Debt is the prolific mother of folly and of crime.

As this blog has demonstrated over the past 1,607 posts, Hobart is home to a lot of boats. What I have not stressed is the propensity for the owners of many – if not a majority – of those boats to pick a terrible pun as a name for their boats. Believe it or not, Concerto in Sea [pictured above] is indeed one of the wittier examples to be found in our many marinas and boatsheds around town.

Just as in naming a child, the pressure of picking a moniker that will be able to weather the tests of time, trends and mean-spirited individuals is immense. I would like to think that I’ve performed well thus far with the world-renowned Henry and Ezra [with the added pressure of the puntastic surname of McCracken], and thus would flourish if faced with the challenge of a virgin ketch trembling in anticipation at the prospect of a lick of paint and a dignified name.

That said, today I face a new kind of anxiety, Theme Thursday pressure! The Powers That Be have decided – in their infinite and munificent wisdom – to utilise a suggestion of mine as this weeks’ them. Moreover, what a theme it is!

Indeed, HISTORY, is mine!

The pressure of delivering upon one’s own them is colossal. Ever the squeaky wheel, I have ~~pissed about and moaned~~ constructively critiqued some past themes as discriminatory against us plebs located in the Southern Hemisphere. SNOW in summer! ~~SAMHAIN~~HALLOWEEN – a festival about the end of harvest – in Spring! SUMMER in WINTER! Yes people, I have been a robust advocate for the rights of Antipodeans for a long, long time.

Naturally, as a vocal critic of such inequity, the pressure is firmly upon me to deliver. I expect that there are many cruel ~~fuck~~wits out there willing to suggest that I myself am HISTORY. Of course, they are right. I am indeed HISTORY. They are HISTORY. Believe it or not people, you are HISTORY too!

Many ~~idiots~~ people fall into the trap of assuming that HISTORY is past, HISTORY is dead or that HISTORY is anything but present. They are mistaken. HISTORY can never be dead. Like the parrot in the sketch, it might be sleeping, but only the fool confuses the two. HISTORY lives, HISTORY breathes and HISTORY both drives, and moves with, the currents that create, inform, deny, change or influence HISTORY itself.

The misconception is rooted in the notion that HISTORY is about them. It is about great men and weighty matters and significant events.

BAH! I say.

BAH! and PFFTT!

HISTORY is about us. HISTORY is about you and me and Vikrim the wholesale fruit salesman in Visakhapatnam; Jelena from Jelgava who works as a chemist in the day, but plays cards at night; or Abdul of Accra who enjoys street soccer but wants to be a teacher. HISTORY is in the details. Wars, treaties, empires raised and empires fallen is nothing more than the collated detritus of everyday life.

We are everyday life, therefore my dear readers, we are indeed HISTORY...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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