cold snap

Nice to see the entirely reasonable personal opinion of the state's Deputy Chief Health Officer caused so much fake affront to the Liberals, etc yesterday, if only because, while it was COVID19 related at least it had a little bit of the essence of the old battles of (as many commenters on the article in the Age pointed out) the right seeing freedom of speech as stunningly important unless it is something they don't agree with.

I have gone from knowing nothing at all about AVD or even being aware of her existence to feeling positive about everything I know about her. 

The 200th anniversary of Cook's visit was of course when I was 5, I and my cohort might have been encouraged (I had just started primary school) to engage with the legend but I don't remember that, though I do remember the ephemera of the 1970 visit hanging around for a while, most significantly when we moved to Hawthorn in 1973 there was a translucent Captain Cook sticker on a back window. I also remember the following piece of folklore, which by the way in my child's mind I always imagined happening in Captain Cook's Cottage:

Captain Cook done some poop

Behind the kitchen door

He told his mum to lick his bum

Then he done some more.

So much to unpack, but of course although the immediate assumption of the listener might be that his mum (Grace, 1702-1765) did lick her son's bum, although in fact the story does not make a firm statement on that one way or the other. It might have been a kind of 'kiss my ass' kind of pronouncement. 'Lick my bum, mother, I'm going to sea. I have one more thing to attend to first.'  

Since writing the above I have found out something absolutely perfect about Cook's mother, who of course I had no knowledge of whatsoever until I looked him up on wikipedia and still don't really have any knowledge of, of course, but I now know, and so shall you at the end of this sentence, that her maiden name was Pace. Grace Pace. Fucking hell, you could make a hell of a feminist (or otherwise) epic of the obvious pun from that name. I love that so much.