Indelible Adventures

Australian Rules football is a religion in most of the states of Australia except for perhaps New South Wales & Queensland where rugby still rules the roost so to speak.   Aussie Rules has become a lot more popular across all of Australia especially with professional teams located in each of the state capital cities - its a truly national sport these days. Fraser Street - Clunes (main street) - yes, its straight out of the 1850's... As a kid growing up playing football in small town Australia during the 1960’s and 70’s it was 100% football (“footie” as its lovingly called - even today) all the time.  Back then footie was everything…and for the large part still is.  If you didn’t play you were considered weird and often shunned by your mates (peers group for those not in Australia!).   To say it was a bit of a pressure cooker for a kid from a less than desirable family in a small town was an understatement.  Playing footie was th...

Over the years you tend to develop a lot of scars, both physically as well as emotionally.  I guess in both situations the scars are noticeable, other times not so much.  My most noticeable physical scar is on the front of my neck.  I hadn’t thought about it in some time, but for some reason I noticed the scar this past week.  It’s about the size of 25-cent piece (a “quarter” in the US & Canada, in Australia about the size of a 10 cent piece, and a one Euro coin in Europe).  It’s located at the base of my neck where the collarbone meets the mid line of my chest and neck. I remembered back to when I first noticed the mole; it would have been in the late 1980’s.  I was surprised that there was this rather large and discolored mole staring back at me in the mirror, where I could have sworn had not existed the day before…it was as if it just appeared overnight….perhaps it did and I hadn’t noticed.  Why hadn’t I noticed it bef...

Our weekends during the winter are mostly spent at a ski village and resort about two and three quarter hours south, just across the border in Western New York (USA) at a little Norman Rockwell -esq type town called Ellicottville .  Ellicottville at its finest in the winter - a small, intimate and family oriented ski resort located just 2:45 from Toronto For the past three winters we rented a condo in Ellicottville so the kids could participate in the Screaming Eagles ski program.  Each year their confidence and speed surpassed their prior year accomplishments, in fact last year Zach was much faster on ski’s that either me or my ex.    We’d all start at the top and he’d basically barrel down the mountain without turning and be standing waiting for us after each run…   I know he was proud of his new found speed and confidence on ski’s and secretly so was I. As I write this week’s blog I’m sitting in the Starbucks in my old n...

Prologue: Who would have thought that a year on and I’d still be writing my weekly blog?   Clearly not me, to be honest I thought that I would have run out of stories by about last April yet here I am still writing merrily away….clearly no accounting for my readers tastes ☺ Indelible Adventures blog statistics....who knew that a year on it would have been so well subscribed?? Seriously though my weekly writing has definitely helped me think about life a little more deeply and encouraged me to be more observant in my day-to-day interactions with Zach and Sami not to mention the broader world around me.  It’s also helped me connect more with my past – stories from my mum and dad including the related stories passed down about my grandfather were particularly well read and commented on.      Just the fact that so many of you are still interested in reading my blog every week is really encouraging.  The other thing that blows me away is the breadth o...