Author Archives: Mark

The Boys go to Blat

03 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by in Mark

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Off you go boys but I’ll be waiting

 

“Well I think that wheeze boys should have a weekend away for all that male bonding stuff” says Emmjay as he sips his glass canoe.

Oh fuck no, thinks Hung all that pretend bullshit about how great wheeze all were back in jail, oops I mean high school. ”I’m bored” says Hung reading from the script that he wrote. “Can’t we just put on some Dirt Air and Heat and pretend?”

Dirt Air and Heat

“Bloody good idea” says Gib ”Lets go out and shoot some cats, drink lots of piss and cook some critters on the barbeque.”

Cheers all round, well from the boys anyway.

”Not a bad idea” says Angler ”Lets get Gordon, Gez and Sandy and, and go camping.”

”None of that poofter stuff” pipes in Merv, who by the way hasn’t actually been invited, as he has to run the pub and granny wouldn’t let him go anyway seeing

This is the bit before the tzatziki

he is a juvenile delinquent or that he is from Deniliquin.

“An, an, an, how come Foodge and O’Hoo haven’t been invited?” pushes Merv.

“Ewes ain’t invited Merv, ewes have to stay behind and run the pub” replies Emmjay ticking over the dollars.

“And Merv, my young friend, someone has to keep the business fluid, if you get my drift” informs Gordon.

“But Gordon, camping is crap, flies in your caviar, no Macca’s for your hangovers and sleeping can be uncomfortable” pipes in Sandy.

“Not when you travel to a different solar system in the SS He Who Cannot be Named II” replies Gordon. “I have activated the ship and we off the the planet Blat, to kill cats.”

“Count us in” say the boys.

So we do all the science fiction stuff, you know beam up to the ship, fly so fast your

Looks more like snot to me

nose bleeds and then descend to the planet surface in a space pod, fully self sustaining so that no evidence, oops, rubbish is left behind to damage the environment. Wheeze clean, mean and green. Sounds like a slogan for a certain political party.

The pod lands and settles itself gently on a grassy patch next to a pristine river estuary flowing out to sea. Crikey, sounds like Summer Bay.

“What’s for dinner?” asks Geez trying to get his word count up and who has been in absentia (or is that dementia) for the last few stories.

“Ask auto cook” Emmjay contributes being much in the same bracket.

“Auto cook responding. Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened up to you.”

“Stop, none of that religion bullshit” affirms Hung, smoke absolutely pouring out of his cigarette.

“How about roasted leg of beast with potatoes, carrots served with jus and mulled

Roasted Beast

wine” Gib pontificates “Oh and greens for fun, followed by a peach frangipane with

home made ice cream and raspberry compote covered with crushed almonds and icing sugar.”

“Swap the mulled wine for Shiraz and you got me” says Angler.

Cheers and beers all round.

“Auto cook responding, go the mass has ended, thanks be to Gordon…”

“No, no, no, no religion. I told you Mark, no fucking religion okay!” reinforces Hung.

“Hung, I’m not even in this episode, I’m on holidays at Long Bay but point taken” says Mark.

Seven days later, no one had thought to go outside, shoot cats, discover the

Here kitty

environment, meditate, do yoga, kill cats, look out the window, debate Chaos theory, find an algorithm that actually works but no matter everyone returned to Inner Cyberia in a totally happy mood.

So Honshades approaches the boys on return from space. “So boys, how many cats did you kill?”

“Coupla hundred” lies Gib.

“At least a thousand” lies Angler.

“Tens of thousands, wheeze run out of ammo” lies Gordon.

“Well none actually but wheeze brought one home” says the ever truthful Emmjay.

“Don’t tell Helvi but I’m in love with auto cook” says Gez.

One too many beers I fink…

 

Picture is from left to right, Sandy, Gib, Emmjay (at rear, as usual), Angler, Gordon, Foodge, Neville and Gez. O’Hoo is the stiff.

This is the cat that Emmjay brought back, aw we how cute, now they infest the whole planet, oh well.

How cute, we nick named her Cockroach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sociology of A Place To Call Home Part 13

02 Thursday Nov 2017

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Home is home

The Sociology of A Place To Call Home Part 13
by Sandshoe

I was offered a job in a prawn processing operation. The manager insisted my Japanese language qualification was why he wanted to employ me.

I was applying only for a job sorting prawns on a conveyor belt. I made it clear I could not converse in Japanese. He would have it that it mattered not a whit. I would be circulated through the operations to learn the business. They dealt a lot with Japanese

Dem is yummy

clients he said. He added I would not be standing all day, every day sorting prawns.

In the days following, I considered the effect on me of inevitable, as I saw it, failure. A competent mental health practitioner would have identified I was in no condition to decide either way. I mistrusted the manager regardless his pleasant reception of me and enthusiasm. I longed to trust him. Fear consumed me. I telephoned from a public telephone box and declined the employment. I feel in memory the horror, the immense anxiety I suffered making the call because I had failed.

With the steady accompaniment of the lull of waves breaking on the beach sand as I fell asleep, woken by a drench of sunshine blazing through the verandah lattice, I was in recovery. When rain drummed on the roof in a tropical downpour, the waves crashed

Some gentle waves breaking on the shore

accordingly and I listened, watched lightning illuminate the lattice on stormy nights. If I wanted to access companionship I walked through the sand to the community camped along the beach to meet with groupings of itinerents and residents of every level of education and professional background, siblings, singles, de factos, marrieds, children.

The campers slowly spread along the edge of the esplanade road that was intact from where the road off the highway curved right at the beach front. Set back at the curve to allow a traffic turn-around was the local store. Where the road straightened past the curve, the first camp in the line had been set up a couple who secured a second tent for sleeping and converted their original accommodation in an army disposals tent into a day-to-day shelter by rolling up and fixing the sides of it permanently open. A wooden cable reel made a serviceable table. A few steps away, a free standing tap on the beachside provided a source of water. Directly over the road was a public toilet block.

The surround of the opened tent became a gathering place. Twists of humour were shared with cocoa at night for the regulars as an occasional treat, honed was the risque and profane in displays of impromptu theatre, ideas flowed. I relaxed in companionship that bred a sense of belonging and identity, kinship based on empathy. Life long friendships were established.

My partner was 15 years my senior. He had walked out of his business address at North Ryde in Sydney one day result of an affair of the heart and returned north. He had only recently returned to Sydney from an expedition collecting orchid samples.

His promising career as a landscaper/nurseryman and nursery owner whose abiding passion was flowers began with gardening as a small child with his mother and after a short stint as a clerical assistant when he left High School with 12 years apprenticeship in the Sydney Botanic Gardens. Among the books in his small library were two that

Sydney Botanic Gardens

were fascinating and beautiful and may be rare that I cannot find either listed. One was an early type of American Home Manual, a source of knowledge of conventional European and native American Indian herbal remedies and medicines, veterinary advice, cultivation techniques, lifestyle wisdoms, exotic recipes. The other was a handbook of the Royal Botanic Gardens of Ceylon. Both were published at the turn of the nineteenth century.

When we met, he worked as a glass house attendant for the Department of Primary Industries in a position of underemployment that was not well paid. He was not always well treated in a junior position. His work environment was so torturous in the middle of a tropical summer he fainted and swooned in fitful rest periods on the concrete floor under a bench laden with plant specimens that variously included confiscated Customs items.

He was a yoga exponent. Allan Watts was his go-to. The mystics of sub-continent India and Tibet, Madame Blavatsky, the Theosophical Movement, the entertaining politics of

Just call me Helen

the vibrant local Healthy Food Society and Healthy Soil Society were his afternoon conversations with neighbours, an artist/writer who was also an emigré from the south and carried his afternoon jug of beer the few houses down for a break from his work, an emigré political activist from the field of aboriginal land rights, a one time friend of my older brother when they worked for the railways who had retired to paint. On the beachfront in the early evenings convivial time was equally and as easily spent peopled by road trip travellers and one described of the highways to the south a stream of hitch hikers on their way north, the movement of youth out of cities. The swelling population was supplemented by people from Cairns’ suburbs they drove from to join the conversation on week-ends.

One immediate neighbour was an avid reader of 50s and contemporary 60s American novels. He introduced me to science fiction and a range of counter-culture writers I knew of, but was schooled in by his passion for them. I re-read Vance Packard and took out of the frontispiece of The Morning of the Magicians by Pauwels and Bergier that the relationship between them necessary to write it was their primary outcome.

