As I was checking in at Brisbane Airport the other day a bunch of rough looking dudes were checking in beside me.

You know the type, no not broken noses like me but body piecing, tattoos and of course the mandatory black shirts and jeans.

But contrary to their appearance they were very pleasant and I learned that they were the band Good Charlotte which coincidentally I watched play one of their hit songs before the start of the Indy the day before.

Amazingly after I checked in I walked up the stairs with Ben Lee, who also was very pleasant, it was like some weird dream.

Now when I got on the plane I sat down and you wouldn’t believe who was beside me... Elvis.

No that part was definitely a dream but the rest was true unless there was an impersonator conference in town.

Now I reckon the famous face thing was an omen because while I was flying the John Butler Trio film clip of their song Better Than came on and apart from it being a catchy song the lyrics made me think about life and it made me realize something.

The song goes like this: “All you want is what you can’t have, And if you just look around, man you’ll see you got magic.”

Now watching the film clip my mind flicked to today’s society and how we have super sized a lot of things and certainly put possessions in front of everything else. I hear a lot about homes being unreachable to the average punter and in a lot of cases that is sadly true.

But maybe we should have a look at what is the definition of a home.
Double garage, three to four bedrooms, with a big kick-arse house taking up the whole block, no eaves, therefore air-conditioning ensuites etc.

Then in the house there is the super-size plasma, the huge refrigerator and it goes on and on. What happened to the nine square house, maybe a carport, a gravel driveway and finish things off when there is more money available (yes I am describing our first home that I am eternally grateful that my mates built for us).

Now there a couple of points here.

Homes are what you make it and secondly I am as guilty as anyone on the super size thing.

As I sat with my big posterior squirming in the economy seat I also thought about everyone banging on about obesity.

Why wouldn’t we be obese with our big plasma, bigger fridges, bigger recliners that make the old Jason rockers look like a bar stool, and most kids with video game equipment that looks like the cockpit of the space shuttle, rather than a football to kick about the park.

Then there are all those businesses out there make a living out of mowing lawns, washing cars etc while a fair percentage of the population have their bums planted on their super-size lounge or the super-sized bed.

Now what has this got to do with the song you may well ask? The song convinced me that life shouldn’t be about material things, and this line in the song confirmed it for me: “Look to the other side ‘cause I know the grass is greener but just as hard to grow.” After I got off the plane I was reminded that life should be about living things, not the other.
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Speaking of big beds, I was reading a story about hotels in the UK where there a “spike” in the number of reports of naked sleepwalkers – 400 in one year with the majority of them sadly being men. See story here.

Now I have written about this many years ago. I used to be a chronic naked sleep walker when I wasn’t in my own bed, ie, motels etc.

But it all started as a kid when we lived on the pineapple farm in Eudlo.

I was a regular at waking up in the pineapple patch in the middle of the night, with no clue how I had got there.

Dad started locking the door but a couple of times I got out the window and descended the down pipe.

Not bad for a kid built like Eddie Munster and scared of heights. It certainly had some disadvantages as I got older but one definite plus on trips away with other blokes it nearly always got me a room to myself.