This is Pretty Much All I've Done With My Life So Far

OhMama MY MIND. I’m going out of it.

I thought last weekend was bad. This is worse. But by worse I really mean better. Because obviously it’s fucking awesome and exciting and this week I have been as happy as I ever expect to be.

The tension, though, it takes a toll. I have an edgy nature and a diagnosed anxiety disorder and have carefully assembled my life in such a way so as to remove or negate as many extraneously stressful or disruptive elements as possible. Friends, for example.

Finals football is taking me right to the edge and I’ve also ramped up my coffee intake which has in turn ramped up the strength and duration of my facial twitches and people have been confined to their beds with leather straps for less or so I’m told but anyway it’s been great it’s been real.

((I’m just kidding about the facial twitching business. The majority of my twitching occurs when I eat big green feta-stuffed olives at Christmas time and it’s usually confined to one eye.))

After taking Monday off and giving serious consideration to not going in all week I showed up on Tuesday but warned my boss not to expect much too much as “It’s a big week for me.” He is used to my nonsense and he doesn’t ask questions, aside from the rhetorical ones he barks continuously (see several posts back). Like yesterday, noticing that I was extremely early “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE YOU SHIT THE BED DID YOU” at a volume that suggested he was communicating from the midst of a roaring blizzard and not, you know, leaning into my car window and about fifteen centimetres away from my face.  

All week I have been slightly obsessed with Josh Young Bull Papalii. His fiery exchanges with Paul Gal took me completely by surprise. They also seemed to surprise and unnerve Gallen. Here is what The Young Bull said: “Furnsey just told me to look after Gallen out there, it was a big ask and I still can’t believe I finished it off. He’s real experienced and a real scary guy, too.”

Here is what the Old Bull said: “I don’t really care about Papalii, he hit a dog shot with a swinging arm, and once in the back without the ball. He was coming from the blindside a lot. He got me high and from the back, he did well the boy.”

I feel terrible for Gal and wish the Sharks could have made it through too so I can’t go to town on this too much. I’ve tried. What happens is I think of Gal giving the Origin losers speech this year and last, and Gal being interviewed after the Raiders knocked them out, and Gal finishing his eighth double scotch of the evening at home in Cronulla every night since Saturday like a character out of a Raymond Carver story, blankly staring into the middle distance and considering the irrevocable march toward middle age, early-onset arthritis, death, and the very real possibility that the Sharks may not win a premiership on his watch and perhaps anybody else’s watch either during his lifetime which is rapidly ticking down tick tick tick jesus christ it’s enough to make you sick it’s enough to make any man take to drink hmmm that reminds me look at that mine’s empty again ANN?? ANN!!!!!  

But, Papalii. He really did do well. Every item written about him mentions his soft voice, his shy nature, his gentle soul and his enormous appetite. All viable topics. But - and I can scarcely believe it myself - no one has addressed the enormity of his thighs. I don’t know. Perhaps – just a hunch - my priorities differ from other people’s. Someone complained that this blog had become increasingly “unnecessarily homoerotik (sic)” to which I said a. no homoerotika (sic) is unnecessary and b. are you familiar with rugby league at all hello?

I don’t think it matters what I write about the thighs. If your world view is anything like mine and you see the chilling dystopian landscape through a graphic, luridly perverted lens you will be mesmerised by the comically muscular thighs and the unfortunate cut of short from which said thighs burst forth from volcanically in the above photo and will find your eyes swiveling back there because you find the sight so attractively appalling.

His head is also hilarious. My brother says it reminds him of a totem pole. I say it looks like something you would see on Easter Island. Either way, it too is enormous, and awesome, obviously.  - *Automatic eyeball swivel* -  But sweet jesus those are some truly thick thighs!! Thicker than molasses. Thicker than thieves. Thicker than Trent Barrett. Not as thick as Mark Gasnier.

The Raiders Rattle The Storm.

