More heartbreak from a Saints fan

I was cleaning out my email, and found a copy of an opinion piece that I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to write for the Herald Sun. I wrote this in my lunchbreak at work and it was published in the paper after St Kilda coach Ross Lyon made his cold and calculated move to Fremantle. This was September, 2011. 

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I’d love to have one single year without a St Kilda making headlines for all the wrong reasons. We’ve had sex scandals, nude photos of our beloved players stolen and ejected into cyberspace, spats between players and opposition coaches, and enough sensational headlines to last a lifetime.

And Thursday night gave us the biggest bombshell of all. Adored coach Ross Lyon – the man I genuinely believed would take us to our first premiership in half a century – had walked out on the club. St Kilda officials, players and supporters (hell, and even Ross’s management) were totally blindsided.

It’s been a bad week for St Kilda fans. Last Saturday we watched our 2011 premiership hopes slip away with each Sydney goal celebration. After the game, Ross Lyon joined the Saints as they huddled on the field, remaining there long after the Swans returned to the rooms. I’ve heard people say that the out on the ground can be the most private place for a footy club, away from the hangers on in the change room. So as fans we could only speculate what was being said. Of course we assumed it would be that the players need to focus, regroup and look ahead to next year. Strength through loyalty, right?

Then on Thursday night it was announced that Mark Harvey had been sacked, and rumours swirled about his replacement. Would it be Rodney Eade? That’s when the bombshell hit. It was Ross Lyon. I headed straight to the rumour mill- Twitter.

And so I watched it unfold, and it got worse.

Sure we heard rumours that Melbourne was interested in Lyon, but never did I consider that he would consider leaving the Saints, for Melbourne, or for anyone. So when I read that in fact Lyon had been talking to Fremantle for FIVE weeks, it was like a punch in the guts. He was finishing the season knowing that there was a fair chance that he wouldn’t be in a Saints polo shirt come trade week.

Fans were stunned. There was anger, shock, disgust. Don’t get me wrong, either. I don’t want to speak for all supporters (Ross certainly had his critics in fans, Shane Warne being a high-profile example), but most Saints supporters really liked Ross. I loved Ross, and he has certainly been St Kilda’s most successful modern coach. All those coming out of the woodwork now saying ‘I never liked him anyway’ are just feeling the hurt. And you know why? Because our coach has given up on us.

So here is my question Ross: why did you prematurely announce the retirements of three Saints players, including my favourite club veteran Steven Baker? Could it have not waited one more week after you’d gone,  or at least have given you time to speak to your players who would have done anything for the red, black and white?

Lyon rode the highs and the lows with the players, club officials and the supporters. Together we’ve felt the elation at two winning preliminary finals, the heart-pounding moments in three grand finals in two years, the same stunned, empty feeling of a drawn grand final, and the absolute heartbreak at two lost premierships. I watched the 2009 grand final squashed into standing room on the bottom level of the MCG. Half of the ground was obscured, but I lived and breathed every moment and like always, stayed til the very end.

For Ross to have come just so close to knowing what a premiership could feel like, and then walk away just blows my mind. Doesn’t he feel what we feel?

While the supporters are reeling, I can only begin to imagine what the players must be feeling. Ross didn’t sit down with the players and face them like he should have, he was a coward. I’ve heard that Ross was a tough man to work for. Sometimes he arrived at the club at 5am, and expected the same level of commitment from coaching staff and players alike. So when the players gave him the commitment he required, shouldn’t they expect the same from their coach? Next year would have been the real test for the Saints, and he owed them that.

Losing two consecutive grand finals (as well as the off-season that will haunt them forever) definitely did take its toll on my club. How could it not? How could you go all through that and still have the same level of drive and determination? But the Saints really did turn their season around, and put in a solid foundation for a better year in 2012. I want to know- why jump ship now? Give your players one more chance.

Call me naive, or even delusional, but I believe whole-heartedly that I will watch this playing group win the flag that they deserve, with or without Ross Lyon. I hope with all my heart that the club can get through this – its biggest challenge ever – and come out firing. St Kilda needs unity right now. I want all the club officials, the coaching staff and especially the players to know that their supporters are passionate and loyal, and we’ll be with them til the very end. 

Tosca

The story of our dog. The best I can give him is my words.