Around me was endless stimulation to think a tolerant and creative community is the key to human success and greater happiness.

I learned to sew by making my partner a pair of white sail cloth zippered, placketed, banded, Bogart-pleated, cuffed, formal/casual dress trousers I drafted the pattern of

Adam Gilchrist’s mum Enid

out of an Enid Gilchrist Pattern Book. I had conceived the idea of home employment dress making. When I made next a princess style short and white cotton dress, my client said she loved the gament. I doubted she honestly was happy with my work and sought no other customised sewing.

For the kitchen window instead I made scalloped-topped calico cafe curtains I orange tie-dyed with my partner’s help and next a multi-coloured-tie-dyed calico curtain that divided the front latticed veranda into bedroom and living room.

The flooring was sea grass matting. The cottage took on a look of creativity. Not until I was told six years later by a mother of a schoolfriend of my oldest daughter that I am a creative individual did I wonder I should think that through and why she said so. She was an Art teacher. The notion I was creative per se was alien to me.

An administration that sends a teacher trainee out into the field without formal training in the principles of creativity has to be wondered at in this retrospect.

Yet on the beach surrounded by technicians from a range of professions and artists and believing I could not draw let alone master the mediums of the trades, paint or sculpture, I lent my sincerity and encouragement. The return was I began a transformation and I was delighted I was sought after to critique for them in person

A bad Q’lander

what I thought of their newly produced works. I believed in art and its appreciation as expression of self and societal mores no different from spoken word. I was an ideal audience and supporter, differentiating between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, willing to view creative artistry without prejudice more especially that Queensland’s repressive regime, its manipulation of outmoded law, was stirring up vociferous protest against the closing down of art exhibitions and theatre performances to suppress dissent. I understood the politics of art.

The artist who knew me first in the context he was a one-time friend of my brother knew me as a small child. As he left the beach cottage one day after enquiring of my viewpoint on a new project, he made the quixotic comment that the only place my father went wrong was to educate his children. My father was point of fact no different in respect of his passion for art from his earliest childhood that we spent hours together trawling through travelling art exhibitions for the excitement, the turn-on of a famed or little known portrait, a landscape, brushstroke, colour palette. My thoughts went to considering he and I together gave equal regard to a draughted straight line if a work demanded either his or my attention. I had taken to entire heart the role of audience as an emotive and aesthetic discipline.

My mother was sensible and sensitive. She showed me the beauty of the Australian bush and I learned the outcomes of benefit to be found of isolation in the bush environment she grew up in. She loved the naive artists who with no formal training work out of only the creative impulse. As I now formed into an an adult in an environment of acceptance of me as I was and sufficient I carried my parents’ legacies in their individual and greater parts right into the centre of my activity as a dissident. Theirs were the qualities that gave me the place of tolerance and belonging where I was safe.

The Council stopped accepting camping fees. Developers were vying for land to build spec houses on in place of the campers in the way and heavy earth movers their anticipated contracts to raze the scrub that stretched untouched from the beach front to the highway. On week-ends we watched nervous to protect ourselves from a growing number of hoodlums on Sunday drives disturbing the peace. Screaming obscenities in regard to women was popular sport. The police showed up more frequently and drummed up charges of infinitely petty content. It became impossible to ignore gently behaved and slim younger men who were handsome in their white cheesecloth and light cotton outfits and wore their hair long seemed targets because they were attractive looking; more especially in comparison with their malicious tormentors. The men were treated with the scare tactic of mockery of their girlfriends’ fidelity. Women were propositioned. We abhorred the police. Court attendances were on the increase. The most well known ploy was the selection of harmless individuals off the streets of small towns and charging them under the Vagrancy Laws that specified the carrying of a specific amount of cash that if not found on the apprehended person would suffice to make an arrest. The Vagrancy Laws were blatant discrimination. As an ABC Producer announced to introduce an interview in 2004 referencing the Vagrants Act:

If you’ve woken up in a Queensland stable this morning wearing a pair of felt slippers, here’s the good news.

The Queensland Parliament is repealing its Vagrants Act, so that being found in a stable or wearing felt slippers outside at night will no longer be a crime. 

Insight onto a period that represents one of the most significant of my life that I found a place and people I felt great trust in that my peers and mentors respected and treated me with courtesy cannot be better provided than by describing the way we were thrown together in solidarity to resist the attempts made by the Queensland police to discredit the community. One significant incident was the wrecking of the

A mess if ever

contents of the cupboards of a young pregnant woman in a neighbouring rental home she had recently moved into out of a temporary home-made house built for her in the foreshore scrub. Coffee, custard powder, salt, spices, everything that was foodstuff and recently installed was upended and strewn the surface of her kitchen bench allegedly in the interests of the police finding drugs. She was pushed aside. No drugs were found. She was shown no search warrant. A skilled activist of senior years and neighbour instigated a successful move to support her. Question was asked of impropriety in the Legislative Assembly of the Queensland parliament recorded in Hansard under Notice, 2 September 1970, headed ‘Forcible Entry of Residence by Police’.

The senior police officer who led the invasion was a regular nuisance. The community desired he lose his job. I know only of hearsay that was the result. He reappeared in my personal experience of him in different employment some time later. I find some small gratification only that it did seem he lost his credibility as an alleged champion of what is right.

Another camper who lived in a small wooden boat pulled up on the beach was charged with having shown a painting alleged to be offensive in a public place. The community went into ‘heads together’ mode naturally. A lawyer was identified who was known to represent social justice. The argument for the defendant was established. To the entire anticipatory delight of the rest of us any argument the police put forward could only be

Boat life can be rocky at times

discredited and potential, again, was their downfall. The accused albeit was miserable. He thought optimism was unwarranted and right enough he suffered through the merest thought of having a criminal charge against his name and further on the wrong side of the law in Queensland. Another camper and I volunteered to our meetings held at the tent to traipse one mid-week day around the city of Cairns to businesses where we thought it likely the manager/retailer would be sympathetic to our promoting the upcoming trial date. The brief we went with on behalf of the accused and the community was to fill the public gallery.

We were driven to respond with passion on behalf of the arts and theatre communities of Queensland and Australia entire. In 1969 a series of moves against the arts community and its audiences had seen the banning of recordings of the musical “Hair” and the fining of an actor on a stage in Sydney for uttering an allegedly obscene word. Aubrey Beardsley posters had been seized out of an exhibition in Brisbane. A responsibility had fallen our way to contribute to the defeat of prudery and its manipulation by powerful interests waging no less than a war against the least evidence of gatherings of people suspected of conspiring against corruption believed to be rife within every level of Government the length and breadth of Australia.

Any number of persons out of the community on the beach could well have been agents however to promote the trial to the wider public. The collective political skills and sense of justice of the campers and sympathetic residents were manifest. My now fellow agent in this exercise lived on the beach esplanade roadside in a Combi van. He and I had formal business clothes primarily. We were ofttime companions on excursions he made collecting and buying scrap metal he sold on to a scap metal merchant so I knew him to be a skilful negotiator. He was held in the highest regard on the beach for his personal and professional skills that had initiated his original entry into Australia from Europe. Nevertheless as we set out I felt a moment of angst at thought of his fascination with the capacity of Australians to swear. I lightly wondered his pattern of usual beach speak as an ESL speaker might not be entire unto the needs of presentation we were looking towards did he become defiant … always comedically … whereupon might he lapse into scattered use of the one swear word that impressed him most. It occupied spaces needs be where the English word escaped him and the rapid flow of a sentence was at risk, so much so he was fondly nicknamed ‘Fuck “Fuck” [Surname: a model of motor vehicle]’.

We would have been seen in such a good light that day, earnest and sincere, in wholesome good health, dressed in formal civvies, tall and good looking, as pretty as a picture. We were similar in age. We were a team and very good friends. We could not

Cairns Magistrates Court

together have shown more skill seeking to charm the birds out of the trees to fly down at the appointed time and fill the public gallery of the Cairns Magistrates Court.

Still, unsure what the response would be of the proprietors who could not leave their business address at the time, I contented myself word of an upcoming censorship trial would spread like wildfire and the police involved would be a laughing stock, best if a raft of the business people of Cairns witnessed it.

to be continued…
Christina Binning Wilson

Didn’t think you were going to get away without a cat picture did you

 

This is Deep.

