Author Archives: gerard oosterman

Ducati 250 Mk 3 Desmo

06 Wednesday Apr 2011

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Story by Mike Jones
Ducati 250cc Mk III – photos courtesy of Stew Ross

The Pig’s Arms has clocked up its first year and nearly every day we get a person or two coming over to read the piece mentioning perhaps the greatest road bike ever built – the Ducati 900ss.  This was a monster that sorted out the men from the boys simply by having a clutch beyond the power of a wimp to engage.  It was a beautiful, elegant piece of open road mischief, and a mechanics’ dream to keep on the road.  But for any serious motorcyclist of the 1970s and beyond, it was street cred writ large.

I have never owned one and the closest I’ve come to riding one was a more modern, heavier and more brutal Mike Hailwood replica.

But for a year or so I did have the pleasure of riding my girlfriend’s Ducati 250 Mk III Desmo.  At the time I owned and rode a BMW R75/6 –  a sweet as a nut touring bike with a bikini fairing borrowed from the big brother R90/6.

What a contrast !  The Duke weighed about half as much as the BM and was tiny in comparison.  But it was a joy to ride.  And it was reputedly good for 100 mph.  But it was pretty scary over 70 or 80 – probably because I was always short of coin in those days and I used to eke out the last adhesion available in the Pirellis, Michelins, Avons or Metzelers or Continentals – or whatever the last owner had graciously conceded at sale time.

And another small matter was that the gear shift and rear brake were respectively on the right and left – the opposite of just about everything else on two wheels at the time.  Not a good idea to forget this in a decreasing radius corner.

When one piles the miles on one’s own clock, it’s easy to forget the simple pleasures of youth. Every now and again, I feel a hankering for the thrills of my life back then. Last weekend, FM and I ticked one item off our bucket list and went off on a Ferrari drive weekend.  We went in convoy behind a generously-driven Alfa GT and drove from Sydney down to Kiama- via the Royal national Park, along the seabridge and through Jamberoo.  We took turns in a 1988 F328 manual – the best in my view – an F355, F360 and a 2006 F430.  The newish one had 500 horses under the bonnet and acceleration that was beyond belief.   Make no mistake, driving a Ferrari is a blast, but the average number of outings per year undertaken by people who are so indulgent that they buy one – is just 12.  A toy.  And a bloody expensive one at that.  The excess insurance for the weekend was a snip at $10,000 and so we were all rather careful that we didn’t need to call it in.

But cars, are well, just cars and when I was thinking about my old bikes  (most of which had stellar acceleration by car standards ) and eyeball-popping brakes – and some also had handling too, my thoughts returned to one of the greatest little motorcycles ever built.  I was fooling around looking for pictures and videos of the little beast – having little or no chance of finding my own and I discovered over at Youtube a clip of a Ducati 250 (probably an early 70′s Mk III following a Ferrari 328 along a freeway. Go find that for yourself.   But there were better images to be had and there’s  a video for your delight below.

The spectacular Ducati singles were made mostly in the late ’60s and early ’70s.   Ducati started out with the small 250s – and as many manufacturers have done – they upped the ante by hotting up the 250, that later became a 350 and an astonishingly good wheel-standing 450.   Big M said he saw a 450 for sale recently unrestored – asking price ten grand.  And Duke restoration is a heroic undertaking requiring highly specialised and detailed mechanical engineering knowledge – or access to that bloke.

Then Ducati had a little brain explosion and built something ordinary – the 500cc parallel twin.  Redeemed later with the gorgeous SL500 V twin Desmo Pantah in the early 1980s.  One of which is in FM ‘s Dad’s shed waiting for me to cash up.

In the mean time I also found one of a solid band of Australian collectors and restorers and Stewart Ross kindly gave me the use of photographs of his amazing concourse condition 1968 Ducati 250 Mk III.  My girlfriend’s bike was probably one year older and had – of all things, two filler caps on the tank.  Photos of that model are even more rare – many actually being a 350.

Best movie is a bit cheesy and it’s a very modern 250.  But it certainly brings it all back for me.

Enjoy you old road warriors.  Vale Dennis Hopper.

