Lost in Spades

Travelling by train through the inner west is like walking through the bowels of an old building on the fringes of the city. Cracked edifices, leaking pipes stained rusty, bifurcating canals and tunnelling. Fences, wire and cable declare areas of complete emptiness as no-go zones. Old bricks. Red-brick. Damp and dust. Home to a microcosm of crawling insects; all in symbiosis with the city. A feeling of desperate loneliness used to fill me once, with such sites. Now, I am not saddened so much as just lost in its randomness and yet not; a purposeful randomness that reflects my own life and perhaps that too of others.

Padstow

Australian Federal Parliament is debating an Offshore Processing bill. But really both sides of parliament are playing out an ego stalemate. The people that suffer are those that drown as their glorified rafts (that they call ships) capsize and sink on a 200 nautical mile odyssey from Indonesia to Christmas Island; the latter geographicaly part of Asia, but politically falls under the Commonwealth of Australia. In truth this debate is too little too late and a sad sad indictment on this country. In fact it's worse than that because there will be no end result to today's arguing. Self-righteous prosletising and the boats will continue to come; and the boats will continue to sink. So this debate is far worse than too little too late. It is a patronising, smug, indirect slap in the face to fellow humans as they are being swallowed by the ocean.

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Despite the close finish and her languishing at the end, on a soft, undulating and uphill finish, having prematurely been let up, the beast gave one last desperate effort to win its 22nd race from as many starts, the Diamond Jubilee at Royal Ascot, and rightly go down in history as the greatets sprinter that ever breathed. Fittingly, the queen of the turf met the Queen off the turf, exchanging greetings. She will almost certainly now be retired. Long live the Queen.

Only a few hours before Black Caviar takes to Royal Ascot for the Diamond Jubilee, the lass has not had the fanfare and commotion befitting a queen. This is a horse that has won all of its 21 race starts. Maybe today will change things, one way or another.