| Life Is A Wondrous Journey | ||||
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Life is a wondrous journey My first recognition of life came at around two and half years of age on a three wheel trike called a dinky. I have heard the word used as an adverb but never as a noun. ‘Dinky little baby, dinky little dog,’ but to ride a dinky – no way. So onwards and forwards I headed for Africa and got as far as the strawberry patch. There they were some very toothy items in the garden; real– fresh homegrown dribble material. Purloining several I made like public enemy number one and salted my stash in a convenient pocket. I would go next door into the crawl space under the internal stairs and secretly gum the strawbs’ before the ‘mean u and me’ (Mum) caught onto my wicked game. I never made it to Africa for several reasons. Now the colour and texture of strawberries is unique. Put them anywhere else other than your mouth and they instantly bond to whatever you have inside your pocket. This stairway was dark and forbidding, you don’t see them anymore. A block of four units; where the internal staircase was a work of art. Elaborate timber and steel supports, varnished to a mirror surface, the crawl space would have taken at least six of us strawberry pinchers and the space around the staircase would have accommodated another flat, oops, unit. By the ear I was frog-marched back to the scene of the crime. The yelling became incomprehensible; I only took three and never tasted one. It proved difficult, well nigh impossible to extricate the contraband when the super glue squishes out and you are not quick enough to wipe the bonding agent from your appendages. The mean u and me didn’t see me pilfer the horrible objects she had caught a glimpse of the outside of my shorts, yes the colour of squashed strawberries is awesome. Now this has always fascinated me; why is the poor hard working desperate and defeated (dad) presented with the task of admonishment, when he wasn’t even there. The poor old thing couldn’t even see me, as he had had an attack of melancholy, the reason lay up against his arm chair, empty and unwanted. So for the crime of three strawberries I was abandoned to my room with a broken hair brush on the floor. The mean u and me liked breaking hairbrushes, generally around my legs. Now is the time to tell you something. When the melancholy got too much for the desperate and defeated, he trooped off somewhere unknown. So for the next ten years, my poor old mean u and me toiled all day in all weathers to keep us together, so that today, the poor old thing is tired, worn, full of memories but not dispirited. You cannot but see the paradox; the terrible trouble over strawberries; then working for years as a virtual slave for peanuts to ward off the bureaucrats who wanted to break up a family, because the rules were rules. There was triumph in this story. While the mean u and me toiled long and hard, a lanky good-looking cheerful sort of guy started playing tennis, and the rest is history. One thing though while he liked the odd lubricant, it never became a walking stick like it did to me later in life. My next memory took me outside of my world, that being a small backyard. In those days, the yard became the world, wars were fought, heiresses were saved and baddies and the odd Indian overwhelmed by a four year old boy who scrabbled in the dirt with an old ice pop stick. I found the stick, I never savoured the mouth- watering delicacy until later and to this day, I still buy them on the odd occasion. As I built motorways and bridges or enacted a scenario from ‘Bridge too Far’, my troops fought against valiant but albeit already vanquished enemies. I would spend hours or what seemed hours at saving the world, or some tricky lopsided piece of dirt attacked by a plant root and which would collapse at the most inappropriate moment, always on my truck park or massed troops. The trucks and troops of course never existed outside of a boy’s imagination. And that is when the world fell apart, or my world did. Another boy turned up. I really did not know the origin of the word ‘boy’ except that is what I was called by the neighbours when we walked to the front fence to buy vegetables or coal or see what the bone man wanted, or what the man with the funny face had on his ‘bits and pieces’ foray into our street. I never saw the milkman until I grew taller; he came at mysterious times with these strange bottles that were always warm. The bottles were strange as we used to have to take a jug and someone would fill it, but then these strange items appeared and our poor ice ‘fridge would be overtaxed. This other boy was introduced and he came from a strange country, I had never heard of, actually I had never heard of any country; and the ignominy of not knowing what a country is, the shame. I drew some wondrous faces, arched eyebrows, muttering and cold looks, all of them. This boy must have been older than I, because I had to look up at him. He had the most extraordinary collection of model planes hanging from the ceiling of his room. I didn’t even have peeling paint hanging from mine. He came from someplace called ‘N Zillan’, and that had me foxed. I didn’t know we had streets near us, let alone another country just down the block. I have to hand it to Ronny though as the fuel for my imagination became a heat so awesome that soon I was out on the street with him as he had an affliction, he was older. My imagination went into overdrive, streets