The inner flutterings of my intuition told me the Raiders were going to win this game. I texted my brother, I told him “I predict an upset, same as last year!” “Not me” he wrote back. My hold on the real world has always been slight at best, but something tells me I am right and he is wrong and I serenely ignore his suggestion, and everyone else’s (except, I imagine, the lovely and ever-loyal Laurie Daley) that the Raiders will be badly beaten.

The game starts but I am making custard in the kitchen. I don’t know what I miss but it probably involves Cooper Cronk rushing around being authoritative and yappy.

Raiders post the first points, ten minutes in. Blake Ferguson does sensational athletic things under the high ball, comes up with it, slams it down, leaps up and slams the ball away. Huzzah. Croker converts. 6-0.

Ferguson is playing with two spectacular black eyes. I note with interest that he has never looked better. He looks less like a half-formed amphibian and more Tyler Durden.

Reece Robinson gets a ball to Sandor Earl and Earl gets over. It’s pronounced “Shannnndor”. Is that Celtic? Those stars on his thighs don’t look very Celtic. I remember sitting in Bruce Stadium in 2010, when he was on the wing for Penrith, staring at that star-spangled thigh and thinking it was one of the more horrendous assemblages of tattoos I had seen. This was back when Joel Monaghan was on the wing for the Raiders. It was a good time, 2010. You sat right down close to the sideline so you could hear the hits and the things that people called out to Monaghan – nice things, because Monaghan was nice – and often Monaghan, because he was right there, would turn and look and acknowledge the shout-out. Usually it was just “HEY MONAGHS!!!” but once it was “HEY MONAGHS YOU’RE A FUNNY FUCK!!” which was astute, because he was, and didn’t that sense of humour prove to be his ultimate undoing - which, as the (my) theory goes, marked the general decline in morale and cohesion at the Raiders, the results of which we are still seeing, circa 2012. But I digress.

Cameras cut to Mal Meninga sitting broodily in some lofty box. The commentators announce he has been in the Raiders dressing rooms. Doing what, I wonder? I have no time and no appetite for Mal Meninga. I would rather hear that Ricky Stuart had been in the dressing room, frankly. Croker’s conversion fails; he sends a large lump of grass a good way up into the air though. 10-0.

Play resumes and Croker gets a flick-pass away. Several seconds later Brandy Alexander says words to the effect of “Croker raced up and made first contact.” This is all very, very strange. Unfamiliar.

Fifteen minutes in the Storm get their first real chance to post points. The Storm post points. This, this is familiar. Momentum shifts and swings towards the Storm. Doom-tinged doubt creeps in to my mind. This is exactly what these Raiders cannot handle. Defensive tests unnerve them, they unravel. Earl, who has just been tossed into touch a moment prior, gets up out of the line to shut things down for Melbourne on the fifth. I exhale. Relief. After defending their own line Canberra have a good set of six. My god. Also, they’re offloading. I’ve never seen the Raiders offload en masse like this. Twenty five minutes in and their completion rate is 9 from 10. My god in heaven.

The Storm make an error. Reece Robinson passes long to Eddrick Lee, who juggles, re-gathers and crosses for a try in the corner. Croker, gaping like a hooked fish, misses by a mile. 14-6.

Next thing, while I’m occupying myself wondering whether the Raiders can get through a solid set after posting points, they are occupying themselves by immediately going ahead and posting some more points. Quick hands from Josh McCrone to Ferguson, who busts a tackle, fends like T-Rex and links with Earl – TRY!

Next, Anthony Quinn knees Ferguson in the head. It flattens him. Eventually he wobbles to his feet.

In the 39^th minute Justin O’Neil gets a second try for the Storm, on Canberra’s left side. The problem side. Fun fact that is really no fun at all: Canberra has conceded 34 tries through their left hand side this year. Their left hand side defense gapes like a ripped circus tent, basically.

