Monthly Archives: Jun 2023

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To Max and Alex, on basketball and theatre

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Dear Alex and Max

I write about two major achievements of which I’m tremendously proud.

Max’s basketball

I knew you loved it when you spent long hours practicing down at St. Leonard’s. However, during your first game when I saw how advanced your skills are, I was still surprised.

Defensively, you complete towering blocks, and can seriously obstruct a dribbling opponent. Like a warrior you guard the key, while snatching impressive and inspiring rebounds.

I’ve also noted your teamwork. It’s characterised by generosity, and the constant empowering of those fortunate to be in your lineup. This is true leadership.

Beyond these, you have substantial offensive abilities, and I especially like your jump shot as well as your occasional three-pointer!

You have talent.

On the court you generate good.

In some ways the most stirring moment of your career was after the tie at Morphett Vale. While it’s agreed that the referee made the wrong call, I like how you displayed an acceptance of this. Many would’ve had a meltdown, but you showed great discipline and management of the disappointment.

These are vital attributes, and I am massively proud.

I want you to let this basketball confidence spill over to school and home and influence these areas of your life.

Allow it to be a happy infection!

Alex’s acting

The instant you entered the stage during The 39 Steps as a Scottish crofter was one of my life’s outstanding events.

Your talent for projecting character both physically and vocally was instantly obvious. I loved how you demonstrated great comedic skill with your confident and remarkable accent. Although you had told me you were pleased with this, I was stunned. Your next challenge is Michael Caine!

You also exhibited that unteachable quality of presence.

Comic timing, and generosity towards your fellow performers also caught my attention.

Weeks earlier when you described aspects of the play such as breaking the fourth wall, slapstick, and how the music and lighting functioned, I was deeply proud of your insights and capacity to assuredly use this theatrical language.

I can imagine how, just like us Kapunda kids, these friends might be ones you’re seeing decades after you all leave Brighton.

Now, I also want you to utilise these considerable skills across the rest of your subjects and at home. Collaborate and give to others just like you did on stage. Apply yourself totally.

Both of you possess significant advantages. You’re clever and perceptive; you’ve ready senses of humour and show the 21st century’s key skill: critical thinking.

Dad

X

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Open a Kissing Gate

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It’s dusk on a Friday.

Below us, and the tree-lined slopes, are the now-twinkling lights of the city.

Tramping along together in our cocooning coats, the creek’s interrupted by a stone wall. Behind us is the cottage’s yellowish beacon. Claire’s scarf bounces.

On the Heysen Trail, we’re approaching Norton Summit.

As we swing open a kissing gate it protests with a shriek. My phone light shafts over the scrub as if it’s generating suspenseful effect in a horror flick.

Upon arriving at Morialta Barns we ignited the fire. The redgum was now burning, but gently.

We heard the ghostly bleating of hidden sheep. The rounded hills were receding into the rising murk. Bushes swayed and jumped at the directive of a gust. Our hosts reckoned we could encounter a quietly twitching roo.

Chatting about the days we’ve had and the days we’ve to come, we clasp hands for affection, and warmness.

An hour earlier, having collected Claire from the city, we edged up majestic Magill Road, through the eastern suburbs and then suddenly, bottle-green paddocks were pushing back the forest. There we were, in the countryside. The transition was startlingly brisk.

We’d jettisoned.

Steering our way through another gate, there was the Scenic Hotel. My birthday dinner would soon be served.

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West Beach parkrun: cocooned in this calm esplanade

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An hour after Saturday’s slow dawn I edge into the throng at the Harold and Cynthia Anderson Reserve. On the neat lawns there’s people from across the athletic spectrum and dogs and dads with wide, black prams.

With a few hundred others I head north in the shared enterprise that is the West Beach parkrun. The congestion rapidly evaporates and peering ahead, the coloured stretch of joggers is elasticising along the esplanade.

To my right is a playground. With my teenaged boys having abandoned this age of innocence, I feel a saddening sting that comes from the despair of time moving quickly, too quickly. As I amble through, I can almost hear the spectral shrieks.

We snake by the Henley Sailing Club, all imposing and vaguely smug in its nautical whiteness. A greyish blue sea is on my left, and the trail chaperones us along the dune and among the hardy coastal vegetation. The city’s close by but we’re immersed in this surprising strip of wilderness.

Here the beach presents as serene and health-giving, somehow more encouraging of a life to be brightly lived. Then we take the bridge over Breakout Creek and the Torrens outlet. We often hear of the mighty Murray, and the mighty Mississippi; well, this is the tremendously modest Torrens but it’s our little river and makes for a fetching ecosystem.

A pair of female runners catches me, chatting about a casino win. Remember how going to a casino was once an event but now holds less ceremony than popping down to the servo in Ugg boots and shapeless trackies?

Pushing on, the Henley jetty swims into view. The talented local poet, John Malone, once wrote that jetties are umbilical cords attaching us to better versions of ourselves. Accepting this premise, every month I stride onto a jetty for the inner benefit of both gazing out to sea and back to the silent, sometimes worrying land. I think it works.

We pass the Henley Beach hotel. It’s a serviceable alehouse but fails to sunnily exploit its location. Rather than embracing the seaside and affirming breeze it seems to defy these. Maybe I should swing by soon to offer it redemption.

At Joe’s Kiosk I turn around and am southbound, encouraged by a clapping volunteer.

There’s an agreeable absence of metropolitan sounds. I’m cocooned in this calm esplanade and the solitude of running promotes a falling into yourself that’s neither acutely aware of the current slog nor meditative. This morning, running just is.

Gulf St. Vincent is gentle today and its mood washes onto me. Last week we had a rearing surf as a winter storm dumped mounds of brown seaweed. For all their ferocity, these tempests offer natural reassurance and a restoring intimacy.

Returning to the Harold and Cynthia Anderson Reserve I quicken and then cross the finish line. Knowing my time is modest I remember to focus on the act of having completed the run. The story’s narrative heave is often more important than the finale. I’m content.

Clumps of joggers again gather on the clipped lawns, their morning exercise now taken. Like me, some will disperse into satisfying and routine Saturdays. It’s the seventh birthday of West Beach parkrun so there’s cake for all. It’s a robust community.