Rd 1: Melbourne vs Brisbane @ the MCG

I had a rush of blood to the head this week, and did something I’ve never done before: I became a member of my football club.

I grew up in Adelaide with an SANFL “Footy’s Best In The Flesh” sticker on my bunk bed. Norwood was our team, and I ran around Under 7s training with Gary McIntosh’s number 14 on my back. Whenever State of Origin footy came to Footy Park, a parent would take a bunch of boys along and we’d chant “S-A” and “We hate you ‘cos you’re Victorian” all night long.

All the same, even in the 1980s it was hard to ignore the game across the border. On winter Sunday mornings my brother and I would leap out of bed to watch Drew Morphett present an hour of VFL highlights on the ABC. It was the era of the great Essendon teams, and in the backyard he’d be Leon Baker and I a diminutive Billy Duckworth.

1987 was the year I became a Melbourne supporter. The Demons had a graceful, ageing champion in Robbie Flower; a South Australian gun named Steven Stretch on the wing; and the young Irishman Jim Stynes, whose famous blunder in the 1987 Preliminary Final was the kind of tragedy that weds a young fan to the team. I’ve been waiting for redemption ever since.

I’ve written elsewhere about my existential angst as a Melbourne fan. Being an interstater, and politically of the Left, it can feel rather odd to support the MCC team. A few years ago I flirted with the Crows and the Bulldogs, but neither ever took. I think the turning point was when Liam Jurrah burst onto the scene - but it might just as easily have been when Jimmy came back to save the club from extinction. Here were some people I could care about, and a story worth telling.

I was eleven years old and jumping around the living room when Jimmy won the Brownlow in 1991. Last week I was moved to tears when he died. It’s a funny thing, crying at the death of someone you’ve never met. I guess I cried for myself really, for the dead man I will be and the child I’ll never be again; but also for my family and friends, and for Jimmy and his, and because reading all the obituaries I felt happy and sad at the same time.

So Jimmy’s gone - and Liam Jurrah is out indefinitely with a bad wrist, a family feud and a pending court case. But this week I joined the Melbourne Football Club anyway. I chose the eleven home games membership, general admission seating, for $195. I don’t like Etihad Stadium. I’ll probably make a game or two there, but really I want to be at the MCG.

I’ve never had many mates who actually barrack for Melbourne. One of the few who spring to mind is a lovely bloke named Dave Lafferty, a Queenslander mate from the student activist days. One night at the New International Bookshop I had an unusual rush of customers - there was a big event on upstairs - and Dave appeared out of nowhere and started making coffees. I hadn’t seen him for years. We both lived in Footscray for a while, and went to a few games but then he disappeared again. Are you out there, Dave? The ‘G misses you, and so do I.

For Round 1, 2012 my fellow Dee is Pete Coles. Pete’s a brother from a men’s circle we both sat in a few years ago. That’s a story in itself, but suffice to say that while we’re not best mates, we’ve been through some real bonding experiences together. He’s a big, gentle man with flowing red-brown hair, a muso and youth worker and a bit of a hippie. In fact, as we head into the ground I joke we’re the hippie faction of the Melbourne supporters, both in our sandals, Pete with his prayer beads and me with my sushi.

Less of a hippie is Jerome Small. I hope I’ll go to many games with Pete this year - perhaps even find a few more Dees who want to join our faction - but I also want to sit with friends who support the opposition. Today, that’s Jerome. He’s a Lions man from back when they called Fitzroy home, and his story is a bit like mine. He gave up on the footy altogether when Fitzroy folded, then wore an Essendon scarf to a 2001 Grand Final barbecue - but found himself jumping instinctively to his feet when Alastair Lynch marked on the lead in the first quarter that day.

Fast forward a decade and Jerome’s back in his old Fitzroy scarf. He’s a big, gentle man too - a construction worker and one of the most authentic socialists I’ve ever known. As we take our seats in the Ponsford Stand, up in Level 3 so we get an overview of the action, I wonder if he and Pete will find a political argument today.

After a minute of applause for Jim Stynes, a fitting variation on the minute’s silence, the ground announcer invites us to remain standing for the national anthem. Jerome sits down in disgust, declaring “I’m not going to stand up for a song that’s full of lies!” I wish I had his gumption, and resolve not to stand next time myself. As the song plays we discuss the increasing proliferation of national anthems and calls to patriotism in AFL footy, on Anzac Day and beyond. An Irish ballad would have been much more meaningful today I reckon.

