I'm aware what I am about to write might cop me some flack. The flack will be from people who have never met me, people who misunderstand me either by accident or design, or people who hide anonymously behind their computer screens firing off abuse at people they have not met, nor are likely to ever meet whilst they drink calorific soft drinks and masturbate to Miley Cyrus clips on You Tube, their miserable jizz dried under their fingernails (fingernails already grimy because these people don't ever tub as they're too busy looking at Miley Cyrus on You Tube) as they clack said fingernails over their keyboards (where there are flecks of dandruff from the heads of these miserable SOBs) to fire off abusive missives at folk they don't know.
I will take this opp to advise that if you wish to disagree with me, that's fine. It is your entitlement to do so. If you abuse me, I will delete your comment and block you. Or if your comment is interesting, I will store it for future use in my writing, and give you no credit whatsoever, so suck on that until your mandible aches.
But what has brought this on? Well, it was a You Are Fucking Shitting Me moment I had the other night. I was doing an evening medication run, and as I was pulling over in front of a client's home I heard something on the radio that almost caused me to crash the vehicle in my incredulity, so I was thankful I was slowing the vehicle to a halt. I was listening to a sports commentator on the AM station. Why was I doing this when my fondness of sport is right down there with my fondness for root canal surgery? It was because the FM station was streaming the Top 40, and I had trouble coping with what I was hearing It's not that I am old, it is because a lot of modern stuff just sucks. So I thought I'd just listen to some talking head (radio journalist, not US punk-ish band from the 70s). And the guy on the radio said the Cricket Association of Nepal is planning on placing Phillip Hughs' bat on Mt Everest. And yes, that's what got my eyes bugging in abject disbelief, and I just slammed on the brake, and gasped aloud to the radio band, as though the bloke could hear me, 'You are fucking shitting me!'
WHY would they do this? Many years ago, I trekked with one of my best friends through the Himalayas in Nepal. Before childbirth, I can truly say this was the most amazing thing I have ever done in my entire life. There was an overwhelming air - not due to the rarified oxygen but the vibe from the people - of peace, tranquillity, spirituality, and acceptance of everybody. There were some manmade structures there, but they were for 'good'. Prayer walls and prayer wheels, and when one walked by the prayer wheel one was meant to give it a spin and say a prayer. It didn't matter if you weren't Buddhist, a prayer to your own God was more than welcome, I was told. My friend and I strode along the meandering path carved into the sides of the mountains, and we would put our hands together in a prayer-like gesture and greet the Nepalese with 'Namaste', as we passed. One day I waxed lyrical about the valleys below, the snow blowing from distant mountain peaks, the blueness of the skies above, the majesty of the place, the gaudy saddle cloth on one of the yaks that was led by via a nose-ring; my friend, suffering a niggling headache from altitude-sickness, finally grunted, 'Simone. I've got eyes.' Oh, how we would laugh when we reached camp because the sherpas couldn't pronounce my name, and would call, 'Hello, Semen!' as I arrived. No matter how many times I told them, 'It's Sim-MONE' (over my friend's hysterical laughter), they never got it right. But it's a happy, wonderful memory. One afternoon my friend and I sat at the campsite, which was up a high mountain, and a cloud rolled in, engulfing us so we couldn't not see at all. It was crazy. It was amazing. Those mountains are a place of mystical, spiritual beauty and majesty.
SO WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO STICK A FUCKING CRICKET BAT ATOP THE GREATEST MOUNTAIN OF THEM ALL?
I am aware that following Hughs' death there was the 'outpouring of grief'. I used quotation marks because it's a hackneyed phrase that gets done to death and over played, like an irritating earworm of a Christmas song in a department store in the week leading up to December 25. Yes, I also thought what happened to him was sad, and my heart went out to his family, as well as the young bowler in this accident. But after a while, I got just a tad fed up with the click-bait and grief porn that saturated my Internet, and social media news feeds. So, I did the best thing in these circumstances: ignored it. I did not partake in the exercise of putting a cricket bat out the front of my house because (1) like I said, I will not take part in grief porn when I don't even LIKE cricket, and (2) there's this feral little self-entitled prick up the street who is likely to have stolen my son's cricket bat had I chosen to leave it outside.
I daresay I will be accused of being an unsympathetic troll lacking empathy, a cruel sociopath playing with people's emotions. That's not true. As mentioned above, I had immense sympathy for the family. You know what? When aged only 23, my oldest brother died from head injuries sustained in an accident, so yes, I think I can state I have a fair idea what the family are going through, and they will always have my kind wishes, as will his friends. It's the sickening media saturation that roused my irritation, as well as the attendance of both the Prime Minister and Federal Opposition Leader at the funeral. I don't get it.
Likewise, I don't 'get' why anybody would want to sully the landscape of one of the world's most forbidding, untamed, and reverent places with a piece of sporting paraphernalia. To me, this is absurd. Apparently, 'they' want this done before climbing season commences in March/April.
Maybe 'their' counterparts in Sydney might stick Alvin Stardust's black studded gloves on a flagpole at the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, so I can do a bridge climb and look at them? This to me would be an achievement; I have no desire to do this climb because I don't like heights. That might seem strange, given I've walked through Himalayan mountains, which are pretty high, but the difference there is even on the mountains, I felt I was 'on the ground', whereas it's different with the Bridge. I don't like standing to close to the windows of the Centrepoint Tower Observation Deck, either.
Oh, well.
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