The cricketing ages of man.

As I watch Ricky Ponting approach the end of his cricketing career it occurs to me that my life has been set down in stages according to who is the current Australian cricket captain. It certainly has tended to divide life into convenient chunks of 5 - 8 years or so. Far too many of them if I'm honest.

My first real cricket captain was Ian Chappell. Of course as a young nipper I was aware of Bill Lawry but Chappelli was the first captain i genuinely recognised as being an important part of my life. Still, I was too young to appreciate his genuine worth as a captain and I can only remember being desperately disappointed by his all too frequent modest scores as a batsman.

His brother and replacement captain Greg Chappell on the other hand, was God-like in his batting prowess, and I happily overlooked any shortcomings he had as a captain. His fluent, elegant technique was a joy to watch, and his prowess against both the English and the dominant West Indies brought joy to my teenage years.

Of course, Chappell's reign was interrupted and to a certain extent ruined by the eruption of Packer World Series cricket, and so we had brief periods of captaincy by Graham Yallop (who I quite liked) and Kim Hughes (who I didn't). But Greg was the man. Only much later did I find out what serious flaws he actually had as captain. Perhaps our heroes will always inevitably let us down, but I'm glad Greg's failings weren't apparent (at least to me) until well after his captaincy ended.

Following Greg of course was the ineffable Allan Border, perhaps my most favourite of captains. A great captain and a great batsman, he was rock solid and lacked the character flaws of both Chappell brothers. With neither the elegance of Greg nor the hard-headed insight of Ian, he was yet a brilliant batsman and a competent and respected skipper. Whenever Aussie cricketing backs were against the wall, you could always rely on AB to grind out a big innings to save the day. He did it again and again and virtually single-handedly re-built Australian cricketing pride.

That Border's reign coincided with my marriage, arrival of children and first significant move from my home town are not insignificant. Australia's 1989 triumphant Ashes tour of England remains one of my life's highlights. And while that tour was memorable for the coming of age of superstars and future captains in Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh, it was Border's captaincy that made that series possible. I still vividly remember sitting alone in my new town of Adelaide, wife and kids yet to join me, and watching all night, mesmerised as Mark Taylor and Geoff Marsh batted through the whole of day one of the fifth test. Glorious!

AB's reign lasted a whole decade, and it seemed somehow grotesque that it had to come to an end, but it did. I was unsure about the worthiness of his replacement, Mark Tubby Taylor, but then, who could replace AB? Taylor proved worthy but relatively short-lived, being at the helm for just 5 years. In some ways the opposite of Border, Taylor proved a lively and likeable captain paving the way for his replacement Steve Waugh, and cementing Australia's position as a leading test nation, whilst simultaneously I was cementing my own life firmly in my new home city of Adelaide.

Steve Waugh was a strange but aggressive captain and a powerful batsman who was even more capable of digging Australia out of trouble than had been Allan Border. Perhaps our most fluent and elegent batsman since Greg Chappell, Steve Waugh impressed everyone the world over with his skill and mental as well as physical toughness. With a fast-growing family of three rapidly growing boys, these were traits I needed and tried to emulate.

Then came Ricky Ponting. Never before had one so young and so talented been so obviously destined for the captaincy as young Ricky. Such precocious talent of course yielded a few ups and downs early on, but it was always inevitable that he would settle down to become one of Australia's finest batsmen and an undoubted, brilliant captain. That he was a fellow Tasmanian only made his reign doubly pleasurable for me.

However now his era is coming to an end, and as his star fades, so does Australia's as a cricketing nation. The gloss has gone, and as I enter the latter half of my life and begin to feel my age, it seems to me that the best of Aussie cricket has also been and gone, at least for a while.

Whoever takes over as captain will have an unenviable job. Following the Chappells, Border, Taylor, Waugh and Ponting is going to be one of the toughest challenges on Earth. I wish him well.

Life without a car.

Every second or third day, I walk to the supermarket, buy a few things and walk home again. It can take as little as 15 minutes, and I love it.



Every work day I catch a train from the station across the road from my house. 37 minutes later and a few chapters of whatever book I'm reading, it drops me at Central Station, the 26-platform major hub of the Sydney train system, ironically a few minutes and two stations west of the actual city centre. From there I have an 8 minute walk to work, most of it underground through a major pedestrian tunnel. Unlike most of my work colleagues who drive to work and have to contend with Sydney's never-ending traffic snarls, I arrive relaxed and untroubled by my commute (although some of the buskers I encounter are frankly terrible).



I've been living like this, sans car since January. Admittedly it's made easy by having the train station and all the shops and services I need within an easy walk or short train ride, but it is an agreeable way to live. I no longer have to remember to take the car for a drive every week or two to stop the poor thing from seizing. And I can borrow a car readily enough when I need to, but thus far I haven't had the need.



The only thing I have really missed is kayaking. Without a car, the kayak sits forlorn and neglected in my garage. However the lack of a car is temporary, and the kayaking will resume eventually, but I will continue to walk to the shops and commute by train to work even after the return of the big blue petroleum monster that is my 15-year old car which is currently on a sabbatical in another part of the country.



