Project 289 - day 39 (Saturday 25 April, 2009) : ANZAC DAY...Lest We Forget

I have to admit something from the get-go..... I did not get up for the dawn service.

To be honest, though I value what the nation's diggers have done for me, and all Australians, I have never got up for a dawn service, not even when I lived less than 100m from the war memorial in Miranda (yes, I know, that is verging on the scandalous!). I have often watched the march on the TV and at times become quite teary when you realise what these men and women went through to guarantee freedom for this country, but I have never gotten up to honour them. I must rectify that next year. Possibly...

What I did do was sleep in with the bf, and awoke to a lovely Autumn day that was eerily quiet. No one was really up and about, and those that were, were far away at pubs and clubs, honouring their fallen mates, catching up with old cobbers (the old Aussie word for friend that my beautiful Granpa used all the time) and reliving the glory days of yore. 

I was content to hold my man tight, have a lazy breakfast of crumpets and honey, and watch the march on TV (see the photos below and above), grateful that I live in a country that allows me the freedom to be so indolent without threat or danger to my own well being or those I love. Of course the anti-capitalist cynic might also note that the diggers' sacrifice also made it possible for citizens of a modern wealthy democracy to go shopping and so we did, snapping up a front loader for the bf's new apartment, and then a new LACK bookcase for me at IKEA (see tomorrow's saga for the fun that I had putting that fire engine red baby together!! God bless IKEA's inability to formulate easy to read instructions). 

Our freedom to purchase on credit thus exercised, we finished the day with dinner at a.... wait for it.... Turkish restaurant (see the photos below)! It seemed somewhat poetic, and strangely perverse all at once, and a slightly left of centre choice in keeping with the contradictions inherent in anything I do.... and no, we didn't finish up with dessert at a Japanese sushi restaurant to complete the odd culinary commemoration.

One thing that struck me as a odd, and tickled my funny bone all at once, was that the diggers fought and died to preserve Australia's way of life, which last time I checked included an almost religious devotion to public holidays. But what does our incompetent state government do? They refuse to gazette Monday as a public holiday! The diggers would have been appalled!!