Gruntski

Ahhh- the laziest (NOT!) blog poster in the southern hemisphere.

Yet there is so much information that I could impart….. if I wanted to.

Abbreviated version:

 I still love my job, although I have been told that in 18 months, Special Needs User Support will be outsourced for the department- and that sucks (I won’t get the sack- I’m a public servant… buI have to find something else to do)

Natasza and Anthony are going great guns- here’s some vids of Tasz on a horse- her first experience at trotting…:

 I have been asked to audition for another musical, by the guy who directed The Full Monty- evidently he has a role picked out for me,  so I could hardly say no…( The role he has picked out is for the Tour Manager, evidently a bit of an asshole… (type-cast again…).

 I went out last night for a Christmas Partyt, drank WAY too much, and am paying for it now (although I don’t know what happened to my commitment never to drink again… several beers later….)

I bought myself a new car (Ford Territory, AWD, with all the bells and whistles, and it drinks twice as much as my Pulsar did, although it’s alot more fun to drive….)

Bought a tent, and sleeping bags, and hope to take the kids camping sometime early next year (am getting a portable BBQ for christmas (thanks mum)) and need to buy some camp stretchers (Yes, I’d be happy with a swag, but trying to convince my kids that sleeping with huntsman spiders is a good thing may take some doing).

Looking forward to Christmas- coming to Melbourne for a week and a bit, but will probably be back here for New Years- maybe I’ll get back into the horse riding thing again (yes I know that I said I was going to stick with it, but when the sun goes down at 5pm, and I’m not home till 6pm makes it a bit hard… and then there’s the fact that that was the middle of winter, and we are now well into summer, and also the fact that I am a scaredy cat).. (I will hopefully be forced to (re) learn to ride with Tasz, as it looks like she’s gonna be on my case to take her riding every time she comes out here…)

…This is something I could teach my children…..

not likely though…

As I have mentioned before in my blog, my Grandma has been quite ill, and she passed away on the 27^th July, in Melbourne. She went peacefully, and with no pain, and that, my friends, is very important.

I went to Melbourne to offer what support I could (and to receive it, too, truth be told), and felt something I have not felt before.

A part of the family.

You see, I was a “step” child, someone not of the blood of the Brown family; someone perpetually “less” than the other members of the Brown clan.

And during my time in Melbourne, I realised, finally, who was responsible for that feeling.

Me.

I was the person who alienated myself, I was the reason I didn’t feel like I fit in.

During the last two weeks, I have felt more love and respect from this family than I have felt in the previous 30 years as a “member” of the family. I’m not saying they didn’t love me before- I just wouldn’t allow myself to accept their love.

Grandma Brown always had a place for me, both as a school child on holidays, or as a young adult, learning his way in the world. And I have done some pretty horrible things to her, my uncles, and others in the family.

Yet they always forgave (against their better judgement sometimes, I am sure).

And all this was realised in the lead-up to, and during Grandma’s funeral. Some of my cousins I haven’t seen in over twenty years; the rest, maybe seven or eight years since the last contact.

Yet we all resumed our relationships as if only a few months had passed. I know Phillip, Warrick and Taryn and I had always gotten along so well as children; you can imagine things would have been difficult – my last sight of Taryn, she was in her early teens. Now, she is a young woman of 25, well on her way to a life in her own right. Another cousin, Sharon, had no idea who I was (I had been out shopping with my mother, and when we got home, Sharon was sitting at the kitchen bench- I said hello to her, and (I shit you not) thirty seconds later, she asked my step-dad “How is Grant? I haven’t seen him for years!”. I just looked at her for a couple of seconds, and said “I’m fine, thanks, how are you”. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone so embarrassed. Admittedly, I am twenty years older, and fifty kilo’s heavier, and now sport a full beard, so her inability to recognise me is to be excused).

We reminisced, and reminisced.

I caught up with Sharon’s brother, James, whom I (also) hadn’t seen in twenty years. We got along quite well, with promises to catch up sometime in Sydney (where he and Sharon, and their parents, Brian and Vivienne, live).

Plenty more cousins to catch up with, and their children, in some cases, and not one of them treated me as anything other that a full member of the Brown family.

Grandma’s funeral in Melbourne was beautiful. Emotions ran high (to be expected), and some eulogies were delivered with long pauses, as speakers tried to deal with their emotions. Yet all finished, and we portrayed Grandma as who, and what, she was to us.

A hero.

A hard working, committed soul, who NEVER stopped, and always did the little bit extra.

The Melbourne funeral was followed by a trip to Colignan, near Mildura, in Victoria’s North Western area (known as “The Mallee”) where she lived her life on the farm. A memorial service was held in the local church, with two ministers conducting the service; neither of them could stand being left out of the honouring of such a local legend. A wake was held in the local bowling club, of which Grandma was a well respected member.

The CWA (Country Women’s Association) put on a spread the likes of which you have never seen, and people talked about Grandma for a long, long time. All the things she had done, all the help she gave to others, and the respect that was earned by actions instead of words and wishes.

