Melbourne. Footy.

I do like to think of myself as being tremendously cosmopolitan and sophisticated (Ivy League educated, I play piano, I know modernism from post-modernism, I've been to the Opera in Kiev and so on) but like anyone who spent formative years in Melbourne I have a strong attachment to AFL football - more so now that I've lived away for so long.

I took my sons to the MCG to watch a match. (Pies v Saints, if you must know. I was there as a neutral observer. I can't go for the Pies, and the thing that vaguely troubles me about St Kilda - my second son's team - is that nobody hates them. What's the point in that?) It was a great footy day in Melbourne. Cold, drizzly, grey. Walking from Richmond Station up to the MCG you start to feel like Melbourne's reached out and embraced you, clutching you to its bosom. There's nothing quite like that feeling of being part of a large happy crowd.

I was musing at one point about how people say that Hawthorn and Essendon dominated the 1980s. That's ridiculous. Carlton won 3 premierships in the 1980, so Essendon and Hawthorn can't both have won more. And ultimately, premierships are the only thing that matters.