Before the first bounce, I knick Jerome's record to perform an impromptu quiz on both clubs’ history. The players have their pre-game rituals, I have mine. I ask for a tip, and Jerome prevaricates while Pete plumps for Melbourne by 40. Inspired by his confidence, I tip Melbourne by four goals.

We lose by 41 points.

It’s a scrappy game. Neither team looks great in the first half, but in the third quarter the Brisbane rucks are well on top and Simon Black and any number of young midfielders are carving us up. Given the Lions won just four games last year, it’s a disastrous start to our season.

I still enjoy it though. There’s a masochist frame of mind that comes naturally to any long-suffering supporter. I’m not one for bagging my team, but I repeatedly wonder aloud what Jack Watts is doing in the centre bounces so often - Pete reckons the coach is trying to toughen him up, and we have a not entirely generous chuckle when young Jack comes off with the blood rule. We both acknowledge that the team has not a single star, perhaps not even a genuine A-grade player. It’s a depressing thought.

Even when we do kick a goal it seems more the result of persistence than skill. At one point we seem certain to score as two players close in on goal with the ball at their feet; Aaron Davey attempts to soccer it through but only succeeds in falling over, and thankfully the ball lands in Brad Green’s hands for a goal he seems embarrassed to celebrate in the usual manner. “A comedy of errors” I suggest. “Footycliches.com!” shoots back Jerome.

The real highlight of the day - and keep in mind here we are the hippie faction - is that Jerome gets to see his team win. “GO LI-ONS!” he bellows with increasing regularity as the realisation dawns that a victory is on the cards. I particularly like how he looks up the young players in the Record, then shouts their names for all to hear: “We LOVE you Pearce Hanley!” “Mitch Golby you are a STAR!”

When the final siren blows Pete looks pretty keen to get moving, but we stick around so Jerome can enjoy the song, and the celebration continues as the players and staff salute the fans up our end. Jerome’s not too keen on coach Michael Voss, whom he calls “son of a cop”, but when Jonathan Brown shows his face – recently reconstructed for the third time – Jerome reckons he looks in pretty good nick. In fact we can hardly see the man, but it’s an optimistic moment.

As we leave the ground, Pete and I plan to reconvene for Round 3 against the Tigers, and I tell Jerome I’ll probably see him at the Marxism conference at Easter. It’s been a good day out with mates I haven’t seen much for a while.

If Melbourne don’t improve dramatically, that might be the story of my year as a club member. We all know a week’s a long time in footy, but Perth is also a bloody long way away – and we’ve got the Eagles over there next weekend. Things might just get worse before they get better.

"What the fuck do you want fuck off out of here or I’ll bite ye!" Debut Mondays at the Wheeler Centre

The Wheeler Centre runs a monthly night called Debut Mondays, where four first-time authors are given a mic and ten minutes to read from their work. As you might imagine it can be a hit and miss. Not all writers publish a first book that warrants a second, and even those who do usually take time to grow into the entertaining performers we nowadays expect them to be.

This year Debut Mondays has moved downstairs to The Moat, the swish café/bar/restaurant that opened late last year. (Along with Embiggen Books down the road, The Moat is apparently part of “the Little Lonsdale St renaissance”.) It’s a much more welcoming, hospitable environment for what is usually a lowkey event – although the March edition was something special.

Robert Power kicked things off entertainingly, confessing he had spent time in his youth as both a revolutionary socialist and a Seventh-Day Adventist. The creepy religious twins in his reading from In Search of the Blue Tiger certainly bespoke this experience.

Next up was Maggie Groff, who had already won my heart by chatting comfortably with yellow-shirted Leon – a local street identity and serial attendee of protests and literary events. Maggie read one of the opening scenes from her book Mad Men, Bad Girls and the Guerilla Knitters Institute, a light crime read that delves into the world of cults in northern NSW and south Queensland.

Then up stepped Chris Flynn sporting a shaved head, thick black-rimmed glasses and a gentle Irish accent. After a few introductory remarks, he excused himself to “get into character”. He turned his back to the audience, bent at the waist and kept us in amused suspense before reappearing clad in a black balaclava (minus the glasses).

