Peter Roebuck: 2 years gone: A Final Letter

Dear Peter, 

It is 2 years now and I still miss your voice. I click on the sports section in the smh and there’s still a part of me that expects to see your lively pieces. It took me a year to listen to my favourite broadcast of cricket on the ABC because I knew that I wouldn’t be hearing from you. As a writer, you were supreme in the field of cricket journalism. Your opinions were certainly open to question from time to time, but the way you wrote them was everything a reader could hope for.  

I loved that you were a literate cricket writer. I loved that you had so obviously studied history, I loved that you were an erudite man. Here was an intellectual who loved cricket, my uncle was the intellectual in our family, but he always scorned me for being so enamoured of sport. You were my bulwark against the idea that I was wasting my talents by following games like cricket.

Your comments and your articles helped me realise that cricket was a part of the world, and a part of the history of the modern world, and that the game reflected them both very well. One can study cricket and see many of the great themes of modern British, Commonwealth and Australian history writ large through it. May I take a moment to recommend Ramachandra Guha’s superb A Corner of a Foreign Field for any who doubt just how thoroughly cricket is entwined with history?

I admired your passion for the difficulties playing cricket at a high level presented for ordinary people in the West Indies and in Zimbabwe. You placed cricket in the world, rather than trying to separate the two.

After a day’s play, I would stay awake until the clock ticked over midnight, so I could log on to the smh.com.au and read your latest account of the great deeds and world changing events that had occurred the previous day between 11 and 6. For they were great deeds, there was always a feeling in your articles that the events of the previous day had mattered, they were a chapter in a much larger, more important story than just the runs that were scored or the wickets that were taken. Sometimes I felt that desire to fit those events into an expansive narrative caused you to get some additional exercise in jumping to conclusions, but that was all part of the fun. 

My biggest criticism of you was for your article demanding Ricky Ponting be sacked, which I felt was a huge overreaction as I detailed here. But it certainly demonstrated your influence as *everyone* picked up on that story. I think you realised it was an overreaction later on, as I don’t recall you ever being especially critical of Ponting subsequently. You were saying nice things about his batting after it had become clear to my Ponting biased eyes that the great man was past it!!

 

But, there was another side to you besides the great writer. The fact that you had gotten in trouble for caning an adult student of yours was well known and created quite a controversy. At the time I was terribly worried that the smh and ABC would distance themselves from the scandal in the most straightforward manner, by giving you a termination notice. It was, I felt at the time, a reflection upon the good sense of both organisations that you were encouraged to carry on. And years passed, and I continued to enjoy your writing, and the question that story raised, of had it happened again, wasn’t one that I paid much attention to.

However, ignoring something doesn't always mean it will go away, as soon as I heard of your suicide I suspected something similar was afoot, as did many others, Adam Shand later produced a detailed, thoughtful, balanced profile that made it very clear that the term predator was not an unreasonable label to apply to you without forgetting that you were human and the evil co-insists with the good.

Thank you,  Peter,  for the writings and commentary that I so loved. I'm sorry you didn't feel more comfortable with yourself as you may have been able to find what you needed from people who were genuinely able to give consent. Adults they may have been, but their poverty left them with little choice but to do what you wished, irrespective of whether they personally wished to engage in such activities. I hope that they find peace as they go forward in their lives and that when people remember you, that they speak of you as you were, not as you wished to be. 

Lindsay Went

Australian Test team

No huge surprises here, I can't say I'm thrilled with George Bailey being selected, I like the guy and respect his performance in the shorter forms of the game, but I don't think his performance in the longer forms, especially last season, justifies his selection. I'd have preferred Phil Hughes, who's been dropped far too often despite reasonable results in his Test career.

I think we could give England a game here and there, but an England series victory is certainly expected. It really sucks having a crap team!

Going forward as a writer

Writing fulfils me in ways that few things ever have. The artist in me is a writer or he is nothing, the creative impulse has only ever expressed itself in me through writing. Yet I write so little. 

