As we dive into 2024, I wonder how many of us have become Uncle Bob?
You know, the bloke who people avoided at dinner parties and weddings. The man who was politically incorrect and never did as he was told. Yes, that man. The one that people shunned and were too embarrassed to be with.
But I loved my Uncle Bob. He fascinated me, amazed me and I thought that he was the most bloody exciting person I had ever met. I have his photo in my wallet today, all these years later. You see, I loved Uncle Bob.
He was a rebel. Back in the 70's, he changed my life. He taught me to THINK.
He was a good man. Not for all, you understand. Oh, no. He was too outrageous! He smoked! He drank! He debated philosophy and politics and steam engines!. In short, he helped create who I am today.
Why this website exists. Like Larry Pickering and our desire to let freedom ride. Thanks Pablo for the inspiration.
You see, we are formed by who we meet. Who we love. Our encounters. It might be my first teacher or my first love. Or my first political encounter.
Or even my first pub grub or double malted chocolate milkshake with a cheese and pineapple burger to boot.
Have we come to this? Let us go all out. No alcohol, no cigarettes, no petrol, no diesel, no meat, no borders and no country. No voice, no opinion, no bloody hope.
Let us all embrace open " come on in and let us all do a kumbaya and have a jolly good time hugging each other whilst our kids are raped in the toilets and genitally mutilated by our wonderful new citizens."
Let us all cheer and applaud as we welcome our destruction.
I miss the Uncle Bobs of the world. Those people who could make us laugh, question, wonder and consider. Who dared to be different.
I am looking at the photo of me with him all those years ago. I was so young! So attractive! He was someone I adored, and he adored me. We were instant friends.
And remained so for many decades until his death.
I read a joke recently. It is of no consequence what it was other than that it triggered a memory for me
No doubt Paddy will put it up. As I sent it to him.
My late Uncle used to tell that particular joke back in the 80's....
As I recollect he did it with an Irish accent. He told some great jokes.
He was a chain smoking, whiskey drinking everyday man, a wine drinker and the black sheep of the family. That person who everyone shuddered at when he walked in to the room.
But he was a good man, a funny man,, an intelligent man and a real bloody individual. And I loved him.
He never got violent or drove a car when he had been drinking. He never got angry or nasty. He never got arrested for drunk and disorderly and he worked a very high powered professional job and earned lots of money. Never called in sick with a hangover and never hurt a soul.
He held court in the smoking area of family gatherings and reeled off his theories on Life, the Universe and Everything. Uncle Bob was " the man."
Surrounded by his court of admirers. Those of us who loved free speech.
He introduced me to the cheese and pineapple burger, the chocolate malted milkshake and the delights of the pub counter meal back in the 70's. I learned about the magnificence of the steam powered engine; the wonder of political debate and how the power of the media, minorities and the government could overwhelm the power of common sense and responsibility.
How scary is that?
Whilst my teacher at Primary School taught me the value of reasoned debate and intelligent reason, Uncle Bob taught me the value of the mantra of " it isn't bloody right! It isn't bloody right.".
Yet still did it in a way that my Sunday School teacher would have been very impressed with.
He believed in God, was Catholic, yet told some great Catholic jokes, Priest jokes and Nun jokes. His Catholic parrot joke was - well, a cracker. His jokes were legendary. I still know them off by heart.
He passed some years ago, a man who had abandoned tobacco and alcohol to die a lonely and miserable death in a nursing home far away from me. I once asked him, about 2 years before he passed, did he feel better for having giving up his vices.
He replied
" I feel better physically, yes. But do I feel better? That is a different story. I don't feel like me. I am no longer me. But physically? Yes, much better. "
When he died, he was a small man in a small body He lost his sense of self. He WAS a big drinking, big smoking, big eating man. He gave up all the things he loved. His tobacco, his booze, his calorie laden burgers and his love of life.
The last conversation I had with him, and we both knew he was on the way out, he said to me " I am in a wheelchair. I am in a bed made for old people. I am told it is because I drank, smoked and ate all the wrong food. I felt frightened so I gave it all up. And you know what? I have never been more miserable in all my life. "
Uncle Bob stopped laughing. He stopped holding court and he stopped being the feared guest that everyone dreaded for fear that he would tell jokes or extol one of his profound conservative views. Fiercely Conservative in his Politics and fiercely anti abortion, he never wavered from his viewpoint.
That life was sacrosanct; technology was bound only to the limits of human intelligence and the money available to fund it; that Politics was as good as the People who believed in it and the future of Australia came down to happiness. Or that one day, money would find a way.
Uncle Bob used to say that Australians are happy people. When they are not happy, Australia is in trouble.
I asked him, when I was about 17 years old, " well, what makes Australian's happy? ".
And he said " Australian's are happy when they are allowed to be Australians :"
American's are happy when they are allowed to be Americans.
All countries are the same.
Have we become Uncle Bob? Marooned on an island of despair? We can give up everything that made us happy yet we are still not happy?
Because we are miserable. Simple as that. They have taken all the fun out of life. And, as my late Uncle would have said, it isn't right.
So here we sit today, in the smoker's room and wonder how it all went wrong. Because that is what we have become. Like it or not.
We are the new smokers on the balcony.
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