The narrator of Flynn’s Tiger in Eden is Billy Montgomery, a Protestant hard man from Belfast who is hiding out in Thailand, and we were treated to a section of Billy’s experience on vipassana. Vipassana is of course a silent meditation retreat, and Flynn’s frenetic delivery of Billy’s inner monologue – complete with a thick Belfast accent, slang and swear words – made for a hilarious contrast with the supposed calm of his environs.

Since I bought the book afterwards (a first in all my time at the Wheeler Centre), I can reproduce here my favourite section from the reading, when Billy leaves the guided walking meditation and encounters a trail of ants that draw his attention:

“Fuck they’re amazing so they are in a world of their own they don’t give a fuck about us humans and our aul problems, they’ve got attitude too this big red one crawled past me I was sitting on the ground watching them and he must have seen me or something, the wee bastard stops and looks right up at me as if to say what the fuck do you want fuck off out of here or I’ll bite ye. I’m about a thousand times his size or something, I could crush him no bother and he still comes at me all threatening like did you not hear me get to fuck. I jumped up thinking, aye all right pal take it easy I’m going now. I had to sit somewhere else and hope he didn’t come back, the wee fucker set of balls on him like.”

Is Flynn indebted Irvine Welsh? Billy’s mix of humour, boredom and quickness to violence are reminiscent of Trainspotting’s Begbie, and the first-person form accentuates the similarity. I love Welsh anyway, and Tiger in Eden is so well realised it shouldn’t really matter. The sex scenes (of which there are many) and the long full moon party scene are written lightly and convincingly. Billy’s character becomes more sympathetic as his horrific past bubbles up to confont hime, and this process gives the book its structure and abiding sense of hope.

Give Tiger in Eden to a boy aged 15-50 and see if they don’t devour it in one or two sittings.

Of course, the fourth author at our Debut Mondays event (yes, we’re back in The Moat) did not fall into this demographic. She was the 11 year-old Eliza Baker, winner of the 2011 John Marsden Prize for Best Short Story/ First Chapter of a Novel by a writer under the age of 18. As a man in a balaclava dropped F and C-bombs with abandon, Eliza’s dad seemed rather unamused – but her mum was cracking up.

Eliza then stood up and read Chapter One of her novel in progress, South Spirit: The Locket Heart. It was cute and magical, and warmly applauded. After her experience at The Wheeler Centre, however, perhaps Chapter Two will be a bit different.

Little Readers and Readees

Yesterday I worked the Children’s Book Festival for the Wheeler Centre. Outside the State Library lawns were overrun and Little Lonsdale St was a “child apocalypse” (according to my workmate Autumn) of colourful chalking. Inside I chatted to authors and held the mic for kids to ask questions whose succinctness put most adult patrons of the Wheeler Centre to shame.

I must have been too old to appreciate Andy Griffiths when The Day My Bum Went Psycho was published. Thankfully I seem to be young enough now, because I was consistently delighted by both his half-hour presentations – especially the second, a slideshow of his forthcoming 13 Storey Treehouse book with illustrator Terry Denton. And the kids were climbing off the walls.

But the real highlight of the day, for me, was hearing Graeme Base. Like most kids my age (i.e. 32) I have vivid memories of Animalia and The Eleventh Hour. For the first time in decades I remembered the excitement around my brother’s class having an Eleventh Hour dress-up feast. Unfortunately, under Mum’s creative direction he went as the swan, and was teased quite severely. This was, after all, Year 7 at a boy’s school.

At one point a child asked Graeme how he got the idea to write books, and in his response he asked the audience if anyone knew the book Masquerade. I was kneeling in the second row, waiting to hold the mic for the next question, and amidst the confused silence my low murmur of assent carried all the way to the stage. “Sebastian knows!” exclaimed the author as I knelt there feeling absurdly proud.

Masquerade is an amazing book by Kit Williams, published in 1982 as the clue to a real-life treasure hunt. The author had buried a golden hare somewhere in England, and hundreds of thousands of people around the world bought the book in the hope of unlocking the mystery and claiming the prize. And, with the miracle of Wikipedia, I have just discovered the original winner was revealed as a fraud six years later. It’s an incredible story, and I’ll leave you to look it up if you’re interested.

