Summer

Checking my emails just now after coming home from Lib's work Christmas dinner, I realize it's after midnight and in fact now the first day of summer. My father Lyle would have turned 87 on this day if he was still with us. He died in 2007, but the first day of summer will always provoke strong memories.

I'm not about to go into an deep reflection about Lyle, our relationship or my family history. Those of you who knew my father would remember him fondly. He was an unusual man. He told me that his old football coach said, "Lyle, if you could time your leap with the arrival of the footy you'd be a champion." Something akin anyway. Dad was the perfect build for a footballer when I think of it, close to 6 feet tall, strong, athletic, a good high jumper in his youth. He played ruck rover and his leap enabled him to actually do some ruckwork. In that era anything over six feet was considered tall. He had a long left foot kick on him, drop kicks a specialty, which continually astounded my mates and I when we were kids. When I was about 12 or 13, he nearly forty, he was proudly showing his skills one day when he did a hammy or a quad, I'm not sure now. He carried a lump in his thigh from that day on and often rued it, right up to his last days. His football coach got it pretty right, when I think about it. He had unbounded energy and enthusiasm, he just didn't get the timing right.

Dad loved footy. He strongly disliked many things - alcohol, smoking, horse racing to name a few, but he loved footy, and taking his son, me as a kid, to the footy, and watching his son play footy. Brother Jod couldn't/ wouldn't/ didn't go near a footy so his interest focused on me. Our relationship through my childhood revolved around this. The time we shared together was kicking the footy or playing cricket in the back yard. He had high expectations of me, which I did not fulfill. That's the way of it, often.

My sons didn't play footy, except for one year Gord did at the Gembrook U10's. It's funny you know, when I had two sons I always just assumed they'd play footy like I did, and love it like I did. But they didn't. They follow the AFL and the Demons like I do, but as for playing - no way. Gord has a strong frame which could have developed into a potent weapon, and Rob showed tremendous athletism and skill as a youngster, but it just wasn't on.

I started out with intentions of writing about my activities this last week, which have been arduous and testing, and the disruption to my phsyche by the removalists who are moving Rob's friend Hao's furniture from Adelaide to the flat in Nunawading, which has still not arrived, and has caused me to be on call all week, and a trip to meet them to let them in, a fruitless exercise as they did not turn up.

Hao and Robbie are in Singapore on route to Vietnam, I'm waiting on the next call.