Kate Constable's Blog

Putting The Mock On

Another grand old Aussie expression, meaning to jinx something or someone. It seems to be a variation on the slightly more common "put the mozz on" which derives from the Hebrew mazel (pronounced mozzle), meaning luck. But we always talk about "the mock" in our house. (Also, "the false mock," to deliberately tempt the gods by pretending loudly not to care about an outcome while secretly caring very much indeed, in a kind of elaborate double bluff. Yeah, I'm not sure how it works, either.)

A belief in "the mock" goes hand in hand with its opposite: warding off disaster by purposefully imagining everything that could possibly go wrong, in the belief that by articulating the worst, one somehow prevents it from actually happening, perhaps on the grounds that catastrophe is, by definition, unexpected. Western Bulldogs supporters, like my mother-in-law, are expert at this, as previously discussed.

On these grounds, I tipped against the Dogs two weeks in a row, and thus guaranteed that they actually won. But this week I threw caution to the wind and tipped them and they won anyway.

I've always been a firm believer in the power of the mock. But to hell with it! The day of the mock is over; the era of positive visualisation has arrived. I'm going to say it loud and say it proud, even if my words come back to bite me:

WE CAN WIN THIS THING!!!

(Maybe. Possibly. If Brian Lake doesn't do a hammy. If Nick Riewoldt does do a hammy. If the Cats haven't been just toying with us the last few weeks. If the Crows don't get up after all. If the Pies weren't shamming. If everybody fires on the day... And what a day, what a day that would be!)