became battlefields, the old cemetery my favourite place to hunt ghouls and werewolves and the smell of cemetery flowers still draws me back wherever I am to that little boy and his favourite play field and the first time I had a nose bleed as somebody tried to flatten it against my face. I never did find N’ Zillan’ even after he went back. My dear old mean u and me showed me on the map. Too far for me, I wouldn’t make it back by dinner. The world had changed and I had reached that age where I was deposited daily at this place that to day still smells like baked bean sandwiches. Five years of age and the world had grown remarkably larger, unfriendlier and fearful. Now I had to get sticky stuff (paint) all over my fingers, wipe it on paper and not get the hairbrush, strange people-adults. The next extraordinary thing came about as I became aware that some ‘boys’ wore their hair down the back of their uniform and had wrap around shorts with pins in them. The long hair I had been informed soaked up ink if you dipped it in the ink well. It did and there I found another conundrum. The owner of the hair went red and cried and the voice absolutely shrieked. Then I had to bend over a desk where a very tall adult bent a hard piece of bamboo over my rear end. So that signalled the end of believing everything I was told. My education increased at a rapid pace. We walked to school as a matter of course; we never believed that ogres, gremlins and that odd strange hook-nosed odd-fella were just waiting to grab us for an Arabian Prince. Not like today, the gremlins must have gained a bigger advantage as walking to school is so fearsome today that ‘boys’ have to be driven to school in these huge armoured vehicles called 4 wheel drives. We had Royalty in those days, they could ride ‘Malvern Stars’ to school and never seemed to bring lunch. You could always see them at the dingy tuckshop eating those sweet rolls filled with huge gobs of cream. The cost of those would have fed our family for about three days and that is why they were Royalty. The streets they lived in were called ‘cul de sacs’, although I never saw the difference, apart from the one entrance and exit. They were no good for me, no quick exit with contraband strawberries. Every time we dragged our skinny bottoms up the hill to see their train set, their mean u and me told us they had a cold, nose- bleed, whooping cough, hives, measles or mumps. But by Monday a miracle had occurred and there they were on their ‘Malvern Star’, quite possibly the miracle of the decade as it happened every week. I actually made it inside one day where I watched the train race around the track and the boats bobbing in the water. I also saw something that told me I was different. His wardrobe stretched from one wall to another and held enough clothes for a squad. Now while I completed my education by tasting life in the raw, he was squaddled, wiped, dressed, patted, brushed, and then had to meet sundry relatives on a Sunday who pinched, prodded, pulled and ‘tsk-tsked’ all afternoon. No wonder he escaped to school on Mondays. After that, I stood taller and felt better about my life; I made mistakes, but they were mine to make. Give you an example – he ate cobbers by the dozen where I savoured them singly, well they were a penny for two and I had a brother, a brother not a bother. To give you an idea of what century I am in – I am sitting next to our radio which is run on valves – yes valves not transistors, they hadn’t been invented yet. On the radio is the report that the greatest living Kiwi has just climbed Mount Everest – Yes Sir Edmund Hillary, he was knighted afterwards by the Queen. K2 has to wait for somebody else, but possibly the greatest mountain climber in our history has finally reached the absolute top of the world. Now at the tender age of awareness, I found not only other streets, but also a new country just up the line, by train, and my eyes were opened like no other time in my life (except when I met Judy, but that is another story). This place had mountains, beaches, dirt roads, a school, a place where I had nightmares, my first encounter with ‘girls’ and an experience that has stayed with me all my life-a teacher who believed. And the reason for my increased education had something to do with the desperate and defeated who had once again appeared as stone fruit do once a year. So I was banished to this new country, but I think the real reason had something to do with the funny look passing between the tennis player and the mean u and me at any time of the day. Don’t get me wrong, I had the most absorbing and wonderful time, and my absence lead to my sister, so there is a reason for everything. A short explanation here- after the tennis player put a round shiny thing on her finger my wonderful old mum found that suddenly our one room residence became quite crowded, and so did I. Another voice had joined the fray and my hard won freedom had been expanded. So with a wondrous glazy look on my face I raced off to a new future where the size of the place literally took my breath away. Two and a half hours away by steam train lay the idyllic land of Gosford. The place wallowed in space, lots of wonderful space. The beach took ages to walk to, the pool was a diversion on the way, the dust flew into everything, the fish were gigantic, there were houses all along the main road then open spaces as far as you could see on a sunny day and the two mountains stood like sentinels. King Mountain, tall