people don’t want to see the ball gliding along the ground. They want action. Drama. That’s what we bring. Bradman is dead.’
Wally’s looking at me with unconcealed horror. He tries to take the conversation back. ‘Everyone brings their own approach of course,’ he says stiffly.
But she ignores him. Instead, she’s spurring me on. ‘Do you have the potential to play for Victoria?’
‘No doubt at all.’
‘For the country?’
‘Pretty likely.’
‘And you, Wally? What are your ambitions?’
‘I’d rather let my batting do the talking.’
She snorts again. ‘That’s a cliché, isn’t it?’
‘It’s the truth.’
She’s writing in a spiral-bound notebook as we talk. The plastic biro hovers momentarily. She chews the other end of it lightly as she forms the next question.
‘Do you two get along?’
‘Of course we do,’ snaps Wally angrily, just as I’m saying, over the top of him, ‘Mostly.’
Faint smile.
‘I’m going to make a note in my diary to talk to you two at the end of the season, and again this time next year. Would that be okay?’
I find myself agreeing enthusiastically. Wally’s more circumspect. The photographer, who’s waited just beyond her left shoulder, now pushes forward to get his shots. I look straight down the barrel, aping the boorish invincibility of Botham. Wally looks away over the ground, towards the scurrying players in the soft light.
The next day, the image appears across half a page, strangely beautiful. Wally’s face is all shadows and dreams, his decision to look away cloaking him in remoteness. I’m captured by his image for so long, wondering if I really know him at all, that it takes me a while to see myself. No mysticism there: I look dumb and aggressive. And the story appears under a headline I should have seen coming.
Bradman is Dead .
State
More lane markers thirrupping under the tyres.
Consciousness ebbing, the past playing out in living colour as the blackness in the boot consumes me. The world I left behind. Lost in time; discarded by a series of choices. The things I can’t retrieve.
My fingers have chanced upon another shard of the tail-light. I can’t tell if it’s from the lens or the plastic backing—cornea or retina. It’s triangular, a matchstick in length. I can tumble it from finger to finger, though I can’t fully grip it because of the pressure of the cable ties. If I stretch my hands downwards, I can make the tip of the shard reach the cable ties and rub them lightly.
But I’m not sure that should be my priority. The tape over my mouth is driving me insane. It’s irrelevant to releasing my bonds, though, and there’s only so much effort I can apply. I don’t know where to start.
If there’s a corner that you turn at some point, mine was New Year’s Eve 1989.
I mean, that’s not strictly true because you turn corners all the time. Life is comically pointless and composed almost entirely of corners, like a go-kart track.
On the last night of 1989, when the Berlin Wall’s been disintegrating for months, attacked by frosty-looking Germans in dark anoraks, David Hasselhoff is inexplicably there. Exploiting it as his personal contribution to the downfall of the Soviet bloc.
I’m on a mustard-coloured corduroy couch with Craig when Hasselhoff appears on the telly in the world’s most bizarre jacket—imagine the Fonz’s black leather motorcycle jacket, but with pulsating waves of tiny light globes all over it—and he’s standing on the Wall (‘Christ, the Wall!’ screams Craigo. ‘People get shot for lesser jackets!’) singing a vaguely freedom-themed big-hair anthem, like the song itself could break concrete. Maybe it could, the way he sings.
Craig and I have been on the bongs for a couple of hours by this stage and it’s more than we can take. The pipe du jour is a china dragon with a snarly mouth and flared wings. You pull on the top of his head, and the cone goes in a little mount in the region
Wally’s looking at me with unconcealed horror. He tries to take the conversation back. ‘Everyone brings their own approach of course,’ he says stiffly.
But she ignores him. Instead, she’s spurring me on. ‘Do you have the potential to play for Victoria?’
‘No doubt at all.’
‘For the country?’
‘Pretty likely.’
‘And you, Wally? What are your ambitions?’
‘I’d rather let my batting do the talking.’
She snorts again. ‘That’s a cliché, isn’t it?’
‘It’s the truth.’
She’s writing in a spiral-bound notebook as we talk. The plastic biro hovers momentarily. She chews the other end of it lightly as she forms the next question.
‘Do you two get along?’
‘Of course we do,’ snaps Wally angrily, just as I’m saying, over the top of him, ‘Mostly.’
Faint smile.
‘I’m going to make a note in my diary to talk to you two at the end of the season, and again this time next year. Would that be okay?’
I find myself agreeing enthusiastically. Wally’s more circumspect. The photographer, who’s waited just beyond her left shoulder, now pushes forward to get his shots. I look straight down the barrel, aping the boorish invincibility of Botham. Wally looks away over the ground, towards the scurrying players in the soft light.
The next day, the image appears across half a page, strangely beautiful. Wally’s face is all shadows and dreams, his decision to look away cloaking him in remoteness. I’m captured by his image for so long, wondering if I really know him at all, that it takes me a while to see myself. No mysticism there: I look dumb and aggressive. And the story appears under a headline I should have seen coming.
Bradman is Dead .
State
More lane markers thirrupping under the tyres.
Consciousness ebbing, the past playing out in living colour as the blackness in the boot consumes me. The world I left behind. Lost in time; discarded by a series of choices. The things I can’t retrieve.
My fingers have chanced upon another shard of the tail-light. I can’t tell if it’s from the lens or the plastic backing—cornea or retina. It’s triangular, a matchstick in length. I can tumble it from finger to finger, though I can’t fully grip it because of the pressure of the cable ties. If I stretch my hands downwards, I can make the tip of the shard reach the cable ties and rub them lightly.
But I’m not sure that should be my priority. The tape over my mouth is driving me insane. It’s irrelevant to releasing my bonds, though, and there’s only so much effort I can apply. I don’t know where to start.
If there’s a corner that you turn at some point, mine was New Year’s Eve 1989.
I mean, that’s not strictly true because you turn corners all the time. Life is comically pointless and composed almost entirely of corners, like a go-kart track.
On the last night of 1989, when the Berlin Wall’s been disintegrating for months, attacked by frosty-looking Germans in dark anoraks, David Hasselhoff is inexplicably there. Exploiting it as his personal contribution to the downfall of the Soviet bloc.
I’m on a mustard-coloured corduroy couch with Craig when Hasselhoff appears on the telly in the world’s most bizarre jacket—imagine the Fonz’s black leather motorcycle jacket, but with pulsating waves of tiny light globes all over it—and he’s standing on the Wall (‘Christ, the Wall!’ screams Craigo. ‘People get shot for lesser jackets!’) singing a vaguely freedom-themed big-hair anthem, like the song itself could break concrete. Maybe it could, the way he sings.
Craig and I have been on the bongs for a couple of hours by this stage and it’s more than we can take. The pipe du jour is a china dragon with a snarly mouth and flared wings. You pull on the top of his head, and the cone goes in a little mount in the region
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