The Brown family also had their own personal celebrations and ceremonies; we lit tealight candles, and sent them down the Murray River, along with the flowers and petals from the funeral in Melbourne. Some of my other cousins, Debbie, Susan, Michelle (who are all excellent singers) suggested we sing Amazing Grace, which we all did, the voices ringing out across the Mighty Murray, the river of Grandma’s life.

We all look forward to the next gathering of the Brown family, and we have all promised that it will take place in happier circumstances than this.

I can’t wait.

R.I.P. Grandma

Swearing.

 I do it alot. In fact, I tend to swear like a fucking trooper. As most of you already know. I do (sometimes) try to moderate myself a bit when I am blogging, but most of the time, it just rolls of the tongue before the brain realises that I might offend someone.

 But there are worse than me around, let me tell you! (Hi Tony )

A f’rinstance. (As in “For Instance…”)

Last week, I was merrily driving to work, bopping along to the radio (I won tickets to another movie, and also to the winter wonderland thingy in Canberra, BTW- I think I’ve cracked the $1K mark in my prizes….) and was stopped at a set of lights.

“Clunk!”

WTF???

Some guy had just run up the ass of my car. I got out of my car, in my nice respectable public-service work clothes, including my long black jacket, looking (I think) probably a little bit intimidatory, especially as I am in the process of growing a full beard for “Oliver!”.

I walked to the back of my car, as the driver of the other car (a commodore, for those that give a shit) got out, and immediately started yelling at me. I don’t respond well to being yelled at, especially when I am (for once) in the right. So I ignored him while I looked at my car. Luckily, there was no damage, as this guy had hit my towbar.

 I kid you not, the day before, as I was leaving work, I considered taking it (the towbar) off (it’s one of those “easily” detachable models), and actually got down on my knees, and could not remove it because of the dust in the threads (it has a pin through the tongue, and an oversized plastic washer with a thread to hold the pin in place). So I left it there.

ANYWAY.

With this thought in mind (as in “I am so glad that I couldn’t remove this towbar yesterday… “, followed closely by “is there a God?”) I said to the guy “You are lucky that I had my towbar there.”

And he said (with an accent, to be fair- this particular accent is commonly accepted as one where the first fucking thing that these fucking people from this particular fucking region fucking learn on arriving to fucking Australia is that a fucking sentence is not fucking complete unless it con-fucking-tains the word “fuck” at least ten fucking times, fuck.) “What you mean, I fucking lucky? YOU fucking lucky!”

I couldn’t let it go. “Whaddaya mean, I’m lucky? YOU ran into ME!”

“Fuck you, fucking asshole. You fucking asshole fuck.”

 By this stage, we’re toe-to-toe, and I wasn’t feeling to confident; the guy looked fit, and I was wearing this heavy woolen over coat, a shirt and a t-shirt, and to be honest, I’m more of a wrestler than a boxer (drinking excessive amounts of beer and wrestling tend to go together, I think).

So I did what any self respecting person would do in my place…. “I’m an asshole, am I? Why?”

“I don’no fuck. You are asshole.”

“Sure, mate whatever you reckon” as I grab my trusty mobile phone from my belt (I’m gonna kill him with radiation…..) and ring the cops, whilst frantically looking at this guys bent-up number plate, trying desperately to remember it…

And he gets into his car, and with this final riposte- “(edited before posting, even though technically it contained no swear words, but related to something you do with a straw and another word for a rooster, and I can evidently perform this feat like a female dog- think about it, and email me your best guess- the first successful entry will receive a straw, a rooster, and (if they want) a dog…..)”

Once I got through to our local constabulary, I was told “unless he actually touched you or damaged your car, we can’t do a thing about it….”

Which, when I thought about it in a more “peaceful” frame of mind, made sense. In reality, the guy hadn’t (through sheer assed luck) actually commited a crime. If he had scratched my car by the tiniest amount, and driven off (which he did do- drive off, that is; he didn’t damage my car at all) then he would have, by law, left the scene of an accident without providing the relevant information. And I could have had criminal charges laid.

The second part (which is the philosophical part) of the post is the following.

I don’t know how many Canberrans or Yassites are going to read this, but they would understand. We have in this area a HUGE problem with kangaroos. There are literally TENS OF THOUSANDS of them around (within a hundred kilometre (60 Mile) radius of our national capital (which is, BTW, Canberra, (NOT SYDNEY!!!)).

And driving home tonight (after watching “evening” at the movies (thanks Mix 106.3)), I nearly hit a ‘roo. And he was a big bastard too, for an Eastern Grey. I know the Reds can top 6′, but this one would have been 5′ and a bit, standing up. My window was down, and I named him a fucking c*^t. Loudly.

So I pose this philosophical question- does the fact that I used that horrible expletive in the middle of the forest, where no-one else could hear it, make it a swear???