Book Sample
Nothing
has popularised sport like television. Sometimes, though, contestants
get more exposure than they bargained for. Competing live in a
nationally broadcast tournament, sumo wrestler Asanokiri lost more than
the match when his loincloth fell off. In a flash his deficiency, of
attire presumably, was pointed out and the red-faced wrangler
disqualified.
Chapter 9
Richmond is one of those inner city suburbs making the awkward transition from seedy to fashionable, appropriated by the young and upwardly mobile from the aged and going nowhere. Where cramped housing, smog and twenty-four hour traffic is a small price to pay for the convenient proximity to noisy pubs, seconds shops and overpriced bistros. It is also Melbourne’s sporting precinct, home of the MCG, whose towering light-banks illuminated not only the stadium but also my living room, bathroom and half the bedroom. With a million and a half watts angling in the window, the left-hand half of my unnecessarily double bed was brilliantly illuminated while the right lay in total darkness. Closing the window helped, but I quite enjoyed being able to read in bed then simply roll over and go to sleep in the dark. The truth is I liked living in the light. If I was at home it made me feel as though I was at the ground. If I wasn’t I probably was at the ground.
Tonight I was home, scanning the frozen wastelands of the fridge in the hope that something tempting might reveal itself. There were eggs and ham—there were always eggs and ham. There was bread in the freezer, alongside peas and corn, a croissant that had been there as long as I could remember and a container of something that looked like a frozen bilious attack. There was milk and butter in the door. And cheese, though most of that had gone sedimentary. There were two leftover tomato halves in an advanced stage of meltdown and the crisper looked like a compost bin that was starting to grow again. There were other things, not all of them identifiable, but nothing you’d actually want to eat. And beer. So I had the essentials.
I chipped off two slices of bread and let them thaw in the sandwich maker then added an egg with a few shreds of ham across the top. The knackered chef. Jamie with an Oliver Twist. Soon I was settled in front of the TV with a jaffle on my lap and a can of Carlton on the side of the chair that still had an armrest. At first I couldn’t place the irritating little boy on the screen, until the first ad break threw up the Home Alone graphic. Great! Even the TV was mocking me. What a hole Helen had left in my life.
And it was a hole, this badly maintained flat. Crudely furnished and strewn with cardboard boxes still being unpacked on a need to find basis four years after I’d moved in. I’d spread a few bits of sporting memorabilia and the odd picture around the living area to hide a multitude of sins, like water stains, cracks and yellow paint so bright it was trying to escape flake by flake from the walls. But the rest of the grand plan to fix the place up had withered as surely as the aspidistra that stood brown and stiff in front of the hole in the wall where the flue had been for the had-been heater. It was the perfect environment for feeling depressed. Especially after the phone conversation I’d just had.
‘Shit!’
‘I know. I couldn’t believe it either.’
‘But why?’
‘Well, the line is you can’t compete in the Australian Championships unless you’re selected in the Victorian team and you can’t be in the Victorian team unless you’re a bona fide member of a club registered with the Victorian Darts Council. And that doesn’t include the Fish Creek fuckknuckles!’
‘Well why can’t I just join a registered club?’
‘I’m sure you could. I’m sure clubs will be falling over themselves to sign up a hot property like Sam Alley. Problem is they’ve already picked the team and you’re not in it!’
‘That’s ridiculous! Why would they pick the team before the Victorian championships?’
‘Well that’s another problem. It seems there are two Victorian championships.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘One that’s open to anybody and one that isn’t.’
‘So which one did I win?’
‘The Open.’
For a moment it went so silent you could hear a penny drop.
‘And the one they choose the Victorian team on?’
‘The one that isn’t!’
‘Shit!’
I gave her a bit of time to digest the news, but just at that moment a steel belt radial would have been more palatable.
‘Look!’ I said, trying to be positive. ‘I know it sounds like a disaster now but another twelve months isn’t really that long. Not at your age anyway.’
‘And where’s the nearest club?’ she asked eventually.
‘Not sure. There’d be plenty in Melbourne, obviously.’
‘Jeez, Ches, I don’t want to move to Melbourne just to play darts occasionally!’
‘There’ll be others, closer to home. I think they said something about Morwell. I could find out easily enough.’
‘It’s really not that important.’
‘Yes it is for God’s sake! Yes it is!’
‘Who to?’
‘Damn it, Sam, have a bit more respect for your own talent! Remember your Bible stories!’
‘I don’t recall any Bible stories about darts!’
‘The one about the talents! One bloke used his to make more... talents... or something... and the other guy buried his in the ground...’
‘He buried his talent in the ground?’
‘Or under a bushel. Or something like that, I don’t know. The point is God didn’t give you this ability to fritter away, Sam.’
‘I don’t think God’s going to lose any sleep over whether I play darts or not.’
‘Yes he is, Sam! Well, hell, I don’t know. The point is you can do something no one else can do, not like you can, and it’s your ticket out of Fish Creek...’
‘Don’t knock Fish Creek!’
‘...it’s a ticket to test yourself in a bigger pond. It’ll take you places.’
‘What, Morwell? Well, pardon me but I think I’ll pass.’
‘OK, well let’s not go making decisions till we’ve thought this through.’
‘What’s to think about? If they don’t want me to play I won’t play. Easy!’
‘Spoken like a true champion. Where’s your fighting spirit for God’s sake? Well I need to think it through even if you don’t, so just sit on it for a bit, alright?’
‘Ches, get over it...’
‘Just wait, alright!’
‘Alright!’
‘Alright. Well, I’ll call you soon.’
‘Alright.’
‘Speak to you soon.’
‘See you.’
‘See you.’
And the last person I felt like sharing my despair with now was an irritating little boy with an expression of permanent surprise.
I fled for the safety of Foxtel and some decent sport. Instead they had curling.
Sport by its nature is a little bit silly. Even I can see that. The point of flailing a small ball out of sight towards an unseen hole in the ground is not immediately obvious. Flinging a ball about with a net on a stick is an idea that would occur to few. Two guys hitting each other in the head for half an hour only makes sense when you’ve been hit in the head for half an hour. But curling takes the Jam Fancies. Let me explain.
The game is played with a 20kg piece of granite with a handle on it called the ‘rock’. The idea is to propel the rock along an alley of ice so that it comes to rest as nearly as possible to the centre of a painted target. Shove ha’penny on ice. Passably sensible so far if you’re in a generous sate of mind, but wait, there’s more. Just before the pusher sends the stone sliding on its way, a couple of team-mates set off with—how shall I say this—well, brooms! I know! And whether they’re made of the rarest redwood with individually selected hog’s bristles crafted by some master curling broom-maker in a tradition refined over hundreds of years, or whether they’re bog standard plastic numbers from Target or its local equivalent I couldn’t say, but the fact remains that this is one of the more bizarre spectacles to be found anywhere in the wide world of sport. These two scrubbers shuffle sideways smoothing the ice in front of the rock to keep it going further and straighter, or possibly not smoothing it, depending whether they judge the stone to be falling short or overshooting its target. And this, believe it or not, is an Olympic sport. ‘Christ!’ I bleated aloud. ‘There must be something more watchable than this!’ knowing full well there wasn’t.
Then it struck me. Like a rock.
Sam Alley. Tall and tan and young and flighty the girl from Fish Creek is one almighty media package and you, Chesterman Fanning, are just the man to launch her to the world!
Leaving Bally Haly and the New Brunswick Beavers to their alpacas and broomsticks I stretched the telephone cord into the relative quiet of the passageway and set to work.