It’s reasonable to expect that the leaders in our society fall into the second camp. In many instances I think that is true, and historically very much the case. In general this has provided us with leaders who are nuanced, humane and of an intelligence far beyond the norm. That’s as it should be.

Though I don’t question the intelligence of our leaders today, I believe we are going through an era where raw belief is secondary to shallow jingoism. The emphasis has shifted from acting from our beliefs or ideals, from some sort of moral bedrock, to a shallow, opportunistic and ultimately transient re-action to the days events.

There are different reasons for this. I think in general we have dumbed down as a society. Our attention span is shorter, our patience limited. Sound bites rather than informed discussion are now the norm. Our political leaders deal in bold and controversial statements, often with little relationship to the facts, tailored for the evening’s news, and tomorrow’s headlines. That often they have little relationship to the facts is immaterial, and barely commented on, which is symptomatic of our time. With some exceptions our media standards have radically declined. Bald misrepresentations masquerading as opinion have become the de facto standard, particularly in the tabloid press and radio. For way too many Australians these bitter and pre-digested ‘opinions’ are how they come to understand the ‘facts’. Their opinions are not theirs, but rather have been received from others – and generally those who make the biggest noise and create the biggest headlines. It’s all of a piece: sensation over consideration; slogans over discussion; abuse over prise. Even much of our advertising I’ve noticed has become tainted. I wonder standards there are that should be controlling these excesses.

Given that this is the society today is it any wonder that our political leaders are what they are? The truth of the axiom that we get the politicians we deserve has never been more evident.

Our leaders are curious. As I said, I don’t doubt that either Gillard or Abbott are intelligent. The problem is, one is weak, and the other corrupt.

Gillard doesn’t strike me as an intellectual (a much derided term these days unfortunately). She appears like a woman who has given little thought to the broader canvas, more inclined as she is to calm good sense. She is a sturdy type, a strong nature even if she has been weak politically. I don’t know enough about her to know if she is a student of history or society, if she reads or doesn’t. She strikes me as an occasional reader, too practical to indulge in things of the past. With that though is a stolid lack of imagination. That is her greatest failing as a leader I think. As a deputy she is supremely competent, but from a leader you need qualities that will carry us forward, to follow, to lift us from the bitter rut we have fallen into. Foremost amongst those qualities is imagination. Because she has little imagination there are few ideals that colour her perspective. She acts, not from belief, but from narrow pragmatism.

Abbott is different. He is a reader, a writer, clearly a student of many disciplines. Though he has always been far to the right of where I sit I once quite liked him. In a junior portfolio I was able to dismiss his occasional extremism as harmless Abbott-isms; in many ways he seemed an affable character, and more thoughtful than he portrayed himself to be. His books are well written and well received. Somewhere inside him is a thoughtful man.

Perhaps that’s why I now so despise him. I called him corrupt before and I meant that in the sense that he has happily disregarded the ‘better’ parts of himself in the quest for political power. As an avowed Christian he does little, if anything, to embody Christian virtues, and no Christian charity. A smart man he has resorted in opposition to diss everything. He gives the strong impression that he would oppose initiatives even if he himself agreed with them. He is a man who has happily separated what he believes from how he acts. He is a leading contributor to the hostile political environment we are now subject to. Politics, and society, have degenerated together and if he is one cause of that it is because he has latched onto the tenor of the times. He speaks in violent shorthand, with dubious respect for the facts – the media lap it up, and he reaps the rewards.

I’m an idealist, but I’m not naive. I know being in power is much more challenging than commenting on it. I realise that there are pragmatic realities that must be bowed before, that shortcuts and compromises must be made. I’m also of the belief that occasionally the end might justify the means – but also that both the end and the means must be carefully weighed. The problem with Abbott is that the end for him is to be Prime Minister of this country, and any means will justify it.

It’s a philosophy that has infected our parliament, which has become a bitter and mean spirited place. Just yesterday, Joe Hockey, a fundamentally decent man I think, launched himself at the government with a diatribe that was disgraceful and borderline racist. There is no society in our politicians, and little civilisation.

