Still Motion

Jeremy

I took this photograph at sunrise one morning. It’s on a winding stretch of road which is more or less the main artery through my whole area. Sometimes I pass through at normal speed, at other peak hour times I crawl past at a walking pace, but I always look at it and no matter what chatter is happening in the car or on the radio, it never fails to get my attention. This road is rarely quiet and the shrine is on a bit of a blind corner which means your back is to the cars coming, so it took a bit of nerve to take the shot. I would say many tens of thousands of cars pass it every day.

On those trips I would think about Jeremy ‘Jem’, who his family might be, who keeps the shrine like this all year round, year after year, and, more gruesomely perhaps, I would wonder how he died. It was a while until I found out the story, which I have been unable to substantiate, but I was recently told that Jeremy was a journalist in Iraq who was killed by a roadside bomb while embedded with troops. He was a young guy in his early twenties who lived on the northern beaches, and, supposedly, he was the first Australian to be killed in the war in Iraq. Knowing this makes the shrine even more poignant to me. It’s not in a war memorial, it’s just on a simple pole and it seems to have been there for years. Day after day I pass it. Year after year slips by. Have we really been in this horrendous war for that long?

For Jeremy and his family: know that there are among us, many who noticed, and who thank you for your undoubted courage and your ultimate sacrifice.

Bring on the New Bromancing … Mad Men & Me

This weekend my significant other is away for the weekend at a ‘Buck’s party’, leaving behind the wild weather (high winds and dust storms here) for 48 hours of non-stop football watching, beer, surfing, surfing videos, football re-runs and well, beer. The scene for these activities is a house on a beach more than several hours drive from home. This particular buck’s party will be rather large. More than 20 of them at last count, all bonding in the primeval form. Cro-Magnon anyone? Maybe. But I am calling it the New Bromancing.

I confess I find the whole Stag / Bucks’s night concept a bit odd in the 21st century. When people have been going out forever, travelled to Bali and shopped together for IKEA, I’m puzzled why there is a need to split the sexes into Bucks and Hens just because the couple in question have decided to wear matching rings … *frowns*

Once I actually suggested to a girlfriend who was getting married to a famous television producer, that we have a joint Buck’s and Hens’ Night for everyone who was invited to the wedding. On the invitation we could put “Not another buck ‘n hen night” was my line of thinking. I was thrilled by my catchy tag line - if you get my drift. However, the look of horror on her face at the idea of a unisex event pre-wedding cake said it all, without her saying a word. Needless to say my idea was duly filed under ‘Too cutting edge’. Or maybe it should have been filed under simply ‘Too Edgy’. Or whatever.

And thus the ubiquitous bucks’ nights continue unabated. Sometimes they end up in those seedy strip clubs or sometimes they emerge in a tamer version as the weekend away + beer. But, no matter what the form, I have come up with a perfect  - and it must be said brilliant – solution to this gender-splitting practice. While the bucks are a-bucketing and the hens are a-nesting, I’m simply staying home a-lone! The opportunity to curl up on the couch with the dog on my feet and watch the entire Season 1 of Mad Men is now at hand. In fact, I can watch all 13 episodes if I want (which I do). In a row. Until I am practically drunk on the exquisite Don Draper and wishing I could channel my inner Joan / Betty / Rachael or at the very least raid their insanely gorgeous wardrobes.  Because I own the remote, I do.

I’m giddy at the prospect of my own personal Mad Men extravaganza. In fact, now that I am thinking about it, couldn’t all guys do with a bit more bromance in their lives? They need it. And I am hoping the rest of our friends who haven’t done so get married asap, and leave the real Mad Men to me - Season 2 is due in store any week.

Another buck ‘n hens weekend? I say, bring it on.