully, the Sydney Morning Herald (5 January 1920, p.7) reported that the flight had been taken without his parents' permission.

Nunn was born in about 1902.  The Wright brothers first flight took place in 1903.  It is painful to think that when Mr Nunn's parents received the news, they may have reflected that he was killed by an accident they could not have imagined on the day they welcomed him into the world.

Sunday, and another beer.

Another summer day, another beer.  This time a Kaiju Krush at the Victoria Hotel in Brunswick.

It's been a full day.  I meant to go to Mass this morning at Our Lady’s at 9am.  I woke at 9am after the best night’s sleep I’d had in ages.  I decided God must have wanted me to catch up on sleep instead.  I got my coffee and began a three hour FaceTime with Grace and Rachel.  They were so happy to see me.  Also a good talk to The Ex.  As I’ve reflected a few times, this isn’t how I thought my family would look, but I’m good with it nevertheless.  This is OK.

After Facetime I headed out for my weekend run.  I lengthened the usual route a little to include Royal Park Station and ended with a respectable 14 kms at a better pace than I’d expected.
Running clears your head and when I got home I deleted the POF and Tinder apps off my phone (one spam email offering prostitution too many, among other reasons).  The reason I mention this is that at about the time I put them on my phone the other week, I mislaid my Marian medal.  Well, I went to do laundry after my run (and after deleting the aforesaid apps).  What do you suppose I found?  Sometimes Our Lady is less than subtle.

Cleanliness was literally next to godliness this weekend as my next stop was Mass at St Joseph’s, followed by the beer with which I began.  I’m putting off going back to my digs to start writing up SES Peer reports.  It’s not a difficult job but it’s fiddly and boring.

Not much more to add.  It'll be a busy week this week

A mental health day

It’s Saturday and a cool change is giving Melbourne in general and me in particular a break from summer heat.

I’ve been exhausted for the last few days.  The usual late rush of work last year, then three weeks or so farm work in the north, and a big absence of my usual diet and exercise, has hit me mentally for six.  Time on the farm has been with family, which is great but means you’re “on” all the time and that's kind of exhausting too.  How tired am I?  There’ve been a couple of SES messages today and each time I’ve looked at the pager and thought “I’m not up to it...  show me a chainsaw or a damaged roof and I’ll stare blankly at it and tell the crew 'just do whatever you think'”.  This, plainly, is neither safe nor satisfactory.

As a result, I made today a mental health day with tincture of Marie Kondo.  I ironed my shirts.  I filed two years worth of paper clutter (bank statements; that sort of thing).  I got groceries and went with things I’ve not tried before (pulse pasta? Why not?).  Then I purged the piles of things on my bedside table, threw out old copies of Catholic Weekly that I know I'll never get around to reading and bought a magazine box for unread copies of American Rifleman and The Mirror.

Then, I got a tram down Lygon Street and took a gentle stroll through Melbourne General Cemetery (which gave me material for another blogpost in a few days).  I walked to the Brandon Hotel for beer and book time.  I’m not sure Hemingway was the best choice for a day like this.  I love his prose but sometimes it can feel like one is chewing gravel.  I’m still catching up on my misspent youth and stopped for wine at the Great Northern on the walk home, which is when I'm drafting this.

At this point I’m feeling more like myself again (Dutch courage?).  I was going to write SES Peer reports tonight but I don’t think I have it in me.  I’ll update my Goodreads profile and do some stretches and be in bed by 11pm.  God willing by tomorrow I’ll feel like myself again.

How's your weekend?

So long, old decade, and thanks for the memories

Every year has its seasons of waiting, when normal rules are set aside and the world waits for the milestone to pass.  Holy Saturday is one.  The Monday before Cup Day is another.  The longest of all is the season between Boxing Day and New Years Day. It’s a season to search your heart and to review your life and consider what you want the new year to hold. When the next year marks a new decade, this goes up by a factor of ten.  In other years, I’ve reviewed my diary and notebooks in this time seeking insight.  This year I didn’t have to.  This time I had inspiration on my side.

