Back in the day, colours were paraded before regiments so troops knew their team colours, as it is always quite useful to know which side you're on and which direction to point your gun. But it's all just for pomp and pageantry purposes these days.
In this ceremony, the Royal Military College Duntroon get their cadets to prance up and down and up and down a parade ground in their spiffy whiter than white jackets, licquorice allsort trouser pants, sheeny shoes and various shining accoutrements, while being yelled at by a loud-mouthed, order-barking field officer with a penchant for being loud-mouthed in a spectacularly loud-mouthed fashion. And at some point in the event the colours are tossed around carelessly like a pass-the-parcel. Sort of, but not really like that at all.
I have attended several of these ceremonies. I don't know why. Nothing ever changes; the military like to maintain order and precision in everything they do. And they also don't care much for spontaneity or surprises. There is always a lot of choreographed marching and people yelling and shiny shoes and lots of standing around; by the poor cadets and by me.
One can generally seat one's bottom at these things, but today I stood, right up the front, because I wanted to take some snaps without big boofheads blocking my way.
Due to the fact that I am utterly incapable of standing still for five minutes, I spent much of the time swaying and sighing and stamping my feet to the beat and occasionally I did cartwheels around the grass in a mostly choreographed fashion, but the cadets never moved a muscle, unless Officer Yells-A-Lot yelled at them to do so. They never do.
Standing still is a discipline that anyone can learn, I imagine, except for me, time and flies. Speaking of time; it does not fly when one has to stand still. I guess I keep going back in the hope that one day one of them will go rogue and start moonwalking during the Symbolic Arrival of HM the Queen. I'm sure no-one would notice a spot of freestyling.
Stuff I learnt today. Canberrans, did you know that the Carillion is not actually called the Carillion? It's the Carill-on. I know, right! The last time I was this confused was when I was told there was no Santa Claus.
I really can't cope with this ridiculous piece of information right now, as it completely screws with my national landmark thought processes, so I will continue to call it the Car-ill-ion. Probably forever.
More stuff I learnt today. There is a fine line between surreptitiously responding to a mobile text over and over and over again and being a rude dickhead. I have decided to erase this line. I am putting all these people into the same impertinent boat and then chucking them overboard. Every man, woman and precocious child; I don't care how short you are.
When I looked around at the crowd this morning, I noted a high number of mostly young people glued to their mobile phones - texting, sexting, but mostly being perplexing - to their smarter friends, who were likely still in bed.
To these people who will apparently spontaenously be consumed by fire if they don't access their mobile phone every five damn seconds I say this: fuck off and stop being so damn disrespectful. Maybe it was a Groupthink thing. You can never underestimate the power of stupid people when they assemble. Never.
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