The Deepwater Horizon catastrophe has made me feel even more smug than usual as my personal reliance on petrol dwindles to virtually nothing. I haven't bought petrol in nearly six months, and can honestly say that not having a car has been an ironically liberating experience. I am definitely looking forward to the return of my car (if only so I can go kayaking again), but life without it has been enlightening, in that I now realise how daily life seemed to revolve around the car rather than the car being a tool to be used occasionally when appropriate.



And my 74 minutes per day on the train reading has meant I have read more books in the last two years since I began commuting by train than in a long, long time. And I love it.


Johnny Walker was right!

Tasty, dark blue dreams.

Last night I dreamed about Hogan's Beer: no, I've not heard of it either, and I seriously doubt it exists, but in my dream a friend who incongruously drank Fosters bought me a six pack of Hogan's and it was sublime. I can even remember the taste of it - sort of a cross between Coopers Sparkling Ale (out of the tap) and the American Schlitz beer but creamier and richer and just yum.

Which is all very weird because I can't honestly remember ever having a dream in which I could taste something, certainly not so vividly anyhow. Other aspects of this rather short dream were equally vivid, from the car we were driving in, to the space we parked in across the road from the grog shop to the dark blue can that the beer came in.

The previous night I had an equally vivid dream, albeit without the taste sensation, in which I was unsuccessfully attempting to empty an enormous warehouse with a very small, very old forklift. All rather weird.

The minimal research I've done on the interweb as to the causes of such vivid dreams suggests I was simply a little low on blood sugar (unlikely); that I had a big day at work ahead of me (no); or that I'm pregnant (um, also no). Personally, I'd like to blame the radishes, but as I didn't eat any I guess it wasn't that either. At the end of the day (bad pun I know, sorry) I don't think anyone really knows the cause of vivid dreams, which is probably just as well when I think about it.

Aristotle (if I understand him correctly) thought that dreams were little different to everyday thought processes, but in a sleep state we are unable to differentiate between the real and the imagined, and therefore dreams take on a greater significance and are left to run their course, whereas in the awake state our imaginations are cut short by everyday realities and our awareness of them.

None of which explains why in my dreams I apparently invented a new friend, a new car, a new grog shop and an entirely new beer which tasted wonderful and came in a dark blue can. Am I seeking new adventures? Well I'm always ready to taste something new, but I like my favourite beer - have done for over 20 years and see no need to change. Unless of course they decide to put it in a dark blue can.

Cheers.

Old? I ain't old!

I have noticed a disturbing trend in recent months, most commonly when I'm flying. And that is that whenever I'm in a row of seats with a younger female passenger, the cabin crew are far more likely these days to serve me first. This is disturbing because I can only attribute this to an "age before gender" etiquette that has never previously applied to me.

But listen up cabin crew - I'm only 48 for Christ's sake.

Maybe it's paranoia, but I'm also sensing on occasion that slightly condescending, overly sympathetic gleam in the eye of a younger person who holds a door open for me, for example. Hateful. I am beginning to properly understand why some old people become grumpier as they age.

My father on the other hand, who lived to 84, took it all in good grace and loved it. He revelled in the attention, and it was always an excruciating exercise to go shopping with him and witness the attention fawned on him. Shop assistants who'd barely give me the time of day would find chairs for him, serve him to the exclusion of all others and happily chit chat with him on matters totally unrelated to whatever the business at hand was. Nauseous.

The pragmatic thing would be to accept it and make the most of it while you can, as my father did. But, as I said, I'm only 48. I'm not old. Don't consider my self old. Quite the opposite in fact.

The ageing metaphorical salt was further rubbed in the festering wounds again recently when I discovered a seemingly wonderful radio station playing all the classics of my yoof - Led Zep, Bowie, The Who, et cetera - wonderful music, but I couldn't stand it because all the ads were for funeral plans, denture clinics and retirement homes...

I say again, I'm only 48, God damn it!

We keep being told that the population is ageing, but as far as I can see, it appears the world is now run by generation X, Y and whatever the hell they call the youngest up-themselfers who have the impression that anyone over 40 is already one foot in the biodegradeable cardboard coffin. Again, hateful.

Yesterday I visited an exclusive wine store which supposedly has pretty much anything and everything (even a 5 litre bottle of Chateau d'Yquem for example - for those who understand such things*). I was searching for a fume blanc similar in style to a locally famous one made by wine maker Tim Knappstein in the late 70s/early 80s. The first two store assistants (both in their 30s) I asked had no idea of the wine I was referring to. A third assistant, in his 50s at a guess, did know of the wine but then changed his expression to one of "that was so long ago - how dare you remind me of past glories that can never be again". He then cold shouldered me, as if greatly offended. It is true that nostalgia can be a dangerous thing, but seldom have I found that it provokes antagonism in quite this way.

So as I sit here listening to Dio's "Rainbow In The Dark" and mourning the loss of poor old Ronnie James who died recently, nursing my arthritic left knee and staring balefully at the superannuation statement that just arrived in the post to remind me that I'm going to have to accept the fact that I will soon enough have to retire (and that I don't have enough savings to do so), I am left pondering the pros and cons of the ageing process. But as I pour another glass of 33-year old port** that was purchased as a relative youngster for next to nothing and has been sitting quietly and patiently in my cellar all this time waiting for this moment, I conclude that some of the benefits of the ageing process are bloody well worth it.

Hell yes.












*Six thousand Australian dollars, if you're interested.
** 1977 McWilliams Vintage Port, damn lovely.