As the VCDF's Christmas present will the new Deputy Secretary Strategy be a jet-ski or just another pair of light-weight nylon socks?
Barney (my boss, Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) returned from his sojourn in Mesopotamia lighter in weight but, it must be said, somewhat heavier in spirit – although he continues to wear the mantle of command with his accustomed air force style.
Now the VCDF doubles up as the Chief of Joint Operations (CJOPS) the responsibilities of day-to-day high command fall virtually unimpeded onto his three-starred shoulders. Fortunately they are still strong enough to wield the impending axe to higher command structures with vigour, not that this will concern me.
Yesterday I sneaked into his office at lunchtime and wielded the delete-key with equal vigour to shield my position from the long list of proposed cuts.
Now the Secretary has been extended for two years, and DEPSEC-S has moved upstairs and morphed back into the DEPSEC I&S from whence he came, the fifth floor rumour mill has been running at full tilt concerning who might soon get to share the power suite with Barney. Even Barney claims not to know although I did catch him highlighting names in what looked like the DFAT telephone directory the other day.
The level of plotting and the scale of the deception planning behind this decision have been impressive. But with Christmas gift-giving now not too far off, hopefully Barney will soon know whether his new partner at the top of the policy tree will be, metaphorically speaking, a jet ski or just another pair of light-weight nylon socks.
The real highlight of my week has been the publication of an authorative tome recounting the history of the family firm’s great contribution to Australian history and philosophy. Furphy: The Water Cart and the Word records the traditional Furphy approach to our proper place in society and the large portions of noblesse oblige this has always involved.
Written by Andrew, my third cousin, twice removed, on my orphaned-at-birth step-mother’s side, the book tells the noble story of the noted foundry, J. Furphy & Sons of Shepparton, and how their famous cast-iron water tanker carts greatly added to antipodean critical discourse through first the military, and then the general, Australian argot.
Luckily my distant cousin, being a retired businessman and grazier of note, can write much better than I can. He was assisted by an emeritus professor of English no less as co-author.
Professor John Barnes is also the biographer of my most well-known ancestor, the distinguished 19th Century author Joseph Furphy, writer of the great Australian novel Such is Life. A great read in itself and the inspiration, no doubt, for the 1880-style organisational vision statement uttered by Ned Kelly as the noose was slipped over his head.
My wife is always at me to emulate my forebear and write the great Australian novel of the 21st Century. This topic especially comes to the fore at the time of year my annual MSBS statement arrives and she contemplates our likely penury in retirement.
Pandora has even been known to observe ruefully that it is a great pity I come from the notoriety rather than the sobriety side of the family. At least she has correctly interpreted the temperance messages in Pitman’s shorthand long emblazoned on the end of Furphy water carts.
My only answer at such times is to gesture at the serried ranks of our attractive and well-behaved offspring gambolling at our feet, and counter that this is the price we must pay as members of a minority group – monogamous, happily-married, Anglo-Celtic couples in the Queen’s service.
She could, in theory, re-arrange her domestic and legal circumstances to avail herself of the new Defence policy enunciated in DI(G) PERS 53-1 Recognised Inter-dependent Partnerships, which extends the ostensibly generous conditions of our married bliss to all types of coupling, excluding pets (at least of the furred or feathered variety).
The absence of further sired offspring such a step usually entails would definitely assist savings plans for retirement.
Luckily she still sees her future bound with me personally and, indirectly, with my glittering career prospects as a denizen of the fifth floor near to the ear of the VCDF.