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in Mark

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Ofta Church we go…baa baa

Traffic seems heavy this morning. You know wot happens. If you have  one car then you will get another therefore you will have two one cars that will interrupt your day. But hey, don’t mind me. I’m Sandy, your local parish priest that doesn’t believe in God. Pretty cool hey. A parish priest that doesn’t believe in God. Go up to your CEO and tell him or her that they don’t actually exist. Check out the facial expressions. Thems is so good they get paid thousands of times more than any one else in the company that actually does something. Can you believe that? Well I can.

Are you coming over to the Way of Gordon and the Church of Saint Generic Brand, hint, hint, come over and join in the festivities, kidding me if ya don’t?

A one car

 

I’m sitting in the front bar at the Pigs Arms. Bloody disgusting place, that’s why I visit. Now now, no, to try and convert these poor souls over to the Way of Gordon to the Church of Saint Generic Brand. Bring your own religion and tacos and we can have a meal after, sound okay?

Gordon is recanting in his usual highly religious way, tongues and betadines instead of uvulas and metaphors. “Hey, and did ya see Hacker’s face when wheeze told him that hees don’t exist know more, talk about double en titre with BBQ sauce…” and so the word was of Gordon.

Gordon can speak under water with a mouth full of pebbles, hmm.

“Well, yeah look I mean right okay for sure I really do think so, perhaps if I had more time but I agree you won’t see me wavier unless I see a better  argument for sure please trust me, I’m a nurse, lets forget that little brown paper bag but yes I agree with whatever I said” says Gib.

Wow, that got my word count up. “thanks Gib”. “No worries Hung”.

“Has the story actually started yet?” asks Honshades.

Lets see if I have all angles covered.

“No, well I don’t think so” says Angler. “Oh, hang on yes, Sandy’s here to convert us the Way of Gordon when really he just wants to drink ale.” Aren’t some parts of stories just real shit, er, um, if you know what I mean.

“Has anyone feed the chooks yet?” enquires Nurse Barbara who will be feeding the chooks for some time in the coming episodes.

“I think that if you change the name down at the railway station from Hornsby to Bondi that no one will really notice. Imagine the thrill of getting off at Hornsby, the wild surf, fresh air and blonde babes, yes I can see it now, what could possibly go wrong.” says Sister Yvonne.

Lets extrapolate this across other things like lets change the name of Ferrari to Datsun 120Y. Oh yes, this is real folks.

That’s right, nothing happened…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sociology of A Place To Call Home Part 12

17 Tuesday Oct 2017

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Qld. Teachers College Graduates 1763 (Hint: I’m in the fifth row at the back)

 

The Sociology of A Place To Call Home Part 12

by Sandshoe.

Females were directed to wear stockings. I did not initially believe it.

When I confirmed it was a directive, I asked did anyone know of requirement other than it?

Not any reference to style of presentation?

Nothing other than a directive that sounded perverse.

In tropical North Queensland? Nylon stockings?

Well, the rest of us could

I could not bear the thought.

I told another female student I had decided to not wear stockings. Her look of deep concern frightened me for her. I had expected a conversation.

She warned I would be in trouble.

Over stockings?

Where but in a furnace of hell in every respect had I arrived.

I wondered I might even get expelled. The Education Department might find this as a reason difficult to explain. I would make it a difficult argument. I would present myself as immaculate. I chose a formal sun dress, new and fashionable,

How sensible

discrete with an over the knee hem. The shoulder straps were wide and neckline high and straight. The dress fall allowed me room to move with ease. I wore a new pair of flat dress shoes. My hair was neatly pinned. My finger nails were immaculate.

No make-up. Nothing aggravated me more in Primary School than a teacher who spent repeated time every day at her desk with a make-up box open on it so she could look in its mirror and apply make-up. I spent more time that year standing outside on the verandah with my back strictly not in contact with the open door or wall we had to maintain our posture clear of. Being sent outside would only result in the Headmaster I adored catching sight of me and coming past to ask what my misdemeanour was. I would be sent back inside to sit down. I was pleased as I was naughty in that class. The teacher instead was miss goody two-shoes. She carried with her a change of shoes she slipped in and out of. I had found a cause.

I was reading a book, sir, because I thought it was free time, I wasn’t working, sir. I asked my friend for a rubber instead of asking Miss X for a lend of the one on her desk. I was talking to

The book was called “The Accounts” by Dodd G Accountant.

someone, yes sir, and Miss X told me I should be working and to mind my own business, yes, sir, I’m out here a lot. I will be good, sir, no sir, Miss X put her make-up box away, sir, in her cane shopping basket.

Most days through that year, I read a book I concealed under the desk and went to the library the next afternoon to get another one.

A teacher looked up to regard where I was standing at the door of the staff room where I was now assigned. She supposed I was the teacher trainee. She was glad I was there. She was busy. Had something to do. I learned only the class was a Senior History class and asked the length of the period as she walked with me to the room, waved me in, but turned on her heel and left.

So much for the teacher who it had been said was waiting to receive us and would brief us, would help, don’t worry about a thing. I had received no training in the methodology of teaching history. I had received no training really, in regard to the wider

1+1= more or less 2 but not 3

subject of education and its requirements. Nothing about legal status, safety, presentation, relationship with parents. Nothing.

I saw at first glance I was perhaps three years older than the students. They seemed to never realise how close in age we were.

They were stone-like. I was the enemy. Their faces frozen as if suspended in time simmered, pouted, stared at me in resentment. They sprawled, their legs spreadeagled under their desks, lounged sideways, were scrunched into themselves and one studied with apparent deliberate purpose out through a window, his elbows on the window sill where he had pulled a chair. I was not surprised. The students and their school had a reputation. I introduced myself and asked what were they studying.

They either did not know or did not intend to tell me. I would love to hear their names, however I demurred adopting pretence nothing negative had happened. I addressed each in return with a greeting and their name. I was naive of formal instruction in ice breakers. I was stalling for time to think.

Each responded on the cautious side. They were civil. What next

Vroom, vroom

I was wondering. I had read ‘What is History’ by E. H. Carr. I hit on an idea. I would lead them into a tutorial. They, instead of my teaching them as I had nothing to teach them with, would fill the time by talking. My only purpose was to leave them happy with me. I would see if I could warm them up by saying something.

We should really look, anyway, at history. Seems to me, I said, we are best equipped to study history if we talk about what history is. We need to understand what we think it is. We need to know what each other says it is. We need a common understanding because otherwise we will not know what we are talking about.

Their insolent manner thawed. The sprawled, the lounging sat forward. Some turned part or entirely side-on swivelled towards me. I could not allow a feeling of surpise distract me and I set it aside.

They warmed as each spoke up, randomly, to describe what they thought history is. I chatted with each student in response. Nobody interrupted another person speaking or argued without thought. I did not need to urge anybody to speak. I wrote nothing on the board to not break the mood, stayed in front of the teacher’s desk, leaned myself back on it and variously sat on the desk edge with my feet on the floor. They had moved closer to each other and grouped.

I saw by the tableau they formed they were comfortable with each other, friends.

Amateur people watching was paying off. I was no longer filling time. I was deep in saving lives based on what I thought might be true of the reports I had heard of the students at the school. I steered them to look at human relationship in the context of today’s history and yesterday. We are contemporary history. History is less than a minute ago. Lives can be changed in less than a minute. Every year we go back, we have to rely on other people to explain to us what they experienced a year ago, a hundred years ago.

History is an interpretation of what happened.

Respiration sifflante Australien mate, où est la putain de bière

They were studying The French Revolution they told me. They had not read the text for the day. One of them offered me their study book. I chose to not risk accepting a text I had not read, viewpoint my experience of the Physics text in High School. I might be aggravated by the content. My excuse was that as they had not done their homework it was their homework again so they were ready for their next lesson with their teacher. I suggested always so much better. Reading the text, they might like to think about the ideas they had come up with about history, what is history.

Let’s consider the French Revolution then. Fortunate I had read ‘The Crowd in the French Revolution’ by Marxist Historian, George Rudé. I ad-libbed, spoke about oppression of the

Georges brother Rodney

people’s voice and inequity, the nature of revolution and successive struggles, reducing revolution to human behaviour when people are without means of support and led by ideas of social radicalism that can reveal a result is not their liberty.

Did they want to say anything. Time was almost up. I did not want to give them much more time to engage me in discussion.  I did hope they would name the elephant in their room.

One said Vietnam War, Miss. I think we should not be there. That’s what the protests are, revolution.

A lot of people think so, I answered and a lot of people think we should be there and there was quiet reflection, some students nodded mildly. I thanked them for their attention and said how much I had enjoyed meeting them.

I asked them were they happy at school.