In Praise of The Parsimonious

05 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

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Frugality is on its Way

One of life’s little rewards over the last few years is getting the car washed and polished. This I do every six months or so. By that stage the car is littered with all sorts of debris which I take out before I drive to the car wash. Our carwash is in Mittagong at one of those large shopping malls. There is a team of 4 or 5 young men, flat out with high pressure water sprays, an assortment of vacuum cleaners and squeezes, black paint for the final touch on the tires. The whole process takes an hour or so. After each of those car washes and polish I make a vow not to leave any rubbish in the car, ever!

 I follow the vow but not the grandkids. I found they had stuck chewing gum deep inside the door’s storage area. Also pop-up little drink bottles under the seats, lolly wrappers, and some ‘gay-time’ ice cream refuse.  Of course, Milo has a very luxurious bed at the back of the wagon with a small mattress and a variety of Indian pillows, a string of beads for toy, making him look Maharajah like from the Punjab region. His room at the back also has to be vacated and taken out.

I surrendered the car keys and was promised it would take about 90 minutes. This is always a difficult period to get through and one reason why Helvi usually leaves this to me to sort out. Big shopping malls are not her scene while I usually try and get a story out of it. A study of Australia at its most observable! There are usually a number of leather-like settees spread around the malls for some like-minded persons to settle into and either observe or take a nap or do both intermittently.

I bought the Australian because being a Monday Helvi had already bought the SMH for the TV program. I normally don’t buy any newspaper but those 90 minutes had to be gotten through somehow. Of course, I was immediately punished for this lapse in discretion. The front page had 8 million Australians portrayed as uneducated, analphabetic morons; all hopelessly illiterate and none could add 2+2 as well.

I got up in utter despair and bought a pork bun from an Asian outlet. I was the only customer and noticed a huge queue at Michelle’s, my most hated food outlet, where elderly ladies with blue or pink hair seem to settle for tea and scones or a mean sausage roll.

I went back with my pork bun and The Australian. I noticed very few shoppers about. This was strange and at 2 pm expected hordes of people. It was eerie. What’s going on? The shoe shop next to where I was sitting, the two shop girls all dressed in black were listlessly emptying some boxes and playing around with shoes on shelves. Not a single customer while I was seated there. Even the large sign with “The second Pair for Half Price” did not entice a single shopper.

I remember the article the previous Saturday in The SMH how Australia is starting to save and getting rid of credit card debts or mortgages. Was this now being played out in front of my eyes right then? Are people sated with goodies and coming to their senses? Have shopping come to a dead halt?

 The way home with my clean and sparkling car needed a stop- over in Bowral where I had to pick up my very old pair of RM Williams which I had booked in some days ago for e re-heel job. They were already overdue but the shoe maker was overwhelmed with repairing old shoes even though the shop employed 2 workers. He had apologized for the delay but told me they never had it so busy. So, there you are. A further confirmation of frugality with an increasing abstemious public keen on making things last and becoming more careful with opening their purse.

There is hope for all of us.

A Plucky “knitting” Man

31 Thursday Mar 2011

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

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A plucky knitting man.

Turning up at Bowral Rail station for yet another trip to Sydney, I bought my ticket on a cool autumn morning. This time without Helvi, she decided to attend to domestic stuff. The bathroom needed wiping and there was ‘dust everywhere’.

I needed some tuning to my hearing aids as the level of irritation from repeating even the simplest utterances by others were not audible enough for me to respond to satisfactory to those doing the uttering. This I get done in Sydney. Hence my date with a train this morning

 I bought a return ticket, and as the Bowral Southern wind was blowing and the temperature indicator in the car was 11c, I took shelter in the waiting room. There was another person seated there and he was knitting. He was a man of about 40, neatly dressed in a tweed Colbert and nicely pressed pants, shirt and tie, smart footwear. I was surprised but not as unsettled as some that entered this waiting room and quickly left when spotting the male in the act of knitting. The knitter had a ball of green wool in a plastic bag and, as far as I could make out, had progressed to having about 20 cm of a knitted length of some garment. I thought it might have been the beginning of a scarf. It brought back memories of my introduction of knitted stuff many years ago. When about 3 or4 my dear mum knitted our underpants. The trauma never left me and I remember the itch as if it was only yesterday.

When the train arrived, I was further surprised that the knitter also travelled with a bicycle. The bicycle was parked outside the waiting room and I had already, prematurely as it turned out, thought the bike belonged to a young man with heavy boots and a vast arrangements of rings through his lips, nose and eyebrows. I was badly mistaken!

