Even with my dim and hazy memory, some things can be recalled, or apparently so. The FIFA Women's World Cup being held in Australia and New Zealand, which began last night with victories to both of the host nations, was one such spur to memory. I admit that I am helped in this matter by my old friend Wayne, who seamlessly fills in the gaps for me without ever realizing it.

Cromer Park, Manly Vale, probably 1976. Wayne and I, having been soccer tragics in every other respect, were now officiating at women's matches. The procedure at the beginning of most games for the men was to check boot studs, toss a coin and call for a fair match from both sides. This was the same for the women, except that nails and jewellery were also subject to scrutiny - long nails taped over, chains and bracelets removed. This was important for obvious reasons but also, as a number of players confided in me, the ladies could be very rough if they wanted to. No point in handing them supplementary weapons!

It seems like an eternity away, those deep, deep soccer days when everything was the game or some aspect of it. I do miss them sometimes, but still am a happy spectator and lover of the code.

Go the Matilda's!

Working on programs that are live to air on radio is an interesting experience. Firstly, there is no chance to undo your mistakes, whether they be to do with the reading/presenting task at hand or others that are of technical nature. There are lots of buttons on the control panel and quite a lot of sliders too, and an unnoticed button left on or off can have a dramatic effect on what what is broadcast or what you perceive to be broadcast. I learned very quickly that a 'split cue' button doubled with another can ensure that you hear nothing that is being broadcast, even if it is all going smoothly. And because its live, panic can quickly set in. All one can do is apologize and move on.

My time as presenter of The New Statesman at 2RPH appears to be coming to a close for reasons too complex to explain, but primarily because I have my own show in pilot stage. If it's approved I will not have time to juggle three different recording tasks and do live to air broadcasts as well. I've had this concept in my head for months and its beginning to take shape. It won't be until I have had a run of half a dozen programs that I will know if its truly sustainable, though I think it is.

Stay tuned for more on this topic!

Just back from a shortened bike ride, the wind being so strong that it was 'crashing though darkness... and stampeding the fields under the window.' I didn't get blown off but the resistance was so great that I came home for lunch and coffee instead. Even now the house rings 'like some fine green goblet in the note that any second would shatter it.' I always think of Hughes Wind when the weather is like this and I suspect I always will, it is such a good poem.

The Grand Sumo Tournament in Nagoya is poised to begin and already there is interesting news. Newly promoted ozeki  Kiribayama has taken on a new name, Kirishima, which apparently is his original ring name. Takakeisho has pulled out of the tourney to mend up and will likely go kadoban in the next basho, meaning he will have to have more wins than losses to keep his ozeki status.

I think this is going to be a great tournament and I look forward muchly to it.

To close out any and all further references to name changes, I thought it reasonable to quote from one of the Tatami Tales emails that we sent back to Oz way back in 2002. As I said. these were much closer to being 'letters home' than dull old emails and we both adopted a writerly conversational style to make them more interesting and to appeal to a broader audience.

Anyway, one of the missives dealt with the live house event that I mentioned in the last post. The circumstances around how we found ourselves doing a set with professional musicians in a proper music venue is worth digressing for.

It happened that in autumn of 2001, the parent of one of our students asked us to come to their sports day at a local primary school in Sanda. Of course, being new to the country, we accepted. It was while we were sitting down watching an event that a rather beautiful woman approached us and asked, 'Do you write songs?' Kind of bonkers, don't you think? Enter the talented Shu Yamaguchi.

As it turned out, we did in fact write songs now and then and so she employed us to write the lyrics to a melody she had created but with one stipulation, the words 'Smile so Blue' should be somewhere in the chorus. We duly did so and she invited us to rehearse it with her at her house. From this flowed all sorts of offers from live recording to live performance, bizarre when I think about it now. But that's how we ended up supporting 'Flaw', her band, at a live venue in early 2002.

 Now here is what I wrote home,

"A few Saturdays ago Nadia and I were guests of the Japanese band 'Flaw' at the 'Starting Over' Live House in Kobe. I will concede that I was a little nervous at the prospect of playing with professional musicians. This was especially daunting as the musos were so talented and so versatile that I didn't want to remove my guitar from its case. I fact, I wanted to remove myself from the scene altogether.....

Our friend Shuko fronts 'Flaw', and her voice has such a singular lyrical quality, so seamless and intuitive, that its hard to understand why she isn't a major star. 'Flaw' are a trio who specialize in a kind of Latin American jazz, the samba and bossa nova rhythms sitting in interesting counterpoint to the sometimes contemporary choice of material. Shuko can even make Barry Mannilow seem sexy - no kidding!"

