THAT WINNING FEELING

TO THE VICTOR BELONG THE SPOILERS – INFORMER IS NOT LIKELY TO BE FIRST ACROSS THE FINISH LINE, BUT HE’LL SAVOUR ANY WINS ALONG THE WAY

Tomorrow Informer is taking part in a 10km fun run, which is already false advertising. It won’t be fun,

I’ll be walking more than running and it will be longer than 10km after you add all the wobbly detours I take as my body fails me like that marathon dude at the Comm Games.

I’m told participation alone is a kind of winning — Jessica Mauboy might debate that — which is interesting because of late your rectangular hero has been musing upon the vagaries of victory.

This was sparked by Mrs Informer who, dejected after yet another dud result on our weekly lotto coupon, turned to me and asked: “Why don’t we ever win anything?”

“Money isn’t everything,” I countered. “And remember, you won me. You won the jackpot of luuuurrrve.”

After she stopped being sick, Mrs Informer

adjourned to her plotting nook in the back garden. As for me, I was left to ponder how, at this stage of life and decades after puberty, I’m still waiting for my balls to drop.

Not that Informer hasn’t enjoyed a few wins along the way. I once won a thousand cans of beer in a raffle. Good beer too, Boag’s from Tassie, none of your mainland swill.

The quandary was how best to reconfigure the fridge, a task made easier once we’d chucked all the food out. Shamefully, it took me and my two housemates less than three weeks to drink the lot.

Another time I won $1000, again in a raffle. The quandary then was what to spend it on. I bought beer because, as previously noted, we’d recently drunk a thousand cans and didn’t have a drop left in the house.

There are purer forms of winning. These do not manifest in prizes of a hedonistic bent, but instead provide deeper rewards. A victory shared, for example, is incredibly sweet. Like the Swans in 2005. What a win! My daughter wrote the team song down the length of our driveway in chalk. If winning had to have a feeling, I’d go with that feeling on that day.

Speaking of my daughter, she and her brother were huge wins for the Informers, although our celebrations came only after all the panic, terror and relief surrounding their arrival. Both were born in the morning so each time I got to eat Mrs Informer’s lavish private hospital breakfast. Winner! Mind you, she might have kept the noise down.

It is said that once you get past a certain age, every day is a victory.

If you want to witness the lie to that, come to the nursing home and meet Informer’s mother. Sometimes life is the gift that keeps on taking.

So, if winning can be overrated, it can also be overstated.

And sometimes winning is losing, especially in song — Everyone’s a Winner ,by Hot Chocolate; ABBA’s The Winner Takes it All; Bette Midler’s Win Beneath May Wings, although I might have misheard that last one. No matter, they all suck.

In closing, the question remains: does winning really matter?

I’m still at a loss, so to speak, but maybe the answers will come in an epiphany during tomorrow’s athletic exertions.

Whether winning, losing or just taking part, most things work out in the long run.

“IT IS SAID THAT ONCE YOU GET PAST A CERTAIN AGE, EVERY DAY IS A VICTORY.”