Someone's playin' a horn, must mean somethin'...

How often do normal people blog? Am I doing it too much?

Points to ponder. I'm enjoying writing on it this often, cos I wanna write more in general and at least this is writing, so maybe it's helping me develop a good habit.

Anyway, so I was at the dawn service this morning with Kat (my gf) and I thought to myself 'I must go and write about this immediately upon returing to my place of residence'. That's my inner register, it's quite proper.

So then, here I am, at 7:30 on Sunday, the first time that I've been up voluntarily this early on a Sunday for a very, very long time. We set the alarm for ten to 6, which really wasn't early enough, as we ended up being just a tad late, arriving as the last post was playing. We were walking at a brisk pace along the newly paved footpath (which I do not like but that's not appropriate for now) and as we got closer, the notes ghosted towards us and gave me goosebumps which made my new tattoo hurt. Kat said in her typical cute blurty manner:

'What's that?' I giggled and told her it was the last post, a very significant piece of music when it comes to anything military in Australia, really. She replied:

'well, someone's playin' a horn, must mean somethin'.

'It's a bugle, but yeah, it does.'

The beach is always a cool place for a dawn service. I once attended a dawn service in East Timor on the beach, it was a very cool thing and I can remember that I cried a lil bit.

Quick sideline: I like to notice things when I do stuff, so I can remember events later in my life. I've forgotten so many things that I've done or have happened to me (like more details about the service in Timor) and I want that to end, so I look around and notice shit. Sometimes it's boring, sometimes not.

So, it was at the beach, at the clock tower thing in Sema4 (that's how the hip locals write it) and they had a catafalque party of Army guys and also a lil squad of something else, I'm ashamed to say I don't know who they were. They were older guys in uniforms that reminded me of a marching band with white helmet-hat things on. They were not a marching band as they carried rifles, not instruments. They were very cool and I enjoyed when they fired the aforementioned rifles.

Lots of prople were there, and this made me really happy and proud. I might be a tattooed, dreadlocked, riff-raff looking punk derby playing loud music loving karate dancing weirdo, but nobody can ever, ever fault my love for my country and my respect for the men and women who gave their lives for others' freedom. There was a vast array of persons there, from babies to oldies, I saw a guy with a rat's tail and a tattoo on the back of his hand! I thought it might be a small turn out cos it's a small place, but the lil square was full and people were spilling onto the road and even across it. I felt very proud of being Australian and free. I looked up at the flag which was appropriately snapping in the crisp breeze and felt a smile creep across my face. A few entrepreneurial seagulls cruised the crowd presumably thinking 'wtf? a crowd this big and nobody has chips?'

For the first time ever, they said the lord's prayer and I didn't pray. This felt weird and almost wrong, but I guess converting to anything, even atheism is hard. I realised that I didn't need to, I just used that time to remember people I never knew (hard) to make sure their lives weren't lost in vain.

Although we couldn't hear or see very well, when the service ended, being at the back of the crowd served us well, cos we were able to get to the first open café before most people and order our breakfast, which turned out to be shit.

'bacon on the side please' evidently means put it in the middle of the plate so poor vego Kat can pick around it and 'extra crispy bacon please' is code for ' pop it on the grill for minus one second and serve cold'.

In spite of the shitty breaky, the morning was a definite success and I was proud as punch of Kat for getting up with me and going, even if she didn't know what a bugle was.

...'horn', cute.

Tx

P.S. Here is my nephew just before his first mission. Happy to serve, evidently.