Allusions to Japan in the previous post sent me back to my ancient folder of saved emails in order to find out just when I did buy my guitar in that music store in Kyoto. No luck on that score, though an email dated April 2002 noted that it had been used in a gig (by me) in Kobe a few weeks earlier. My guess is that the purchase was likely sometime late in 2001. By the way, that performance at a 'live house' and how it came about is another story altogether!

When I first started this blog in 2005, I used the title Tatami Twist to distinguish it from the email/letters we had written (and might still be going to write) from Japan to Australia to let the family and friends know what we were up to. Those emails were called the Tatami Tales. 

That time and those emails are now long gone, so I have taken on the name again from this day forth. It seems like a very satisfying segue indeed and really quite appropriate as there are many references to our time in Japan in this blog.

Last week I took my guitar into a music store in Penrith for a long overdue service and restringing. Yesterday I got it back with a relatively clean bill of health. At twenty years of age, it still has a lot of life left yet.

Said guitar has sat near the printer for nearly two years now, only occasionally played. This was not the case only a few years before when it got a regular weekly outing to a café set up by Anglicare for clients and staff in Mt Druitt. It was not the case either some years before that again when, in a previous marriage, I would spend hours working on a few songs for our regular music parties as well as accompaniments for other singers who needed a guitarist.

I bought the Yamaha in Kyoto around 2002, hoping to turn some of my English classes into more special occasions by learning the text book CD songs and rendering them live. It worked a treat - kid faces lit up when I pulled it from its case and began teaching them a song. It was a really useful Tesol aid and I brought it back to Australia in 2007. It's not a top quality instrument, but its sounds good, plays well and does the job.

So, I plan to get back into playing, going over some of my old café repertoire and learning new material. I trust you will hold me to it!

Back home again.

While it strikes me as unlikely that architects of modern shopping malls had medieval cathedrals in mind when they drew up their plans, there are nevertheless some similarities  betwixt the two.

Many malls have a wide central aisle not unlike that of a cathedral, with shops on either sides and smaller aisles leading off to a similar pattern of shops. Cathedrals also have such aisles, often running parallel to central one (the nave) and then smaller 'aisles' off to the left or right that may lead to chapels, before the transept crosses the church some where near the middle. In addition, many malls in the postmodern style have exterior buttresses, even flying buttresses. They often have vast ceilings too, which suggest wealth, power and prestige.

But far more than architectural similarities are the spiritual ones. The modern mall replaces the cathedral as the epicentre of communal life, where the values of consumer capitalism, the potential usurper of Christianity, can be entertained, exalted and experienced. Money, in whatever form it might take, is exchanged for goods, the latter providing a temporary release from the hollow daily drag of life. Meaning has been exchanged for what is acquisitive. This is not to blame those trapped in the cycle, for a trap it is, nor even the creators of the system, who may have had the best of intentions.

I have often thought about these parallels, boring soul that I am. A case, of course, can be made against such thinking, though I have yet to hear it.

It may be that I'm just getting older, but I find the winter this year quite a deal colder than last. I'm not sure that the statistics will bear me out, but the winds seem icier and my capacity to retain heat poorer, all pointing to lower averages. Even now, however, I read that this winter will be drier and warmer than the last, so maybe it is just me.

The old Nectre combustion heater is holding up well, though definitely in need of some maintenance. As mentioned in an earlier post, I began wood fires in late May (which is very early) and have kept them up every second night or so since. My woodpile is gradually diminishing and I'm uncertain whether we will make it to the end of July on the current stock.

Having said all that about the cold, the sunny days are really quite pleasant. Bikes rides require some judiciously assembled layers of clothing, but are certainly doable. The Mountains are beautiful in all seasons and it's exhilarating to whizz by views of distant peaks and valleys of bushland.

Such a nice place to live!

Reports of V. Putin's imminent demise have been prominent for some time since the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. He has been variously, incurably ill, at risk of overthrow, of assassination and so forth. Of course, most recently, the shadowy Wagner Group, headed by the eccentric and possibly unstable Yevgeny Prigozhin, made a half-hearted attempt at some kind of coup, the nature and purpose of which is equally shadowy.

Putin does not come out of the coup attempt looking any stronger, rather the opposite, though I expect him to survive. Still, a wounded Putin is a dangerous Putin and the West would do well to take heed, lest the Russian President do something rash to secure his position at the top.

Zelensky will doubtless have a propaganda field day - that's to be expected - but Western leaders should resist poking the Bear.

Resentment is a very caustic thought and emotion, perhaps one of the worst. It is hard to get rid of even after you think you have got rid of it. You can say that you forgive someone a hundred times and think you have got past it, but then something small brings everything up again.

Resentment that comes of personal slights and hurts is often the hardest to erase because the hurt might still be buried deep long after the action or word has taken effect. It's personal nature tends to make it that much more searing or humiliating.