One beautiful lad stood as if he was the designated spokesperson

A purse-carrying nancy-boy speaks up.

by previous group decision. I remembered my appointment at the same age. I remember, vividly, what he said and his ease saying it.

He said if all the teachers were like you, Miss, let us speak to them like you have, we would be happy; if they talked to us like you have, asked us questions, taught us like you have… he trailed off and added, rueful, it’s this school, Miss. He had half turned his head and looked out the window at other buildings visible through it and looked back at me. Every student’s face was serious. Everybodys’ gaze was steady on me. They might well have intended rebellion when I walked into the classroom. For now they had material to think on. I thanked their spokesperson without comment on the school and called class end.

The teacher had not reappeared.

I found her in the staff room and leaned myself against the door jamb. I had a question for her that was all I could think about. My words were confident, passionate, sincere.

“How can you stand the Education Department?”

She shot her reply walking towards me. Her mouth was tense, I interpreted bitter, you’ll be alright when they break your spirit.

She was in a hurry, no enquiry how I fared, what the content was. She added the one further friendly word thanks meaning my taking her class and she was gone.

I felt for the teacher and I liked her for all the little of her I

Icy veins if ever

knew. My blood ran ice cold hearing the notion advanced my spirit would be broken.

How could I ever forget the details of this experience and the essence I have extracted and remembered given everything that had come before it. That the Senior student felt I had taught the class and shared the secret that was the elephant in their room identifies why I survived my life through regardless the Queensland Government’s fractious effect on my confidence and well being. Ameliorated was my extreme misfortune I contracted to and met some of the more poorly educated and ill defined, ruthless people I would ever by getting entangled by my matriculation in the lure of a Fellowship with the Queensland Department of Education.

Unbeknowns to my parents, I flew to Cairns most week-ends. As result of meeting the man who would become the father of my first three children, in the bookshop as it happened where I had applied for employment the summer holiday before I left to go to Townsville, I had attached to the midst of the alternate culture that was a disparate group of people living on a beach north of Cairns in rental houses, their own private properties, tents, Combi vans, caravans, eventually buses, boats on the high water mark and concealed in the foreshore scrub in grass thatched and corrugated iron lean-tos.

One week-end soon after my Prac, I extended my stay by two or three days. My neighbour in Townsville in the half-house attached to mine who rarely intimately spoke to me rushed to

If you add half a house to half a house you get…

greet me when she saw me walking towards our residence. Her face showed grave concern. Did I know the police had searched my place while I was away she asked me.

Fear of the Queensland Police Force was rife. Organised crime in Queensland was rumoured to be managed and protected by corrupt police. Police were said to offer favours to young women in return for sexual favour. Excesses of police brutality against leaders of the protest movement against Australia’s alliance with the United States were well documented. I primarily felt vulnerable because I travelled frequently to the beach where residents and young people and older, travellers from the south and overseas were attracted to the core group. Most were opposed to the Vietnam War and rejected Australia’s involvement in it.

My neighbour said of the police they were there for ages. What frightened me next was it did not look plausible they had been or had searched. I searched, to try to identify if drugs of any variety had been planted on the premises that I knew to be a common ploy. Finding nothing, I wondered if the police it was claimed had searched went to great trouble to cover their tracks they had been. I had no reason to disbelieve my neighbour. Had the police known where I was. Might they return. Neither could I as I saw it risk asking the TTC administrators had they phoned the police. Not a word had been said to me at College.

Here was tipping point thinking on the Teacher’s Training College. I felt very frightened. I packed up. My memory is blank what

Spot the chick with the Watneys Red Barrell tits

arrangement I made for the transport of three years’ text booksand not either with the real estate agent, although I assume I handed in the keys.

I walked out without a further word to the Department of Education or to the College.

I have never known what assessment was awarded my first teaching Practical.

My parents were devastated. We were estranged.

My parents and I never discussed what happened that in less than three years I had dropped out. Years later I expressed regret to my father that I assumed he paid out my contract. He replied affably no, he wrote and asked to pay it and was told the file was closed. He had not paid anything. That was lucky, I said, confused. I’ll say, he answered affably.

My only real regret is in regard to walking out that it ever began. I regret I do not know what became of the children out of the only classroom in Queensland I taught in under contract. I

Constable Dutton – Qld Pleece, brown paper bags only

wonder from time to time how the other teacher trainees fared and where their careers took them.

At first my partner and I lived in his rental cottage with a beachfront view.

The beach side properties were far narrower than usual suburban blocks. The dwellings had been built as close to the front of their blocks as possible to advantage their access to the beach. Many of them beach-side as ours did had only for yard an eccentric length of grassed or only dirt car track that set their view from their back doors at some distance from their corresponding neighbours on the other side of an unsealed lane, their hotch potch of tiny front gardens. The view down the lane was of a higgle piggle and humble mix of sand and dirt, stray shell, of fences and no fences, fallen palm fronds, a coconut or two or husk, glimpses of multi-coloured leaves, overhanging end branches of mango trees, plain and simple old fashioned hibiscus blooms, here, there, an occasional frangipani.

An esplanade road had long eroded and its nature strip until the cottage sat in beach sand drifting through a lattice frontage that enclosed a verandah. The frontage adress was nullified. The address was the lane at the back of the property.

to be continued…

Christina Binning Wilson

 

My old school…

Sister Yvonne gets a new job

16 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in Sandshoe

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No, pass the sauce not the horse…

Story by Sandshoe

BREAKING NEWS: Sister Yvonne gets a new job.

Foodge was up early with the Guide out of the middle of The Clarion.

Flat Out Like A Lizard Drinkin’s tipped to run better than she did in Cawfield’s The Crescent Moon he read out aloud.

Paper Roses was playing on the juke box.

P-a-p-e-r R-o-s-e-s his Uncle Merv was crooning in the way someone

What’s this paper crap?

mopping does. A-l-w-a-y-s m-a-k-e m-e b-l-u-e. Foodge set his uncle straight.

“Uncle Merv, the word’s cry.”

“It’s my spin on it. P-a-p-e-r R-o-s-e-s A-l-w-a-y-s m-a-k-e m-e b-l-ooo-ooo…

Ok Foodge, if he’s singing he’s happy mopping. One more ‘p’ than moping. We don’t want the right words. Nobody pays Merv a lick of sauce so blue is fine. Blue makes the sun shine for Merv. Cry implies mopping with only one ‘p’. We can afford the second ‘p’.

Arch the Accountant from Whizzzzzz Accountancy dropped in, always on the fly, Arch the Hell’s Angle who got ambitious to help the petite

An advanced motorscooter

bourgeoisie. It was on his t-shirt.

“Where’s Angler and Gib?”

“Cannot rightfully say, Mr Arch. They’re waiting, I know that much.”

Merv was contemplating Nurse Barbara as if he had never seen her before. His glasses steamed up from the steaming hot water he poured into the mop bucket.

“Why?’

Now condensing steam was running off Merv’s glasses and leaving him a

Nurse Barbara feeds the chooks

pane of opportunity. He had bought an especially large pair of glasses for this very purpose of seeing. “Pres Nurse Barbara,” Merv said.

“Yes” she answered mistaking Merv’s declarative as precedent to a summative.

Merv said they were going to Bondi. Nurse Barbara pointed out to Merv straight off going is not waiting, not with the other.

“It’s true, Nurse Barbara!” Sister Yvonne had slipped out of the local vet surgery. Everybody was getting out and about. Yes, Sister Yvonne had slipped unexpectedly and as suddenly into a new career and the old veterinarian’s surgery, the Pigs’ Knob, Sister Yvonne, back from the United States of America, a Veterinariae Medicinae Doctor.

She was carrying a ladder. “Chooks,” she said in passing, “Angler and Gib are going to Bondi. They’re waiting at Hornsby.”

‘They’re out of town? Is that where it is?”

“That’s for sure,” Merv was witness. “Went south. Good as flew.”

Therese Trouserzoff made a surprising appearance on the street pavement. She strummed a uke and she sang, “Why,” she couldn’t help

Therese ponders life the universe and everything

her important self, “don’t they go to Bondi if that’s where they’re going instead of waiting at Hornsby?”

Someone ought give Therese the bestest job ever. She has us all to support. Retro.

Arch shrugged his craggy, leather-clad shoulders. “You blokes ever been before?” He meant the femmes as well. Merv was shoo-ing him, neverthelessness out the back door pronto tonto. “There’s nothing in Horns…” Arch’s words faded and Merv came back in the front door. He was carrying held up before him a tourist promotion package.