and majestic graced the horizon. Its footsteps started at the end of one road and held hundreds of trees. I walked up it one day; it took nearly all that day. Well I did wander here and there. I had come from a one-room residence to stand at the top of the world; the feeling would take nearly all the vocabulary that I knew at the time. Macadam like the Concord and Space Shuttle were in the future so dirt covered the roads except the main road which was a concoction of bituminous oil and blue metal; great on a windy day, but horrendous in 380 heat, or in bare feet. At the back of where we lived, strangely garbed creatures dashed about like bilby’s, at different times of the day. I later found out it was a convent. We had a river down beside our place; actually, an aunt and uncle had taken me in. This river had all sorts of things floating in it, a stormwater river. This became a fabulous playground; bull-rushes grew at the side and held all sorts of interesting creatures. Headless men, red Indians, demons, every creature I could think of. By the time I could afford the pictures, horror movies did not fascinate me, strange, but I had met better creatures down by the bulrushes, in my stormwater river. My next sojourn into my new world started at a rail bridge where a handline ended up with a struggling fish impaled on a home- made hook. Point Clare it called itself, a way bridge on the rail line to the Metropolis of Gosford. We walked everywhere my cousin and me, down to the pool, to the beach, out beyond the mountains. Walking to school became a short trip of a mile or two, nothing like the walks on the weekend. And that is where Terry and I became mortal enemies. Before my under-fed body turned up stretching the resources of the school to breaking point, Terry had been invincible at running. Now I could catch him and he never forgave me the slight of actually keeping up with him or of actually tagging him. I never understood his competitiveness, not until I tried sports. At our school it became difficult to bowl when the stitches actually slashed your fingers, or the hockey stick cracked in half before you were penalised for the cry of ‘sticks’. Football players were a different breed, they came from another planet. They were huge, ate a lot, and grunted, smiled when they impaled a team member head first in the ground and crashed into poles walking away with a wan smile splitting their faces from ear to ear. No. football would have to wait for another hero, this one preferred to see the whites of the eyes at the end of a table, a court or behind me when I took the finish line. But poor old Terry hated me, the one vaunted sport where he was king, and some idiot turned up, actually touched his shoulder at speed and said ’your it.’ Terry taught me a game, I thought it was a game, but it was sloppy and involved ‘girls’. This day with an evil smile on his dial, he called it ‘bottle’ or something like it. You spun the bottle and if it pointed to him, he punched you, and if it pointed to you, he punched you. Terry liked this game but I couldn’t see the point until the girls became involved. It wasn’t Terry’s idea; I assumed it was the older girl because she knew the rules. When the bottle that you spun pointed to her she crushed your lips with hers leaving gooey saliva all over your cherry bin. Now Terry liked this definition to the rules, and so did my shoulder. It was when Terry kept winning that made the games boring. This girl knew the rules that meant going into Grandma’s shed where she kept her Morris touring car. We waited and waited, like forever but all we ever heard were gasps and laughing. How could they see where a bottle pointed in the dark, it became a mystery to me. Anyway, I tired of this game and my education into sex would have to wait a few more years. My schooling had soared into space from the doldrums of the old school. This teacher made things come to life. We explored the adventurers, the Amazon, the Romans, and the Byzantium and visited Constantinople. Math turned into a language I understood, I always thought it was a language, but all of a sudden algebra came alive, the old sailors were lucky they knew navigation and so did I. So I could navigate a ruler around the classroom, get lost on King Mountain and know absolutely nothing about the real world. But this teacher loved running and so I found my forte. I now think of him as I write, the great passion he had for teaching I never found again. One teacher came close, a Maths teacher I had to fall in love with before I could actually pass the subject, but now I laugh. She used too much makeup, must have been at least twenty years older than me and had the biggest lips I have ever seen, too much lipstick. The great ‘love affair’ lasted one term, she married the science teacher and left, and so did my maths marks, down the gurgler. My sojourn at school extended from A to D, and then back to B that was the way they assigned school classes. The D class because I, Mr Curious had to take a language actually French to be precise. We were penalised in the olden days by not being allowed to do a language, they made you take general maths, which was a waste of time. As a further penalty, we were consigned to the strictest disciplinarian imaginable. This man ran an army parade every day of the week. In those golden days, we had to march as a battalion and God help you if you mucked up your feet. It had absolutely nothing to do with education and everything to do