As a Christian, it my duty ( and my desire)  to forgive and give up any resentments. As Paul says in Ephesians 4.31, 

'Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.'

That doesn't leave a lot of room for resentment or envy or jealousy, which are all forms of bitterness or malice. They are a trio that always turn out for the worst.

Prayerful forgiveness and turning the matter over to God are certainly helpful. Surrendering wholly to the Lord gives you a much better chance of 'letting go.'

Being flawed as we are, it is always a work in progress.

In 1912, Thomas Hardy wrote a poem for the Titanic Disaster Fund, a matinee given at Covent Garden following the catastrophic sinking of RMS Titanic a month earlier. The Convergence of the Twain, is written in that slightly bleak, ironic style that Hardy excels in, though not all found the poem satisfactory.  

As the poet imagines it, the ship and the iceberg are created at the same time, as if destined for their ultimate 'convergence.'

    'For as the smart ship grew

    In stature, grace and hue

In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.'

It was from Hardy's poem about the Titanic that I got the idea for the poem in the previous post (poor as it is compared to the master) that would reflect upon the demise of the Titan, in the very same spot that iceberg and ship once collided.

Trine is my best guess at three, as twain is for two.

Strange Convergences

Two old friends still meet,

Clenched in a watery frame,

One abruptly unformed,

The other an infinite blend.

A century of fame now

Beyond their intimate reckoning -

Torn steel cannot mend,

Nor same-ice recombine,

That invisible moment,

A voiceless slide,

Like a lissom dance,

Slight touch to foment

And dark waves to hide,

A starless settling.

To the twain who met,

A stranger arrives,

One not yet

On the sunless shore,

Or the shoreless sea,

In the crumpled dark -

Still, an emissary of light,

Of frank curiosity.

'Oh, welcome friend,

Our table's set,

Pull up a chair,

A trine are we.'

A few years ago when I was a volunteer guide at the Australian Maritime Museum, one of the more interesting exhibits was Challenging the Deep, a multi-media introduction to James Cameron's love of exploring the depths of the oceans in small submersible vehicles. It included some excellent modelling of the wreck of the Titanic, period costumes and Cameron's own take on exploring shipwrecks and other far deeper places. Doubtless he is a brave man.

I was thinking about this show this morning when I read of the disappearance of the submarine Titan, a small underwater craft designed to take tourists, amongst other things, to the resting place of the Titanic in the North Atlantic ocean. The surface vessel, the Polar Prince, lost contact with Titan about two hours into its descent. A major rescue operation is currently underway; the Titan has up to 5 days oxygen supply for the 5 submariners on the trip, who with any luck all will be found safe and sound. But it is a fraught situation and everything depends on just what might have gone wrong. Entanglement with wreckage of the Titanic, an electrical fire or hull breach would be deadly, as would sitting powerless on the ocean floor.  Not only that, but the conditions on the high sea, the weather and so forth can all hamper the discovery of the ship and rescue of the crew.

When I was a guide on the submarine HMAS Onslow at the AMM, I would often talk visitors through the rescue procedures available to such a craft in the 1990's based upon the manuals and reports I had read. The chances of survival were not considered great. Conditions had to be right for rescue or escape to occur. The Onslow is a vastly more capable boat in every respect to the Titan, which was described by one media outlet as 'little more than a mini-van-sized, pressurized viewing platform.' (The Guardian)

I am not a brave man when it comes to exploration in dangerous places. Not for me a Martian expedition or a trip to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. But I do wish the searchers well and hope, against what I know are lengthening odds, that they succeed in their mission.

Courtesy the Sydney Morning Herald and OceanGate Expeditions.

Chatting with my mum today, I was reminded that tomorrow is the anniversary of her arrival in Australia on the venerable SS Ranchi. On the 12th June, 1949, the reconverted former troop ship sailed into Sydney Harbour and tied up at Woolloomooloo. It was raining and cold and my grandmother (for she was also on board) remarked that they had been told that Australia was always warm and sunny. It being my grandmother's birthday, she probably felt that the elements should have been kinder that day.

These kind of journeys are invariable fateful, in the sense that something of the old way of life will have been changed forever as a result of those pair of tickets bought for a one-way trip to the other side of the world. Life in Australia, as similar as it may have seemed to life in England, meant, however, an entirely different universe of relationships, jobs, children, events and so forth which would inevitably follow. It is a journey that can rarely be 'untaken.' 

The SS Ranchi also had a colourful career.. Built as a liner by P&O in the 1920's, she sailed a scheduled route between England and Bombay, then later to the 'Far East.' She was requisitioned by the Royal Navy in 1939 and served as an armed merchant cruiser, then later as a troop ship. P&O finally got her back in 1947 where she was pressed into service as an 'emigrant ship' between the UK and Australia between 1948 and 1952. Her career ended when she was scrapped in 1953. Quite a career, don't you think?