When I think back to my childhood, The Eleventh Hour and Masquerade seem like definitive, eye-popping experiences of the magic of books. Another that springs to mind is Anno’s Journey, Anno’s Italy and similar works by Mitsumasa Anno.  If you don’t know Anno, imagine Where’s Wally? done in a minimalist, Zen Buddhist style by an artist with a deep interest in history, science and travel.

If I was sitting in Mum’s place in the Adelaide Hills, I’d be able to list many more favourite picture books that truy transcend the term. As it is, I’ll have to stick with what I can remember.

Having said that, my first memory of reading, like all memories from the first three and half years of my life lived in Brunei, is no a real memory at all. It’s captured on film. There I sit, blonde and pudgy with the Three Billy Goats Gruff balanced between my toes. It almost looks like I’m reading the book, but really I’m reciting it by memory. A neat party trick, though.

What I do remember is Mum reading aloud to us. A lot. More than a lot. More than I can imagine any parent reading to their children. More than I can imagine reading to my children, if and when, and that’s a sobering thought because there’s really no greater gift you can give a child. Not when you’ve got food, clothes and a roof sorted, anyway.

From an early age we had at least an hour of reading every night, and usually not in bed but sprawled out in the living room on a sheepskin rug, the couch or in front of an open fire. Kipling’s Just So Stories were favourites, especially The Beginning of the Armadilloes and The Cat That Walked By Himself. The Hobbit was a big hit, but when Mum started The Lord of the Rings I found it hard to follow and wandered off.

Or so the story goes. I was so young I can hardly remember this – somewhere around my sixth birthday. The way Mum tells it, every time I wandered off she would see my head peeking around the corner shortly thereafter, and before long I’d be back in the living room, listening again. Writing this, I just heard a flash of Mum’s voice solemnly intoning the words inscribed on the ring of power: “One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” Soon I was hopelessly enthralled.

Amazingly, this wasn’t even the first time The Lord of the Rings had been read aloud in our family. Dad read it to Mum in England, when she was pregnant with my older brother Thomas. I can just imagine Mum correcting Dad’s pronunciation of all the names, and interrupting to fill him in on the Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse influences on Tolkien’s Middle Earth. How he managed to finish it within nine months remains unclear.

Years later, giving the Best Man speech at my brother’s wedding, I explained his curious middle name Aelfwyn to a bemused audience. It means “elf-friend” in Anglo-Saxon, and I joked that our parents are not even hippies – they’re just geeks.

To the extent that this is true, I’m glad of it. Months of our childhood were spent listening not just to Kipling and Tolkien, but Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, Lloyd Alexander, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Ursula Le Guin, E. Nesbitt,, Kenneth Grahame, Colin Thiele – and dozens more authors I can’t wait to read to my kids, if and when, before the 21st century catches up with them.

So I thought yesterday, walking home from the State Library, with the sights and sounds of of children spellbound by their favourite authors dancing happily around my head.

Thanks for reading.

The Music I Love - Now Yours To Download!

Sebby's Retro Electrorave mix by SebbyP

As readers of this blog will know, I was rather excited about seeing Africa HiTech, Mark Pritchard and Aphex Twin perform live earlier this month.

As well as inspiring two laudatory reviews, this led me to while away an afternoon investigating the entire Warp Records back catalogue – or at least as much of it as I could find on Bleep. $100 later, I had on my hard drive a large collection of tracks from the classic Sheffield electronic label of the 1990s.

In Energy Flash, his seminal history of rave, Simon Reynolds criticises Warp for snobbishly setting itself apart from the scene – and argues that by doing so it cut itself off from creative explosions, such as the birth of jungle, that occurred precisely because producers and DJs needed ever newer and crazier sounds to keep the dancefloor pumping.

There is at least an element of truth to this. Warp is known as one of the founders and custodians of electronica or, as it is sometimes known, IDM (intelligent dance music). With compilations like Artificial Intelligence in the early 1990s, they helped create a sound somewhere between rave’s main room and its chill room. But Reynolds’ critique glosses over the hugely influential work of artists like Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Boards of Canada and in particular Autechre – who have drifted steadily from the dancefloor but somehow continued to develop an immense oeuvre that is, at its heart, rave.