Halftime, 20-12. As they run off Mark Gasnier looms up and opines of Canberra “they’re actually doing a Melbourne Storm on the Melbourne Storm!” He gets this out without fucking it up and is clearly very pleased with himself. It still astonishes me that anyone would give Mark Gasnier a microphone, but at this time I’m feeling generous and find myself murmuring something like “good on you Gaz”, which is neither a sentence nor a sentiment I am familiar with. This is an unusual night all round.

Still, I’m not comfortable. To be a Raiders fan is to be in a perpetual state of discomfort. They can’t be trusted. They are famously unreliable. Also, the Storm are irritatingly reliable. And they love a strong second half. I picture them in the dressing room, being re-programmed with Bellamy’s exclusive and secret ‘retreat, evaluate, recalibrate’ software. The thought makes me feel extremely edgy.

The second half starts. A ball from McCrone leaves the Storm looking a long way short in defense and gets Eddrick Lee over for his second try. Lee was on track to becoming a basketball superstar until advice from an uncle swayed him towards football. He’s fucking massive; a big, lanky, loose assemblage of limbs and circuitry. Croker misses the conversion. No offence, but can’t someone else do it? Actually, offence. He stinks. 24-12.

Cronk kicks a 40/20. This is not good. This is very, very bad.

The Raiders hold the Storm back, but only barely. They get the ball back and advance it up the field with an ease and aptitude that I have never seen.

With 56 minutes gone Croker scores a try from a Joel Thompson one-arm offload, much to the distress of Cronk, who is screaming maniacally at Strom players to slide across, slide across! The Storm are ruffled! Less surprisingly, so is the terminally inept Mark Gasnier. He interjects to observe that “three repeat sex – pardon me – sets - for the Raiders here…” I get up to light some incense.

Next, McCrone throws a long looping ball out to Earl. Another try! Another missed conversion.

Shaun Fensom makes a bust and sets off down the field like a great thundering bison.

Robinson gets a ball to Lee, who makes it a hat trick of tries, which in turn makes a lump form in my throat. Croker, who looks like he has a perpetual lump in his throat, makes the conversion. This takes it to 40-12, the largest margin the Storm have ever been beaten by at AAMI Park. Audacious. We really have no business beating the Storm at all, let alone at their home ground, and by a record breaking margin. I relax and begin to revel in this unaccustomed brilliance.

The siren goes. David Furner winks at some unseen person from the coaching box. Such is my mood that I find this rakishly charming. Alluring, even. Winning throws a golden glow over what would otherwise be a sleazy and lowbrow gesture from a man as flinty as Furner. Ferguson and Earl do a special handshake, one with twitching fingers and pumping motions. This is also charming.

Gasnier, chatting amiably to a peevish Jason Ryles, says that the Storm were ‘uncharacteristical.’ This is not the first time I have heard Gasnier use this non-word. I can’t help but feel that the leap from leaving an absurdist 4 a.m. voicemail message to sideline commentary has been something of a stretch for Gasnier. He is far better suited to the former, I feel. I’m no expert, but surely that must be the greatest voicemail message in Australian history. The flashes of lewd, Wild-like wit are unparalleled in their excellence.

Finally, cameras cut to the Raiders dressing sheds. They’re all in a big circle clapping and hoo-haa-ing and belting out the team song and then Eddrick Lee breaks ranks, moves into the centre of the circle, drops to the floor and STARTS DOING THE WORM.

Boys of Summer & Lists of Books

I keep lists of the books I've read. I keep the books too, but it's the lists that make me feel less internally displaced. Same thing with the notebooks, the thousands of scrawled upon fragments, everything I've ever thought worthy of writing down and keeping - I do it not to remember what or where or why, I do it to remember myself.

The lists of books are like roadmaps. I can use them to navigate and plot the points of my past.

