A swell send-off

It was simply by chance. Wednesday morning and our nursing home participants are delayed arriving because of heavy traffic. So, whilst I wait I flick through the newspaper and there I notice in the funeral announcements, a section of the paper I only occasionally look at, the name of a former work colleague and friend with whom I have had no contact since exchanging Christmas niceties last year. What a shock. He'd seemed in acceptable health always and a death announcement was unexpected.

The funeral was today. More than 250 in attendance. Clearly a man respected by many. His grown up family impressive in their demeanour and speech. Charming young grandchildren participating articulately and with poise beyond their youth. Widow dignified.

I shed a tear as the coffin was carried out of the church.

A sportsman great, I do not make

It is often said that one characteristic of great sportspeople is their capacity to focus on the 'moment'. They do not dwell on the setbacks of the past. It is a trait I wish I possessed.

I learnt to play bridge about twenty years ago with a number of aims, one of which was to improve my concentration; to fine tune my focus. It has worked to a degree but by no means absolutely.

Playing bridge involves an etiquette similar to golf. All competitors should be polite and genteel and take setbacks as well as triumphs with equanimity. Privately you might wish to separate your opponent's head from their shoulders and at times you might wish to perpetrate something even worse to your own partner but on the surface all should be sportingly fair, full of grace, behaviour characterised by modesty and good humour. It's a tough standard few of us achieve without exception.

In last night's game we were matched in round 2 against two men who mostly are pleasant opponents. I'd never known either of them to be difficult with us. They could afford these high standards against us as they usually play very strongly at our table and get the better of us in play. Last night, however, we took the player in the West seat down in a slam contract he thought he should have made. Indeed he could have made his contract but the fact is that he didn't. That should have been the end of it but West, annoyed by his defeat, believed that my partner, in the South seat, had mislead him when he asked her to explain my card play. West expressed that opinion petulantly at the table. This is a breach of etiquette. If West believed that he had been unfairly disadvantaged by South's response to his question it was open to him to call the Director (a sort of manager cum adjudicator of play) and request a ruling.

West made no attempt to call the Director. I'm sure that was because he knew that no breach of rules or unfair play had occurred. My partner had answered West's question correctly but the fact that the card play on that hand forced me to depart from our usual playing agreement was just one of things that arise when playing bridge.

That's where I should have left the matter. I should not have taken the bait of his aggression. West was in the wrong and I should have stayed mute. But I didn't. I responded with a sharp retort that was only marginally less a breach of etiquette than West's petulance. Having lost my cool I then started to mull over the incident. This is my weakness. Well, it is one of my weaknesses. Now I had another two and half of hours of card play to negotiate and all the while my concentration was shot. I felt myself red in the face and no doubt my blood pressure had risen and all while I had to continue playing to the best of my ability as the other East/West pairs took their turn at our table.

In those circumstance my play usually falls away and we (South and I) end up with a low score for the night and an even lower position in the field. Late in the night, in the second last round, I made two errors of judgement that contributed directly to very low scores for two hands. For the rest, though, my score sheet indicated that we weren't doing too badly despite my mind being off with the pixies. Or should that be off with the demons?

It turns out that we finished second in the North/South field with 58.80%. This is a score which wins plenty of nights and is as high as we been placed in quite a while. We were pretty happy. What about the offending (offensive) West? He and his partner finished in the lower half of the East/West field with a percentage well below what they typically achieve. Justice was done in our minds.

Yet again I will urge myself to show restraint in future. But I'm only human. A sportsman great, I do not make. I know I'll take the bait again some time.

Cats scare Magpies away

This day last week I was in Melbourne. It was Grand Final day. A wet and cold day with dark clouds overhead. Two local teams, the Collingwood Magpies and the Geelong Cats were playing in the Australian Football League's championship match as it might be called elsewhere.

At 3.29pm with the match approaching half time I look out my hotel window and I can see the Melbourne Cricket Ground with it's light towers illuminating the ground. Just a couple of hundred people short of 100,000 are inside the stadium viewing the spectacle.

Not a single car, train, tram or pedestrian is visible outside the ground. Presumably those not present at the stadium are viewing the match on live television elsewhere indoors.

Fast forward to 5.19pm. After three quarters of titanic, even, struggle the Geelong Cats have started to assert their superiority and look to be headed for victory. Spectators, presumably Collingwood Magpies supporters, are beginning to stream from the ground across the rail bridge and trains are moving again.

