The Boundary Brief V.3

Melbourne's lamest speeding fine, waking up as a bug and history's greatest guitar solo

No disclaimer or apology for the length between drinks this time. Welcome to The Boundary Brief volume 3.

Need a refresher on what we’re doing here? Feel free to check out V.2 or V.1.

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Anyone who knows me has me placed as a nervous driver.

My beloved Honda Accord is covered in dents and dings from various misjudged corners and curbs. Where I see every misaligned panel as a story (like trying to pull into the narrow driveway of my first rental property, before submitting to street parking for twelve months, or regularly touch parking at cricket), for my mates they all amount to justified mistrust.

It’s fitting, then, that in a week where the Australian Grand Prix Commission released the prices for next year’s Melbourne race, I have had a nightmare behind the wheel – in and around the very same circuit.

Three times really is the charm

Considering my work is in Albert Park, I drive pit lane and the Grand Prix straight every day. On the same stretch of Lakeside Drive where Lando, Lewis and co. reach up to 330 km/h, I plodded along at 48. Unfortunately, however, outside of race week, the limit is 40. So, instead of Driver’s Championship points, I collected arguably the lamest speeding fine that Melbourne has to offer.

Considering cricket preseason is now well underway, we are in the midst of a series of late-night sessions at the Junction Oval at the southern tip of Albert Park Lake. A recent Thursday, two teammates and I came out of the centre at 10:15 to discover the Honda’s front left tyre flatter than a Uni Main wicket. In a display hardly worthy of neighbouring pit lane, we were out of there not a minute before 11.15…

Superstitious? Obviously, I’m a cricketer. But even out of season, I’ll be avoiding stepping on cracks and walking under ladders – because I’m now damned certain that bad things come in threes. Still unable to run post Marathon, I joined a gym with a friend who lives in Port Melbourne so we could get in the tin room together (save your applause). After dropping him off from our first session as a duo, I reversed into a Mercedes in his street. Three times I apologised on the note, and even left a shakily drawn smiley face to demonstrate extent of my remorse.

Perhaps it was futile optimism, but the smiley face didn’t work, my phone rang the next day, and now I really do hope insurance is solved, with Budget Direct.

Funnily enough, I had recently finished reading Michael Lewis’ The Undoing Project. His 2016 exploration of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s work revealed that people tend to be driven – often illogically – by loss aversion. A theory that suggests we are more sensitive to the prospect of loss than the potential for an equivalent gain, it largely explains our reasoning behind purchasing insurance in the first place; we pay high premiums regularly, to avoid the pang of a significant, one-off loss.

I wonder how Dan and Amos would explain something far more futile than insurance. Say, club cricket, or, God forbid, amateur golf.

Where Lewis’ breakdown of decision-making heuristics in The Undoing Project was manageable for me, his expose into the world of high frequency trading in Flash Boys, was not. Consequently, I have turned to reading Franz Kafka, because the prospect of going to bed one night and waking up as a giant insect seems distinctly more probable to me than ever understanding the workings of Wall Street.

Don’t take Dire Straits away from me

I’m optimistic I won’t wake up as a bug any time soon, however, because I imagine it would inhibit my current obsession: listening to Dire Straits.

Sure, I knew if them before a few months ago, but the most I had connected with the work of Mark, Dave and the gang, was when Geelong pulled off a heist in 2018, to get “Gazza for nothing and TK for free.”

Now, I’ll be surprised if any other artist features in my top five songs for the fast-approaching Spotify Wrapped.

As for a favourite? At the risk of sounding overwhelmingly mainstream, if a better guitar solo exists than at the end of Sultans of Swing, Alchemy: Dire Straits Live, then I’ll head Down To The Waterline and take a long, hard listen to it.

I’ll just try not to run a red light in getting there.