Like the time when I was nineteen and met this guy and after a couple of days of running charmed and drunk across the sky it came to light, by way of the book I was reading, that he didn't know who Henry Miller was. I remember this in far clearer focus than what I remember the actual book in. I remember feeling genuinely flabbergasted in the 'what kind of person are you?' manner that nineteen year olds are fluent in. I remember waving the book around barking "Tropic of Capricorn? Tropic of Cancer? Ring any bells? in uncomprehending disbelief. Obnoxious, I know.

Now I am older and understand that not only do some people not read, but that some people have zero interest in books, authors, or the written word in any real form whatsoever. Just one of the several dozen fundamental truths that my young self failed to grasp. And the guy? He and I lasted a couple of weeks; a month, however long we were supposed to before our gold light began to bleed to grey.

Did the Henry Miller issue hasten the dimming of the golden light? Hard to say. The large quantities of cheap wine he drank from a squeezy sports bottle probably accelerated the fade out more than the Miller thing, but certain things; mere trifles, often, do have a habit of lodging themselves in my mind and festering freely, for good or ill. Plus, the fact that I remember and am writing about this nearlylko ten years later seems to confirm that it did.

So. There was that. Flip the coin, toss it high, and turn to the time when a French boy walking past the tent I was sprawled in - spread out like Jesus on the cross and in a hot lather of that very specific 'lying in a molten nylon womb' sweat - noticed that I  was reading American Psycho and returned a minute later with a cold rock melon, a knife and the French language version of American Psycho that he himself was reading. "Ahhh, is, 'ow you say, destiny, no...?" Whatever. If it was meant to be knicker-rippingly seductive it worked. Well played, Frederique, well played. Word to Bret Easton Ellis, too.

As it turned out, that Henry Miller book I read was to be both my first and last. I fucking hated that book. I abandoned it in a South Australian laundromat alongside a pile of That's Life magazines. Miller would have rolled and writhed in his grave at this, the rotten son of a bitch. Or would he? From what I understand, which is very little, I think Miller wrote as a reaction against all that he saw which dulled and deadened life, in the same way Bukowski did. Horror. They were both horrified. People, the masses, the nightmare of them;

"their sounds, their decayed unlaughing laughter and faces as brutal and ugly and impossible as any matter you can dream up...and the eyes, the eyes, no eyes at all"

That kind of wraps up That's Life and ties a bow on it right there, so yeah, I don't think Miller would have been too chuffed with his company there. I know he liked the seamier, seedier side of life, but this was no 1930s Parisian laundrette with steam and soiled underclothes and a buxom young laundress he could bend over a basket.

I just discovered, by way of Google, that every photo of Henry Miller, ever, contins at least two tits. BALLER. (Not his, either; this is no "Bob had bitch tits" situation. It's a straight up BALLER situation.) See also: every edition of every one of his books.

So I write this and the very same night my brother texts me to tell me, apropos of the Polack he was out with, that I should try re-reading Henry Miller. "I know you didn't rate him ten years ago but I think you would now". He followed this up a second later with "Fire up you sad cunt!" because, well, who wouldn't link Henry Miller with Mark 'Toey Human Number One' Gasnier? They share Paris and a propensity for obscenity, it's only logical!

Are there lessons in these fragments, folded like unfurled flower petals? Maybe. Probably. Possibly that books and book talk are an effective way to sweeten somebody (i.e. me) who has a near-total aversion to people. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. There is also the suggestion here that some people (i.e. me) may require potential partners to possess a rudimentary understanding of, y'know, that literary shit? I say this even though Henry Miller turned out to be a ranting, hyper-masculine windbag. Guys? You gotta know what's up. To what degree is yours to decide.

I used to think that any man who could read without his lips moving was acceptable. Well, it wasn't, and it isn't. I'm not looking for shared literary tastes on any grand scale, just some literary taste. How doI feel about boys who only read biographies or the collected works of Jeremy Clarkson? If they are in full possession of the rest of their faculties and all of their teeth I can't see there being any problems. I read Joey Johns' book - that epic doorstop The Two of Me, and his brother Matthew's From the Sheds, and Brad Fittler's Freddy (yes, really - and I imagined Freddy narrating it to me in his punch-drunk voice and free-wheeling way -  it was a good time), and I have Mal Meninga's Big Mal waiting on the shelf (where it may well remain now he has inflamed my righteous Blue ire to such a feverish extent) and I was saucer-eye enthralled by them all. I wish more NRL identities had books detailing their turbulent, fabulous careers, truth be told. I think Jason Stevens has one? About God and stuff? Yeah, no.

