Hawthorn had its first home game of the 2024 season on Saturday. I had looked forward to it all week, in an otherwise yet another groundhog week. The Blackburn line was however, infected with that plague known as bus replacements so Tress and I did the usual thing and drove to Syndal station to catch the GW line into Richmond.
It was a horrible performance by the Hawks. Insipid. I felt like brewing a whole batch of coffee to offer to the new team, particularly the midfield. Actually the defence was very ordinary too. Just a very uninspiring and frustrating performance. It was a balmy day and I only had a thin t-shirt and a rain jacket of sorts (it had been drizzling earlier in the day) but at the G, the notorious draft/wind was cold and after each quarter Tress and I ducked out of the grounds to catch some sun to warm up. I wished the players caught some sun too, as the damped, cold and hopeless performance needed much boosting. In the end, Melbourne (Dees) beat us by well over 50 points and we went home subdued, with only being with the little fellow again the source of happiness…
The night before, Tress and I went to the Yaring Street Food joint in Mitcham for a bit of very good Thai. It had been a while since we were there and I wondered why, as the food is always good and the people there are always warm and friendly. Maybe it’s the “hole-in-the-wall” nature, and how small the place is, which meant if we lingered, it felt like we were taking up space to prevent a better table turnover. With just Tress and I there however, that was ok and we promptly left after our meal.
Earlier on Saturday, before that damp squib of a game, we got a tradie in to have a look at our deck gate/door, as well as some other works – the edge lines along the lawns needed replacement/fixing and the other door on the eastern side needed fixing too. Later, after the very friendly tradie had a look and took some picture to go away to provide an estimate, I took our long armed edge trimmer to a mower service shop on Springvale Road. I had damaged it the last time I worked on the hedges and bent the blade. The mower shop guy said they couldn’t do it and suggested I took it back to Bunnings to see if they could fix it. So I drove to Bunnings on Whitehorse Road but they couldn’t fix it either, so chances are that trimmer will now have to be binned. I’m sad. It has been a great 4-5 years but it’s still very newish so it hurts… 🙂 😦
On Sunday, David William spoke on John 13. It was about contrasting love as our world knows it today (“it’s about me”) and as Jesus showed in that passage (“it’s about selfless sacrifice”). I scribbled in my Supernote note taker:
“True Love – Sacrifices”
“False Love – Self First”
This morning, as I did my run and listened to Tim Keller in a podcast, he dived into describing how immense was Jesus’ love for us. It brought up in my mind, recent images of God’s love that is akin to a man’s love for his bride. It made me think about how better to love. That podcast also alluded to forgiveness and it also made me think about what Tress and I said about that over the weekend, as we thought about getting Jason and Mel together for dinner with A Hooi and U Marloney. We sometimes felt Jason appears to be uncomfortable to be amongsts folks from ICC/Gateway. He still is, probably. Forgiveness is hard. It however, can be very liberating. I hope that happens for Jason soon.
Ante 