The well dressed knitter clambered aboard and hooked his bike vertically in a special little compartment that the train provided. He sat down and took out his plastic bag, continued knitting.

I am not as distant from knitting as most of you, although I hate to make presumptions. All kids in Holland were taught knitting when I went to school. I can still knit but reverted to only the simplest of stitch or knot. I got corrupted by a knitting machine when living in Holland with our kids, and used to turn out smart little garments that were snapped up years ago at the Balmain market stalls.

Strange, how knitting seems to have died out. People now seem to do the pearl and knit on their mobiles. On the way home, from Central to Revesby a woman behind me had a continuous conversation without a breather. I looked around, she was on a mobile!  An attractive dark girl was also talking loudly but into the air, she had a kind of clip on her blouse that must have absorbed or amplified her talking. When that stopped she was furiously pushing her mobile buttons, non- stop till Campbelltown.

 Who pays for all that, I wondered?

How Different Can Dogs Get? One Canus tell

26 Saturday Mar 2011

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Siberian Wolf

Story by Warrigal Mirriyuula

You all know what a sucker I am for a good dog yarn; so when I came across some recent research regarding the genetic and morphological variation in domestic dogs I was immediately drawn to a study that articulates the human determined direction of domestic dog evolution over the past 10K years, and specially the effect of human selection in confirming Darwin’s theory. Human intervention has allowed dogs to follow their own evolutionary paths, dumping Darwin’s soundbite, ‘survival of the fittest’, and proving him right in the bargain. The study was conducted by biologists Chris Klingenberg, of The University of Manchester and Abby Drake, of the College of the Holy Cross in the US.

Published in The American Naturalist on January 20, 2010, the study compared the skull shapes of domestic dogs with those of different species across the order Carnivora, to which dogs belong along with cats, bears, weasels, civets and even seals and walruses.

African Wild Dog

It found that the skull shapes of domestic dogs varied as much as those of the whole order. It also showed that the extremes of diversity were farther apart in domestic dogs than in the rest of the order. This means, for instance, that a Collie has a skull shape that is more different from that of a Pekingese than the skull shape of the cat is from that of a walrus.

Dr Drake explains: “We usually think of evolution as a slow and gradual process, but the incredible amount of diversity in domestic dogs has originated through selective breeding in just the last few hundred years, and particularly after the modern purebred dog breeds were established in the last 150 years.”

Asian Wild Dog

By contrast, the order Carnivora dates back at least 60 million years. The massive diversity in the shapes of the dogs’ skulls emphatically proves that selection has a powerful role to play in evolution and the level of diversity that separates species and even families can be generated within a single species, in this case in dogs.

Much of the diversity of domestic dog skulls is outside the range of variation in the Carnivora, and thus represents skull shapes that are entirely novel.

Dr Klingenberg adds: “Domestic dogs are boldly going where no self respecting carnivore ever has gone before.

“Domestic dogs don’t live in the wild so they don’t have to run after things and kill them — their food comes out of a tin and the toughest thing they’ll ever have to chew is their owner’s slippers. So they can get away with a lot of variation that would affect functions such as breathing and chewing and would therefore lead to their extinction.

“Natural selection has been relaxed and replaced with artificial selection for various shapes that breeders favour.”

Dingo

Domestic dogs are a model species for studying longer term natural selection. Darwin studied them, as well as pigeons and other domesticated species.

Drake and Klingenberg compared the amazing amount of diversity in dogs to the entire order Carnivora. They measured the positions of 50 recognizable points on the skulls of dogs and their ‘cousins’ from the rest of the order Carnivora, and analyzed shape variation with newly developed methods.

The team divided the dog breeds into categories according to function, such as hunting, herding, guarding and companion dogs. They found the companion (or pet) dogs were more variable than all the other categories put together.

Pug

 

According to Drake, “Dogs are bred for their looks, not for doing a job so there is more scope for outlandish variations, which are then able to survive and reproduce.”

Dr Klingenberg concludes: “I think this example of head shape is characteristic of many others and is showing it so clearly, showing what happens when you consistently and over time apply selection.

“This study illustrates the power of Darwinian selection with so much variation produced in such a short period of time. The evidence is very strong.”

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by University of Manchester.