I met Tosca when I was seven years old. A local family had advertised puppies to give away, and Mum took  my brother Luke, my best friend and I to choose one. My first view of Tosca was seeing him chased around and around by his mother, including right through the back seat of our car and out the other side. He was born with an overbite, a condition that never gave him problems. But the original owners were planning to "knock him on the head" if they couldn't find a family for him. He was the black and white, stocky, pointy-eared brother of a ginger-coloured litter. He was the underdog, and we knew he was perfect. From that moment he was ours. But he was a dog who could never have been owned by someone. He belonged to us in the same way that we belonged to him. Just family.

Tosca wasn't a lap dog, or the sort of dog who would sleep at the end of your bed. He lived his own free and independent life. On the very first night he spent outside as a puppy, he bravely warded off a fox eyeing off our chooks. Our 13 acres were his territory, and he knew every corner like we did. He was a villain to the rabbits on our land, and spent much of his happy life chasing a sprinting rabbit along the hillside. In the long summers when the grass would be tall and golden, you could watch the waves as Tosca would weave through the grass. When the chase was on he would leap high, his head reaching above the sea of gold to follow the movement of his poor puff-tailed prey. He would visit our dam to cool off; wading through the cool water and mud, lapping some up with his pink tongue as he walked.

On our childhood adventures through the paddocks, he was always by our side. We would climb through fences, and he would stalk the fenceline with his nose, looking for the right place to follow us under. Sometimes we would lift it up for him, but he usually always found a way in on his own. He never walked on a lead, and could mostly be trusted to behave. He wasn't interested in chasing sheep or chooks, but he did have to be called occasionally when we ventured into the Sandon forest and he picked up the scent of kangaroos. Thankfully he never had a run-in with a snake, despite plenty of opportunities, but he did unfortunately do some minor damage to a rather angry blue-tongue lizard that he was 'protecting' us from.

He was by my side the day I ran away from home (unprepared, on a cool autumn evening in summer pyjamas). He sat with me at the end of our long driveway, and as he waited patiently beside me for nothing in particular, that was the moment that I knew he understood. He understood humans in more ways than one, including the year he ate all of the Cadbury Creme eggs on our Easter egg hunt, leaving the cheaper and slightly less delicious options unscathed. Despite chocolate's toxicity to dogs, his iron stomach won that round. He also survived eating a huge pellet of rat poison, and enjoyed many more years of healthy life after that.

When I left home, it hurt so much to leave my family behind and my visits to Sandon were the only time I felt whole. When the car would stop at the top of the hill, I knew Tosca's wagging tail and cold black nose would be waiting to greet me. Like big skies, cool floorboards underfoot and cups of tea with Mum, Tosca's presence at Sandon was something that was unchanging - a comfort knitted into every visit. Luke left not long after me, and Tosca and Mum became sole companions at Sandon. As the years rolled on by, he slowed down. That's we were so surprised when he showed up one Easter with a huge rabbit in his mouth, and he was as proud as could be.

His last few years were not his best; he had lost his stockiness, his big black ears were no longer really hearing, and his eyes were clouded with a darkness he couldn't see past. His nature became needier, and his loss of independence revealed the kindness, companionship and mutual understanding between him and my mum. If she left him inside for a moment without her, he anxiously waited by the door for her return. Mum cooked him special meals, and when he was too unwell to sleep inside, she created a small pen around his kennel with straw to keep him comfortable. He gave her companionship and a welcoming wag of his tail when she came home from work.

We lost our dear dog this year, after his 17th birthday. It wasn't a trip to the vet, and it wouldn't have been right for his free spirit. He simply wandered a little way from the house and came to rest. My first visit back home without him was at Christmas, and he should have been waiting for us when we arrived, and he wasn't. He should have had his wet nose making marks on the window at the back door, but he wasn't there. He should have been sneaking onto Mum's expensive rug without her noticing, which was their nightly game. But there was no usual outburst from Mum shooing him away.

In our life as a family, there has been so much difficult change to get through and Tosca has always been a comfort and our companion. We have lost our dog, and Sandon, with its rolling grass, creaky gum trees, and slow, winding creek, has lost its guardian.

Goodbye to our dearest dog.  

Looking back to something new

With the beginning of my post-grad study just a week away, I've been reflecting on my time since I started my under-grad degree as a naive 17-year-old in 2007. Although I'm attending the very same university, suddenly it all feels daunting again. I'm nervous about everything, from the simple things: not being able to find the right lecture hall, affording textbooks (I miss the days when the most expensive item to purchase amongst my novels and poetry was a $40 dictionary), and whether or not I'll make friends quickly. And then there are the bigger things: whether I'll be able to balance my part-time job (and only source of income) around the demanding placement hours, and the biggie: is this huge change in career the right path for me?