Now it is 6.04pm and the Geelong Cats have prevailed. The match is over and the victory celebrations are underway inside the stadium. The trams are running and the crowd is dispersing, many of them across the railway line and on to Federation Square where two hours later the victorious team will be presented to it's adoring blue and white scarf bedecked fans.

Sparkling Passion

James has stirred interesting memories with this post about drinks of the past.

I'm pretty well teetotal not because of any principles against drinking but simply because I have never really developed a taste for alcohol. In my early twenties, though, I went through a phase of drinking Vodka and Orange Juice (Screwdrivers) and Gin and Tonics. How gay was I?

Mention of Passion Pop in the comments to James' post triggers a memory for me.

Back in the late 1970s our Department's Social Club paid a visit to the hometown of the Minister of the day; an over colourful, faintly notorious character. The region around his hometown was known for it's vineyards and a visit to them was high on the agenda for this group of Public Servants all of us aged in our early twenties, highly sexed and living for fun.

We happily flitted from vineyard to vineyard. I had already passed my short drinking phase and stuck to the fizzy sickly sweet soft drinks to which I have been more or less addicted for most of my adult life. The rest got stuck right into sampling the wines which our hosts were hoping we would purchase by the boxful.

One of the wines on offer was a confection named 'Sparkling Passion'. A bubbly passion fruit coloured - and flavoured - wine which the serious drinkers - that is; everyone but me - took one sip of and then reeled in horror at it's sickly sweetness. Naturally it was the only wine I took to with enthusiasm.

I didn't find any reference to this wine on the Net; which doesn't surprise me but I did find this gaudy advertisement for an almost identically named soft drink, possibly from the same era.

Sparkling Passiona

There is no doubting why I took to the 'wine', when everyone else shunned it. It tasted exactly like a carbonated soft drink popular in my youth and still sold to this day; Passiona.  I was somewhat surprised to read in the link - but then again maybe not - that Passiona is only sold in Australia.

Passiona

Trams in Prague

Designed by Porsche, built by Skoda

A streetcar named Antwerp

A tram in Antwerp, Belgium

A streetcar named Amsterdam

A tram in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

A streetcar named Bonn

A tram in Bonn, Germany as viewed from our passing coach

A streetcar named Nuremberg

A tram in Nuremberg, Germany

Part of the tram network runs on open tracks

A streetcar named Linz

A tram in Linz, Austria

A streetcar named Vienna

A tram in Vienna, Austria

A streetcar named Bratislava

A tram in Bratislava, Slovakia

A streetcar named Budapest

A tram in Budapest. More coming Andrew.

For Andrew

A Prague tram; Andrew there's more to come.

Love birds

This pair was enjoying a long nuzzle and cuddle on my kitchen window sill this morning until they sensed me aiming my camera at them and then abruptly parted.

Searching for myself...

(Artwork: Raphael Perez)

As my blogroll suggests there are quite a few blogs I follow regularly. I'm impressed how so many bare their souls with beautifully written posts revealing their inner most thoughts and emotions. Breenlantern is one such blogger who writes vividly. Another fascinating blogger with quite a different style is Kezza. These are just two examples.

The more I read these blogs the more I wonder about my own emotion and passion. A cursory examination of my blog will confirm that I reveal far less of myself than do these passionate men. And it has always been that way.

Before my mother developed Alzheimer's Disease she often commented that I may have inherited her looks but that I am my father's son in character. Sometimes the comment was spoken in jest but as often she was admonishing me for an action or behaviour of which she did not approve.

My father belonged to that stoic generation of men who were quiet and did not show emotion. There was no such thing as a metrosexual in their day. It was very difficult to know what he was thinking deep down. I saw him cry just the once and that was the night when the Police brought me home to my parents after entrapping me at a toilet and, I suppose, the realisation of my sexuality hit him. He never cried again in my presence nor did he mention that night.

I didn't really doubt that he continued to love me, although he didn't state it but I was never certain what it was he was thinking.

In 1974 I was posted to London to work there for two years. Although I had travelled overseas twice previously on holidays, this was to be the first time I had lived away from my parents. They saw me off at the Airport. Within a week of my arrival in London I received a letter from my father. It was the only letter he sent me in my life (other than the briefest notations at the bottom of letters my mother sent). It was a beautiful letter. I had no idea that my father harboured such passion and love for me.

But that was it. He never really opened up to me again except for something he said to me less than a week before his death. He was in hospital and I was helping him from his bed to a chair by the window and he whispered to me "You really do love me". It was said as a statement of surprise. He was dead before the week was over.

And so here I am, my father's son - pragmatic as ever - keeping most of my thoughts to myself. This particular post notwithstanding.