I’m hopeless with New Year’s Resolutions. They tend to go in one year and out the other. Growing up in Lithgow in the late 50s early 60s, I met a genius when it came to resolutions. She was the mother of one of my hockey mates and her name was Hetty. Her surname seemed to change every 18 months or so, but always fell short of the number of guys who ended up at their breakfast table. She was a barmaid down at the Lansdowne Hotel and could dispatch a troublesome drunk with her trademark combination of left hand throat choke and right hand gonad crush as she back marched them out the door. Back then it was women who always danced backwards so the poor recipient’s flailing movements made him look like he’d been put together by a committee before God stepped in. Plus he was now triply confused. He had to make a split second judgment on what was important to continue living. Breathing, alleviating the pain that only a man could appreciate or stop the social indignation of looking like a Thunderbird character in backward fast motion. Anyway, once a year Hetty’s clan of about 60 would gather in Hetty’s backyard to herald in the New Year. One year I was privileged to be there thanks to a couple of missing back fence palings that had been required to give some last minute rigidity to their Guy Fawkes effigy last bonfire night. I’m sure Hetty saw me at some stage. Nothing got passed her silver-back alpha vigil. But she’d seen me give her son my orange at half time at a few of the games and must have decided to give me a free pass. It was at these gatherings that she announced the New Years Resolutions. Her genius was, the resolutions were not for her, they were for everyone else. She would give every single member of her extended family an individual resolution to uphold and woe be tide any that forgot. To reinforce their steely weight, she didn’t call them resolutions, she called them The Gunners. At 11.30pm she grabbed a wrench and started banging on the water tank. A nervous hush fell over the gathering and Hetty boomed, “All right you lot, it’s time for this year’s Gunners. First of all, Warren, this year you’re gonna stop taking your trailer to funerals, even if you are 100% sure you’re in the will. Tight-arse Larry, this year when you run out of petrol and send Glenda down the road with a can, you’re gonna stop telling her to bring back a couple of beers as well. Connie, this year when you have your stuck-up dinner party for all your stuck-up friends, you’re gonna stop using your most recently deceased stuffed pet as a table centre piece.” She tore through about 27 people and then to my horror, she suddenly said, “And you little Spud Murphy…. Yeah I can see you standing on the hutch behind Fat Billy…. This year you’re gonna stop giving my son your orange at half time. He’s big and ugly enough to take care of himself. The coach gave it to you to suck so suck it out of respect. In life you never know when you’re next suck is coming, so suck it while you can and suck it like a man. And next time the coach gives you something to suck at half time, you suck it likes there’s no tomorrow son. You boys today are giving and taking sucks willy-nilly with not regard for the stiff opposition you’re gonna face in the 2nd half. Golden rule is, don’t give a suck and don’t take a suck unless it’s from the coach.” Ever since that night I’ve retained Hetty’s Gunner and will continue to do so. In 2015 I will continue not to give any boy a suck, nor take a suck if he offers. I will also not play any sport just in case there’s a coach involved. God bless you Hetty. Spud Murphy.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 17:09:12 +0000
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