here we go loop de loop



It must all begin somewhere.

And end I guess, but I can’t write about that.

Somewhere. That could be the whole “when a sperm met an egg” (in Kileleshwa I think but … let’s skip that …*Shudder*).

I think it better start a couple of decades later. Finishing a degree, wondering what would come next, setting of with a vague dream of riding a Gold Wing  around Australia, jackarooing, finding love, whatever.

Some new-found faith dimensions, too, but they were kind of parallel.

It never happened.

I knew how to ride motorbikes, horses, even how to grub thistles, but bugger-all else. Apart from a degree-worth of some sort of knowledge of literature and religious studies.

But I was incapable of flogging myself off for job interviews. Selling family photos door to door up the West Coast to Marble Bar? That one fell through. Attaching the felt to pool tables? That did too.

Attaching press stud buttons to women’s tennis skirts. That one didn’t last long, not least because I lost the boss’s girlfriend’s watch. Don’t ask.

Editing advertising features for a national church newspaper? Yeah, foundered in that one, too.

After being fired from a couple of jobs in Melbourne I stumbled into priestifying and blundered along there for 40 years.

I still haven’t reached Marble Bar, and won’t on this gig.

Or maybe I will. It’s only a 440 km deviation.

Because, 15,525 days later, I’m off to do The Loop. I fly out of Dunedin (where I wasn’t, back then), heading off for a quick jaunt around New Zealand’s Big, Red, Western Isle. Ahitereiria, Australia, here I come.

Nets and Webs and Blogs didn’t exist on December 31st, 1982. Not in today’s form.  So maybe that’s why it was all delayed?

Join me for The Loop. I leave home this afternoon.




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