 I want to write children’s books, to be a children’s author. Partly because I think I’ve got still got a fair connection to the boy I was, partly because I feel far more comfortable around kids than I do around adults, which is not to say that kids can’t unnerve me now, just as they did then.

Maybe it’s because many of my favourite moments in teaching have come from reading stories to kids – how much better would it be if I was reading them some of my own?!

 I’m not too old to be a successful writer. And success in writing, for me, is not such a huge thing – being read, finding an audience, would be a success. I don’t need to be a Mem Fox or a Paul Jennings or a John Marsden. Finding an audience for my work would be great and committing myself to that work!

I want to be a creative person, I want to be a writer, to let myself be expressed through my keyboard, to spend quite a bit of that time which remains to me making connections, connections that may stretch beyond my own brief journey. 

There is just one obstacle blocking my path to being a successful writer.

Me.

I have been lazy while writing takes effort, writing takes work, it takes sitting down at the keyboard and coming to it with real focus and intensity. It requires a decision to spend far less time playing games and far more time creating.

I know full well that I possess the capacity to write things that will attract and hold an audience. I know because I’ve done it before and because I have read enough to understand the rhythm of language. My understanding of that rhythm is good enough to trust, given a willingness to work hard at it.

Another truth: I am slowly building a scenario where the time will continue to be there to write, a successful tutoring business is developing and it’s not going to take that many hours compared to some other jobs. Additionally, it’s not impossible that some of my creative writing could earn money. Not lots of it, sure, but a few dollars here and there is a useful hobby.

The reason I haven’t written more is that I am afraid to do the work, afraid to open myself up and COMMIT to that relationship, to write with my whole heart, to let writing be the driving passion of my life other than my wife and family. 25 years ago, when I wrote those essays in my diary, I realised that writing had its hooks in me.

Ever since, I have played the coward, too scared to get out there and play, too afraid to do the work to make it happen.I haven’t truly engaged with my writing. Consequently, I have written nothing of consequence and allowed others, possibly no better than I, to connect with their audiences while I dreamed of having an audience.I didn't dream of finding an audience because finding an audience implies that you might do some work to find it!

Audiences don’t come to you through dreams, you have to build them, you have to commit to who you are and admit who you are. The only way to be a writer is to write. Every day that I live there is time available – turn the glass teat from something to suck into something to fill, be the breast, not the nipple.

Writers write, Lindsay Edmond, and for too long now, you have played at writing, afraid to commit yourself to it. WHY? It’s not like you’re committing yourself to anything else, you’re not going to be a politician, you’re not going to be a teacher and your tutoring business is very much a means to an end. A means you believe in, yes, but a means nevertheless.

Currently, when the time comes, all I have to say that I was here and was of some benefit to this world, is Kristy and Cassie. Not a worthless legacy, granted, but less than it might have been. 

If I reach my father’s age, will I be pleased I was a Bejeweled Blitz champion, will I gain great satisfaction from the hours spent on ICC after all my friends left?  Will I rejoice in how often I blasted the computer on Warcraft III as a human player? The obvious answer may be no, yet I give a different answer every time I play those time wasters.

 

I opened my blog post topics folder and there’s a good 50 potential posts listed there and this piece here is one that also belongs there – I’ve kept these types of pieces for my private journal, but the blog is the right place for many of them.

My blog doesn’t need to be focussed on a particular theme, if I write with consistency and passion then regular themes will develop over time and attract an audience. There are clearly some themes in that list of blog topics.

 Going forward, then, I must commit myself, I have the ideas for my blog, so I must seek to write something for it every day, not post every day, but write every day.

Ideas for writing more generally will come, I need to start writing down those ideas and then attempt to bring them to fruition, I recognise that the overwhelming majority of my initial attempts to write fiction will be shit, but out of  that manure will come compost for future writing crops.

I propose to post a minimum of 3 blog posts a week for the rest of the year, equalling a total of 21 blog posts by December 31.

My specific goal for longer term writing is to create a list of ideas to write about and to have made a start on some of them by the end of January.

The needs of my business actually will take some time up over that period but the time will be there, should I but choose to use it!

