Walking the block can be an adventure at my age.
Wanda won’t come with me any more, so there’s nothing romantic about stretching my legs – no hand to hold, no idle chat, no pointing to the sunset.
But I do it for Wags because even though the old boy’s suffering a hint of arthritis in his hind quarter these days, he still loves a good sniff and who am I to deny him life’s pleasures while I’m still able to provide.
Don’t worry, I don’t think I’m not falling off the perch any time soon. We’re still active holiday-goers. We just no longer do things for the sake of doing them.
So, in that context, can I put on the record that no time soon will we be going to Papua New Guinea to be conducting any field research.
The criminal gangs can get their ransom money for someone far more valuable than me.
In fact, if I did go, I’d be designing a cap which says: “Father of non-wealthy children”.
I’m not a fossicker. And there’s no need for me to be crawling through mud to prove anything to myself or anyone else along the Kokoda Track.
I will, with content, continue to pay my respects by attending services at the epitaph each Anzac Day.
Because life, as I’ve learned as a life-long scribe, is a matter of risk and reward.
While it is idealistic to believe people’s worthwhile pursuits should be protected, it is also realistic to understand there are people in this world who don’t appreciate the nobility of those worthwhile pursuits.
Like terrorists. Or pirates. Or criminal gangs living in jungles of third-world countries carrying AK-47s they swapped for a bag of opium they grew on the side of a mountain crawling with poisonous spiders that don’t have fangs long enough to bite their terrain-hardened bare feet.
I’m sure you get my point.
Wanda, can you scrap that brochure with all those islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea? Let’s do Greece instead.
