I’d say it’s what separates us, not from the beasts, but the bestial. Creating the future, renewing a learned past - these are reasons to strive. Writing for and with love, taking and framing an image, stretching new melodic skins onto old skeletons of song… it’s how we manage to fly. It’s how we stay you and me, not us and them.
Unlike Osk, who seemed to establish his own tactical task force wherever we lived, scooping up neighbourhood feline troublemakers as sidekicks (including the memorable ginger behemoth Watson, with whom he used to scope the street from the safety of the shed roof), Jelly has the intelligence gathering skills of a sponge cake.
Anyway, somewhere in between my 'and then you should've done this' and 'why didn't you say x and y, rather than z', and 'for the love of monkeys and the general public's eyesight, you didn't honestly wear that heinous shirt did you', something he was saying about the dating extravaganza we were picking to pieces finally penetrated my cloud of self-congratulatory cumulo-waffle.
"Most people don't talk about how dates are progressing as a tender process, do they?" he asked.
"What?"
"She said I was 'part way through the tender process' and that she was judging me on my submission. I'd like to think there was irony involved, and I think at the time I may have given an admittedly weak "haha, yesssss, quite". Looking back, I'd have to conclude, computer says no on the presence of Fabulon or other aids to achieving crisply pressed linen."
Because let's face it, kids. 2015 sucked. It sucked big, fat, hairy spiders. It was a year of hate, of sadness, of horror, and of general down and out big fat hairy spidery suckiness. If you had a reverse Olympics of sucky years, I reckon 2015 would be down in the anti-Gold medal position with 1888, when Frau Klara and Herr Alois decided to get on the Riesling one night in downtown Braunau am Inn, Austria, things got a bit zündend under the Federbett, and the result was the unspeakable horror that was Adolf Hitler.
““It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.” ”
— Susan B. Anthony
I feel in some ways as though I am writing an obituary with this post - which, considering that I attended a funeral yesterday, perhaps makes sense. And to be a bit melodramatic, there has been a kind of death.
This week saw the downfall of Australia's first female prime minister. And before people start rolling their eyes and thinking this is going to be a rant about Labour v Liberal, let me stress that it isn't. It also isn't even about Julia Gillard in some respects.
It's more about us as Australians.
I don't pretend to think that politics are a clean game. Anything that involves a balance of power is going to bring out the worst in humans. I am also not so naive or blinkered as to think that just because the PM was a woman, she should be afforded any kind of privileges in terms of being treated better than anybody else in the business. We say of our leader 'primus inter pares' and as such she was first among equals, not better than anyone else - but that's my sticking point.
She also is no worse than anyone else, and as such deserved, and deserves, the same measure of respect as any other leader who came before. And this - this she didn't get. Which is a god-awful reflection on Australia as a whole.
Yes, we have a tradition of cutting down tall poppies. Yes, we make fun of pretty much anyone we feel like making fun of, and I'm as guilty as the next sarcastic bugger. But the constant bitter attacks on Julia were beyond anything I've ever seen in politics. They had nothing to do with her policies and everything to do with her personally. Which makes me incredibly fearful for where Australia is heading.
She may be abrasive. She may have given as good as she got in terms of dishing it out to opponents on a political level. But this was a PM who had to deal with constant jibes about her weight, her looks, her wardrobe, her choice of partner, her choice not to have children, her voice, her family.
Would it have happened if she had been a man?
This is not an 'Ode to Saint Julia'. I'm not saying she was a great Prime Minister, because honestly? I don't think she was. What I am attempting to say, possibly quite clumsily, is nobody deserves the treatment she received at the hands of the media, the public and a large percentage of Federal Parliament.
I don't think anyone should be in a position of power, whether it be government or business just because they are a woman. It should be based on merit not an absence of male genes. Otherwise it's a game of pretence and mess, and yes, inequality - not in the way we traditionally think of it, but in the long term it hurts women because where's the need to strive?
But to be hounded in the way that she was...
I vote no. No more.
Please bring some respect back Australia.
Because giving someone a fair go is supposed to be what we're all about.
