WANDA wanted me out of the house for some reason, so I wandered down to the bowls club for a quiet tipple and a practice session with none other than yours truly.
It’s one of life’s pleasures being able to compete with one’s self. No arguments, just a relaxing session of one bowl being better than the last.
I’m no professional. Just a guy on a mission to defeat last year’s B-grade champion who in my humble view isn’t worth the championship pin he was presented with, and wears proudly on his hat like a trophy of all-conquering greatness.
It’s B-grade for crying out loud – who in their right mind wears a B-grade trophy on their head, like an actor from Home and Away sitting in the front row of the Logies?
He looks more like the class clown, and that’s exactly what people will be calling him when rusty old Wayne cleans out his pompous mouth with soap and a pretty handy last bowl he won’t be expecting because he’ll be too busy telling the crowd how good he is.
Forget Bazball, my cricket-loving friends. This will be Wayne-bowl, and it’ll be an aggression never before seen by the conservative members of the club committee.
They’ll be cheering a revolution as the B-grader’s sent packing with his tail between his arthritic legs.
They’re the types of things that can go through your head when you’re quietly plotting the opposition’s demise during a solo practice session.
Then some bozo decides to interrupt the voices at play in a champion’s mind.
With a beer in his hand, nobody else around to bother, he comes straight up behind me and wants to engage in political natter.
I enjoy a political discussion as much as the next guy, ready to put fools to the slaughter with my deep general knowledge, and witty 70s pop culture references.
But surely there’s a time and a place. Wanda sent me here so she could be alone, or maybe with some friends on the back deck, I’m really not sure.
The point is, this was my chance to be alone, comfortable with my own thoughts, however evil they’d become in the 20 minutes between putting on my little flat shoes, and taking the kitty into the gutter with a bowl worthy of national representation.
No, this guy doesn’t want to respect why I’m here. Instead he asks a question – bold as brass – that I’ve quite frankly become sick of being asked: “Which way you going to vote in the referendum, Wayne?”
The guy’s obviously got his views, and I can only assume he wants them validated.
Little does he know that under normal conditions, I’d hear him out and later mess with his head with a well-constructed counter-view.
Because, as with any election, it is my prerogative to vote any damn way I want.
And this will be the same. I don’t, like so many others, feel compelled to share with anyone which box I’ll be ticking on referendum day.
What I will do is I’ll wait for those putting together the question to tell me exactly what it is I’ll be voting for. I’ll then digest the information they’ve provided, read an opposing view, and weigh up my options.
My vote will be considered, it will be based on fact – not rhetoric or what some loud-mouth drunkard wants to tell me – and it will be mine.
The outcome won’t bother me because that’s what democracy is about, accepting the decision of the people.
Ring, ring. Hey Wanda, are you finished with the deck? I really think I’m ready to come home now.