Journal Reference:

1. Chris Klingenberg and Abby Drake. Large-scale diversification of skull shape in domestic dogs: Disparity and modularity. The American Naturalist, January 20, 2010

A Plucky Woman

26 Saturday Mar 2011

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

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A Plucky Woman.

The punters predict we’ll have a change of NSW Government happening this Saturday. It should not happen, but change is ‘in the air’, the pundits are saying. In fact a ’rout’ is predicted. It has always been a mystery to me that people change political sides when it comes to Federal versus State voting. The philosophical difference between parties become secondary, and alliances or allegiances are thrown overboard at the drop of a hat or election.

Perhaps for many, the slip and slide from one to the other are chained to their ingrained notions that whoever promises the most in material wellbeing will get their vote. They, the voters, are indeed an unpredictable lot and don’t seem to have much of an idea of remaining faithful to their beliefs.

Of course, anyone with even the slightest notion of judging people would never waver when it comes in a choice between the present leaders of the NSW main parties. No matter what the past or indeed the future; it is a no-brainer. When it comes to sheer power, strength, determination and a core of unwavering strongly held beliefs, KRISTINA Keneally is heads above any other possible choice.  Despite all odds against her, she stays the course, totally un-perplexed of fazed. She is a winner even if she loses.

Most people that change their political alliances do so because they have been told by the opposition that things are bad or will become even worse if they stay with the present government. In state election, the opposition parties demonize and demolish, but rarely come with better policies. We have always known that.

Voters also sit in traffic, trains, or busses, for hours and hours, and blame the prevailing political party. They are miffed about relationships, the loss of their favorite football teams, the cost of bananas, and blame the present party.  All of a sudden though, like a conjuror pulling fifty porkers out of a hat, promises fly like pigs from all sides. The wavering voter takes it hook line and sinker and changes; vote in the party with the largest bag of promises. And so it goes…

Desperately trying to fend off stroppy feminists who seem to gravitate to insults whenever women are praised for their sex; dare I say also, that at no stage in Australian politics  has a female ever displayed the  charms and cheer pizzazz on a level of Kristina.

 Ok. Let fly now, become ropeable and give males heaps.

 She carries herself presidentially and looks into the camera without fear or hesitation. Her dress sense is superb and at no stage is she at all concerned about how she comes across. She KNOWS her stuff, walks like a model but nothing is deliberate for effect or even votes.

There is no doubt we are looking at a future premier in Kristina, if not now, next time around. That’s if she sticks around on NSW but I wouldn’t like to wager that she might cast eyes federally, if not presidentially as well. We might be running ahead here a little but…. What would Australia be like, finally taking the jump and govern on own feet, ditching the Governors and get our own Head of State?

We love royal weddings and he is a Prince Charming, but would he mind if we dumped the lot of them and go for one of our own. Kristina would be as regal as anyone. Make her a queen if you like. Better still, a future President.

We’ll watch this Saturday’s voting in NSW, (with baited breath,) but am betting Kristina will be the winner even if she loses.

The Ballad of Taggart

24 Thursday Mar 2011

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

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Extracts of a novel by M Glenn Taylor.

He let his fingers hover over the chipped keyboard, eyes shut tight. He lit another cigarette. Willie dropped in a slow but catchy bass line. Johnnie came in second, smooth and easy, Chicky waited, then let rip a reed splitter. They had it down. Johnnie kept his eyes shut as he started to sing.

Well, I drown a glass a water

and I’ll hang a rope

The devil he done come to me

Took away my hope

Well, I’ll put that stick a dynamite

Right on under your nose

Cause I done seen the worst a man can see

That’s just how it goes

The voice, the whole sound, was smoke-shot vocal chords and sticky-floor toe-tapping, holes in the soles. Chickey played part of the song with his nose. It was holy hell blues all right, and the only country or gospel to be heard was not a brand greasy Jimmy the disc jockey had ever encountered. This was sin music.

The muffled fiddle squal, the quiet dulcimer, the old five string, they were just discernable enough to calm the excitement. And when the young woman’s voice broke through, it was beautiful. Church solo beautiful. They could make out her words.

