It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Blogs are everywhere. Campbell Street, Hobart CBD, October 2010.

Theme Thursday yet again and this week I wanted to talk about the current touch football season.

Now, I could bore you with vivid descriptions of our SOMNOLENT defensive line (or lack thereof), but I wouldn’t want to bore you with clichés.

I could talk to you about the myriad of injuries incurred in what is supposed to be a non-contact sport – game one = sore shoulder, game two = bruised thigh, game three = jarred knee – but I won’t.

I won’t lie to you: we’re struggling. Zero and three three rounds in, we remain [mathematically] still in contention for the finals.

We’re taking it one week at a time. There is no point getting ahead of ourselves, but (like the boy with the barrow), there is a big job in front of us. The reality is that we have had a number of injuries to senior players (my long list, a broken finger, back spasms, bruised egos), but we are looking at it as a chance for the kids to step up.

Despite the results, the coach has the full support of the board. We have all heard the rumours of friction in the dressing room, but at the end of the day, it is a team sport, and even if there is no I in TEAM, there is A ME. The other teams have just wanted it more. We are better than our record indicates, but we do need a result. We miss out again, he’s a dead man walking.

In many ways the team is in a in a rebuilding phase, in terms of the premiership clock, we are around the upper right quadrant. That said, we have a number of determined players, but the turnovers really hurt us.

It is a game of two halves, unfortunately, at the moment we are playing both equally badly. Although we’re still in with a shout, we are not getting ahead of ourselves and thinking finals, we’re focusing on next week.

We need to cut the costly errors, play a full 60 minutes, work on our fitness and get back to basics, work on the fundamentals and stop playing like millionaires. We need to take our chances, find another gear, get out there and have a red hot go. If we don’t, it’s guaranteed to end in tears.

If we get out there next week, give it 120%, I reckon that the next match can be a great advert for the game. At this level – Southern Touch Mixed Division Seven – there are no easy games. We have it all to play for, and although the opposition look good on paper, the game is not played on paper and touch is a funny old game.

It’s all to play for. If we want to be in with a shout, the guys have to put their bodies on the line, win the one percenters, take centre stage and provide the spark that lights the touchstone, let's us grind out a result and get our season off the ground. It’s a real battle for survival, and weed to get out there, take no prisoners and take the game by the scruff of the neck.

Time to draw a line in the SAND. I know that the opposition coach has been talking a good game, but one day the chickens will come home to roost. We are at the business end of the season and we’re not going to throw the towel in. If we win this one, we are in the hunt. We lose, and we’re in free fall and the knives will be out.

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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