Some reflections on life

A big night after family day seems to have left me reflective

Alice’s ‘Saffie’ article in Womens Health and a passage from Christos Tsiolkas’ book The Slap are making me feel that I am as much the product of my fathers generation as I am of my daughters. Stop that sniggering Gabby and listen to me. I acknowledge you are qualified to judge my part of Alice’s generation but you know nothing of that part of me that shares with Cristos’ character Manolis when he reminisces about Australia in 1961 where there were no seat belts and he drove with a beer between his legs. Not so much a lawless time as a time of less law.

In a time when three long necks came with change from a dollar we would not drink from them the way your peers do, got you drunk too fast was the theory and at three for a dollar what’s the hurry. Now of course you can’t ignore the cost and there is a hurry. I well remember a pre green way of life when the car window was the forever open lid to the worlds biggest garbage can. When seat belts like crash helmets were the affectations of rev heads who put v-8’s into their Morris Minors or anything else with wheels. When drinking and driving were as acceptable in a phrase as eating and sleeping. It was in fact legally necessary on a Sunday to have travelled thirty miles to qualify for a drink which came without any health warning concerning the thirty mile return trip.

Is it any wonder that I was a bit recalcitrant when it came to these new laws and health warning de-facto laws? Think for a moment how you might feel when swimmers are fined or jailed for swimming when beaches are closed, It’ll happen. When to rent or purchase in certain areas will require the consensus of those already enjoying the privilege, It happens already. When all must wear clothing in shades of red, it could happen. Its hard to give up what you thought were freedoms when they become labelled as privileges and are rationed nepotistically.

Now for something completly different

All these years I’ve thought of them as villainous, sadistic fascists with no regard for any but their own and their master’s interest. Devoid of empathy in their barbaric pursuit of aggrandisement. Morally bankrupt and even worse than real estate agents. But no, as it turns out those slave drivers who facilitated the erection of the Egyptian pyramids were in fact the personal trainers of their day.

Take a walk through your local park in the early post dawn and there witness as I have these tireless descendants of the pharaoh’s foremen and peers to the Burmese Junta as they sacrifice their breakfast time to restore the self esteem of their lessors. One on one they may not be so effective as empathy rears its ugly head and they may feel obliged by their otherwise inactivity to join in their slave’s gyrations. Give them a group and witness the emergence of the boot camp sergeant, barking her orders whilst keeping a steel eye out for laggers who would get out of step.

Of course though times have changed, systems remained the same and to impose discipline it is necessary still to have the weapon of punishment. Whilst hang, draw and quartering, flogging and even a strap about the ankles are, unfortunately, now considered politically incorrect, the tongue is still mightier than either the pen or sword. Oh yes you’ll find these ‘trainers’, oddly named after their footwear, as lippy as the best drill sergeant.

Recently in Bicentennial Park I witnessed a trainer whose charges had obviously been so wicked in their slavish weight gain that he had them, two girls, running in line carrying bamboo poles threaded through two tyres. The awkwardness of this so called exercise involving keeping their arms bent to keep the tyres off the ground and dodging the tyres themselves which had a constant potential to interfere with their gait truly looked like torture. The trainer making the pace before them so as not to witness their struggles carried a length of rope which seemed to me a threat to coffle least they did not keep up.

An amazing sight though on reflection I guess the coaches of sports teams have indulged in these types of rituals in the privacy of their training track for years and the only difference here is that it has been brought out on parade before me and my fellow morning walkers.

R


Ever wary Gabby was a second too slow






Nothing serious

Something serious




Hugh cracking on


Post Family Day Rock and Roll Yee Haa!




The Spirit