Starring Barbara Ferris as Sally

I don't read novels. I haven't read a novel right through for about 6 years. I can't judge other peoples intent. I can't judge what's in someone’s heart when they create a world. I can't judge their intent in writing. I only read non-fiction books. Books I can learn something from. I've thus spent too much money on terrible autobiographies - sports men and women talking about pranks and hi-jinks...but then every so often, I find a story that means something relevant to my life in one of those books. I got this from a philosophy book, or one of those subpar Freakonomics clones, but I always remember it...actually, I read it on Harry O'Briens Twitter feed...I hope that a footballer told me this story doesn't dilute it too much or make it silly stuff...

It started with a tree. It wasn't much of a tree, probably a spruce; maybe it was a bush and as it grew in the head its foliage blocked the Israeli security cameras on the Israeli-Lebanese border near Addaiseh. The Israelis decided to use a crane to rip it out. But the problem was no-one was sure where the Israeli-Lebanese border is. It started a war that tree. Once the cranes arm went into a disputed part of the territory, shots were fired, people died, lives were ruined, all because of a tree...a blood soaked tree...

The point this book made was that the tree was an excuse. Something for people to fight about. Hurt each other over. If it wasn't a tree, it would have been something else. A dog, a child, a kiss...anything really. If a fight is brewing, something minor will spark it off, and then, every little thing that you've held back for years, every unspoken sleight, it's all on the table...and there you are, your life is changed...

It's never about the tree...


Its late afternoon in a suburban Tasmanian living room. Outside her window a neighbourhood dog is pawing aimlessly at a rose bush. Prick your ears just right and you can hear a neighbourhood radio playing a popular music tune loudly. Kids run unsupervised hither and tither from one house to the next in a frenzied ball of pent up energy. He had been inside her house all day, trying to write anything that came to mind, just trying to fulfil this writing challenge assigned to him, but he hadn't got any further than typing the assigned phrase into his laptop. She had been bored all day - she knew every time he tried to write he would get frustrated and annoyed. She didn't really like what he wrote anyway - she liked escapism, she liked to stare out of the window and dream. She had never shared her dreams with him - she felt he would be intellectually snobbish about them, since they were simple things like her kids being free of violence, so she kept them bottled up. Sometimes she would drop in little hints and conversational titbits late at night when they both couldn't sleep. She wondered if he was listening. He wondered why she was talking...

Now they were arguing. Within hours, they'll have broken up. Within hours, they won't have a clue what they ever saw in each other. Within hours, all that ever was, all that ever has been, will be all gone...every little sleight, stretching back to when he didn't listen to her properly at Wendy's on their first casual date. It's all coming out...

They think it's about the kid. It's not. It's not about the kid...

It's nothing to do with the kid...

It's never about the tree...

When I was younger, I used to be terrified of dying. All my collections would be finished as quickly as possible lest I die one football card short of completing my collection. I had a revelation during a thunder storm one night that if I died, I had accomplished nothing - I was only 14, but I couldn't sleep all night. I imagined someone picking over my Sports Illustrated magazine, re-attaching the mug handle to my coffee mug because I never got the time to do it...I hated that. I used to stare into my family cupboard and imagine all the flotsam and jetsam of my life pored over, all the things I had never done discussed as sad music played for sad people. It was terrifying...all those things that kept you going for today, that never got finished when there was no tomorrow...

It came to pass my fears. My cousin died of a heart attack 3 weeks short of his 30th birthday - the invitations to his party were still on his table. My uncle died in a pub, mid discussion about why Celtic always get robbed by referees. His pint of beer was a mouthful short of being finished. My gran died next to a little soccer figurine that I bought her. The leg had come off, and next to where she died, was the glue she was going to use to fix it. All signs. All moments in life unfinished. All things no one ever got around to before the end. I'm so conscious of time...I'm so conscious that there will be an end point to my life...I'm so aware since I moved from Scotland to Penguin to Scotland to Burnie to Scotland to Hobart nothing is permanent. I walk around shopping malls berating myself for wasting time just picking up computer games and reading the labels to kill my lunch break...I should be doing something...

And now - this. This empty house, only filled with the sound of television, and there it is - her half finished Diet Coke in my fridge. She's not dead, but our relationship is. Just a little unfinished memento of life’s ebb and flow. In her house, she might find a photo, or a memento - our ticket to that film, one of my abandoned socks. She doesn't think like I do - she's a practical thinker...she'll scoop them up, throw them away...

The unfinished parts of my life, though, will always kill me...