Sunday Night

Sunday night in sleepy Busselton and we're down to one child, Sport Boy. The older two have gone to Perth; Favourite Daughter for an interview at Tabor College where she will be starting a 6 month course in July and The Heir for moral support and a chance to get out of sleepy Busselton for a couple of days.
The Hair has wangled his way to Zac's place at Dunsborough for the night, theoretically so they can work together on a an oral presentation for history. Rumour has it that Zac's mum is strict about these sort of things so we'll see.
Mrs Holt Press and I had a late dinner of noodles while watching some quality TV, where else but on ABC1, "The Girls from Belarus" followed by a fascinating episode of Compass about a young woman's search for independence and identity in the face of a controlling fundamentalist father.

Saturday Soccer
The BIG game against the MR Gladiators lived up to its billing, it was a very good game. Sadly we lost 3-0 but not before a real battle. It was a tale of two halves, they out-played us in the first half, scoring 2 goals. Our defense just couldn't get the hang of marking players and being accountable. Perhaps because they so raely have to! A rev up and re-focus at half time brought significant improvement with Cornerstone dominating the game and having many opportunities but still failing to score. Then, in the last 5 seconds of the game MR scored on a breakaway to finish 3-0 winners.
They have a much better coach than our kids!! He coaches the country week team that Sport Boy has been selected in and it showed in their discipline and organisation.
After the game he affirmed that it had been by far their toughest game of the season.
I'm not sure if our kids can beat them next time they play but we at least know we're competitive with them.

Scenes from a taxi ride.
There was an interesting vignette in the taxi last night, played out in two parts.
I took a couple to Bunkers Bay Resort, past Dunsborough, a $60 fare, where they were going to dinner, a gift bought for them by their children. We talked about football most of the way, they are long-suffering Dockers members, she a teacher, he an electrical engineer.
I gave them my number and they rang a couple of hours later for me to come and pick them up for the return journey.
This time the tone was different, the lady was on the phone some of the way and it became obvious they had received some bad news while they were at dinner.
I didn't say anything until they opened a conversation with me then remarked "It sounds like you've had some bad news".
It turned out that the lady's mother had died and they had just received the news.
Suddenly the football didn't seem that important or relevant.
They told me a bit about her, that she was quite elderly and that she had suffered from Multiple Sclerosis for many years which put a bit different perspective on the situation. They descibed her last 10 years as being trapped inside her (non-functioning) body yet still having an alert brain.
The lady was going to leave for Geraldton the following day to begin dealing with all the usual affairs that go with a bereavement.
Interestingly near the end of the journey, the conversation again turned to football, perhaps in a way grounding us and high-lighting that fine line we walk between the everyday and the eternal.
Death awaits us all. Life is made up of the myriad inter-actions, conversations and relationships that happen along the way. We never know where anyone else is on their journey, nor how close we may be to our destination ourselves.
And none of us knows when the Dockers will win another game!