Curious it is to consider the men standing in the wings on either side of the divide, the former leaders, Rudd and Turnbull are both thinkers, intelligent men with well-defined beliefs. Turnbull I would vote for in the blink of an eye – a reasonable, urbane politician of the old school, inclined to do the best for the national interest than his own – and with some sophistication and intelligence. Rudd had his chance and lost his nerve, but at least he stands for something. I’d vote for him ahead of Gillard.

I should finish by saying Australia is by no means unique in this regard. This is a worldwide phenomena I think. In Obama the Americans have a leader they seem to under-value from afar, a man decent, intelligent and acting from the altruistic desire to civil service. And he believes in things. Opposing him though are the ratbags, the Rupublicans in political disarray as the rabid extremism of the Tea Party raises it’s very ugly head. I have more faith in the good sense of Australians than I do that the Americans will be able to hold off the Tea Party. The Tea Party spells doom to the American state, but that’s an opinion for another time.

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Gillard To Introduce Migration Act Amendments To Parliament.

It’s no secret that I think this government is hopeless. I’m not alone thinking that, though my reasons are probably different from many. I think Gillard is basically a decent person, but hopelessly out of touch. She’s smart and tough, but also subject to bad lapses of judgement, and has become too far removed from the core ideology of the Labor party tradition. The irony is that she’s ditched the philosophy in order to appeal to the electorate, but has misjudged the state of affairs so badly that she only ends up looking worse. It is a disaster of the highest order, of which this story is the perfect example.

How did she ever truly believe she was going to get this over the line? Every man and his dog (yes, Rigby) knew it was doomed to failure. Putting aside the dubious morality of her argument, it was just dumb politics. Abbott, that snake, was never going to support her. His concern is not the national interest, nor indeed the poor asylum seekers he has laughingly tried to embrace, but purely and only his own political fortune. He acts on the policy of opposing anything and everything the government does regardless of merit. Why would he change now?

I find this hard to take. As it happens this amendment has little merit and deserves to voted down. That it is opposed politically in the end matters little except to highlight the absolute failure of judgement by the PM. It leaves a gaping hole in what remains of her credibility, and forces her to turn to the only policy left to her – onshore processing. Such is the irony that while this is by far the most humane, it is the policy Gillard herself has been pushing hard against. By her own incompetence has painted herself into a corner.

I despise Abbott, but he plays this game a lot better than Gillard, and has a much stronger finger on the pulse. She’s an amateur and doesn’t deserve the power she has on any measure – either philosophy or competence.

Too late know. Had she taken the stand and chosen to do first that she is now forced to do last her standing would be so much greater. Her failure is manifold, but her greatest failure has been of nerve.

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I caught a program on TV last night which looks an Australian variation of The River Cottage. The Gourmet Farmer charts the journey of an ex-high profile Sydney food critic as he takes to the bush of Tasmania and begins a new life as a novice farmer. Matthew Evans is the critic in question, and a guy I used to read occasionally when he was syndicated to the local paper here. He’s a tall, affable, and perhaps naive wannabe farmer who takes to his new life with enthusiasm and a frequent expression of confused uncertainty. In other words, he’s pretty much like the rest of us would be if we suddenly found ourselves deposited in the country looking to eke out an existence as a farmer.

I enjoyed the show greatly. It’s now on my must-see list. Because he is a foodie first and foremost his perspective is, as the title suggests, the gourmet. He has pigs and chickens, he takes on turkeys, he milks his own cow and grows his own vegetables. He even goes diving for abalone. In the meantime he constructs a life in this totally foreign environment far from the bright lights and familiar comforts of the city.

For me it’s great entertainment, and kind of educational too. It’s about living simply and well, plumbing the great treasures of providing for yourself, but also coming to terms with what that actually means. Last night, for example, our farmer was grim faced at the prospect of having to slaughter some of his chooks. That’s not much fun to anyone I expect. He was instructed by a couple of down to earth women who helped put together a strange contraption to make it simpler and more humane (though it looks like torture to me). Then he did the deed. That’s the bad news. Good news is there’s roast chicken for dinner.