From the yeah, no, to the fuck, yeh files comes this fun fact: Bret Easton Ellis, that SICK GENIUS FUCK - know what his all-time favourite music video is?  Boys of Summer - Don Henly!!!! I know, right? This struck me as being pretty great. And by 'pretty great' I obviously mean fuck-off fantastic. Is Don Henly the Eagles' drummer or am I way off base? Anyway, love the song - it's an elegy to summers gone by; love the video -  it's all wayfarer sunglasses and Deadhead stickers on cadillacs and closed-up holiday houses; and love Bret Easton Ellis some more (sick genius fuck that he is).

To the best of my memory I think American Psycho is the only book I've ever bought that has been wrapped in plastic ("SHE'S DEAD - WRAPPED IN PLASSSTIC" and visions of Laura Palmer's beautiful, blue-lipped corpse, anyone? Bueller...Bueller? Just me then?). And there was an incident at the bookshop when I was unable to produce ID to prove I was over eighteen, for the simple fact that I wasn't over eighteen. And I was using a voucher that I had been given at my tenth grade end of year awards presentation.

American Psycho has given me, among many, many other things - (a fear of naked men in white sneakers weilding power tools, a fear of men who fill in crossword boxes with words like 'bone' and 'meat', a fear of men who exfoliate excessively - I could go on but y'all see where this is going, right?) - access to the single greatest and most ludicrous excuse, for anything, ever. Dazzling in its simplicity, audacious in its absurdity, I give you Patrick Bateman's default excuse/alibi for everything. Literally, everything.

Gasnier's Last Squirt of the Sauce.

I was thinking today. I do this sometimes, it passes the time.
Here's a selection.


1. Bulldog fans are fat, ugly, and hopelessly deluded. Triple threats, in other words. How's this for optimism:

"Stay true bulldog fans! Our triumph will be of 2004 proportions when we get through this rough patch." 

Rough patch? They're not the two words I would have chosen, but I suppose we can fill in the gaps on our own. That is a team mired in misery, isn't it? Even Andrew Ryan looks sad - not 'sad because my facial features are arranged in an unusual fashion sad', but actually, legitimately sad. He said last night post-loss that the Doggies

"need to, uh, have a bit of a look at ourselves, all 17 of us"

and it damn near broke my heart. And I hate the Bulldogs. By the way, that quote is typical, wildly understated footy-speak for "WE'RE FUCKED. WE KNOW WE'RE FUCKED. NEXT." 

The Bulldogs, 2011.

2. The song Crimson and Clover. I thought about it because I listened to it about thirteen times. Tell me this song doesn't make you want to go lose your virginity in a meadow all over again. Exactly. I can't imagine ever saying such a thing about another song either, it's that fucking good.

3. Lady Gaga's Sydney visit. We are Australians. We need a token international celebrity flown in to validate us every now and again. This is an integral part of the Australian cultural experience, and one we all understand, especially around our *ahem* awards seasons. Giving Gaga the keys to the fucking city though? I cringed. Then I saw her trying to mount and molest Clover Moore during the presentation and all my uncomfortable, cultural-cringey feelings dissloved, because she looked like more of a fool than we as a nation ever could. That's what I call validation. Viva Australia!

