Leap, ride, catch, then fall to the earth like a mere mortal, the enormity of the act reverberating around the stands, the roar sustained by the surprise, the sheer joy of witnessing the extraordinary.
A fleeting moment to be examined over and over until it appears routine, a mere biomechanical act. In the context of a match, a season, a career and a history, it is exceptional.
This is why we do it. This is why we watch sport. In the hope of witnessing one sublime physical moment.
What one realises when one is looking from the window of an Airbus is how much of the world doesn’t have people in it.
Leaving one big city and arriving at another could give one the impression that the earth is a crowded place, crammed with buildings and cars and humans all getting in each other’s way. And the population statistics tell a similar story. How do you fit 6.5 billion people on to one small planet? How can we fit in the 10,000 being born every second?
However, taking a look from 30,000 feet gives, literally, a startlingly different picture. The middle of Australia, for example, is dry, salt-encrusted and utterly devoid of humankind. Huge tracts of China house not a single apartment block. Most of the hilly bits everywhere else are empty. BabbelOn’s conclusion is that we just need to spread out a little. Get out of the cities and start to fill in the blanks.
The problem is, of course, that there is nothing out there. No roads, schools, Wal-Marts or Woolworths.
The answer is, of course, that when you live in the country/outback/hinterland/wilderness you don’t need Haagan Daas and Youtube. And you can probably still get Youtube with a decent broadband satellite network (the Australian government is spending $43 billion rolling one out as you read this).
The jobs are in the city, you cry. But is your job really all it’s cracked up to be? How many city dwellers as they stand rocking, sharing each others’ body odour and iPods, are filled with the joys of their careers or are even just happy to be going to work? Most of those who are still functional are working out how many more years until they can pay off the mortgage and retire to somewhere else. How many people do you hear say “I can’t wait to quit work and move to the city? Somewhere really noisy and crowded with poor services and nowhere to park.”
What about the restaurants and clubs and theatres you cry? How many times a year do you go to a restaurant, club or theatre BabbelOn cries right back at you.
The real reason not to move to the country, of course, is that the people who live there are the ones who didn’t have the wit or the drive to get out in the first place. Or they are dole cheats and bail jumpers hiding out. In other words, you new neighbours will be bogans or ferals.
But this is a short term problem. In the olden days (last century or was it the one before?) all the clever, well-bred types resided in the country and the cities were home to the criminals and degenerates. We simply need to reverse the flow.
If the kids complain, tell them they can have a horse or a motorbike. If you think you will miss your friends, take them with you.
Leave your mortgage, your carbon footprint, your daily commute and your private school fees behind. If the government was smart (ie if BabbelOn was President King) it would spend some of that $43 gazillion on subsidised solar panels, and 10 hectares and a mule, for all those who agree to swap Balmain for Ballarat, Longueville for Longreach, and Killara for Kununurra.