Well, boys, you’ve heard that tale

About a Mingo dead-eye shot

Who on that 1920 day couldn’t fail

To give Al Felts what he got

The boy was full of rotten teeth

But his eye was keen and sure

He held the miners’ deep belief

That their lives were surely pure

Out on the hallway stairwell, Chickey’s sight went red. Everything blurred. The howling in his ears commenced and his knees gave. He dropped like a man in the mids of a stroke.

Johnnie and Willie kneeled to him, slapped his face a little. They listened for his breath, found it, and carried him out, just as greasy Jimmy said to the radio-listening public, ‘And that was The Mingo Four with “The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart.”

Oysters- A return of Service

23 Wednesday Mar 2011

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Ah, huitres …. l’avion rose

Story and photographs by Jules

This window dresser and a pigsarmsman recently sashayed into Harrods with his 86 year old Mum for an oyster treat. Mum being insistent that they have, `the selection’.

Now this is a great idea because one gets to do the comparison in `real-time’.  One can guzzle the little molluscs one after t’other and compare taste.

Just as an aside here let me tell you that oysters actually filter and clean the water that they live in. (Makes a change from Humans, the nasty beasts.) A healthy oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day. Well so I read somewhere. I’m not going to provide a peer reviewed paper!!

Anyway they ( we) had some rock oysters, Japanese Pacific oysters, Clares, Belons- and my favourite The Colchester, accompanied by brown bread and butter. The bread baked on site and the un-salted butter sourced from The Harrods Dairy Farm—or so I’m told.

Rare shot of Jules in the Harrod’s dining room – modelled after the Pig’s Arms Dining Room

They were duly dispatched, accompanied by a glass of French Champagne * (from Harrods vineyards, no doubt)- and this enabled us to come to a sensible decision with the suitcase purchase, upstairs.

One of my old haunts in affluent days of yore was Wheelers. Good old fashioned silver service, with slightly snooty waiters. It made me feel good in the seventies, to dine in the up market establishments. Me with denims and kaftan shirt, accompanied by the remnants of “the beautiful people of the sixties” ,the hoi-polloi , current and fading  debutantes and–well anybody really, especially if they had pizzazz.

I never got to Wheelers Oyster Bar in Whitstable, but have avowed to take the pilgrimage one day. This year perchance, if plans for a 400th anniversary school reunion are taken up. It is miles away, nowhere is too far in Dear Old Blighty .

Thanks to Neville Cole for prompting me to dig out last year’s photos. If you hadn’t they would probably just languish on my hard drive for evermore and a day.

But just before I go I’ll just share this:

On a sojourn on the Coast of California once, we picked out a seafood restaurant in Sausalito, just over the Northern side of The Golden Gate Bridge. We had driven up from LA, stopping at a couple of motels and made camp in a Ramada Hotel in San Francisco. You know, we had the family room with two king sized beds for five of us. Fortunately the saucepans were 3, 5 & 7 years old, so we all bunked in No Prob!

I can’t recall the name of the restaurant, but their specialty was lobster and I was very keen, especially after some recommendations.

I’ll keep this short—as it’s humid today and I need a pool fix.  So let me just tell you that it was a riot.

They slapped bibs on us and made a great big fuss, as we were `Poms abroad’. This led to an abandonment of our English manners and we took great delight in making a mess. 5 or 6 beers helped the oysters down and some Californian White (can’t remember the style), washed the lobster down. It is the way we would like to eat, more often I’m sure.

*poetic embellishment—as Mum had champagne and I had soda, lime and bitters.

Boeuf Tartare avec un Oeuf

20 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

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Boeuf Tartare avec un oeuf.Posted on August 3, 2009 by gerard oosterman

The Geoffrey Russell Nightmare Special The walk around Montpellier resulted in needing to have lunch so we dove into one of those intimate little lunch and dinner places that seem to appear as soon as one gets hungry, especially in France and even more so in the south of France.

We were shown our seat and left to ponder the menu including a wine list. The atmosphere was intimate with lighting subdued and with all sound reduced to a sotto voce. The garcon in white jacket and with the right un-pretentious manner, putting even the most belligerent customer at ease, came around our table to take the lunch order. The choice by Helvi was a sound one, a piece of top side beef with vegetables and ‘Pomme de Frites’. She was asked for her preferred choice of the ‘boeuf’ to be rare, medium or well-done.  Medium was her choice.

