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.
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 read a a joke today. It is of no consequence what it was other than that it triggered a memory for me.
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 100 a day man; drank a bottle of whiskey a day man, a carafe of wine; 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."
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 masses could overwhelm the power of common sense and responsibility. 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! ". 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 that once matched his heart. 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 joke or extol one of his profound conservative views. Fiercely Liberal 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.
Uncle Bob used to say that Australians are happy people. When they re 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.
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