4. Mal Meninga is a nasty whiny bitch. And possibly a crackhead. How else to account for his wild claims? A conspiracy against Queensland that the NRL, the ARL, and the entire state of New South Wales - including the NSW media and the Blues coaching staff -was in on? That is some deluded cracktalk right there, bitch is badly paranoid and in a bad way if he believes that. Missed it? Here's some of what he wrote in Brisbane's Sunday Mail:

"It was a victory against the very rats and filth that tried to poison a monumenatl team with lies, personal attacks, arrogance and disrespect. But rather than be a cause for celebration, the Queensland team this year found itself the victim of a smear campaign so mailicious and orchestrated that it tainted the entire code of rugby league."

Holy shit, how high is this guy? I mean, in his eyes he is nailed up on the cross right now and awaiting resurrection. Still, this is the man who jumped ship to take the money and join the Super League in 1997 and asked, as explaination

"What has rugby league ever given me?",

and if that doesn't indicate that something has long been lacking in terms of this guy's essential decency then nothing will.

5. My thoughts surrounding Mark Gasnier announcing his retirement range from mildly to wildly inappropriate. Not because I'm mad or sad or feel betrayed or anything, nothing that ordinary. No, my feelings on the matter are more abstract, by which I mean my feelings toward Gaz are inextricably tied up with the whole sauce squirting scandal circa 2005. I just feel that any man who would announce his intentions via a random woman's message bank by saying

"There's four toey humans in a cab", and then back it up with

"Fire up you sad cunt!" 

 is a man worth knowing.

And, what the hell, he only just bulked up again after coming back from France as an emaciated Birkenstock-wearing husk last year, WHAT THE HELL, GAZ?

Has he had that baby and got a glimpse into The Void or something? YOU'RE ONLY 29, GAZ! I feel like what is needed here is for Gaz to be fed some of his own words - namely, to be told to FIRE UP. Yes, his announcement does have me slightly rattled, well spotted.

I take some comfort in the fact that I am not alone in this. Over on the Twitter, someone else - also a man worth knowing, I suspect - responded to the news with four perfectly chosen words:

"Toey human number one?"

My.Thoughts.Exactly. Vale, Gaz.



Toey Humans numbers 1 and 2 and Public Urinater number 2 aka Watmough



My brother has a halarious story about the time he saw Gaz on North Curl Curl beach with two girls and a surfboard. I can't re-tell it because too much context is needed, besides which I just said it's halarious so that's way too much pressure for me. Suffice to say that Gaz comes out of it looking just as endearingly foolish and dimwitted as he normally does, so no alarms, no surprises.

Minichello: Don't be Shy, ya Mum Wasn't

Anthony Minichello's unexpected Origin selection made me remember how last year my mother brought it to my attention that my penchant for men of Mediterranean descent goes way back. Further back than one cares to remember when pressed by one's mother, at least.



Minichello Bruthas in Arms: Anthony & Mark

 

She heard Minichello's name mentioned on the TV or something when she was staying at my house and told me that I used to like him. "What the shit? When?": "Oh, back in the day..." This perplexed me for a minute because I haven't lived at home or watched any games with her for ten years, nor am I in the habit of telling her who I 'like', with the exception of Adrian Brody and Will Self. Still, she insisted it was true, she remembered his Roman nose*, she said, and his musical surname, and then she said "Yeh, and wasn't he ivolved in some kind of phone sex shenanigans as well - I'm sure I remember hearing something about him and that Gasnier getting up to something...", and I said "NO, SURELY NOT, NOT MINI" and told her that he was a fine and upstanding statesman and icon of the game and that she didn't know what the fuck she was talking about and that she was probably just thinking of John Hopoate. Well, if you're gonna lay on some retrospective blame, why not heap it onto Hoppa?

Then came the words that offspring the world over long to hear their mothers say, something to the effect of "squirting the sauce"; as in, "didn't they say something about squirting the sauce?".

This triggered a faint spark of recognition in the burnt out fuses of my brainbox, and, as is the modern way, Google filled in the blanks for me. I miss the pre-Google days of mystery and wonder, I really do, but I also can't deny the ways in which it has so obviously enriched my life. Without it, I would be denied the pleasure of finding treasures such as an actual transcript of the very voicemail my mother was referring to, and thus of finding my mother to not be quite as far along in early-onset dementia as I thought she was. VIVA LA GOOGLE.