I had chosen the ‘Beef Tartar’, and told the garcon to have it ‘medium’ cooked as well. He laughed heartily but I did not really understand the finer points of his laughter until after the dish arrived. A plate of raw minced steak with a raw egg in the middle of it was what finally turned up on our dimly lit table. There was nothing cooked about it, never mind the ‘medium’ part of it.

I bravely finished the plate but Helvi sensed my lack of enthusiasm and asked if everything was alright. I confessed my total ignorance of beef tartar and thought that the dish was a kind of steak done rare. A bit Russian perhaps, with images of horse riding Tartars doing the cooking of the meat on a fire after a fierce battle deep inside the Crimea.  This embarrassing dereliction of culinary knowledge has been a source of endless mirth and enlightenment to our friends when the tale of medium cooked ‘beef tartar’ at Montpellier gets re-told by my beloved wife. It has been an ice breaker at many a social evening.

In the case of readers being surprised by this embarrassment, please consider that so many of my friends probably think nothing of eating vegemite, a food so horrendous to look at, so terrible to contemplate inside its brown jar, that I feel justified in making slight of this minor slip up.

Uncle Pudding at Bendalong

17 Thursday Mar 2011

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

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Uncle Pudding.

Many years ago, at a time when the local garage man would lift the bonnet of the Ford, check the dip stick of the engine, crouch down to pump the tires, we also used to go camping. The camping involved loading tents and kids with a drive of some hours to a spot where there were hardly any others. The last hour covered a mere 15 kilometers. It was a dirt road which after rain would turn into a slippery dip. The trick was to get into the middle and slowly allow the car to roll down the hill, gentle on the accelerator, hoping that the way uphill would be without having to do that in reverse.

After arrival, the kids would be left loose which resulted in their blessed instant disappearance giving us time to erect the two tents and get firewood. Getting firewood wasn’t a big task, usually there was enough kindle from the gum trees within a short walk around the tents. The fire would be started confined between some rocks and a kettle on top would be boiling in no-time at all. Ground coffee in the pot, (never the insult of Nescafe,) and Helvi and I sipping this golden nectar, it was instant heaven for both of us.

 The spot we went to hardly ever varied. It was Bendalong, just after Sussex Inlet and past a spot where a boat loaded with ceramic tiles had come to grief during a storm in 1946.  Bendalong used to mine some minerals which were loaded on ships with a half ‘demolished by storm and tempest’ jetty still poking its nose into the ocean. The best times were had by kids that would scamper down a steep and crumbly escarpment to a rocky plateau. The youngest, when still a baby was carried in a papoose down that hill and many of his first impressions of life must have been the back-side of his father as well as seeing waves and sea creatures. The rewards on that plateau were the oysters. No oyster has ever tasted better.

In the evenings we would have the fire roaring and listen to the gravel laughter coming from behind our camp side. This was Uncle Pudding in full flight. He was a miner with early retirement, “dusty lungs”, it was called. There were a few on that peninsula. The pension would go much further on free-hold council land during the times of tolerance and a society still unworried about some souls living free on camp-sides and in Caravans. Well, free? Perhaps a case or a bit of a case of beer to the person or ranger in charge of the camp side was exchanged. No one cared or was jealous.

His laughter was perhaps anointed by the beers he would be sharing with some relative or other dusty lung miners, some had fishing boats. The huge slabs of tuna he would give us as a matter of course and our kids loved this Uncle Pudding. The origin of that name we never understood nor wanted to. He simply was ‘Pudding’ and ‘uncle Pudding’ he was called by our kids. He lived in a caravan and had a kerosene fridge in which he kept his tuna food and copious amount of beer. Connected to this caravan he had a large canvas annex which was really his lounge room with dilapidated large lounge chairs spread out in front, over which he had spanned another canvas cover. All this held up by ropes, guy wires and posts.

The era of best oysters and Uncle Pudding came to an end when he died and our kids grew up. We went back a couple of years ago. It’s all changed. Hundreds of caravans and aluminum clad annexes. The whole campsite has bitumen Rosella named driveways which at night are lit by garish blue neon lights. Ugly brick toilet blocks. All transformed in a suburb- holiday tangled horror. Stone lions or naked cement ladies with urns placed in front of the caravan. Cement frogs and toad stools. Hellish music and silly flowers in plastic, flickering plasmas and huge heaving guts carried by indefinable sexes stomping about… The whipper snipper brigade now on holidays, no more camp fires.

