THE HARDER THEY FALL

Feb 05, 2014

Pre-katrina from the net

Their thuggish behaviour continued; even across time, across countries, reaching out to rob him even when he thought he was finally rid of them. Thuggish, stupid, nasty, belligerent, caught in their own lies and born bullies, they were born nasty and would die nasty. He was the target because they thought he was vulnerable, alone, disenfranchised. Out of job and out of mind. A forlorn waif of what had once been a person. But things weren't always as they seemed. And even if they were, every act they took against him exposed themselves. And so he let it fly. "Sometimes you have to lose to win," he said; and here it was, all over again. These distant songs when all he wanted to do was sing again. They were bullies. It was in their nature. And if there was one thing on Earth he did not respond well to, it was being bullied. But he kept his mind, kept his silence, let them act as they will. Turn the other cheek, said Christ, but it had taken him a long time to learn.

He was incensed by injustice and incensed by the passing of time. He caught fragments of old things and fragments of new. They had finally moved away, or quietened down, because no one came out smelling like roses, least of all him, and perhaps they had finally done their job, and pulled the pursuers out of the queue. He didn't know. He wasn't privy to everything, just the stray voice in the wind, barely distinguishable from the radios and televisions which sometimes played in the otherwise quiet houses all around. The howling, the haunting, had finally finished, and perhaps it was true, he was safe now. He didn't feel safe. He still felt out on a limb, like someone acting out a life that wasn't even his.

But perhaps all that was simiply the result of prolonged surveillance; of a ridiculously absurd series of events over nothing but idiot rent boys and their cohorts, corrupt cops. Perhaps there wasn't any use complaining that another liar and thief, this time a British man living in Thailand who did work for the Royal Thai Tourist Police, was claiming to have written a book he had not, to be threatening him in an outrageous manner, threatening to bring his fledgling publishing enterprise down by vexatious claims. Anyone who would do that was lower than low, and yet these were the people they were unleashing on tourists. He didn't care anymore. They had done their best; and succeeded. Here he was in these quiet streets, lost in a lost point of a lost life, scarified, embarrassed. "I'm not myself, I'm not in control of my own life," he would occasionally say, in the few interactions that he had. As if nothing mattered anymore.

Washed up and washed out, he could see the way they were coming for him. He still had nightmares about what had happened; and yet many worse things happened, world events moved on. Prime Ministers came and went. Disasters multiplied. Earlier in the year hundreds of bodies had been washed down the Ganges in floods. Here, minor events, minor scandals made the news. They hadn't, in most cases, been able to identify the bodies. He listened to the ABC News Channel in the car, but even it was predictable. For a while almost every last story had a global warming tinge, as if they had decided they were the last bastion of truth, and were going to fight the war themselves. For carbon credits and carbon tax, as if anything a country as remote and sparesely populated as Australia did was going to make the slightest bit of difference to anything. But the morality was beaten into every text, and he listened as he had always listened, sceptical, quiet, silent in a silent grace.
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THE BIGGER STORY:

Fiorente has won the 2013 Melbourne Cup in a thrilling finish from Red Cadeaux and Mount Athos.

The 2013 edition of the race became a battle of two horses who had been previous runners-up, and the Gai Waterhouse-trained Fiorente, second in last year's Melbourne Cup, showed greater stamina over the final 250 metres to hold out Red Cadeaux, the runner-up to Dunaden in 2011.

It is a famous win for Sydney trainer Waterhouse, the most prominent figure in Australian racing, who had long coveted her first success in the nation's greatest race.

But it is also a personal triumph for jockey Damien Oliver, who was suspended over a betting charge last year, and controversially allowed back to riding in time for this year's spring carnival.

Some punters booed the famous hoop when he came back to scale. One veteran racing scribe said sections of the members at Flemington and the public were venting their feelings towards the jockey, who was banned for betting on a horse in a race in which he was riding another chance.

It is Oliver's third Cup win after success aboard Doriemus in 1995 and Media Puzzle in 2002. The latter was an emotional victory coming in the week his revered brother, also a jockey, died after a track accident.

Fiorente remained a good value favourite all day after a perfect preparation, which included a slogging third in the Cox Plate after a tough run. He finished second as an outsider last year when having his first run for Waterhouse, but thrived under her guidance during a copybook campaign this time in.

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