“LOOK!” he said, “Fallen off the back of a truck! At the front door! Lying on the ground! Even a map! Good money in this sort of publishing! How to get to Hornsby! Up and offed they did. Angler and Gib.”

GO TO HORNSBY! DON’T WAIT!

WAIT UNTIL YOU GO TO BONDI!

Gib, Angler and the boys drop in for a drink or fifteen.

Merv goes to the Bank

15 Sunday Oct 2017

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Going to the bank. Look left, then right and then, look theft again.

 

Story by Big M.

Merv was discombobulated. He still hadn’t recovered from the loss of the Pigs Arms dot matrix, and had just made it home before the ticket, or now known, as the Opal Card Inspector got on the bus. The driver had laughed at Merv’s effort to exchange postage stamps for travel, and had told that half the commuters didn’t have a card anyway.

It had really started this morning. He had asked a delivery driver to take back six kegs that were off. The driver agreed that they were all from a batch that had been recalled, and didn’t Merv get the email, or see it on our website? Merv thought he was talking gobbledegook, so cut to the chase and asked for a cheque. “A what, mate? A

It’s real for sure, it says so here

cheque, medieval thinking man, the boss will just do a bank transfer, if we’ve got yer BSB ‘n’ account number on file.” Merv had always been happy to get a cheque, so went inside to ring the manager of the brewery, who was friendly, but insisted that he go through the website, or email to him. Merv ended up ringing the bank to find out his BSB and account number, only to find that they had just stopped issuing passbooks, and could he email all of his details to the bank. It all sounded like something for Emmjay to sort out, but could he wait for Emmjay’s next visit?

Then lunchtime. Some young blokes wanted to pay for their meal and beers on ‘paywave’. Merv reckoned that as long as they paid, he’d wave at them. “No silly, on our cards!”’ Well, fuck me.’ Thought Merv.’Wavin’ credit cards to pay for stuff.’ He had eventually got one of them to go and get some cash for the payment.

I swear, eyes was a boy when eyes woke up

Meanwhile he was walking from kitchen to Gentlemen’s Bar when he caught one of the young lads going into the Ladies Toilets. “’ang on there, young feller!” Merv had him by the collar.

“Unhand me, I’m a lady, or, at least I am today.” Squirmed the little bloke.

“You look like a bloke to me!” Merv was ready to throw him into the carpark.

“Well, I’m Gender Fluid, I felt like a boy this morning, so dressed accordingly, but now, after a few drinks, I feel like a girl.” The prisoner had managed to wiggle out of Merv’s massive hands. “Besides, it’s you fault for not having Trans Bathrooms!” Merv just let him/her go.

Then, back at the bar, Merv asked some of the bar flies about ‘Gender fluid’. Of course the nurses didn’t bat an eyelid, or many lids, they had seen too much of it, whilst Angler and Gib reckoned they’d read about it but never seen it. Mark claimed it was

I think that toilet is overflowing Merv.

something to do with sitting down to take a piss. Shoe reckoned she’d seen it, and read and written about it, and, if Merv bothered to read what’s on his own website, may have learned all about it! “We have a website?” Sputtered Merv, still none the wiser.

Foodge wanted to pay for his beer on his Visa (again, what’s with the travel references?), and get a cash advance. “You want to pay on what? And get cash too?” Merv was aghast. Clearly he’d missed something crucial in the world of business, so put Granny in charge of the bar and took off for the bank.

The Assistant Manager looked about fifteen, but, as The Pigs Arms was such a valued customer, spent ages talking about internet banking, paying and receiving payments

The Bank Manager

online, how to set up a new credit system called ‘Visa’, and what other credit cards ‘Visa’ recognised, and where the money goes once the vendor processes a ‘Visa’ payment, and how ‘paywave’ is part of ‘Visa’, and no, when the customer gets a cash advance it’s not from the vendor’s account. When the young bloke was finished he asked Merv what sort of operating system he had. “Well, mate, we were just about to update to a Pentium!” Merv could barely conceal his glee.

“Well, Mr Merv, I think you should go a few steps beyond a Pentium. I’ll tell you what, you can purchase a complete commercial set up that links into all of our ‘Visa’ machines. I think they’ve got them on sale at Bing Lee’s!”

Merv went pale, then feinted, to find Granny standing over him. “Wake, up Merv, I need a hand!”

‘Thank the Lord, it was only a nightmare!’ Thought Merv.

“Them Transgender dunnies are blocked again, can you get in there an’ shift it?”

Ain’t life a bitch…

 

 

The Sociology of A Place To Call Home Part 11

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

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I’m sure I read this story somewhere

 

The Sociology of A Place To Call Home Part 11

by Sandshoe (Honshades)

I was identified some years ago by a former student that she and I were likely in the same year at the TTC in Townsville. She messaged me we had so much fun.

I lived in my new rental half-house in Townsville alongside a family with small children. My neighbours were tenants. I liked their presence. Our louvred home sat squat at distance from other properties in a spread of dark and dank green lawn, bungalow-like although covered in as if wrapped in sheets of fibre board as after-thought. My residence was dark and quiet inside. Others might see gloom. I liked my half-world within a world and its promise of sanctuary.

The nature of letting agency is to never reveal the downside of low cost

Low rent housing

rent unless it is blatant. Legislation need is the enshrinement of the principle of disclosure without exception where a domicile is a health risk.

I never opened the windows. The rooms filled with mosquitoes otherwise. Before I left to go to College, I lit two mosquito coils in each room. When I came home in the late afternoon, where linoleum had been visible was a black carpet of mosquito carcases. The floor had to be swept and the broom cleaned. I lit a coil in each room. I went to bed early. I swept the floors first thing. I lit a coil in each room. The coils I lit first thing were not burned out when I set up the two further coils in each room before I left for College.

The heat and humidity were terrible. I feared the coil smoke in the atmosphere would kill me as surely as mosquitos.

I contracted an infection in my left ear. I found a medical practice. In consultation I was coaxed out of anxiety to accept the treatment procedures included syringing my ear. Two years before as result of

All ears

mismanagement of the consequences of a cane beetle (lepidiota frenchii) flying into my left ear, I ended up in surgery and hospitalised for a week, surgery near four hours according to a nurse.

I wondered how gruelling for the ear, nose and throat specialist who was surgeon.

I had come home from a square dance at the school my final High School exams over. Someone had left the bathroom light on and the window open. I walked through a beetle swarm in the bathroom. My parents woke to the sound of my screaming without stop as the beetle’s scrabble tore at my left drum. My father put end to the agony I was in by pouring methylated spirits into my ear. Our doctor sartorial in his pyjamas at his residence and attached practice attempted to dislodge the dead beetle.

I felt the drum bulge outward. I feared wrong wrong wrong. The drum was damaged further and although he had not extracted the beetle, the

This won’t hurt a bit

doctor syringed my ear until I insisted he stop. My father attempted to rebuke me. I knew better. Requisite was a specialist. The beetle as it transpired was in pieces in my ear drum and wherever else.

That I accepted the advice of my new Townsville doctor treatment was to syringe was result of his competent management of my anxiety with the help of a cast of ancillary staff. He prescribed antibiotics after I was grateful.

The first or subsequent day of TTC, the class assembled, we were advised a Deputy stand-in for our Senior Administrator would be speaking to us. I supposed housekeeping and an address about course structure.

He was there for the reason we all might wonder to tell us exactly what we were. We were failures. He curled his lip. We were nothing but stumblebums.

He leaned forward to impress on us what we were. We would all know he suggested. We would not be there if we were anything else. He

A stumble bum

repeated stumblebums. I did not know I was one, not knowing the word or that everybody else in the group was. I glanced around and saw rows of impassive faces. My gorge began rising.

We were to know our place. He quivered with indignation. We could not expect to find the same facilities we had left where we had come from (sneer) because we were pioneers. We were at the beginning of an important future, this was our project. We would work.

We would find we did not have a big library. We would have a fine library. We had to understand these were early days. The University is over there, he waved his hand.

I did not exactly know where, even though I was a High School attendee there.

We would think we could just come and go as we wanted, but no. We were not to be found there (sneer), we were not to go there. We were here. This was our place. He waved his hand. We had wasted our time

Your place is over there

enough. We got on with it. We were to make the best of the opportunity we were given to make something of ourselves instead of being failures, stumblebums.

I do not know what he said about housekeeping and course structure. No idea anymore. I was shattered.