All of these worries make me look back on when it all first began for me. I was not quite 18 when being awarded a couple of scholarships pushed me out of home, and into a big city. To accept the scholarships (which, in hindsight was the only way I was able to attend university), meant that there was no option of deferment. I had three weeks to pack my life up, wave goodbye to my two best friends, and, hardest of all: leave my family, my dog and my home behind, knowing that I was never going to live under that roof again. And while Quayles Lane would always be home in my heart, I would never truly belong there again.

How did I go through all of these things at 17? Six years later, I'm trying to find the strength and courage that I can't believe I must have had in 2007. In my first year of uni I struggled academically, with none of the nurturing that I had enjoyed from my high school teachers. For the first time in my life, I had no friends in class. The girls in my course were angsty, hoodie-wearing introverts. And in the end, it was the boys in my classes who became my saviours. Gone were my gang of giggling girlfriends, and in was this new kind of mateship. I missed home terribly, and while I went back every weekend, I began to hate arriving back in the city, with its hot bitumen, traffic, and the sea of unsmiling, hurrying faces everywhere, that was both stifling and alienating at the same time.

I returned home every single weekend. I'd relish that train journey back, and as the months got colder, I'd watch through the window as the whizzing hills transformed from dusty, scratchy and brown, to rolling waves of silky green grass. I'd be spoilt by my mum at home, in a way that only living independently makes you appreciate. But before I knew it, I'd be watching her wave me off from the train station platform. And seeing that never really got any easier. And it still hasn't.

But while it was very hard to feel so alone in a big city, I was lucky to be living with my aunty and uncle, who were the perfect surrogate parents for me. And although I'd left my friends behind, I was fortunate enough to  have a blossoming love that might, just possibly, be the love of my life. With the help of (finally!) my first female friend at uni, I started Deakin's cheerleading club, and in the one hit, completed a dream and opened up a gateway to meeting like-minded souls at university. And I will call many of these people my friends for a lifetime.

Slowly but surely, the city became my home. While I still feel like my heart belongs out where the big skies are, I call Melbourne home. It feels good now, to stride along Elizabeth St, ducking around slow walkers and knowing the traffic light patterns. It makes me feel alive to be a part of this concrete and glass world, with all of us moving, talking and breathing beings giving this city its heartbeat and its life.

A very new chapter is scary. Really scary. But if I could do this six years ago, when all of this was for the first time, I can do it now.

A quick one but a cute one

Your too cute Wednesday pick-me-up! Tiny fluffy puppies herding ducklings.

http://holycuteness.com/2012/03/19/puppies-herd-ducklings/

Introducing an old friend: Hello Kitty

My love of Hello Kitty began in around 1993, when I was four years old. It was a red Hello Kitty lunchbox, its accompanying drink bottle long gone. On the side were pictures of Miss Kitty gardening, coaxing tulips out of the earth as sweet birds flew overhead. The lunchbox became the perfect place to store my growing crayon collection. It was portable enough to take from project to project- scribbling on butchers paper on the floor, or practising colouring within the lines in books on the kitchen table.

The love affair lay dormant - surprisingly - during my teenage years. Towards the end of high school, when day trips to the big city became a possibility, my friends and I discovered a little gem of a shop just off Bourke St. It was called Artbox, and it was a haven of all things cute. I made some new friends:

Super Panda

Blue Bear

And of course charming, inexplicable examples of Engrish, which like this one are often sweetly poetic:

So Artbox (sadly no longer open in Melbourne's CBD!) became my go-to place for cutesy stationery- notebooks, erasers and diaries. I was happy with my new friends for a while, but in 2007, my soon-to-be boyfriend Al gave me a Hello Kitty alarm clock as a gift. It was an old-style analog clock with a bell on the top that set off like a fire alarm every day. I soon learned to not use the alarm function, because I was sleeping with it under my pillow to muffle the BRRRRRRR every morning at 6.50am.

For my 18th birthday, one of my best friends Hayley gave me a Hello Kitty toaster, still in use to this day as you can see by the state it's in. I'll call it well loved...

This ingenious appliance etches Hello Kitty's face into each piece of toast. Al doesn't love my toaster, because it does happen to leave some portions of the bread largely uncooked so we have to flip the bread over halfway through the cycle. To get a good clear face in your toast, you need to cook the bejesus out of it.

What the toaster claims to do.

What it really does.

When I moved into my tiny college apartment the following year, Al gave me a Hello Kitty DVD player. It was hot pink, with decals of Hello Kitty and her friends and family wearing 3D glasses on it, and came with a super cute matching remote control.

