Unchain the Kids and Headstone buffing at the Cemetery

So many kids are confused with their attention being drawn to so many things, it’s a wonder they can put socks on. Our movie watching today includes accepting that at a cinema most viewers are now multitasking and divided into part watching, part eating pop corn or masticating on something, slurping slushies, and full-on texting on cell phones including taking photos of the movie they are watching and forwarding it onto the texting friends whom they have probably never even met. It all very mysterious. I think I’ll visit my cemetery plot at Rook-wood and buff up the headstone a bit, for a week-end of reflection and serenity restoration.

We decided to go and see ‘Django Unchained’.  We have always liked Tarantino’s movies and read enough of the movie to take the risk knowing we would be subjected to the usual habit of so many that don’t seem to be able to take a couple of hours off without risking expiring from  lack of sugar ,salt and fatty substances.

We were not disappointed. As soon as the movie started, there were those familiar rising halos of smells with chewing, swallowing and ingestion noises of the patrons. Why can’t the movie theatres introduce a special room for those that want to eat and swallow? I mean, IKEA have rooms with cubbies and slippery dips and lots of balls and balloons when mum and dad go for a new flat pack kitchen or 100 number tea-lights. Most pubs and hotels cater for eating hordes away from those that like peace and quiet. Why not do the same for those that can’t seem to get away from ingesting food. A special room for munchers, lickers and slushy slurping. Cinemas would make a fortune

After the movie, we decided to visit a brother at Dungog in combination with a drive- by and stay with friends at Ettalong. Next day we went for a walk along the waterfront promenade and perhaps also look for a place to enjoy a meal, all in the one hit. Right on the beach and just fifty centimeters above sea level we found the right place.

Actually, the place found us. The building towers over everything at Ettalong. It’s the Eiffel Tower of the Central Coast. The building is huge and painted a shimmering white. The front of the building facing the sea and bay is a huge RSL club (returned soldiers league club). When we were there we didn’t see any uniformed soldiers having returned from wars, world-wide riots, revolutions or other disturbances. What we did see were many couples including their children going for a ‘Nosh-up’ which at the time we were there, had a mouth watering menu of many dishes at $9.- a plate, including a fifty percent discount on the first drink.

The curious tradition of non- club members having to sign-in still exists and it still gets up my gander/dander. Do non members steal the cutlery, perhaps secreting the forks and knives up their sleeves? I still don’t get the reason for this oddity,no matter how often it gets explained. A bit like cricket, I suppose. I can understand ‘members only’ or ‘members AND the public’, but why this ritual of signing up when they allow anyone to go and visit and then having to identify and give name and address? I would think foreign tourists would be loath to give information of that kind for just wanting to have a meal or dance the night away. What next, an FBI agent or rendition to Egypt, water-boarding?  Helvi would sorely miss me, for sure.

The fifty percent discount when ordering a meal applies to the first drink only. Fair enough, I thought and ordered a bottle of Lindeman’s merlot with utter confidence. It was very lovely to drink, unctuously rich Dutch cigar box with hints of Sunday school prune and ambitious towards the fruit loaded Pavlova on the middle palate.

I thought it better to wait for the 50% discount on the glass of wine after depletion of the bottle settled in. I dutifully went to the bar again, which there now was a long queue of 50% discount patrons waiting in a line which had a rope strung along a few stainless steel barriers. That 50 % must have really been a good business move, I thought. As I shuffled forward and it became my turn I asked for the three glasses of merlot with the discount.

The barmaid asked for my meal tickets as proof of having ordered three meals I did not have the receipts, but… and here comes the good bit. She said…”oh, you look like a NICE OLD Gentleman”, “don’t worry sir,” she added ever so kind and friendly. I was feeling a strange mixture of elation and mortification. I am now ‘nice and old’. A new era has heralded itself.

I think I might just leave the buffing of my headstone for a while yet. Too spooky!

If sport is still seen as the holy grail of youth growing into wholesome adults, I wonder if we ought to consider the opposite. A kind of movement, like which followed that of cigarettes, which we now know are secreted behind closed doors and wearing beige uniforms. People look guilty lighting up in public with a quick avoidance of looking into the eyes of the triumphant non-smoker.

Years ago, smoking was seen as sport is now, a kind of combination of robust health and the coming of age into responsible adulthood.  Remember those advertisements of a brave pilot seated in his war-plane’s cockpit, ready to teach the folks in Bremen, Hiroshima or Hamburg a good lesson? He wore goggles but in his mouth which seemed to hold a sardonic smile, there was also a Camel, all lit up, ready for anything but never ever a hint of looming cancer gnawing away at his youthful lungs. The opposite, it soothed nerves and gave patriotic confidence and made you fight and conquer enemies.

Nerves of steel, the advertisement waxed on and millions of young people took up the smoking health habit, all wanting to grow up and have the Pilot’s nerves of steel for the future. Movies were full of smoke and ash. There was nothing more seductive than Clark Gable brushing off some cigarette ash from Rita Hayworth’s blouse with fingers agonizingly trailing over her heaving but sturdy bra enveloped breasts. Unforgettable scenes of bravery when in ‘High-Noon’ and music’s ‘do not forsake me, oh my darling’ the cigarette dangled so lovely and enticingly from cowboy Carry Cooper’s lips. Many young girls fainted in the cinema in tandem with Grace Kelly’s swooning subserviently in cowboy’s arms.  Yes, smoking was robust health with a Mae West gun in your pocket. A sure sign of having grown up.

This morning on my walk past those gigantic oak trees in the park, I noticed the acorns being shed by the hundreds. It brought back the days when as a very young ten year old I was already influenced by the adults, including my father and my aunty heartily smoking away. With my friends and the help of a first pocket knife we hollowed out acorns and with a small straw inserted, managed to make a workable but primitive sort of pipe. We clandestinely managed to get a packet of tobacco and lit up, gloriously grown up after school, but hidden from adults which added to the taste of the foul nicotine. Smoking before discovery of the pubescent rose buds of girls’ breasts, that was the order of things then, I remember it so well. The sheer joy and  wild enthusiasm of entering the world of adventure and discovery of so much with being wickedly alive which doubled when a couple of years later girls entered the world of forbidden delights as well. It just never stopped then.

How things have changed now. A cold shower on all that smoking, perhaps not so much on girls but…while things have calmed down on budding breasts, at least they are not a health hazard as cigarettes proved to be. What a disappointment smoking turned out to be. I gave up reluctantly years ago but still enjoy someone else striking up with the smell of a fresh cigarette still having an overpowering sense with recurring memories of those forbidden delights so many years ago.

How disappointing sport turned out to be and with all those cases in Court, it is starting to resemble the turn around with cigarettes some years ago. All of a sudden, sport seems to have the stench of smoking. Corruption, drugs are rampant, insider criminal betting rings, girl friends getting glassed or worse, murdered, one wonders if the pilot lighting up in his warplane’s cockpit with a Camel wasn’t a better option after all?  Who still wants to be associated with a bicycle or a ball, let alone a cricket bat or fibre blade runners. It’s all getting to be a bit dodgy. Soon too, sportsmen will be locked up as well as cigarettes.

Perhaps outdoor chess might bring out the robust man or healthy woman? Who knows and what is the world coming?

When will it all end?