When the group filed out onto the verandah every face was impassive still. I feel acute embarrassment. I came out through the door enraged. I see myself standing aside on the verandah with my hands part out-stretched and withdrawing them, helpless, seeing person after person walk by me as if I was not there, disengaged to say nothing, respond to nothing. I expected a huddle of protestors. I drew the parallel I was in a militarised zone that reflected Lavarack army barracks was somewhere in the vicinity.

I remembered the coup at the beginning of my last two years at High School.

Discussion that led to it had been concern each of us felt about the way we might be treated by a teacher assigned to one of our subjects. He had graduated to teach High School. None of us had him as a class teacher at Primary School. We each because of his reputation he was a bully had

Did you say primary

thought we dodged a bullet. We did not want fear to stand in the way of our ambitious resolve to do well and matriculate. We decided to set down day one our collective concern and expectation we would be treated well.

Had we experienced behaviour such as I had as introduction to teacher training I believe we would without exception have stood up and walked out of the room. It was the resolve between us at High School we would were we unsuccessful. That one of us was appointed to introduce the subject and I to address the teacher being clear I was appointee remains one of the highlights of my experience because each of us committed to achieve an end greater than any individual end. We eliminated fear.

Reflection suggests consideration of financing if teacher trainees lost by rebellion their second chance to acquire qualification or, as we were, partial qualification.

A survey of the socio-economic backgrounds of tertiatry students in 1967 suggested medical students came from the highest and teacher trainees from the lowest (D.D.Anderson and J.S. Western from Pattern of Participation in Australian Post-Secondary Education) and were less likely than university students to have fathers in professional occupations.

In the 1930s it was said the majority of students in the arts and science pass courses came from public schools because, according to one La

La Nose

Nauze, most of them were student teachers paid by the State Education Department (D. Anderson, Department of Sociology, Research School of Social Sciences in “Who Gets Ahead?’1983).

Anderson suggested nothing changed and uses the word I did to describe my regard for my Fellowship, lucrative, in reference to studentships paid by the State Education Departments in the 50s and 60s. I note his claim former State school students at University less commonly made applications to do Honours than fomer private school candidates because Education studentship holders were “directed to pass and broader degrees”. He extrapolates:

…and for quite some time universities were training far more students for the teaching profession than for all the other professions combined. For the first time all qualified students were not able to gain admission. Competitive quotas were filled according to what was euphemistically called ‘order of merit’: it was based on aggregate examination marks.

I emphasise teacher trainees did not receive an education at University that was different from any other student’s regard to individual subjects. I received no formal training in either education systems or teaching methodology at University. None could be anticipated. I was, simply, an Arts under-graduate.

The Queensland Government across the board spent $34.51 per head of population on education 1966-1967 which calculates with inflation to an equivalence of $421.66.

About $46.00 per head was paid to the school for each student enrolled in the last two years of Secondary School which calculates to $562.05.

In 2016, the Queensland State Government allocated $2, 635.00 per head to Secondary Schools.

My lived experience lends my bias belief Seniors exiting school in 1967 did not proceed to employment, apprenticeships or tertiary education well equipped for the experiences that would be theirs, a number separated from home influence or as in my case result of legislated further dislocation from familiar territory, services, public transport, site of failure.

State government poltical policies and educational priorities made effective through budgetary and finanial controls on state departments of education were perceived to have the most influence on state supply of

Students listening to Burkhardt

teachers 1956-1978 (Geoffrey Burkhardt, Canberra College of Advanced Education in ‘Changes in Factors Influencing The Markets For State Government Teachers in Australia’).

Consider the resourcing of teacher training. Staff at the four Queensland Teacher’s Colleges in 1970 when I went to Teacher’s College was 137 males and 58 women, part-time one male and six women, total 202 staff (Year Book of Queensland).

Total teacher trainees of which 760 were male and 2,326 were female was 3, 086. Gender consideration breaks the figures down to a proportion of 5.5 male trainees to every male staff member and 36.4 female trainees every female staff member.

No matter the number of female trainees was three times the number of male trainees. Female staff was half the number of male staff.

The traditional status of women on graduation was they neither received equal pay or were promoted to senior positions, which was mentioned to me in passing at University at the end of the previous year as

Pie tasters wanted, apply now

disincentive why a friend had not considered teaching as a career. I had not even been equipped with knowledge my pay would begin on a lower rung than men I anticipated in the moment working alongside. I was still swallowing pie.

Any culture that accepts such ungracious inequity cannot expect gracious standards and sound intellectual reasoning to materialise overnight at the coal face of education.

I had skills as an educator when I accepted the offer the Queensland Department of Education made at the end of High School. Sale of the offer to me included it was prestige to be paid to go to University. I thought it was equivalent of a prize. I was without conceit, but proud of the Fellowship, its title seductive. If I was conceited I would not have had the friends I did in every faculty and level of their progress, under-graduate and post-graduate. I had friends behind me galore and interstate. Friendship was par for the course in my final two years of High School.

You can call me Jim

I knew nobody in Townsville I was in contact with, except that somewhere in the precinct of the James Cook University were former school classmates came home. I have never felt more isolated in my life

All very well leave gender off the agenda. I do not think so. The push to denigrate gender studies is an attempt to disguise power and render its critics helpless.

A female High School student had little or no acculturation either that she would even think to undertake an apprenticeship in a trade as alternative to accepting a scholarship or studentship. I had none other than disincentive. Bullying compartmentalises the way we think so we stay in its confine until we are released or live simply our lives out trapped by a belief system that is not of our own making.

1930 through to 1939 women enrolments in apprenticeships fluctuated around 39% at a high. Female enrolment was around 50% in war years and fell again after the war.

This dichotomy of technical education for men and for women was not seriously questioned for another fifty years. (Technical and Further Education in Queensland:A History 1860-1990, Department of Education, Queensland.)

I forced myself to acconpany a trainee buying a motor scooter. She just wanted the company. I had promised. I waited for her to refer to our treatment. She bought the motor scooter and we parted. I attempted the conversation with another student and hit the uncomfortable brick wall of self acknowledgement she was a failure and the student’s concern for her parents’ happiness.

Swimming was compulsory. I had not known. My mindset was I could not swim. I converted thought I would have to learn into believing I had opportunity. Best present and advise I looked forward to instruction except I was recovering from an ear infection and had not thought to secure a doctor’s certificate. There is no instruction just get in and swim, I was told brusquely by a male who was a passer-by, I thought a person in charge, and not that I knew if instruction was not available for me or anybody or if I ever knew. I stood wrapped in a towel over a bathing suit I was unaccustomed to wearing, feeling dismay I have vivid recall of and embarassment, incompetent, wondering what waste of time might be mine if what appeared a dearth of supervision let alone organisation meant I opted for a regular hide-out in the melee…and what child if I did might drown were I directed to oversee swimming classes in a remote location school and ignored I could not swim.

I would have to learn somewhere if it was assumed teachers are competent in water.

Not so much of the old bit

English Methodology class I looked forward to. The book was ‘The Old Man And The Sea’ by Ernest Hemmingway. I had studied it in some previous year and read it again the night before. I can smell the stink of mosquito coils. When the class was asked if there were any questions, I raised the issue I did not really like the book and had a different viewpoint on how to teach it. As you know so much about it, the lecturer said, peremptory, you can write an essay. Hand it in next week. I had responded as I would in a University tutorial, even in High School Senior English. I felt panic, embarrassed, baulked at the thought of the workload, travel time backwards and forwards, day-to-day exigencies.

I made a tape on English teaching methodology when I was at the College. I was revising a lesson, striving to arrive at a place of comfort within myself, competence and compliance. I recently note someone unaccustomed to a young woman speaking like it may think my wording and enunciation is stilted. My voice is deliberated and cultured. I wonder its negative effect potential on a Queensland Department of Education fuellled lecturer.

Not so I perhaps on a High School class.

Trainees were each allotted a school to attend for classroom experience.

to be continued…

Christina Binning Wilson

Yes, no, well maybe…

Merv meets Dot

01 Sunday Oct 2017

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I fucking hate cats…

Merv was buggered if he could find Dick Smith’s. He was convinced there was a store in town, but where the hell was it? He’d lugged the old dot matrix, in it’s original box on two buses and a ferry (fuck knows why he’d be on a ferry?) into George Street. ‘Well, fuck me’. He thought to himself. ‘All I need is a Yeller pages, so, in fact, all I need is a phone booth!’ Our redoubtable publican carried that old printer up and down George St, to no avail. ‘Fuck me twice.’ He thought.’ No fucking phone booths, and the place is overrun with Asians, not that I dislike Asians, there just weren’t many in Sydney last time I were ‘ere in ’78.’