The music I was looking for on Bleep was the electro-beat, ambient-acid rave of the first half of the 1990s. I’m sure there’s more out there, and I plan on tracking it down, but I did find what I was looking for: an early twelve-inch by Move D (now known for his deep house); various Pritchard aliases including including Link and Reload; some Underground Resistance and Drexciya connections, still fresh and showing the influence of Detroit electro on the UK scene; and, most notably, two LPs and three EPs from the little known and short-lived Sheffield outfit RAC.

RAC’s music fit the bill pretty closely, and two of their tracks have found their way onto this mix I put together on Ableton to showcase some of these new/old tunes – as well as other favourites that clock in around 134bpm. The only genuinely new tracks are from Scuba and Shpongle, and both could be described as looking backwards to move forwards.

It was fun (and pretty easy) making the mix, although I struggled to get the volume levels as even as I would have liked. Mixing the records live would be another story altogether, although I do feel more inspired to get behind the decks than in quite some time.

You can download it from Soundcloud or just have a listen, and if you do I’d like to hear your thoughts. What’s your favourite track? Can you imagine dancing to this music? It starts very mellow but works its way onto the dancefloor, I think. What are your thoughts on the electro-style breakbeat? I love how the off-beat gives the music more bounce, while the 303s and other percussive elements make it flow – four-to-the-floor can sound so wooden and lifeless at times. The Buckfunk 3000 (AKA Si Begg) track hints at where this style would be taken with great commercial success but much less nuance in the early Noughties, i.e. the breaks scene.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the mix. If you haven't been out in a while, have a dance around your bedroom! I certainly have been.

Thoughts on a funeral

On Wednesday I went to the funeral of Celia “Aze” Beasy, my girlfriend Theresa’s great aunt, at St Stephen’s Anglican Church in North Balwyn.

I only met Aze once. She lay quietly looking out the window from her bed, speaking briefly when prompted by her energetic younger sister Valmai. But before the funeral Theresa told me of Aze’s wonderful shack at the beach, where canasta games dragged on forever because her friends would constantly drop in unannounced. Having witnessed the purgatory of her last days in a nursing home, it was good to have this snapshot of life as she really lived it.

Aze moved down from Newcastle very late in life, and many at the church would scarcely have recognised the vibrant woman described in the eulogy. I almost felt sorry for her, surrounded in death by so few people who really knew and loved her. On reflection, however, I think this says more about me than her. She lived a long and happy life. What else matters?

It’s a difficult question to answer. At least there was one happy side effect of Aze’s death, which doubtless is quite common: her family pulled closer together. They spent more time together, talked more, hugged more. It was great to see.

As a newcomer, I felt more at ease with Theresa’s family at this time of grief than previously in more informal settings. Suddenly, I was useful. I held a box of tissues, Theresa’s hand and her Mum’s hand bag; I passed around food platters and chatted up senior citizens; I belted out “Jerusalem” when the priest seemed to lose his way; I even managed not to think of Will Ferrell in Stepbrothers when “Con Te Partiro” was played.

And no, the day wasn’t all albout me – but I do have a tendency to narcissism, which is partly why I’m interested in funerals.  At times I’ve imagined giving the eulogy of a close friend or family member, and delivering such a virtuoso performance that the attendant throng was wept bone dry of tears and rolling in the aisles with laughter. In contrast, Aze’s eulogy was delivered quite matter-of-factly by an acquaintance she made after her 80th birthday.

Perhaps the ideal eulogy is this: an energetic, talented youngster steps up to bring a life long since gone grey back to the full colour of its bloom. A friend of mine recently returned from London for the funeral of her grandfather, at which she delivered her fourth eulogy in even fewer years. She was a big hit. Afterwards, distant relatives and family friends were jostling for position, hoping to book her in to “do them” when the time comes.

But of course, the usual narcissistic funeral fantasy involves one’s own send-off. It’s morbidly but endlessly fascinating to ponder: what would happen if I died tomorrow? Who would speak? Where would they hold it? How many people would turn up? Perhaps more importantly, who would write the Facebook event invite – and who would click ‘Maybe Attending’?