Here's what happened.

Back in the heady days of 2004, already notable for being the year Julian O'Neill set fire to a foam costume worn by a boy during a river cruise, (see also Julian O'Neill circa 1999 shitting in a teammate's shoe and vomiting over the walls of his motel room in Dubbo) the Blues' Origin camp was thrown into disarray when two players (Minichello and Mark Gasnier) were sacked and five others fined following a spree of what was politely referred to as "unprofessional behaviour".



Gaz struggling to recall the msg the morning after


Although he claimed to have no recollection of leaving any message, it transpired that Gasnier used Minichello's phone, which was supposed to have been confiscated, to call a random girl's number from Mini's contact list and left this message, which the girl was greeted with upon waking:

"Where the fuck are ya? There's four toey humans in the cab, ready to spurt sauce, it's twenty to four and you're in bed. Fuck me, fire up, ya sad cunt".

The additional unprofessional behaviour involved players leaving the team hotel after the side had returned from a night out, with Gasnier, Willie Mason and Trent Waterhouse believed to have visited a brothel. Mason and Waterhouse got extra fines for other unnacceptable behaviour including signing another players name at an autograph session; however Mason was not fined for drawing lewd pictures on a table cloth during a signing session at a Harvey Norman store in Liverpool.



marshmallow man mastermind, mwahhaahaa

 It was reported that NSWRL board member John Chalke presented the table cloth to officials, which featured several doodles, including one Mason intriguingly described as a "marshmallow man". My efforts to locate said doodles failed, sadly. This is one of those times where it pays to have a vivid imagination.

Anyway, doesn't it sound like that Origin camp was an absolute hoot and that a good time was had by all? Does it ever!

The final piece of the puzzle posed by my mother fell into place only weeks ago when I saw some vintage, sepia-toned footage of a young adonis *ahem* I mean Mini playing back in 2000 which led to me retrospectively congratulating my 17 year old self on my fuck-off-incredible good taste. I'm not one to get too Danielle Steele but the HEAVENS OPENED and ANGELS WEPT. Or something. It was quite the revelation, anyway. I'm all accustomed to Mini in his current short-haired, ripped-as-shit incarnation, and, let's face it, he is getting a little long in the tooth, so to see him young and hairy and very very easy on the eye was truly something to write - or in my case, ring - home about. Yes. I rang my mother and told her that I'd seen the Mini of days gone by and that I concured with all her claims.

*To be honest, as soon as she mentioned his nose I knew she was was on the money. My family is made up of prominent-nosed people. Because of this, noses are talked about frequently, and with an intensity that can be disconcerting to outsiders. Sensitive types could even consider it rude, but they have no business being among my family in the first place and are moved along immediately.

You know how a good portion of 'light' family chit-chat inevitably centres on the mundane, and maybe even the pleasant, if you're lucky? Well, not on my family's watch. In my family you will never hear words to the effect of  "Did you see that next door's roses are blooming, aren't they divine?", but, rather, hundreds of variations on "Jesus, did you see the nose on THAT??" One time we were asking each other if we were animals which ones we would be, and basing our answers on personality traits and personal habits, and my stepdad, when asked what my mum (i.e. his wife) would be said, in all seriousness and without a moment's hesitation, "a concord".

The concord has a tendency to gaze at me, particularly in profile and especially when I'm driving, and, when questioned, to tell me "I'm just admiring your nose", which reminds me every time of Raoul Duke telling his on-edge hitch hiker passenger "don't worry - I'm just admiring the shape of your skull" in Fear and Loathing. If she's feeling expansive she'll go so far as to tell me that it's an aristocratic nose, and if I'm feeling expansive I'll go so far as to tell her to fuck off.


Behold: a selection of examples of the Roman Nose.