with the Principals competition with another school, something to do with ambition or something glucky. So I left ‘kids’ school behind for ‘high’ school and a different education altogether. You see, our teachers taught us about dead men and two thousand year old empires: how to make a triangle from a square and a description of a rock. This heralded the advent of a new maths education – algorithms, the very heart of software. Binomial and Boolean theorem could have been a pasta dish (oops, not invented yet). Critical path analysis was down the road somewhere but Babbage had been successful and quantum maths was just around the corner. But high on the agenda at our progressive school was how to navigate if you were ever rich enough to sail a boat let alone own one, and how to pass a past participle. The world economy was about how to take oranges from apples and why guns and butter were very important. I always thought how to earn a bob was more important but that was probably why I didn’t get much from my ‘education’. The ideas factory, the epitome of an education centre had yet to dawn in the new age. Our jump into space came with Sputnik and NASA who were still ferreting around for a name. It had been boring, lacklustre and I wondered where in this universe the excitement this place of education could be, could I find this room of knowledge, is there a place where my senses could feast on the bare flesh of learning. The locked door creaked, we pushed with all our energy but the tired old Goths were still in charge. Until one day I found it through luck, perseverance and dogged determination after fruitless tries. But to find it I had to change States and wait for an enigmatic man of the future to approve my ‘Mature Adult’ status. The day I walked into a library and found nirvana, not the band, the place of higher learning, I was enthralled. I digress and this part can wait. The future was an exciting place; the internet not even a word let alone a fact – yet! Our fortunes had changed, the tennis player had turned out to be a good boat builder, a great father, if that is measured in how much he spent on my toys. At ten years of age, I had a matchbox truck. That truck turned into everything, tanks, pickups, road graders, Lorries, jeeps and on the odd occasion a truck. But my new Father bought me toys I never knew existed. A motor boat shot through the water faster than we could with an outboard and a tank that shot real shells and smoke. I had a rocket, which very nearly went into orbit and a billy- cart that wore out several pairs of thongs. Finally, I could be a boy and not have to forage for pennies, work after school or help the delivery guy. Even though I stayed with the weekend work, he wasn’t Rockafella; life had changed once again. The next thing that happened became a shock. The boy with the long hair I had discovered quite by accident was called a girl turned up one day in the shop where I worked and my temperature went into orbit. Every time I saw her, I fell immediately woozy and light-headed. I feared I had caught consumption or the deadly Berri-Berri. I f that was so, there was a contagion because all the guys who followed her every step had the same condition. For a long time I thought those funny creatures at school were a different race and as you got older, a transition came about where these boys with long hair evolved overnight. You see our education was top notch, very informative, balanced and completely useless. The next shock came about as I turned professional, that is I went into the big smoke and got a ‘carrier’, no I’m wrong, a ‘career.’ Us professionals get careers and mundane’s get jobs, that is the way of the world. I put red marks into a book from another book for three weeks; a carrier pigeon could do it (my life long passion with computers was in the future-probably as a result!). For entertainment, we picked up pieces of paper and ‘stapled’ them in an order conveyed to us by an enlightened one – A Supervisor. I vowed to become a supervisor, they were higher creatures; they filled their mouths with fruitcake and then poured copious amounts of luke-warm tea into the same space until their eyes watered. They also talked in a foreign language. ‘Digatell Laurie to markthat sheila’s files, you knowtheone, with the big bugeyes.’ They called it a registry and strange things happened to paper. They were archived, pinned, coded, cross filed, referenced, digitised, analysed, torn out, dumped, wiped the floor, wrong filed,. By dickheads, crumpet chasers, crawlers, something starting with P, jumped up turkeys, wimps, bum lickers, and stooges. Once again, my education had rocketed into the unknown. And this was my first day! Happily, the three weeks of marking a book had been recreational; the real professional had returned from his honeymoon. God knows what honey has to do with the moon. No, I had not yet been thoroughly enlightened and had no idea why he was gob smacked. I spent several years in this environment where I learned to smoke, play table tennis, a game called ‘bludge on the boss’ and achieved three promotions before I had completed my matriculation. This was lots of fun, rolling durries became a consummate skill, so did hiding your ‘tailor-mades’ and keeping any spare change in your pocket not in your best mate’s of three minutes. Once again, my education knew no bounds. Why had I spent all those hours processing stories of dead men, when the real life happened at the back of the compactus? . |