In the mixtape era of the early 1990s, I selected Metallica’s “Orion” as my funeral march. Thankfully, times have changed and I now have a suggested playlist on iTunes, although it does need some work. In fact, even thinking about this makes me want to buy my legal eagle friends a beer (they aways end up paying anyway). Is it possible to produce a will so watertight that the executors of my estate are legally obliged to play a particular selection of music, at a minimum decibel level, and on a particular brand of speakers?

Here’s a mouth-watering scenario: at the ripe old age of 90, I disappear in a sandstorm during a Trans-Siberian ultramarathon and am declared legally awesome dead. My recalcitrant conservative children engage in a lengthy court battle against my surviving coterie of old friends in an attempt to have my will quashed, but are ultimately unsuccessful. In an ironic twist, said old friends sit too close to the Bose sound system at the funeral and suffer multiple simultaneous cardiac arrests during the blissful electronic maelstrom that is Pita’s Get Out Track 3 at the legal minimum of 100dB.



Those who survive this ordeal then find themselves at a wake where all my worldly possessions are laid out for their perusal. Everyone has to take something home, especially if it’s a book with their name in it – or a picture of me looking young and beautiful. Or perhaps old and beautiful, either is fine. By the age of 90 there will be over 5,000 tagged photos of me on Facebook, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find a few decent ones.

All my signature dishes are served: zucchini pizza, rice balls, smoked trout salad and spanish tortilla. Dessert platters heave with a dozen different custard pastries. There is vodka, jagermeister and a bottomless ice bucket of Cooper’s pale, and when everyone is tipsy (but not too drunk) a beautifully crafted joint gets passed around. The music is cranked up, and suddenly a live-action performance of Dan Ducrou’s “Grandpa Does the Melbourne Shuffle” is underway. Cue more cardiac arrests.

This fantasy might have outstayed its welcome, but be warned: this is only the beginning. Soon my will will be written, and so will the directions for my funeral and wake. Actually, I might do the Facebook event too. It would be such a shame not to go out on a high.

In the meantime, I guess I'll have to work on being worthy of such a send-off when the time comes. Harnessing narcissism to live a good life? As Woody Allen says, whatever works.

Winter Is Coming (And That's Summer In France)

In recent years, I’ve been quite enthralled by the Tour de France. At first this came as a surprise to people who know me, including myself. For years I took perverse pride in having actually forgotten how to ride a bike. One of my most recent adventures in cycling ended when I veered inexplicably into the railway line fence in Westgarth. I just checked: the scar is still there on my belly.

So Le Tour (it’s French for The Tour) might not make me want to hit the pedals, but it does make me turn on the telly after 10pm any night I’m home.  To the skeptical or uninitiated, I usually begin my explanation like this: “Have you ever watched one of those HBO DVD box sets?”

Bear with me.

In a single cycling race – say, the road race at the Olympics – a hundred or so riders start off, ride for a really long time and then somebody wins. Sometimes there’s a bit of drama along the way but often it comes down to a sprint for the finish line. Let’s call this the Generic Hollywood Movie version of cycling.

The Tour, however, is the HBO Box Set. With 21 days of racing (and a few rest days in between), there is plenty of time for the drama to develop.

In the Tour, riders are in it for themselves but more importantly for their team, and hence the team’s major corporate sponsor. Most teams are international but some have a national base: there is a Basque team, and now an Australian one.

Some teams have a rider aiming for individual glory. There is the Yellow Jersey for the overall leader of the Tour; the Green Jersey for the best sprinter (points can be won at the finish line but also at various places throughout a stage); the Polka Dot Jersey for the King of the Mountains, the best climber; the White Jersey for the best young rider; and the prestige of winning an individual stage.

If a team has a rider hoping to win any of these things, his team mates are expected to support him even at their own expense. But if he falls out of contention, one of his team mates can have a day in the sun.

The significance of all this may not be instantly apparent, so let me explain. In the Generic Hollywood Movie, everyone is trying to win the race/ get the girl/ save the world. In the HBO Box Set, life is rather more complicated. People want different things! There is a tangled web of motivations and alliances, with characters moving up and down the ladders of fortune and influence depending on their skill and luck.

Only one man can wear the Yellow Jersey – but most of the riders in the field are directly or indirectly involved in a plot to tear it off his back.

