“EVERYONE was wearing these checked shirts”, my friend Sam said to me as we walked around the store. And he should know, as he was in Stockholm just a couple of weeks ago.

We were walking around a clothing store in Surry Hills, Somedays which sells Swedish clothing. Yes, really. There’s shirts and jeans, and shoes, and all sorts of things from Swedish clothing companies. Well, not H and M, but the other ones.

At the moment, they have a forty percent sale. So of course, their “sale” sign is in Swedish.

To be honest, there’s nothing I’d actually purchase myself, except maybe some of the stuff from Tiger of Sweden. It’s all a bit young and groovy for me. There was some Björn Borg underwear which caught my eye, but I have enough socks and jocks right now, so I didn’t worry too much about them.

Also today I ran into a mate from work who has a new baby. That was nice.

And then tonight I’ve watched the Hawke telemovie on Channel 10.

Although I’ve had a life-long interest in politics, it was during the 1980s that I “came of age” and was able to vote for the first time. It was an interesting period for politics, being the age of Hawke, Thatcher and Reagan. We still had apartheid and we still had the Soviet Union. And we were fighting wars in the Middle East, first against Libya.

As hard as it must have been to sum up 10-15 years in a 2-hour movie, I thought the story moved along well, without a sense they were jumping over major periods. I guess there’s always a tendency to feel you have to account for every moment and every action in someone’s life when you do a biopic. Thus, I think they did a good job focussing on major themes.

Without knowing the characters you can never be sure how accurately they’ve portrayed those involved. I was moved by the article in yesterday’s paper by Ros Hawke saying her mother was portrayed as overly ambitious. I’ve also been interested in Keating’s reaction to his portrayal in the new biography of Hawke.

It’s probably still too early to be sure about the historical accuracy of it all. The wounds between Hawke and Keating are obviously still very raw, based on comments from the last few days. You still have the aching legacy of Hazel Hawke’s illness contrasted with the apparent happiness of Bob’s marriage to Blanche,

And on top of that, you have film-makers, actors and so on, who lived through this period and who probably have strong views about the characters also.

In maybe 10 or 20 years time when the “key players” have passed on, perhaps we’ll have a better, more independant view of things. But in the meantime, I still enjoyed it very much, even if there were far too many bloody ads.