Seeking Wallaby Heroes for my son

It’s a bit of a ritual in our house now that I play some music while my son has his dinner. As he was finishing his fruit I moved into the kitchen to pack a few things away. That was when I heard him scream - a scream like the one given off when Alderaan was destroyed by the dark side. I dropped everything and raced to my son as he choked upon his fruit.

I picked him up and immediately the kiwi fruit he had been chewing splurted out onto the black fleece jumper I was wearing. It was as if time stood still and the music of Split Enz and “History Never Repeats” washed over me from the speakers. The kiwi fruit stuck to the shoulder on my black fleece, my son sobbing in terror of what had just happened and my world became clear.

The time has come. This is Bledisloe time and I’m wearing black, feeding my son kiwi fruit and playing iconic New Zealand music. This has to stop. No longer should my 17-month-old son be fearful of the darkness. No longer should he cry because of men wearing black. No longer should kiwi fruit stick to the back of his throat but it is time for history to stop repeating.

It’s time for a new golden sunrise. It’s a time for the heroes in gold to arise and stop the ever-spreading darkness. I want my son to grow up in a world where the Wallabies are heroes. Where every boy and girl from 17 months to 17 years to 71 years of age can say they saw the resurrection of the Wallabies and the return of the Bledisloe to Australia.

I want his memories of Wallabies to great ones. I want him to talk about the events of 2014 as fondly as I mention Greg Cornelsen’s four tries (which co-incidently happened when I was about his age), about Topo Rodriguez’s try line tackle on Hika Reid which drove him back seemingly to the 22 metre line, George Gregan’s tackle on Wilson, John Eales slotting last minute penalty goals or the hand of Toutai.

I want all of these memories for him every season as we play the All Blacks. I don’t want them to be spread over 20 years. There’s a generation of Australian kids who need heroes in Wallaby gold to step forward over the next two weeks. I want him to one-day talk about the scrummaging of Slipper, the impact of Skelton, the dash of Hooper and the mongrel of Fardy. If this happens then he can talk about the vision of Beale, the dancing feet of Izzy or the way that AAC straightened through the hole. It’s not just these players it’s everyone else in the Wallaby team and all those of us who will be cheering them on this Saturday night.

It’s time for the Wallabies. In Star Wars once the scream of Alderaan had gone the side of light was able to triumph over the dark side. Sure, there were a few hiccups and three prequels about the how the dark side came to be that way. But we’ve seen them now and it’s time for the light side, the golden Wallabies to rise and return balance to the Bledisloe.

Parked in!

Last Saturday we had someone park over our driveway so that it was next to impossible to get in and out. We were lucky that when BWM came home she was able to get in because the vehicle on one side pulled out at the time. This allowed us access when we needed it. We were a little bit lucky even though it was frustrating.

A friend also posted a picture on Facebook recently of being parked in at a shopping centre. She had to wait 20 minutes while someone dropped their child off. As someone who runs her own business, which relies on punctuality with her clients, you can imagine how frustrated she was.

Quite naturally all incidents come in threes. On Thursday H and I went to Babyroo at Balmain. The carpark there is a complete mess at the momemt as they are renovating the Woolworths store. This is the only place where you can get free parking for more than 30 minutes. Naturally I had a cruise past to see if there was a spot amongst the dongas and worksite equipment.

There is also a forklift on the site and every time H sees it he yells “DIGGER!” at the top of his voice. Not only did we get to see the ‘digger’, we also bagged a parking spot. Great score! We toddled off to Babyroo and because we had a two hours free spot we enjoyed a coffee and did a couple of jobs that needed to be done. Feeling pretty good about myself I even splashed out on some flowers for BWM (I also like having flowers around the house but as a bloke I don’t tell people that).

Things were going great until we got back to the car. I had carried H in one arm and the flowers in the other so he couldn’t pull any out of the bouquet or take a bite out of them, as he is sometimes wont to do. All was good except for the large demolition truck that had parked us in. They were attempting to load the old fridges from the supermarket onto the back of the truck using the forklift.

Seeing this I was a little frustrated and placed all the items I had in the car except H. We walked around the side of the truck to see what was going on. Here was where I made the biggest mistake, or should I say bonus, you could possibly imagine.

“DIGGER! DIGGER! CAR! CAR!” H screamed in excitement as he saw them loading the fridges. The poor guy trying to lever the fridge in with his crowbar though someone had run over a child behind such was the vocal noise from H. I now had a battle on my hands as H desperately tried to wriggle his way free so he could see the forklift and the truck better.

After a minute or so of trying the guys trying to load the truck realised that it wasn’t quite fitting. The man who nearly dropped his crowbar in fright came over and asked if we wanted them to move because they had parked us in. Before I could reply H let rip at him again, “DIGGER! DIGGER! DIG! DIG! DIG!”

“Mate, this is the best entertainment he’s had all day,” I replied. “You guys do your work and we’ll watch because it keeps this young bloke happy.”

He moved away to try and reload the fridge obviously perplexed by the reply he’d got. It took the guys three goes and nearly another ten minutes to wedge the fridge onto the back of the truck. They ripped into it with sledgehammers and crowbars and gave the old fridges a good old belting. Eventually they got them wedged in much to the relief of the three workers plus the forklift driver.

However, there was one person who was not happy. H looked at the truck as it drove off and the forklift as it was parked up like someone had ripped away his favourite thing in the whole world. Now that we were no longer parked in I tried to put him in the car. H was not having a bar of it and put himself in a plank position so that he couldn’t be buckled into his seat. Eventually he relented but it cost me my sunglasses as his new toy – I got those back when he had his dinner a couple of hours later!

The third incidence of getting parked in seems to have been the best one. H got entertained like you wouldn’t believe and my upper body and core got as great a work out holding the excited wriggling H as the guys hammering and crowbarring! We will just have to see now where our next car park adventure takes us!