Sound familiar, Game of Thrones fans?

The great thing about Le Tour – and HBO TV shows – is they don’t pander to short attention spans.  If you turn on for twenty minutes, nothing will happen. Invest a few weeks of your life, though, and the rewards are proportionate. If you really get to know a character, you’ll really feel it when he falls off his bike – or gets his head chopped off.

With its second season about to air in the US, Game of Thrones is something of a phenomenon. Based on a series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, it was supposedly pitched to the network as “The Sopranos on Middle Earth”. It’s a description that may be apocryphal but nonetheless cannot be bettered.

The setting is the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, a realm with many similarities to Britain. The War of the Roses is a clear inspiration: the two noble houses of Lannister (Lancaster) and Stark (York) are at each other’s throats. A great wall protects the civilised from barbarians to the north. Across the Narrow Sea is a vast land mass of exotic cultures, magic, and perhaps even dragons.

It’s not all tight scripts and great acting, of course. Le Tour may have the drugs but Game of Thrones has serious doses of violence and sex. I haven’t heard as much blood gurgling in throats since The Passion of the Christ. As for the sex, well, I would argue it’s mostly contextual. Others have a different view.

Some people have complained they can’t follow Game of Thrones: “Too many names, too confusing.” Well, I guess that’s where the luscious mise-en scene and amazing backdrops come in. If you haven’t got the foggiest what’s going on, just put your feet up and enjoy the view on your expensive new Plasma TV.

One of the celebrated highlights of the Tour is the breathtaking scenery. While the riders grind out another 200kms, we are treated to helicopter shots of mediaeval abbeys poised perilously on windswept mountaintops. Game of Thrones is essentially the same but, instead of lycra-clad cyclists flashing past, a knight fights a lowborn thug to the death in the trial by combat of a dwarf – while a nine-year old prince breastfeeds and cheers them on.

The Tour de France and Game of Thrones. Let the cross-promotion begin.

Born To Run?

My Dad is a runner. In 1963 he almost won the Open Mile at the Achilles Cup, Adelaide’s private school boys’ athletics meet. Dad was the favourite, but he went out too hard and the Scotch boy caught him on the final straight. I like it when he tells this story.

I like to tell a story of my own, about my name. When I was born, in 1980, the English runner Sebastian Coe was preparing for the Moscow Olympics – and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was still top of the pops as far as Mum was concerned. My name represents Dad, the jock, and Mum, the intellectual, finding common ground. Like most good stories, there’s some truth in it.

Growing up, my brother and I loved sport but thought running a strange pursuit. In fact, in some ways I took after J.S. more than after Lord Coe: there were more family concerts of baroque music, with Mum accompanying my recorder on the harpsichord, than there were jogs along the beach. Dad dragged us out for a run around the oval once or twice, but Thomas and I would soon get distracted attempting left-foot banana kicks at goal from impossible angles. More fun, less effort.

With very few exceptions, I never went running solo until much later in life. At age 27 I moved to Sydney, as much to improve my health as to see family and friends. I ate well, bodysurfed a lot, stopped drinking and smoking – and then one day, perhaps when the beaches were closed, I decided to go for a run.

It was a rather sobering experience. I lasted two minutes on the steep slopes of Randwick and Coogee before breaking into a walk. A few minutes later I attempted to run again. Then walked some more. Returning home with my tail between my legs, I could easily have forgotten all about running for another twenty years. So why didn’t I?

Mainly I kept at it because I’d been unhealthy for so long, and now I wanted to get fit. Running was a means to an end, but more than that it seemed particularly efficient form of exercise: you could run from the moment you left the front door to the moment you arrived home, the odd traffic delay notwithstanding. And, even if every minute of the run was painful, there was always the high that came afterwards.

There is an equlibrium here. For several years I appreciated the benefits of running enough that I could put up with the act itself, two or three times a week, for four or five kilometres. But running along the Yarra I began to glimpse something better, a higher state where I actually enjoyed being outside, running through the trees and up the riverbank.

Back in Adelaide before Christmas 2010, I went exploring the hills around Mum’s new place in Balhannah. I chose a loop on the map that looked about 7kms in length, and managed not to get lost. It was a beautiful, undulating course but what struck me most was a feeling I experienced about twenty minutes in. It only lasted about five minutes, but I instantly recognised it as the Holy Grail I never knew I’d been seeking.

