I feel like the chance to be truly, patriotically Australian is swiftly passing us by. People just don’t care about national identity any more, probably because they associate it with the super-hyper-over-the-top nationalist people and they want the exact opposite.
Um, newsflash…you can love your country openly and not be a jerk about it. I try to get my neighbours interested in Australia day, but they’re all like ‘eh, maybe next year’, and next year never comes.
I even tried blocking out my windows one year with some nifty Australian flag designs…then I had to call in a residential glazier because they weren’t quite as see-through as I’d first thought and I ended up blocking out the sun entirely from my living room. So instead of everyone seeing my patriotism, they all got to see me sheepishly call in the glazier and have my front-facing window taken out, which was even worse. I watched as the flag was taken down in front of everyone, and replace with ordinary glass, and…well, it just wasn’t a good day overall, not for me and certainly not for the great nation of Australia.
Next time I get some custom glass created, I’m definitely going to look into how much you can…look out of it. Alternatively, I could step down and just put a flag up in the window like a normal person. So long as I do it around Australia Day, I don’t think anyone will find it weird.
Speaking of glass and all that, I’m tossing up between having a landscaping job done in the back garden that’ll make it resemble a kangaroo + emu combo from above, or bowing to the wife’s wishes and getting some quality Melbourne glass balustrades.
I do want the landscaping, but maybe it’s time to admit that I’m going overboard. Australia is in my soul…so maybe it doesn’t need to be in the garden as well. And certainly not the window.
-Ned