Merv was getting mighty thirsty, then remembered there was a pub near the cinemas,

Queenslanders…

so lurched back down the road, passed the cinema complex, and into the welcoming arms of The Albion, flopping his arse and his parcel into the nearest seat.

“Bugger me dead if it isn’t the Lewisham Lugger!” Wheezed a voice from the gloom.

Merv instantly recognised his former Sergeant from the uniform days. “If it isn’t Detective Chief Inspector Watson!” Who’s name wasn’t really ‘Watson’, but he was perpetually bamboozled, so was often heard to say, “What’s On, lads?”

“Girly, get the lad a drink, will ya?” Women’s lib had entirely passed by Watson. The young barmaid place a schooner of fourex in front of our thirsty lad, who gratefully skulled it in one swallow. “And another. So what brings you into town?” Wheezed Watson.

“Gettin’ bits for me printer.” Merv nodded towards the cardboard box.

“A dot matrix!” Watson pushed back some long strands of hair that had escaped from his rather long, and desperate comb over. “Haven’t seen one of them in years.”

“Yep, was gonna go to Dick Smith’s, but I can’t find him.” Merv had ordered a third

Biggus Dickus

schooner from the bar.

“Well, old son, Dickie Smith is no longer, don’t youz read the papers in Inner Western Cyberia?”

“Well, yes, we’ve got papers. So where’s Dick then?”

“Dick is at Terry Hills, of course.” Watson took a long draught of the fetid tasting ale.

“Oh, shit, that’s a funny place for a store. It’ll be like four busus and a coupla ferries.”

“Nah, Dick Smith is still alive, and lives at Terry Hills. His stores went arse up. If youz want electronics, youz should go to Bing Ree.”

Merv was wary, not only had Asians taken over Sydney, but they’d taken over electronics! “Where is this Bing Ree?”

Wanker

“Look it up on yer phone.” Watson was gasping for a smoke, so stepped into the doorway and lit up.

“Me phone?” Merv pulled his old Samsung clamshell out of his pocket. “The bastard doesn’t even work these days.

“That’s because it’s only Two Gee!” Watson peered at his new IPhone through a pall of smoke. “Here you go, there’s a Bing Lee just up the road.”

Merv thanked his former boss, and dragged his package up to Bing Lee, where a young Phillipino lass convinced him to give up his dot matrix, and upgrade to a LASER

Laser my arse

printer. “What exactly is the printer for?” She enquired. Merv sat down and told her all about the Pub, and how he was seriously thinking of upgrading the computer to something flash, like a Pentium. With that she took him through to a business consultant, who set him up with a new Computer, modem, business software and electronic till. All with free delivery and installation.

“How will I pay for all of this?” Ventured Merv.

“Pop it on your Visa.” Came the obvious answer.

“Visa? But I aint goin’ overseas!”

“Visa credit card. Look, we’ll hold all of this, and you pop next door to the Commonwealth, and sort out a card.”

‘Christ on a bike.” Thought Merv. “I only come here for a printer cartridge!” With that he was out the door and aboard a bus headed for the safety of the Inner West.

“Where’s yer Opal card, sir?” Asked the driver.

“Will a couple of postage stamps do?” Asked Merv as he shook a couple of moths from his wallet.

我恨猪

The Sociology of A Place To Call Home Part 10

29 Friday Sep 2017

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I’m just looking for clues at the scene of the crime

The Sociology of A Place To Call Home Part 10

by Sandshoe (Honshades)

I found a place to live in on my own in Townsville.

Alcohol was the primary issue.

I well empathised by that time with my mother intercepting my father’s account of being drunk on an occasion way back when. My mother looked up from her crochet and scoffed he knew that was not true. My father said it was true. My mother would have no truck with it.

I saw my father affected by alcohol once. His lowered inhibitions revealed he could crack an inappropriate quip not half. I was 16. The occasion was the one work party it was deemed appropriate I attend with my parents and his quip to a half circle of his colleagues…all male…answer to an admiring reference they made to me.

Fortunate my mother did not hear him. I kept it secret from her. His quip

Fragile…Yes

was racist and sexist. I kept secret from him how offensive it was from my viewpoint. He was fragile if he knew I understood it and I perceived his work colleagues were shocked.

Unheard of in any case had I…as I considered…bawled him out in a private location the next day. I have never repeated what he said.

We can choose to change culture.

I drank in my early experience of University although never in my College room, sometimes to excess. My father and I had a drink at a bar at Brisbane airport on one of several occasions he flew to Brisbane to see me.

Residents of Women College were often drunk and disorderly after nights out. My own ultimate indiscretion rests on walking early one morning from College to attend a champagne breakfast at the University.

Flow on champers…

Champagne flowed. Few people turned up. I had never drunk champers before. The effect was a delicious high until I arrived back at College. I had forgotten Open Day. Residents were expected to host visitors who included parents with high hopes their High School age daughters in transition to University would establish residence in these exclusive premises. My vivid recall is of the trouble to maintain myself upright and walk through a throng of people to escape upstairs into my room. No-one intervened. No-one mentioned it.

My companionship was girls from homes of academic professionals, government ministers, graziers, industry and some small business. The WC song was a collegiate binder. We vocalised satirical concept of our ‘propriety’. Our residence lent ‘us grace at every station’.

Residence for a year and a term was nevertheless fearful containment driven by homesickness. I thought it a coop of claustrophobic imprisonment. In contrast to sun dappling through the trellis of a bungalow verandah, brick stolidity and the daunt of panels of glass on a walkway between the buildings allowed me a corridored view of my housing outside and in especially that I felt anxious electric lights illuminated our traipse across the walkway.

My better adjusted college friends who went to boarding school assured me living in the WC was a cinch. Kindness was mark of my experience of day-to-day chat between residents who were my friends. I loved their friendship. When I heard a discrete rumour someone was bullied by

a bully

someone somewhere in the College who I did not know the concept was remote as if they lived in a distant country. I stood against one attempt. I outright rejected the fresher system of extreme pranks.

I never sought the counsel of the Principal of the College. Likely I carried with me from High School a habit of aloof co-existence.

On habit, complicated that evening meals were formal during the week and we wore our university gowns. The Principal’s gown hem dipped at the back where it was torn and she walked with visiting dignitaries down a centre aisle after we had taken our places. The back of her gown had small rents. Its tattered condition I was incredulous was said to be evidence of her status. Someone catching a shoe heel in the dangling loop the hem made and her falling one evening was nothing compared with anxiety she would.

Rostered students at the Principal’s table withdrew with the Principal and visitors to an elegantly furnished room for after-dinner drinks. Alcohol in

This looks rostered to me…

the College was otherwise forbidden. I dreaded a rostered dinner. If the Principal tripped on her gown. I feared I would deal with it without any grace. I felt foolish sat on a stage elevated above a hall of diners.

If we missed a meal, we were on our own. I had an income and fashionable clothes. On weekends I explored restaurants in Brisbane city. Regular remuneration meant I had means even sufficient to send home a swag concerned my parents were paying my residential bill. My father wrote his thanks it came in handy to pay an insurance bill. I do not know if it was as much money as I thought or his insurance bill was a doozy.

I did not consider playing tennis. I played a high standard at 12 years of age. My mother was a champion tennis player and my siblings. My father who was not accompanied me to competition matches, more often regional games my mother as well. He stood at the back wire fence of

It’s love thirty

the court where he groaned and mumbled instruction at me if I missed a shot. I felt I was an impostor. If my parents conceded to protest I may have made that they did not ensure I took my racquet to College, it was an error on all of our parts.

A close friend who became a professional educator told me in the 90s she knew what I should have been. She said a tennis professional. I was astonished the thought had never crossed my mind.

My father wanted to rail my bicyle to College. I was refused it. He was mistaken to not send it. I did not want to incur expense. Freight from North Queensland to Brisbane looked like unimaginable luxury.

I joined the University Filipino club because I enjoyed its family atmosphere and sobriety. A History club offered by contrast a drinks evening and I withdrew from the slops.

I saw the musical Hair in Sydney in 1969 standing in the last place allowed and entranced. I sat that afternoon in the middle of Kings Cross I

Very hirstute

had visited once as a child with my brother and took a mental snap shot of its now eccentricity that my surround seemed a stage itself draped in flags that were each the flag of the United States. American soldiers on R & R from the Vietnam War and their soft accents dominated a soundscape of Elvis singing Blue Hawaii. I felt suspended in sun and isolation from the mainstream politic. I remain impressed how elegant in uniform and sober the soldiers were as they strolled in and out of one business address to the next.