Uncle pudding died a long time ago.

Defining Moments

17 Thursday Mar 2011

Posted by in Ladies Lounge

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by Madeleine Love

 

Defining Moment 1 Madeleine considers some defining moments

I’m a member of a book group.  We get nine books a year to read and discuss together.  The books are always supplied with study notes containing questions at the end for discussion.

Last night we came across the following question:  “If you were writing an autobiography what books would you include to define yourself, your course in life, or your pivotal moments?”

We went ‘around the circle’ with the question.  It was too narrow for some.  We included articles and movies because they had provided powerful defining moments as well.  This is what came out…

Reading, both as a skill and as an experience, emerged as a defining moment of life in itself. One spoke of the time when she first realised she could read.  In elevated response she declared to herself that she was going to read ‘every book in the world’.

Another remembered the first book that engrossed her, transporting her to another time and place.  She’d had the overwhelming experience of complete engagement.

Then there were the defining moments emerging from the content of the book.  I can’t remember many of the books.  I don’t know many of them.  But I remember the moments…

Some books seemed to arrive at the moment of change, like an announcement on a train “We are arriving at Rosemont Station”.  The Thornbirds announced sexual awakening.  The Women’s Room announced feminist awakening.

There were books that supported and uplifted us, providing a path for the future – someone described the Shawshank Redemption.  Apparently a man was held prisoner and subjected to the most horrifying experiences until he managed to escape, all the while never surrendering hope or optimism.

There were books that said who we were – echoes of our wishes, experiences, perfect worlds – Pride and Predjudice – yes, a woman offered that one.

And then there were the books that transported.  The bigger and more engrossing the book, the more transformed we were out the other side; War and Peace, Lord of the Rings, A Fine Balance. It seems the epic masterpieces take us into an entirely new life experience and create their own pivotal moments.

So we’re going round the circle and now it has come to my turn.  Eager to share but reluctant to be the centre of attention I look to the person on my left and say “next”, but you say “you skipped someone” and draw me back.

OK then …

I was about 9 years old (say 1970), and we were at a rented beach house for two weeks in the summer holidays.  My parents were teachers, and holidays were times to Not interact.  They would lie on couches and read or sleep, while we went back and forth to the beach.  It was warm, we were sunburnt, scratchy from the sand.  Fresh cobb loaves from the Bakery wrapped in tissue paper rested half-eaten on the dark wooden table.

I see myself lying on a couch beginning The Rat-A-Tat Mystery.  In the holiday street we’d bought an Enid Blyton book each.  They were books with covers, perhaps 2cm thick – real books.  On the same day I begin, I see myself finishing.  I could read a book in a day; a small step for one man, a giant leap for mankind.  I was accomplished.

And the next pivotal book was Lord of the Rings.  Again it was summer holidays, but this time in the ‘burbs with all the blinds down to keep the house cool.  Conveniently it came in three volumes.  Second in line, I waited for the first to be finished.  Day after day I strode through the threatening darkness in Middle Earth, finding rare refuge in the protected nature of the Elven domains.  So large, it created a new and permanent experience of life through which I could respond.  I have an Elven domain to look after.

There was Cat’s Eye, a book about girl bullying which gave me closure on the teenage years a decade after the experience.

Coming into self, “Women Who Run with the Wolves”.

Women who apparently run with wolves amazing photo of wolf-running woman next to Towering Inferno book

Becoming a Masterchef: an unnamed recipe book on Muffins.  With dedication I had meticulously followed directions in other books and had so many failures.  I think people publish the ‘bad recipes’ so no-one steals the good ones.  But the raspberry and white chocolate muffin success said it wasn’t all me.

Defining the breastfeeding years:  The Very Hungry Caterpillar – a counting book with holes in the pages that each child in turn loved to read.

Digging out the deeper traumas:  The God of Small Things.  I’d encouraged the book group to read this one so I had some people to debrief with over it.

Movies – Towering Inferno for my first suspense horror (and how that moment was extended into reality years later!), and Gallipoli – I couldn’t leave the auditorium because I couldn’t stop crying.

Well, that’s some from me.  No doubt more will come in time.  But it’s your turn.

“Books, articles or movies you’d refer to in an autobiography, and why”.  Next.