Either I choose to be a writer, or I choose to keep doing what I have done best, which is bullshitting myself and everyone else.  

You can’t write well with a strait jacketed soul.

The Brave one

Being a whistleblower is, on a personal level, very damaging. Telling a group of people more powerful than you to go fuck themselves while you tell everyone else about the secrets they don't want you to isn't something that you are going to get away with.

And yet whistleblowers are critical for good democracy, sometimes they're the only way we will find out what is truly going on. I can't say I'm surprised to find that governments are tracking pretty much everything online, I guess I always assumed they were, irrespective of their denials, but it's nice to get some confirmation of this.

The courage of Edward Snowden is impressive. Here's a man with a great income, a comfortable life, and he chooses to throw that away so that we can find out that our private information is indeed being tracked. No doubt, every little thing he has done in his life will soon be blown up into huge crimes to help divert attention from the information he has provided. Such is the lot of the whistleblower. 

Full credit to http://www.guardian.co.uk/ for having the nerve to push this so hard. It is with some disappointment, though little surprise,  that I see the Australian press very much underplaying the story. They give more emphasis to when Facebook change their website or Google posts an unusual doodle than they have to this. Their big emphasis the last few days has been the on again off again leadership machinations of the Australian Labor Party!

Well, it is news as entertainment and that's just not entertaining enough. I've barely seen a peep bout the topic on my social networking feeds. Nor have any of my friends or family contacted me seeking my views. All signs of a general lack of interest.

We humans aren't always very good at discussing issues that matter.

Book of the Week: Touchback

Touchback is the story of Scott Murphy, a bitter, frustrated, depressed former high school American football star. Crippled in his last game before embarking on a college and professional career, Murphy has struggled in life since, unable to properly provide for his wife and daughters subsequently, haunted by the memories of what his life could have been. Pushed beyond his endurance by his latest failings, he attempts suicide and finds himself back in time, a week before the pivotal game, in full possession of his memories. He must choose whether to change his life at this time, or to accept it.

As a middle aged man with a family, his battles to provide for his family rang very true for me, and I loved the willingness of Don Handfield to write a novel that is willing to go into the heart of  a man's emotions. His presentation of American small town life conveyed humour, pathos and empathy in equal measures. While his final decision was fairly predictable, the journey he took to get there wasn't and the characters we spend time with along the way were consistently engaging. The re-telling of the game was captivating and the ending left me with the tears that I'm sure Don Handfield was hoping would appear.

Shoeless Joe covered some of the same ground and Handfield was equally wise in not attempting to explain how the time travel occurred, as such explanations inevitably tug at one's suspension of disbelief. All the American football knowledge required to read this book is that quarterbacks are the key to the game.

I picked this up for free on Kindle based upon some solid reviews. Recommended.
http://www.amazon.com/Touchback-ebook/dp/B007TXT9XA

Books

Reading has always been a giant passion of mine. It wouldn't be inappropriate to call them the greatest passion of my life (until I met Kristy). Books have provided me with many of the great moments of my life. We have 9 full bookcases in our house and number 10 is on the drawing board.

I was asked once about the last time that I had gone a day without reading a book of any sort. I wasn't able to give a definitive answer, but my guess is that it hasn't happened in my adult life. So it's inevitable that books are going to find their way into this blog.

I'm going to write some posts about my favourite books and books I am reading. I will label the posts Book of the Week. I'm going to start with a book I've only recently read, but that won't always be the case.

Best Australian Test cricket side since 1985

The current Australian side doesn't quite bring the same joy and satisfaction to the spectator as some of its predecessors did, so it seems as good a time as any to take a look back at the great era and pick out the best combined side I can think of.