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Keeping a personal diary is the gift you give yourself once a year. I'm reviewing my 2017 and getting a really clear idea of what makes me happy, what depresses me, and what can be better in the new year. #diary #life #goodbye2017 #newyear #newstart #newlife #writerlife #rollon2018

A post shared by Stephen Tuck (@sdtuc2) on Dec 30, 2017 at 5:59pm PST

It’s not always easy to know where inspiration comes from.  This year, however, I know exactly where it came from.  It came from a booze-fuelled conversation with my dear friend Sarah at a bar in Melbourne.

I don’t quite remember how the point arose.  I listened to her describing her life to date with a sense of acute contrast.  What struck me was that she had spent much of her life dismantling the walls between herself and experience. I have spent a large whack of my 41 years building and strengthening my own.

Actually, referring to “walls” between me and experience isn’t an ideal metaphor.  Readers over the decade or so I’ve been writing this blog will know that the experiences I’ve had have been startlingly varied.  The 2010s have seen -

• The birth of my darling daughters;
• The breakdown of my marriage ending in divorce
• Being fired from two jobs.
• Resigning from two other jobs (one resignation more voluntary than the other!)
• Losing all of my savings.
• Losing most of my stuff.
• Three changes of address and ten changes of jobs.
• Service with SES in two states including multiple encounters with the dead and dying.
• Three marathons and God-knows how many half-marathons.
• I've written and (more importantly) published multiple times in Australia and the USA.
• Running umpteen court cases to judgment.
• Multiple trips to the USA.
• Lots of new friends!
• Loss of some people from my life which (for the most part) I'm OK with.
• Service with Red Cross after a terror attack.
• Work that made me miserable but from which I learned a lot.

There's probably some other experiences I've omitted to mention, but no matter. The point is that life has not, on the whole, been sheltered.  So perhaps a better metaphor is that I’ve become expert at creating ever-more labyrinthine gateways in the walls between me and experience.  A simple (if trivial) example is that I loved Dido’s album Life for Rent. Despite this, it took me an unspeakable amount of time to listen to (say) No Angel or Safe Trip Home.  I can’t even explain why, exactly.  Perhaps, having made one piece of artistic output part of my mental landscape, I didn’t want run the risk of something else overturning it all.  This would go some way to explaining why I’ve long had an instinctive animus against reading fiction and near total lack of interest in anything new where music or cinema or TV is concerned.

These intricate gateways have served a useful purpose.  They let me keep control of what went on in my mind when the 1260 cubic centimetres inside my skull was about the only thing over which I had any real control.  One might posit a kind of intellectual anorexia, with similar motivations.  So far, so good.  But the writer of Ecclesiastes was right: there is a time for everything, and now I feel comfortable enough in my own skin and in my own sense of purpose not to need quite the same fortress mentality, however well it has served me in the past.  Fortresses, after all, differ principally from prisons only in the side of the door the locks are on.  It seems to me that all the carefully locked mental gateways I have built can be replaced with something much more straightforward (basically, will participating in such-and-such  violate the Catechism?).

Since that conversation with Sarah I’ve found myself doing things I hadn’t expected to do.  I blazed through Bruce Chatwin’s novel On The Black Hill in about a week, aching along with its description of rural poverty because it's an experience I've seen at close quarters

I also experimented with trying for an actual date, which is something I’ve never really done in a conventional sense.  This was less successful.  OKCupid doesn’t have a “dealbreaker” setting, which resulted in a very large number of potential matches which I rejected out of hand. 

Golf, like atheism, is a dealbreaker



I’ll be interested to try speed dating next year.  I’d be astonished if it led anywhere but it should make for a novel evening!

 

I don't know what the 2020s will hold.  Based on the experience of the last decade I'd be a damn fool even to guess.  But more than ever, I'm ready for the next set of adventures to start.