My boyfriend’s conscription into the Army was averted by student deferment. He was a vociferous opponent of the Vietnam War. I was opposed since the beginning of 1968 when a returning soldier invited me to a secret location to view photos he had smuggled out of unimaginable atrocity. I kept secret his identity.

My great enjoyment was the University choir and Church In the Round I attended with my boyfriend on occasion although I was not a believer. I can find no contemporary reference to the meeting. The congregation sat around the pulpit. The minister was a skilled facilitator. The meeting was participatory. I made one naive address people are born good.

Another resident was leaving College to rent with friends. I was offered a place. Our share house looked over the Brisbane River. The address was

River of …

a romantic aspect and its facade. Inside was a sprawled dump of poverty burdened inmates.

Male associates of my flat mates who were close friends met me at the door when I came home one night in the company of my boyfriend, grabbing at and mocking his wearing a collegiate tie, intimidating and drunk. My flatmates apologised. I did not fit in. They exploited visits to a parental home from where they thieved resources and food. The student might well have been owed as was the answer to my conservative reference opposed to it as theft. I experienced depression relieved by exercising initiative to find other housing.

I shared a University admin professional’s rent in a soulless 2-bedroom flat in a multiplex over a set of shops, but did not like in my cosseted naivety her obsessive talk about a married lecturer who she avowed she was in love with, he with her. I justified to myself I was the fault I had not pandered to her tortured heart when she left abruptly. In retrospect I thought it irony she complained when I applied to move in that her flat mates never stayed.

My neighbours were a couple with one talented child who was High School age. His parents gave me permission to take him to live theatre to

Tom Stoppard 1937 – hasn’t fucking died yet

see ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ by Tom Stoppard. I made him cocoa in my flat after the play. His parents were happy he enjoyed the play, but decided on potential led astray by a University student. He was a 15 year old. I did not resent instruction I was to minimise contact with their son. I instead acquired sad embarrassment as add-on to struggle to find a flat mate.

I chose to move into a soulless unfurnished apartment in a modern tenement building with a final year traumatised by her first experience of a Practical as a Social Worker. She believed she would leave Social Work. I yearned to study independent of the restriction imposed on me by the Education Department. The atmosphere was one of unreality, struggle and student penury. A male friend of ours on our way out for an evening balanced a whiskey on a ledge over a living room doorway. He announced it would be there for him when we returned. I felt intimidated and relief my flate mate had to find housing at distance to access employment she was assigned to.

Accommodation on my own in the furnished downstairs flat of a quaint two story home, a kind landlady living above, provided me haven.

Frocked up in a ballgown, I met the second boyfriend of my life other than early childhood and innocent loves, he tall and handsome dressed in an Airmen’s Club formal dress uniform. The occasion was a society

Nancy boys or girls

event. We introduced ourselves as a waiter offered a drink tray. ‘Never when I’m flying’, he said charming. He flew a plane. We danced a waltz.

My boyfriend had excused himself from me concerned to rescue wallflowers. He was however beginning to look neither handsome or gallant soaked in alcohol at the end of social evenings.

The next time my new friend and I coincided was in the University library, I dressed in a blue sweatshirt with the identifier University of Queensland, white jeans and desert boots, my hair in two plaits. Classic.

He asked would I coffee with him in the refectory basement. A song starting up on the juke box sounded in the stair well as we walked down the stairs together. I heard for the first time George Harrison’s ‘While My

Good man

Guitar Gently Weeps’. I engaged with the exquisite sound and song, swept into the words. I look at you all/See the love there that’s sleeping/While my guitar gently weeps.

I ended my relationship with my then former boyfriend. His grieving I had not factored in. Guilt tortured me. I feared he would fail his year that he was repeating.

The two men attended the same High School.

My new boyfriend called hinself the product of a working class family. He told me in an unguarded moment he had seen me with his former schoolfriend the night we met and decided to steal me off him as one-upmanship. He baldly told me he had resented at school his schoolfriend’s background. He had thought his schoolfriend returned higher grades because of his privilege.

The two men have been successful. The son of a worker has achieved even perhaps his then ambition to be a man of greater privilege.

Meanwhile, either way I felt indescribably uncomfortable being told frequently of his tortured feelings for a former girlfriend. I was single

I’m single mate, trust me, I’m a nurse

again.

In Townsville then the summer holidays ending and my aboritve attempt to find employment behind me, committed to lying to my parents I was happy to go to TTC, I had lived in five different addresses in the two previous years of 1968 and 1969.

I was looking for my sixth home away from home. I discovered the hard way the special disadvantage of the Townsville TTC. The College was in an isolated location. Getting there without private transport was not easy. There was some limitation on bus service to it or was it no bus service that went direct.

I viewed part-furnished rental accommodation with a real estate agent. I felt shocked and confused it was shown to me, a window opening vacant, window frames leaning against an internal wall, broken furniture. It seemed worth being condemned for demolition.

The premises I rented was a securely lockable half-house.

My travel time was near an hour and a half each way.

to be continued…

Christina Binning Wilson

I lie around the lounge like this all the time, don’t you?

 

All at Sea

28 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by in Mark

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Yeah, the S.S. Sebago was out there somewhere, well it was last night during the storm, maybe we need a plaque or somefink…

The ship ploughed through the heavy seas with waves breaching the bow and the wind so cold as to chill your bones. Black as night with no moon and raging seas the ship continued it’s journey. The captain knew what needed to be done and that was to reach the Inner Cyberian port of Port Disendower by day break otherwise there would be trouble for all concerned.

The crew braced themselves for every impact of the rise and fall of the great ship and they secretly groaned underneath their breath so no one else would notice

The Sebago in serious trouble, all beer drunk…

there suffering or fear or worse, both. Only the captain knew what the cargo was and to tell

that secret could mean his life, or even worse, having to watch re-runs of Seinfeld.

“Aye, Capn” said the first mate. Look I hope you don’t mind me abbreviating captain to Capn as I’m a lousy typist plus it gives the story that pirate sort of feel. “Aye Capn” yes you’ve said that “this storm is an omen that we are doomed” cries the first mate(FM).

“Fuck off” says the Capn with his usual tact. “We must get this cargo through other wise all hell will break loose.”

“And what cargo would they be?” winks the FM as he only has one eye and the other one is closed.

I’m here for my brains but this stuff hurts my arse

“None you mind. Now chuck a right seems like wheeze is approaching some sort of guano infested rock up ahead.”

“You mean starboard Capn, wheeze don’t do right when wheeze at sea”

Oh FFS, thinks the captain, where does the author dig these characters up from. “Okay then turn starboard a bit”

“That ain’t guano Capn, that’s an iceberg” cries the FM.

“Great. Look chip some off and I’ll have it in my scotch later” claims the captain.

“But it’s gale force-winds Capn.”

“Yes, I went to school with Gail, bit of a dish was our Gail.”

Oh FFS thinks the FM, where does the author dig up these characters.

The ship narrowly misses the iceberg and continues it’s journey to Port Disendower.

The captain returns to his cabin for some cabernet, roast chicken and fresh baked

Hmm, chicken, well that’s what best to tell kiddies

bread when a knock comes at the door. It’s the FM.

“Capn, pirates on the port bow” he cries. Seems to do a lot of crying this FM.

“Tell them I’m busy and need to go to the podiatrist” says the captain.

“No daze is gunna board us, slit our throats and steal our precious but yet unknown cargo” replies the FM.

“Well blow them out of the water”

“What with?”

“Questions, always questions. Tell them if they ever want another Trotter’s Ale that granny will be very nasty to them, very nasty indeed, if fact granny may not even serve her wedgies with her famous Vegemite and herring sauce if they so harm us, subject to high court challenge. Get Foodge” replies the captain.

“Wot, wedgies with no sauce?”

“Yes indeed.”

Ready to load

The FM relays the message and with that the pirates scamper and the sun rises in the direction from which the sun rises. The boat pulls into the harbour with Merv and granny waiting patiently on the dock with the Zephyr. The gangplank goes down and the captain walks ashore. “Captain Captain at your service, cargo has arrived, all the fresh potatoes you need for your wedges.”

The FM faints.

Some of this story is true but not much really.

Granny sips on a Trotter’s Special waiting for the boat to come in