I’ve had one of those days where I am very glad I can see the humour of the human condition. We live a brisk walk from the pits in Albert Park, so the Australian Grand Prix has been going on all around us, to the manic sound of fast cars and the beat of distant helicopters.

The event has encouraged a pitiful slew of young men in hotted up cars, who are imitating the professionals by sitting at traffic lights and burping the accelerator as women go past. Or creating a Thunder from Dumbland moment on the road by the beach, by doing donuts and wheelies as children, dogs and lovers wait for them to leave.

Next door we have a warren of flats which are a cross between a high school and a chook farm. They have been reverberating to the musical habits of some unknown person who just adores Skyhooks. The sound leaks down our drive, and across our respectable block, to irritate the lesbians who live down the back.

Tonight, the locals with somewhere else to go have fled – and we would have too, if both the somewhere elses were not stinking hot. The streets are full of wandering men with a skinfull, and women teetering along on unaccustomed high heels, some with surprisingly bandy legs.

It is customary at this point to rail about “boys and their toys” and get all purse-lipped about yobbos and petrol heads. But right now, there is an enthusiastic crowd of young lesbians in the drive bouncing up and down rhythmically shouting “More beer! More beer.”

It was Susies’ birthday so I wokked up some prawns and scallops. I also decided to make a risotto, using the packet in the cupboard. It turned out to be full of moths, which presumably were maggots very recently, so I bought another packet. Would I leave the leftovers to risk the same fate? No, I thought, I will cook the lot and freeze the leftovers.

Now the kitchen is dominated by a really really full stockpot with a bolus of glug in it which looks like The Rice Pudding that Ate Scunthorpe.

I’ve pinched two photos of the Albert Park Grand Prix in 1956, held during the Olympic Games, from page ten of an excellent collection of Australian racing history photos.

This is a Ferrari, driven by Peter Whitehead. I think the group around the car is the crew, while the pits look the same but with some signage and a petrol tanker.

This shows the cars lined up at the start.

This homely gathering is occurring just at the point when a group of men would literally risk their lives. There was a serious chance that a driver in this photograph could get killed, although Albert Park saw no fatalities, despite the trees lining the track, the lack of runoffs, and the casual groups of unprotected spectators lounging at the corners. As Jackie Stewart said on the radio a few days ago, the chances of surviving five years as a Grand Prix driver in the 60’s was one in three.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 12:41 am and is filed under domestic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.