Is it already thirteen years ago when I went back to one of my most memorable workplaces? "Why did you go to Thursday Island?" people asked me. "Because it's there", I replied. "But so are your comfortable slippers and the TV remote". Q.E.D., I think.
I may have been struck down with what psychoanalysts refer to as G.T.D.S.B.S. syndrome (* Going to do something a bit silly syndrome - source: Freud, Dreams and the Unconscious, published 1896), or it may simply have been a wish to revisit one of the many odd and fascinating places I used to live and work in - and they don't come any odder than T.I.!
There are two words I don't want to find myself uttering as an old man, and they are "If only ...". If only. We all have our own "if onlys". If only we had studied harder; if only we had stuck with that job ..."
My trip to T.I. back in 2003 was to eliminate one "if only" and to confirm in my own mind that I couldn't have stayed much longer on the island even if my then boss, Cec Burgess, had been less of a crotchety old bastard.
Socrates said that the unexamined life isn't worth living. What he actually said looked something like this:
(to which Plato is said to have replied, "Keep it in the jar with the lid on or it will all dry up!")
Here then is the journal of my journey to T.I. and another examination of my own past: click here.