After this, my Hello Kitty collection began to grow. And only today have I realised that I haven't bought a single item. And no, I am not a shoplifter (my criminal career ended at age three when my attempted theft of an Easter egg was intercepted by the scariest of all law-enforcers... my mum. All of my Hello Kitty goodies have been gifts, which makes them extra special! Here are some of my things:

Hello Kitty playhouse. I may be a little too old for this, but I really, really love it!

Hello Kitty figures can be purchased separately, like this birthday Hello Kitty (pictured with sister Mimmy)

Just hanging out with a snack!

Sailor Hello Kitty!

Strawberry Hello Kitty plush toy. She sits at my dressing table and keeps me company while I do my make up!

I have a few Hello Kitty cups. When my favourite one broke, I was too sad to throw it away, so it now has a second life as a pen and pencil holder!

Hello Kitty Monopoly is the newest addition to my collection. It doesn't make Monopoly gameplay any less brutal, but the properties are named things like 'Playground' and 'Flower Shop', while the train stations have been replaced by 'bicycle' and 'boat'. Darling!

This book is pretty much the guidebook to all things Hello Kitty! Did you know that she is the height of five apples, and the weight of three? Didn't think so, you'd better study up!

Hello Kitty lolly dispensers. Note the lack of lollies. Yum!

And lastly, this is our household phone. My best friend Ericah bought me this for my 22nd birthday last year. My boyfriend is very patient with me, isn't he? These are my favourite items from my collection. I won't bore you with photos of my many other Hello Kitty products: notebooks, diaries, rules, pens, erasers...

Hello Kitty is an anti-consumerist's nightmare. There was no original TV show or comic book. Her entire point of existence is to be plastered all over every kind of product there is, from clothing to USB flash drives, from cotton ball containers to hairbrushes. And while it's healthy to keep consumption at a moderate level (unlike this fan over over here), Hello Kitty does bring a little sunshine into my life! And there's nothing wrong with that.

Han x

Some nostalgia

I was getting a little nostalgic as I went through some old things a few weeks ago, especially when I found this old letter. I sent these handwritten letters (loveheart-dotted 'i's and all) to all my high school girlfriends as school was finishing for the last time. I had always planned to defer from my university place the year after high school, but life had other plans for me. Very suddenly I had to move out of home, leave Central Victoria and my family, and find my feet in the city. This all happened within about four weeks, and I was only seventeen. I wasn't ready to go.

* * *

I suppose that I finally have to admit that The Group's self decided high school reign of superiority has finished. Our era as we know it is coming to a close, and although our best intention is to hold off and avoid our inevitable fate, our futures are pulling us away from what we always wanted. Plans make in our last year of togetherness over out hand-painted watercolour table at school are becoming harder and harder to maintain. Our dreams of eternal years of schoolies-like parties are being replaced by personal ideals of the perfect job, university places, lectures, finding new accommodation, meeting new friends, and finding new love. Some of our ideals are being realised, while some of our original plans are being thrown out of order by new opportunities that were never intended to occur.

Change for some of us puts smiles on our faces, as this was the plan all along, to change. But this word has another meaning for others. Changing is forcing us from our ordered, safe, comforting little worlds where ideally, everything will continue to be. At least until we say that it is alright to adapt.

As much as those of us want to hide in this place, life makes other plans for us and I've begun to understand that no matter how happy we are to live here in our organised, sheltered lives, we can't prolong our stay here any longer than our fate intends.

We've hear one thousand times over that "things change", but from now on, I want to swallow my fear of it and make things change for the better. I'm scared of something that will be a whole new world for me, a whole year too early. I'm scared of losing you and leaving you and I'm scared that my future will be too far from yours.

But I will call you. I will email you. I will visit you. We will always be together, just in a different setting. Things will be different, but we don't have to let The Group go. We have had our years of wonderful experiences.

We'll go to the beach in the summer and make pyramids and take photos. In autumn we'll walk together and laugh about Slush Puppy and Muscular Whore. In winter we'll stay together in an apartment in the city, after our annual Saints vs. Bombers game, and be grateful for our doonas and hot chocolate. In spring we'll come back home and lay in the grass in the Castlemaine Botanic Gardens and be thankful that despite our different and diverse paths, we didn't let our friendship slip away from us. We'll make new friends, but we'll never replace the old ones. We have too much to let go of.

A naughty dog story

The staff at an English animal shelter couldn't work out why their dogs were escaping out of their cages at night and enjoying feasts in the kitchen. They installed hidden cameras and discovered that the culprit was a very clever dog named Red.

Watch the video here.