Without a thought, any prompting, my younger sister some years ago labelled me a rebel. When I was thinking about writing this and asked her why, she immediately jumped to an incident at the Sydney Olympic Games and not surprisingly, I straight away knew what she was talking about.
A group of us including my sister, were showing our tickets to gain access to the equestrian cross country competition at Horseley Park. But I had recently read something which said that if you retained a pristine Olympic Games ticket, it would be worth quite a lot in the years to come. In retrospect too much reading can be a bad thing.
So I was protesting to the ticket collector, that as he had let me in, I should be able to retain the ticket. He was equally adamant that he needed to have at least the stub to prove how many people were at the event. I suppose that was the logic of it anyway.
We argued for probably a minute and inevitably I suppose, I gave him the ticket stub, thus spoiling my pristine and potentially valuable piece of Olympic memorabilia.
But what really convinced me to give it up, was peer group pressure from my friends, who were getting quite impatient with me for holding them up in their quest for a good observation spot for the upcoming competition. I would have been there for quite a while if I had been on my own though. Probably wouldn’t have kept the ticket however.
Later my sister said to me somewhat crossly, “I think it’s because of your Irish blood”. But I’m not sure that’s true or particularly true, because she has the same Irish blood and it is no nearer than three generations back; lots of dilution with the much less rebellious English, Scots and Welsh since.
More recently I was accosted by an angry police woman in Swanston Street for walking across the intersection when the sign said not to. She was quite agitated because I had not at first heard her shouting at me (no hearing aids in) and then because I indicated that she was making a mountain out of a bit of pigeon poop.
“Didn’t you see there was no little green man?” she said crossly and I thought quite condescendingly. She went on and on to the extent that I eventually told her to "f... off". Not surprisingly that didn’t go down well but she never charged me as she had threatened to.
After writing this I have to admit I am a bit of a rebel; I still cross busy streets against the lights and tram tracks between platform stops for example.
I got booked two weeks ago for parking my car inside a badly marked, by itself parking bay, up against the railings at the Benalla library, because there was nowhere else to park. I emerged from the library just as the parking inspector was writing the ticket. But I think she would have let me off if she hadn’t started writing.
I appealed to the council and thankfully they did let me off the $74 fine. I do at least now park elsewhere if the car spaces outside the library are full. A rebel in partial retreat perhaps.
David Palmer
July 2017
A group of us including my sister, were showing our tickets to gain access to the equestrian cross country competition at Horseley Park. But I had recently read something which said that if you retained a pristine Olympic Games ticket, it would be worth quite a lot in the years to come. In retrospect too much reading can be a bad thing.
So I was protesting to the ticket collector, that as he had let me in, I should be able to retain the ticket. He was equally adamant that he needed to have at least the stub to prove how many people were at the event. I suppose that was the logic of it anyway.
We argued for probably a minute and inevitably I suppose, I gave him the ticket stub, thus spoiling my pristine and potentially valuable piece of Olympic memorabilia.
But what really convinced me to give it up, was peer group pressure from my friends, who were getting quite impatient with me for holding them up in their quest for a good observation spot for the upcoming competition. I would have been there for quite a while if I had been on my own though. Probably wouldn’t have kept the ticket however.
Later my sister said to me somewhat crossly, “I think it’s because of your Irish blood”. But I’m not sure that’s true or particularly true, because she has the same Irish blood and it is no nearer than three generations back; lots of dilution with the much less rebellious English, Scots and Welsh since.
More recently I was accosted by an angry police woman in Swanston Street for walking across the intersection when the sign said not to. She was quite agitated because I had not at first heard her shouting at me (no hearing aids in) and then because I indicated that she was making a mountain out of a bit of pigeon poop.
“Didn’t you see there was no little green man?” she said crossly and I thought quite condescendingly. She went on and on to the extent that I eventually told her to "f... off". Not surprisingly that didn’t go down well but she never charged me as she had threatened to.
After writing this I have to admit I am a bit of a rebel; I still cross busy streets against the lights and tram tracks between platform stops for example.
I got booked two weeks ago for parking my car inside a badly marked, by itself parking bay, up against the railings at the Benalla library, because there was nowhere else to park. I emerged from the library just as the parking inspector was writing the ticket. But I think she would have let me off if she hadn’t started writing.
I appealed to the council and thankfully they did let me off the $74 fine. I do at least now park elsewhere if the car spaces outside the library are full. A rebel in partial retreat perhaps.
David Palmer
July 2017
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