Things Go Better with cOKe?

I have to say that my weekend in Byron Bay for the Writers Festival certainly proved bizarrely synchronistic on many levels.
The Shamanic Artists of Byron Bay: The Medicine of Karuah and Sean O'Shea
After I had spent Thursday afternoon relaxing on the on the beach at Byron Bay staring out to sea while listening to some great busking and then going for a walk through Byron to buy some books and get something to eat, I get back to my motel room and switch on the TV to see the news that a massive cocaine bust happened the day before just out beyond the horizon I was staring at on Thursday afternoon.

"Two men were charged after Border Force and defence officers tasked with patrolling the coast from the air spotted the men's vessel heading towards the mainland on Wednesday.
When authorities sent a boat to intercept it, it is alleged the pair dumped their drug haul overboard and tried to flee but were caught about 70 kilometres off Byron Bay.
The pair were charged with possessing a commercial quantity of illegal drugs, after authorities fished parcels of cocaine out of the sea."

Then I see in the news that weekend that Ray Hadley's police officer son was busted for trying to buy cocaine while off duty.
Emotional Ray Hadley breaks down over son’s drug arrest
“I feel particularly inadequate as a father and as a spokesman for RUOK Day [a day about raising awareness about mental health], when in fact, my own son is not okay.”

There is a personal irony for both Ray and me with RUOK Day falling on September 13th this year.

For me (and yes, I'm OK before you ask) the 13th of September is exactly the day my father (who was a Yellow Cab driver by the way ... just take a look at the RUOK Day colours if you still don't get that one) passed away on two years ago.
For Ray Hadley his son will appear at court on September 12th (the day before RUOK Day). 
Oh, and while on the subject of RUOK Day and cab drivers, here's a story that may be relevant considering the RUOK Day colours -
Why taxi licence holders are killing themselves

You might want to ask a cabbie if they are OK on September 13th this year and just how they feel about UBER?

And the irony just keeps flowing as you can buy Byron Bay cookies at the RUOK Day website.
Let's hope there are no secret illegal ingredients floating around in those cookies;-) 

Black SynchroiciTEA?

RUOK and how's the tea?

Bernard Fanning and Tim Rogers
at the BWF Sunday

I bought a vinyl copy of Bernard Fanning's album 'Tea and Sympathy' on the Sunday of the Byron Writers Festival and was lucky enough to get him to sign it for me.
The only song I don't really like on the album is 'Wish You Well', but when I sing "wish you hell" instead of "wish you well" it works for me while thinking of my divorce;-)

Reading Matt Haig's great little book today (and I don't suffer from depression by the way ... touch wood) he writes about cocaine and Freud's use of it in his own depression - 
"A lot of Freud's work was based on his analysis of his own depression, and what he believed to be the solution.
Cocaine was what worked for him, but then - after dishing it out to other sufferers - he started to realise it could be a tad additive."

I've personally never used cocaine in my life and don't intend to either, as I have suffered from very bad nose bleeds when growing up and I think cocaine would bring them back with a vengeance, plus I would fear getting addicted to it if I started snorting that stuff.
I'm OK without COKE in my life thanks Dr. Freud, so I think you know where you can shove that stuff:-)
And on another personal sync, the anniversary of Freud's death happens to fall on my birthday, which is why my personal hero among shrinks is Jung:-)

"Both Gary and Michael Houston — who would travel with their sister and serve as bodyguards — admit to their own evildoing in facilitating and participating in their sister’s drug use.

“If anything was gonna be done, I was gonna be the one to show it to her,” says Michael in the film.

But it was a friend of the brothers, Keith Kelly, who admits that he was the one who first gave Houston drugs — a bag of marijuana and a snort of cocaine — on her 16th birthday.

Certainly, the film clears up any lingering misconception that it was Houston’s ex-husband, Bobby Brown, who exposed her to drugs.

Says Macdonald: “There’s an amusing but also kind of tragic moment where her brother Michael says, ‘We used to do rings around Bobby.

He was not able to keep up with us.

We lapped him in drug-taking.

He’s a lightweight.’ 

That kind of vindicates Bobby.”"

It's almost time to put on my coca ... I mean budgy smuggler's and hit the Byron Bay surf, because things go better with salt water;-)

Who knows, I might even find my old wedding ring that I threw from Cape Byron years ago when I got divorced ... and then throw it out into deeper water maybe?-)

My wedding ring with the date of the
wedding day inscribed inside - 19/11/88

Remember, Remember the 19th of November ... Some Dates Are Made Not to Be Forgot?

From Matt Haig's book 'Reasons to Stay Alive',
ironically enough

Tea and sympathy (not the album) doesn't interest me anyway, as I don't really like tea that much being a coffee drinker.
And the stronger the coffee the better.

Who needs COKE when there is coffee to consume?

Mandy Nolan, Bernard Fanning and
Tim Rogers at the 2018 BWF 

Bernard Fanning looking for signs at the BWF? 

Who in this world really is OK anyway?
And if so, for how long?
You might want to ask yourself that one come RUOK Day?-)

And happy 49th birthday for tomorrow Bernard and thanks for hanging around to sign your album for me, it's a good one.

I hope your birthday is more than OK, too.
Cuttlefish are the Rockstar Aliens of the Sea?