I find programs like these very alluring. They appeal to that part of me that more and more tends towards a simpler lifestyle. For a couple of years I’ve had in the back of my mind the idea that I may one day take to the bush somewhere. Give me a good bit of land somewhere the dream goes, big enough that I can’t see my neighbours, with a vege patch, some nature, room for Rigby to carouse in and me to build, and in an environment where the bare essentials of a civilised lifestyle – good coffee, cheese, a decent restaurant, a handy pub, and a swift internet connection – are available, and I need for little else. I dream of this sometimes, and more recently, though surely I see much through rose coloured glasses. It is a lifestyle very different from the urbane man about town lifestyle I’ve lived for so long, but then that’s much of its appeal.

The urge to the tree-change, as it’s come to be termed, has become very common in recent years. There’s plenty of practical reasons for it – overcrowded cities, change in lifestyle or beliefs, health, the desire to raise children in another environment, cost, and so on. There’s all that, but ultimately I think it’s something innate in most of us. As children we delight in the wonders of nature we come to consume as adults. That wonder doesn’t die, it simply becomes dormant. At some point it calls to us. It speaks to that more rustic, even primal part of our selves. This is how we lived for millennia after all, hunting and gathering, living off the land. In a busy, crowded, crazy and often superficial world we have been engulfed by in the last century or so the appeal of the ‘simple life’ begins to sing in us like so many sirens. As much as anything else it promises a return to a more honest lifestyle. It may be only a promise, and prove a promise too much for many, but cast in an idealistic light the prospect of working with our hands and witnessing directly the return on effort has the earthy and dignified glow so often absent in our more more packaged lives.

It seems I’m little different, but for all my superlatives I know it’s not so easy as all that, and that nostalgia colours our view. It’s nice to feed fresh cut wood into the fire, harder though when chopping it with blistered hands. Are we capable of slaughtering our own stock, or will it remain easier to buy from the butcher? Is it so easy to put our pampered lifestyles behind us to enter a world where we must do most ourselves? And how do we cope with the city, friends, family all far from us?

I don’t know what I’ll do – I’m not ready yet, and life has to turn more revolutions before I may be. I tend to think I might though one day, and programs like the Gourmet Farmer and the River Cottage are more than just inspirations, they become proof in a way that it’s possible – and this is how you might go about doing it.

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Mum was not good. She is convinced her time is nigh, and can’t stop telling everyone. This is a situation exacerbated when she has a few drinks. It’s not what we want to hear. It may be true – she continues to decline – but there are times we want to get away from that and besides, no-one really knows what’s going to happen. On Saturday I got exasperated. Mum would interrupt conversations between others with her dire predictions and then get upset when we didn’t react as she hoped. The kids have known all along what the situation is, but still I think it’s unhealthy for them to be made to confront it so starkly. Besides, it was my sister’s birthday, a time, supposedly, of celebration. Can’t we just take a break for a while?

I never have a conversation with mum these days without the major part of the conversation being about her health. The polite ‘how are you?’ is now responded to fully and in detail. I understand and I’m by no means complaining. It’s just that sometimes you need a break from it. I know that’s impossible for mum, but for us, with our lives to live, our own challenges and issues to deal with, it’s necessary. What’s happening with mum is a big part of my life right now, but it’s not all of it. I have a lot of other things I must deal with, and many more challenges than I ever let on here. I cope well, I manage, but still it’s nice sometimes just to let it slide away and live in the moment.

I don’t like to write these things, but I’m committed to being up-front here. I don’t blame mum in any way, and the truth is that she’s been pretty strong and matter of fact, almost philosophical, about her situation. I can’t imagine what it must feel like. Still, mum has always erred to the melodramatic, and there are times those tendencies feel very foreign. I know, she’s searching for attention and sympathy, and I know it must feel isolating sometimes to have a death sentence slowing playing out. But enough already, we know, let us breathe a little, lets have some fun, can we not put it behind us for just a little while? So in the face of her incessant and long-winded negativity on Saturday night I became exasperated, and resorted eventually to calling her bluff. Okay then, you’re going to die soon? When? Should we have a book on it? I’d had enough. The next day, sober, mum said nothing more on it, and nor did I. It’s hard enough dealing with the harsh reality without making more of it.