The entry date is 1985, several of the top players were in by then. More to the point, Lillee, Chappell and Marsh were retired by this point and that marked the change of eras. The team is being chosen for a series against the West Indies best team from the 80s and 90s


Openers: There are so many strong candidates here, David Boon, Mark Taylor, Michael Slater, Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer. Matthew Hayden was clearly the strongest candidate statistically and I chose to go with him, despite some concerns about how he would go against top notch pace bowling, which he didn't have to face that much of during his peak years in the team. Similar concerns exist for Justin Langer, I can't help but feel he wouldn't see out a series v the West Indies because he would take too many shots to the head, that hit in his debut test proved to be prophetic. Mark Taylor was a good opener and played very well against some quality Pakistani attacks but often struggled a little against the West Indies pace bowlers. Michael Slater may have struggled a little to maintain the discipline required against the skills of the West Indies pace quarter. Consequently I settled on David Boon. Boon was a very disciplined, controlled player who was a very capable handler of fast bowling. He didn't have the range of shots that Langer and Slater demonstrated but he played quite well against the West Indies and that tips the balance in his favour.

Number 3: David Boon and Ricky Ponting are the candidates but Ponting is so far ahead of Boon as a batsman that it isn't much of a contest. Ponting walks in. Like Richards, Ponting's attacking game faded a bit towards the end but he was clearly the outstanding Australian batsman of the era. Ponting was a good player of pace too. Consequently Boonie was pushed back up with the openers for consideration.

Number 4: Mark Waugh came up against Allan Border here, and as good as Mark was, Border's technique was better, he was as good a player of spin as Waugh was and he was a superb fielder. Additionally, I needed a captain and chose Border because he would be heavily respected by all the other players, being the most senior and they might not feel totally comfortable if he wasn't the captain. And I think Border, Ponting and Waugh are fairly similar when it comes to conservative captaincy so not much difference there. Had Clarke or Taylor made the team, I think I would have made them deal with being uncomfortable :)

Number 5: Steve Waugh: It's fair to say that I am largely in agreement with Ian Chappell re Steve Waugh. I think the argument that he was a selfish batsman has merit, and it's reflected by the low number of run outs he suffered despite being involved with plenty and it's also reflected in his not outs where he played very conservatively at the end of an innings, even if quick runs were needed Unless, of course, he was within range of a hundred, in which case all sorts of risky and unconventional slogs were pulled out for display. I think his captaincy skills were overrated and that he struggled on those rare days when the team was getting beat up.

BUT, he was a fabulous batsman even so. He had to change his batting approach because his more aggressive, devil may care attitude had led him out of the side. He was a good player of pace bowling despite not always looking comfortable against it, admittedly one wonders what might have happened had the bowlers pitched it up a bit more but they didn't so ... And he once he got on top he put teams away, Mark didn't, Mark got his good 70 or 80 and sometimes a ton and then he departed, content with a job well done.

Number 6: Michael Hussey: Ultimately, Hussey is the man who removed Mark Waugh from this team, if Hussey wasn't so good, I'd have picked Mark at 4 and moved the next 2 men down a slot. Hussey had fabulous technique, superb powers of concentration, he was an agile, reliable fielder, a superb runner between wickets. He seemed equally at home against pace or spin and was very good at pacing his innings. He batted well with the tail and could accelerate an innings when needed. One of the most complete cricketers I have seen.

Number 7: Adam Gilchrist: Very much a philosophical choice here. I consider Ian Healy to be the better keeper and Adam Gilchrist to be the better batsman. I think Gilchrist can make up for the likelihood he might drop more than Healy with his ability to hit hundreds that turn a game around. I wonder if I'm picking him partly because I loved watching him bat, being the purest striker of a cricket ball I have ever seen. Or do I just have it in for Ian Healy because he dropped Brian Lara in Barbados in 99 and missed that stumping off Warne against Pakistan?!!

Number 8: Shane Warne: An obvious choice. As good a spinner as any we've ever had, tremendous competitor, reliable slips catcher, handy lower order batsman. I think I enjoyed watching Warne bowl more than any other Australian I have seen bowl.

Number 9: Jason Gillespie: A very good bowler at his peak, he was quick and accurate. Injury problems were reasonably common but that can't be helped. When available, he was very good. He was also a top notch tailender. His disciplined approach to batting really stood out, he was very willing to keep blocking as long as it was needed. The double century against Bangladesh probably showed him he had a little bit more than good defence to offer as a batsman, as he produced some fine 1st class scores subsequently.

