Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, Wednesday, May 8, 2002.


WHEN BLOOD TURNS TO ICE


IN A city that has no weather to speak of - we have a climate while Melbourne has all the weather - the change in Adelaide's seasons can be a subtle and ill-defined thing. At this latitude, we are supposed to have four seasons but the transition from one to the next is not clear. Yes, rain occasionally falls in winter and the summers are hot and dry - but between those two extremes it can be hard to tell where one ends and another begins. To try to draw a distinction, I have adopted a couple of personal rules of thumb. Les Burdett is one. Summer never starts officially for me until I hear Les, the Adelaide Oval manager, on the radio being interviewed about the state of the Test wicket. Les is said to prepare the best wickets in the country, possibly in the world, and he once went to New York to prepare a private pitch. So when I hear Les saying yet again, as he does every year, that "it's the attention to detail, mate'' that makes his wickets so good, I know everything is as it should be, the cricket gods are smiling and summer can proceed. At the other extreme, Anzac Day always marks the first serious rainfall, when I begin to think about lighting an open fire if I had one. Last Anzac Day, at an ouzo gathering of Greek friends waiting for the first rain, Zuma John said winter for him meant the first snowfall in the Alps and he told us about the first time he went skiing at Mt Buller. Without going to the bother of having a ski lesson first, he caught a lift up the mountain and by the time he reached the top, he was so hot and sweaty he threw off the snow jacket, the windcheater and the skivvy. He did what? Perhaps it was the high altitude combined with the physical exertion but the next thing, having no idea how to turn or stop, off he slid down the hill. Topless. The trouble was the sun had moved to the other side of the mountain by then and the snow was quickly becoming icy. Too late, Zuma John was rapidly gathering awesome speed, straight as a rocket, screaming at people to get out of his damned way until finally, thank God, the slope began to level off. Then he spotted the lake dead ahead. Panicking, he flopped onto his back to get some braking traction and the ice crystals ripped his skin to shreds. Wooosh, smack into the water, grateful to find it was quite shallow and he was not going to drown. Freezing, bleeding and half-naked, standing there knee-deep in the lake, Zuma John looked back up the slope to where his clothes sat in a distant pile and worried deeply about himself. His wife Peggy - known as The Flannelette Monster - quickly assured us the episode had occurred long before she knew him. I should hope so. No one would consciously marry an idiot. On the return bus trip to Adelaide, Zuma John said he was in such agony from his bloodied back that he took a Mogadon to help him sleep. Except he was unable to lean against the seat and instead had to strap hang all the way home, hallucinating wildly. Zuma John gives my winter new meaning.