The second thing that happened concerned the kids. Waiting for them to arrive I had checked in on Facebook, including the two boys. At some point I asked my sister how long since she had heard from her ex, the father of the kids. “About 6 months”, she said. “And the kids?” She shrugged her shoulders. “About 3?” A moment later I glanced at my phone to see the man himself had responded to my post from way off in the UK. “Tell the kids to contact their father will you?” It seemed strange after our conversation. I showed my sister. She raised an eyebrow. And then I passed on the message – though of course there’s been no reason why he can’t have contacted them himself.

Finally my niece, Schae. She is 4 years old, a pretty, smart and strong willed girl. I’m her favourite. She’s always loved her ‘Buppa’, as they all call me, but I wonder if my place in her life has not become magnified since her father left. I’m the only male influence in her life, and that of the boys. I’m happy to be whatever they want me to be – I love them all dearly. On Saturday she was all over me, wanting to show me things, or talk to me, crawling up onto my knee at the dinner table whenever she could. She was excited too because she had a gift for me.

A couple of weeks ago at kinder the kids had done something special for Father’s Day. They had made gifts for their father, or else, as in my case, some other dear male figure in their life. Schae had had painted a white t-shirt for me she was thrilled to give. A rainbow shaped arc of colours – red and purple, green, yellow, blue and orange – curved across the shirt, and the inscription, written by the kinder teacher, read: “I love Buppa. I make him happy. He makes me happy too. Schae.”

That’s family life. The dramas, the tribulations, and ultimately the love. Hard to take sometimes maybe, but impossible to live without.

No-one would know I felt that. I show nothing, and say less. It dulls me ultimately, I become flat and as my mind wanders it searches for other outlets, other relief. Yesterday, characteristically, what I felt became intellectualised.

I went about my stuff while my head went about its stuff. Central to everything was mum, but from that much spread. Anything to do with death tends to concentrate the mind, and often on those issues you generally take for granted. Yesterday it manifested itself in different ways. Firstly I had the desire to make good with the people I have parted with on ordinary terms. That’s not the first time I’ve thought that, in fact it’s pretty recurring. I’d be a lot happier if I could get it out of the way, but not so easy. It’s the confessional instinct, the need to pour out your sins in the hope of finding forgiveness and redemption. Confession does nothing for me, but all the same I’d have happily picked up the phone yesterday just to touch base with those people had it been in any way feasible. It’s not just the need for a kind of absolution, there is also a much more practical aspect to it. For all the social shenanigans I get up to there are times I wish, nay, need, someone close to me I can turn to. Those occasions are rare, but keen when they come.

How many of those people now gone might have been intimates with me once? All of them. Sometimes you just want to know someone’s there. You may or may not open up, it’s not always that simple after all, but the option is available and very welcome. Had there been someone I don’t know what I might have said. Things come at you slowly and randomly, and every bit of it must be taken in for processing. I’d have been happy to close eyes sometimes and know someone had my back. For a little while I’d have loved to not be the man. Even as I write this I can imagine myself feeling my way, the words coming to me slowly but to a receptive and sensitive audience. It’s not often I feel that need, and to be honest wish I did more. It’s one of the things I crave in that ideal relationship, the freedom to be weak sometimes. In reality the need is only rare, and much as I might wish to have that intimate close by I get by pretty well without her. Instead, generally, I find much of what I want from many, rather than one.

That point was reinforced with the remaining strange events of the day. Mid-way through the afternoon I got a text message from a girl alerting me to the fact she was wearing hot pink knickers today. Upon further inquiry I discovered it was in celebration of the lovely Spring day. Fair enough.

In the evening I went out for dinner. Had a lovely meal, some good wine, and excellent company with a pretty girl with whom I have an edgy, but platonic, relationship with. Between main course and dessert she got her iPad out and proceeded to show me some pics of her wearing nothing at all. Very nice I thought – she is very sexy – but I didn’t quite know what to make of it. Had anyone else told me that story I’d have said man, you’re in – but I didn’t think that. I’m not sure whether to think that today. I know she thinks I’m a great guy to whom she confides pretty well everything, but she is years younger than me – which is why I thought twice. I still don’t know what to think, but I was glad to see her photos.