Number 10: Craig McDermott: This was a tough one! Craig also had some injury problems and he was up against Brett Lee for a place in this team. I think Craig was a little more accurate than Brett at his peak and consequently, a little more likely to get wickets. Both were useful lower order players although I would rate Lee higher in this category and I'd give Brett the points for fielding too.

Number 11: Glenn McGrath. Well, who else is going to be picked here?! Like Warne, a very straightforward choice. Incredibly accurate, very fit, rarely injured, very competitive, and became a handy #11 through sheer stubborness. Strong throwing arm and safe hands in the outfield.

What are your thoughts?

I am a writer

A year ago, I claimed that I was organising this blog. It did not happen, I was claiming that I would use it for my teacher librarian course, but that didn't happen either.

What brings me back here then? A desire to spend my time doing more things that are fulfilling, as opposed to things that are fun, but ultimately don't contribute to living a richer, active life. A wish to live up to, even in just a small way, the sentiments expressed so movingly by Neil Gaiman in his New Years Day posts. http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/12/my-new-year-wish.html

This is my little attempt to make something that didn't exist before, to help it find an audience, to share some of who I am. To write more and dream of writing less. Sharon Astyk wrote that " The personal is the political" so I would like to look at my beliefs and ideas and experiences through that personal prism.

Initially I used blogging to upload the many travelogues I wrote on past trips. I wanted those pieces to have a wider audience but I never went out and found them one. I intend to re-visit those pieces and add images to them from my own photos where possible and from other sources where it isn't. 
I propose to finally write some pieces about my honeymoon with the wonderful Kristy. My dear friend Michael is becoming an old man waiting for my take on the great city of London, I intend to show him that it was merely a long delayed piece, rather than a hypothetical.

I want to talk about my goals and what I am doing to achieve them, I want to hear what your goals are, and how you are trying to live out your ideals in the real world.

I want to share with you some of my favourite corners of the Internet and what makes them work for me, and I want to hear what sites have helped shape and guide you.

I want to become a small part of the blogging community here and have an online presence where we can share a little of who we are, I spent many years as a passionate member of the Internet Chess Club, and I truly miss that online community that once existed there.

What sort of topics can I envision being discussed here? I am a husband, a father, a teacher, a secular humanist, a reader, a lover of learning, a hypocritical environmentalist, so I expect many of my posts will revolve around those themes.

At this stage though, I don't want to limit myself , I would rather let some of the themes of the blog develop over time. I'm not writing this blog to make my fortune or to become famous. I'm writing it because I want to share my thoughts and experiences with others. I want to be an active writer, not an imaginary one. I want to write with energy and passion and focus, and I want to write regularly instead of sporadically. To realise that I set up this blog over 5 years ago and that I have simply let it drift is to be reminded of how much time I have frittered away in my life. I am 42 now and past the halfway stage of my life. I wish to do more fulfilling things with the time that remains for me, for I have realised that it isn't the experiences we have that we ultimately regret. Rather, we regret the things we do not do.

So, here I am, making a step forward in my life, along a path that has called to me for so long. I took the road more travelled by, and only now have I made my way to another crossroad. From this day forth, when people ask me what I do, I will add one phrase.

I am a writer.

Another year over

Last February, I had signed up to attempt a teacher librarian course. That did not last, and it didn't last because I had no passion for it. This year, I am trying to start my own tutoring business. I believe I have a greater passion for that, which wouldn't be too difficult I grant you!

So, another attempt to turn wentreport.com into a regular blog that garners some occassional readers.

I make no promises to regularly update at this stage. I do promise to write about things I have a passion for. I promise to write with as much energy and vigour as I can. This is a blog where I would like to share my views and opinions about many topics. I would like those views to prompt reasoned, critical, thoughtful, respectful discussion. The discussion area is not run democratically. Trolls will be head butted off the bridge and sent down the river, never to be seen again.