SS Ranchi in her last iteration, as my mother would have seen her.

Photo courtesy State Library of  Victoria

One of the challenges of living in a national park in the vicinity of major tourist attractions is the insane amount of traffic that any holiday period or long weekend will produce. This being the June long weekend of the King's Birthday (That change will take some getting used to!), cars on the ascent to Katoomba are currently piled back two kilometres from the local traffic lights at Hazelbrook.

Since the Great Western Hwy is essentially the only road from east to west through the string of Mountain's towns and villages, locals have no choice but to stay at home or run the gauntlet of when and where traffic snarls and queues may occur. The GWH is that key artery in and out of this side of the Blue Mountains, so you can probably see my point.

It's almost enough to make one sympathize with what Parisians have to put up with. Parts of their city effectively cease to be their own. And yet, the tourist dollars that come in largely keep the place running. Getting the balance right is very difficult.

The passing of Rale Rasic is a sad moment for both his family and the football(soccer) community in Australia. If you don't know who Rasic is, picture this scenario.

Australian soccer in the early 1970's. Semi-professional (footballers always had 'other jobs'), divided heavily by ethnic loyalties, the also-ran amongst the football codes (League, Union and AFL), hampered by media prejudice and chronic underexposure. The Socceroos had never qualified for a World Cup.

Along comes a new coach, Rale Rasic, and guides this team of almost amateurs to the 1974 World Cup in Germany, a world cup comprising only 16 teams. We finished with a solitary point from a draw with Chile, having lost to the two Germany's in the early games. No disgrace, only honour and thousands of new fans from around the world.

He was many other things too, but this one supreme achievement places him amongst the greats of Australian sport.

Take a bow, Mr Rasic. And Rest in Peace.

News that a former US defence insider is claiming that the Pentagon, defence contractors, and the like are secretly hording the remains of crashed alien craft and their dead crew members would be very interesting, nay extraordinary news, if even a scintilla of evidence had been produced.

I mean, some alien DNA, a circuit, a piece of a spacecraft, something which conclusively demonstrates that the allegation (which is all it is) is true. I won't be holding my breath!

Imagine this. An alien civilisation, so advanced on us that they can send spacecraft across interstellar space, negotiating all the hazards and technological challenges that that presents, at speeds that we cannot imagine, and preserving the crew on the journey, arrives on Earth only to crash land. Plausible? What do you think?

Because I have been recording programs for 2RPH from home, I have been struck, as you might well imagine, by the sheer amount of ambient noise in the background. I live in a township in the Blue Mountains, a city within a National Park. So you might also expect a greater amount of peace and quiet, relative to our Sydney cousins just down the mountain.

It might the case and if so, then Sydney must be a aural nightmare! From my back garden I can hear all manner of noisy birds (don't get me started on cockatoos!) but they can be mostly screened out of the recording afterwards. Then there are power tools - mowers, edgers, whipper snippers, chain saws, mulchers, leaf blowers, drills, pneumatic hammers and so on. They are a constant almost seven days a week, from 7am in the morning.

What we gained in convenience, we lost in our daily commune with the natural world, which beckons us to listen, beyond the baleful cacophony.

As first mooted in the my last post, Yokozuna Terunofuji won on Day 14 to take the Emporor's Cup for the 8th time. Coming back from serious injury and surgery on both knees,  it is quite an achievement for the tough Mongolian. How much longer he will last is anyone's guess, though a little while ago his oyakata (stable master) noted that his knees were 'a ticking time-bomb.'

Congratulations are also in order for Kiribayama who has achieved ozeki promotion, a much needed addition to an important rank. Now that Takakeisho has a 'partner', maybe some of the pressure that he doubtless feels will drop off him and he can focus on ozeki sumo.

Courtesy Sumo Fetish    A rare smile.

On the penultimate day of the summer Grand Sumo Tournament In Tokyo, returning champion Terunofuji has the chance to clinch the Emperor's Cup if he can beat second placed Kiribayama this evening. Even if he loses he will have another crack at it tomorrow, though likely with a playoff at the end.

It has been an impressive return from serious injury for the Mongolian who seemed like he may be forced to retire. Today he disposed of (equally impressive) Asanoyama in quick order, giving the latter something to reflect upon between now and the next basho.

Some months ago I wrote about a lady who, as best I could make out, was present at every sumo tourney, no matter where that happened to be in Japan. She was always sitting in the second row, right in view of the TV cameras. Well, she has disappeared and has been absent for the last three tournaments, unless, of course, she is sitting somewhere else!

In her place in Tokyo are two hilarious young Japanese women, whose face-pulling and general excitement must have amused many who were watching at home. Can you spot them? This was from yesterday's bout between Terunofuji and Asanoyama.