I got home at about 11 feeling a lot jollier than I had leaving. I found that while I was out the world of AFL had gone bizarro, and turned on its head. Was it true? Really? What the fuck…

For months we’ve been pressing for something more concrete from the doctors. It’s difficult, I know, to offer a prognosis with any precision, but we know that. We just want to know something, rather than be left with our own uninformed prognostications and fanciful notions. Let’s gert a coffee, she said.

We’ve been discussing for weeks the questions we wanted asked of the doctor. This time we wanted to pin him down. In my absence mum had asked him the pointed question: how long do I have? For once, it seems, he dropped the cheery bedside manner and spoke honestly. “Well,” he said, “if the chemo reduces the cancer and gets rid of your cough then maybe 2 years. If it doesn’t, maybe 4-5 months.”

It was strange hearing this despite it being pretty much what I had thought. My sister, who lives in some denial I think, had asked last week what I thought. I pondered it, searching to discover what I thought on the subject. “February,” I said, and it seemed a fair estimate.

Now the chemo may do it’s thing, but history tells us that even if it works it won’t be as simple as that. Each time mum goes to have her chemo she is tested first to see if her body can take it. The chemo, unsurprisingly, knocks her around. Her platelets drastically reduce, her immune system sits on a knife edge. Half the time they have cancelled the treatment because her body is not up to it, and I can’t see that improving any. On top of that the chemo makes her feel dreadful. She’s in a bad way right now. She has a terrible cough directly related to the cancer. She is weak, tired, has hot flushes, heart palpitations. Much is the cancer, but much is the treatment.

I don’t think I’m a pessimist by nature. I believe in things, in possibilities, in general I have confidence that much can be overcome by will and commitment. Yet I am not confident now. My mind defaults to the worst, not because I’m a pessimist I think, but rather because I have watched mum decline, because I am doubtful that the chemo is feasible in the longer term. It may not be 4-5 months, but I don’t think it will be 2 years.

After our coffee I went upstairs with mum to the chemotherapy area. Around the room people, mostly old, lounged in comfortable looking chairs with IV’s looping into their arms. They looked relaxed, almost mellow. We were shown into an adjoining room. We sat and talked, waiting. Once more I had that feeling of unreality: is this really happening? Once more I couldn’t quite believe it. Is this really what its come to?

We were joined by an Italian family, parents and a daughter. The mother was small, when she sat her feet didn’t touch the ground. They spoke little, humbled and made silent by the occasion. An elderly Chinese woman neatly dressed and with rosy cheeks came in and sat down. She smiled at us as if she were an old hand. It happens to everyone, I thought. Anyone. Morning tea was served by bustling women in hospital smocks: coffee, tea, or juice? We waited for someone to attend to mum. When they did they spoke with the kindly voices people use with children.

I kissed mum goodbye: the chemo was going ahead. I walked by the shuffling sick people and out into the bright sunshine. I got in the car and drove away. The radio was on and I listened while my mind went ahead of its own accord. Why is there cancer I wondered? What is the point of it? It seems a good question now, but it burst from me like a gasp, a reaction to what I had just witnessed, the emotional residue of the confusion that I felt, with a little futile anger for good measure. Then my mind took over. There is no rhyme to it. No reason. It happens.

My mind went in those circles while I drove instinctively and without conscious thought, until I was forced out of that again. “Come on Volvo, you fuckin’ goose!” I exclaimed at one point at the car in front of me paused at the green arrow. As the Volvo turned I felt the disconnect between what I was feeling inside, what was happening to mum just a few kilometres away, and the banal instinct that had me abuse the driver in front.

In the end there’s little to say, and not much really to think. It is, it happens, it progresses, one day it will end. For me it is oppressive, one more small stone after another added to the pile slowly crushing me. That’s how I feel. How mum feels I can only imagine.