I felt like I could run forever.

A week later I ran the 11km loop in Chambers Gully with a friend. We climbed (slowly) for 6 kms, ran along a ridge with a stunning city view, and descended for 4kms. My mate nursed me through it and bought my Gatorade at the end, but I still felt like I’d won the Boston Marathon.

A week after that I kicked a soccer ball barefoot on the beach, and broke a toe.

So the first half of 2011 was a write off. I got depressed. I swam a bit, and a few times it felt good and right like running had begun to feel. Mostly it was quite boring; with all due respect to the Northcote pool, the scenery (especially underwater) is very dull. Slowly I began to realise that, even though my toe wasn’t fully healed, I could still run without doing it further damage.

My road trip up the east coast was the real turning point. I camped by deserted beaches and woke up with a barefoot run and a swim. With my friend Daniel I ran the hills of Goonengerry, the 8km loop around Minyon Falls, the beaches and cliff faces of Bunjalong and Yuraygir National Parks. We weren’t just exercising, we were exploring, socialising – and getting buff to swan around Rainbow Serpent with our tops off.

More than once Daniel led me down a trail that wasn’t signposted. We’d follow it for a kilometre or two, and just as I began to complain aloud and suggest we turn back, we’d arrive somewhere magical: a hill with a view, or a river for swimming. We’d stop and enjoy this place we’d discovered, then run back.

Returning to Melbourne, I’ve kept running but struggled to recapture this sense of adventure and pleasure in running. Thankfully, the other day a present from Daniel arrived in the post: a copy of Born To Run by Christopher McDougall.

This post has been rather subdued thus far – partly because I’m recovering from a bug, partly because up to this point in the story I have more or less uninspired about running. For now at least, Born to Run has completely turned this around. Two weeks ago I was back in the habit of running dutifuly, nose to the grindstone. Now I’m dreaming of running around Australia barefoot. I simply cannot wait to get back out there.

Born to Run is a classic piece of “participant-observer” journalism. The book opens with the injury prone McDougall being counselled by top doctors to give running away for good. It finishes with him completing a 50 mile ultramarathon through the Copper Canyons of Mexico, a race that pitted the legendary endurance athletes of the local Tarahumara people against some of the best US ultrarunners.
It’s a cracking read: every chapter ends on a cliffhanger, or with a mystery that needs solving. And inseparable from the physical quest to run the race is McDougall’s inquiry into the crucial role played by running in the story of human evolution.

It’s hard to imagine a greater motivational tool for runners than this: apparently we really are born to run. Worried about your big butt? Well, you don’t really use those gluteus maximus muscles to walk, only to run - and if you don’t use them they’re only going to get bigger. What about your body fat percentage? Apparently humans have relatively high body fat (compared to, say, chimpanzees) precisely to enable us to run long distances.

And why did early humans need to run so far? To hunt. Most animals can beat us pretty easily over short distances, but when it comes to distance running we are right at the top of the tree. The technique of persistence hunting, which has probably been in use since the arrival of Homo erectus 2.6 million years ago, is still practised today by some traditional tribespeople in Africa. Homo sapiens’ ability to run might even explain why we succeeded and the Neanderthals disappeared.

Lastly, if we’ve been running so far for so long, why do we need all these fancy shoes? Well, the good news for people who hate Nike – or just enjoy the feeling of the earth under their feet – is we probably don’t. Cushioned shoes encourage us to run with a gait that actually increase the impact of running on our bodies. Going barefoot is much healthier, as long as you run with proper form. (Wearing shoes is also fine as long as your form is good.)

This post has become, if not a marathon, then at least a longer, slower version of my usual method. I have much more to say on this brilliant book, my Dad’s illustrious athletics career, the genesis of my name and who knows what else – but now I’m off for a run. Not because I feel I should, but the fact it's my evolutionary destiny helps to explain why I want to.

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If anyone out there wants to join me in exploring Melbourne on foot, I’m going to start with the Merri Creek Trail later this week.

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There's lots of good reading online on the science behind the Running Man hypothesis. You can read a quick article that sums it up pretty well here.