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People often comment on how Rigby gazes at me. Often he sits and just looks upon me. When I move his eyes follow. We were out last night at a bar and the girl I was with commented on that again. “Look at how he he looks at you,” she said with some wonder. I am at the centre of Rigby’s universe. There’s no doubt that he adores me. I’m the personification of all things good to him, a brother, a father, a God. And I love him.

There’s none more pure love than that of a dog for his master. It is untainted, unselfish, entirely given over to the other with little thought of the self. We humans so often twist and complicate our feelings with our thoughts, our fears and prejudices and abject hopes. A dog has none of that. It loves you from one minute to the next. It is constant and forgiving. It loves you for who you are, not for what you have come to represent. In a funny way the love of a master to his dog is not dissimilar. I have often thought if I find a woman who loves me as Rigby does then I’ll be a lucky man; but likewise, if I love someone as I do him then the love will be true.

If we accept this as a reality then our perceptions of the animal kingdom should be more complex than what they are in reality. In our mind we have conveniently pigeon-holed the different parts of the natural world. Dogs, for example, are much beloved members of the family. Cattle are dumb animals bred to be consumed. The environment is there for us to plunder to maintain our lifestyle. And so on. Almost without challenge we have placed ourselves at the pinnacle of the food chain. We have accepted without thought that we rule earth, that we are the living gods of this place, and that the abundance of the earth is here to serve us. We accept the love of our pets because that is within our home, and our due besides; the minute we begin to contemplate a world more complex than that – of which we are but a part – then these carefully constructed beliefs begin to crumble. Our blithe and arrogant ignorance protects us from what we don’t want to know.

It’s an interesting dilemma. Here I am proselytising on the subject, yet I understand how that ignorance can be necessary. Every chance I’ll be happily chewing on a steak tonight with little thought of the poor cow it’s been sliced from. If I do give it any thought – as I do now – then it’s just as easy to shrug my shoulders with a kind of winsome regret. What can you do? I like my steak. We need to live. And so on.

There is wanton hypocrisy in human society. In parts of the world they eat dogs, but if that happened in our society there would be an outcry. Why though? What is the difference really? We happily step on a bug, but protest at the cruelty to animals. What is the difference though? Where lies the line?

We have deceived ourselves because we have argued, correctly, that we are of higher intelligence. We have consciousness. We think, we reason, we feel, we love. But doesn’t everything? I know there are arguments that many animals are so ‘primitive’ that that isn’t the case. Even if that is true it’s clear that there are many species which do think and feel. Rigby loves me, as I’ve said. He’s smart enough to know that when I put my glasses on I’ll be getting out of bed. He picks up my moods and responds to them. He feels, he has intelligence, he possesses intuition. We discriminate ultimately not because we possess what are absent in animals, but that we possess those attributes to a more sophisticated degree. We have more, not different. We may not admit to that, but it’s true. But is it right?

There are philosophers who pontificate on these subjects. There are many who hold strong beliefs that we as human beings do evil. There is truth in that, but I think the question is much more complex than that of morality.

I saw The Rise of the Planet of the Apes last week. I thought it was ok without being great. What was interesting was how I, and most of the audience, were rooting for the apes in their battles with the human race. We were sympathetic because we saw how through their eyes. We understood that they had feelings, that there were connections, ties, affection between them. We saw how mistreated they were, objects of scientific experiment or entertainment. This was a movie, a contrived piece of theatre, yet it exposed the truth of our relationship to them – our slaves and chattels; and the hypocrisy of our attitude. I went from the movie having cheered on the apes and had a chicken burger.

It’s spin though, as everything these days is spin. Certainly it’s true, they are our chattels, our slaves, bred for feed or experimentation. And absolutely it’s hypocritical to decry such treatment in the abstract of a movie and then go out and exploit such treatment. But it’s also true that if we didn’t farm livestock for our feed then our society would be very different: better some say, crippled others. Likewise many of the medical advances that have changed our lives would not have been possible without such experimentation. Where is the line? What is ‘right’? As the leading intelligence on earth, what are our responsibilities?

I don’t know. I know I love my dog and that I’m a committed herbivore. I don’t think morality – whatever it is – comes into it. Ultimately I believe we live within the fold of the earth. We should be sympathetic to it – as we so rarely are – but also use it productively, and as sensitively as possible. We lack humility, and spin it every way but true to make it easier on ourselves. It’s easy to coyly deceive ourselves with shallow justifications when right demands that we own up to what we do, and understand why we do it. Forget the weasel words. We exploit the earth not because we’re more sophisticated or intelligent, or even because it our God given right to exploit. We do it because we are the dominant species on earth. Might is right. Until that changes we will continue to – but let’s be honest about it.

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It’s Sunday a little after midday in Melbourne and I feel an undercurrent of excitement. It’s a big day today. My team take on Carlton in the elimination final at the MCG. There’s a lot on this game. Obviously it’s important -you win and you advance, lose and the season is over. Adding so much more to that though is the history between these two clubs. This is no ordinary final, this is a play-off between two teams who have a history of storied, dramatic games played out, and supporters who hate each other.

It’s an interesting thing this rivalry. There’s a good stastitical basis for it – these are the two most successful clubs in the game – but it has become much more than that in recent years. I think Carlton are my most hated opponent, but it wasn’t always the case. I admired their premiership winning teams of 1981/82. In 1986 I barracked for them against Hawthorn in the decider without too much angst. By the time we played off against for the 1993 flag it was different though. We won that day, I was there and thrilled, but the thrill was greater because we had beaten a club I had come to despise.

It may surprise, but I wish it wasn’t the case. Healthy rivalry is fine, but when it becomes personal it’s ridiculous. As it happens I have a few friends who are Carlton supporters, had girlfriends who swore by the blues, and a nephew who has inherited his dad’s devotion to them. When I look back I can think of many Carlton players I’ve admired, and some I count as a kind of favourite. I love SOS as footballer and person. Ken Hunter is one of my favourite ever non-Essendon footballers. And I think Craig Bradley was a ripper player and person. End of the day it’s just a different coloured guernsey.

I date my dislike of Carlton to the ascension of John Elliott. Many Carlton supporters remain devoted to him, despite what he did to their club. To me he is a coarse and corrupt blow-hard, much more a figure of disrepute than respect. Many Carlton supporters celebrate the arrogance he brought to the club, but to my mind it is the wrong sort of arrogance. John Elliott was always quick to disrespect other clubs, to belittle though less successful, or less well of. He epitomised the blue-blood, patrician sense of entitlement that Carlton came to be associated with. He had no humility, no real perspective of the game as a whole. To play on his own words, I think he’s a pigs-arsehole. I think he’s a pretty ordinary individual.

Essendon gets called arrogant too, and that’s right – it goes with the territory of being successful. I’m an arrogant Essendon supporter, and been called that dozens of times. Arrogance is different to hubris though. I’m not impartial, but I like to think my club has always been respectful even as it has been arrogant. John Elliott was never that, and consequently has tainted my perception of Carlton and created this bitter rift between the clubs.

John Elliott is gone now and today another day, and another chapter in the rivalry.

Carlton go in as warm favourites. That’s fair enough. They’ve had the better season, and in general terms are more advanced in their journey towards the top echelon. The pressure is all on them. I’ll disappointed if we lose, but not devastated. Devastation may await Carlton though if they succumb. Besides the deep disappointment of being eliminated early three years running there is the strong possibility of off-field fall-out. We go in with little to lose; Carlton plenty.

On our day we’re as good as anyone in the comp. Our best has been better than theirs, but they have been much more consistent over the season. The weather may play a part, and will likely favour them – it’s grey outside, it’s been raining and may rain more. Still, you start even. I have a buzz about this – I sort of don’t expect to win, but we’re in with a chance. I haven’t felt this tingly for quite a while. I won’t be there. I’ll be here at home watching, glued to the screen and riding every bump. I’ve made a bit of day of it. I’ve made some pot stickers earlier I’ll chew on as the game gets going, and stocked up on a few treats to enjoy along the way. This is grim competition, but it’s also great theatre. I can’t wait.

Regardless of the result today I think a great future awaits my club – better, and brighter, than for Carlton. This is one year, but they come one after the other.

Waking up I wondered just as much. I know dreams like this mean something, but I’ve got no idea what.