Darling St Balmain

Of times past.   (gerard oosterman)

Even in those late seventies years there were still some of the original inhabitants surviving in that part of Inner West Sydney, having resisted all lucrative offers from salivating estate agents, out for a killing. In our street, there was such a couple, the timber cottage not even connected to electricity, always those brown lager bottles on the footpath together with a slurred but friendly ‘howz’ee going matey, when walking past.

She was bone skinny, always in cotton skirt and with thongs on gnarled feet, summer or winter. I was taking down our old rotten picket fence facing the street and had the footpath littered with those  timber slats with rusty nails sticking out. She happened to come down, a bit sloshed and keen for a yarn.

She stepped on one of those bits of wood with upturned nail which impaled her thonged foot. I helped her away from the pile and wrenched the nailed bit away from her foot and went inside to get some iodine. She said, “I didn’t feel anything matey’, ‘don’t you worry the fucking mozzies for nuthin, she said.

She died well before him. Years later he was still going strong and seen, unperturbed by the “Johnys come lately’, rifling through all the Council litter bins in front of Woollies, the Town-hall, Cop-shop and parks. When he finally went to Rookwood Cemetery, the freestanding cottage was derelict and in the kitchen there was a kerosene cooker and stacks of Play Boys. That cottage sold for a fortune.

Simulated Good Time Reunion

It’s far easier to accept that the world is totally wired but completely disconnected than it is to rail against the failure of personal history and the loss of community.

Why then do we see and acquiesce to an alarming internet-driven proliferation of the most bizarre (and desperately sad) pieces of social engineering  – the school reunion ?

My partner has thankfully resisted the persistent badgering of a couple of former classmates to attend their class’ 30 year re-union.  What a relief to see the date pass.  We discussed it and she found my experience decisive.

Much water had passed under the bridge when I foolishly decided to give in and attend my class’ 16 year reunion.  I had no idea who organised it, but I wanted to find out what the hell had happened to the old crew – not one of whom had I been in contact with since first year uni.

It was a westy boys’ high and in those days the only ones who went to Uni were the few scholarship winners – five out of fifty; no two studied in the same faculty.  So we were a disconnected lot.

The reunion was in a local riverside park where a lot of the teenage pregnancies were launched – in collaboration with the girls’ school (across the road), of course.  I imagined that it would be a good idea to leave my “born and raised elsewhere” missus at home because there can be nothing more boring than playing “do you remember so-and-so” when you weren’t even there.  I also left the good car at home – just in case -because I didn’t want to look like one of those ponces who wants to show off his humongous wealth – which would have added “lying with intent to impress” to the charge sheet.  But outward display of wealth proved to be a relative thing, itself a concern amongst very few of our school.

Both of these ideas (leaving the good car and the missus at home) proved to be good moves.  When I got to the event there were maybe four score and ten adults and about ten score and four children.  As one half of a childless couple at that stage, I was appalled by the noise and inconvenience of this swarm of snotty urchins, hell-bent on trashing any opportunity for adults to chew the fat.

So many of the old crew were unrecognisable.  White hair.  No hair.  Beards somewhat like the Hell’s Angles.  Tatts.  And partners who looked like they had come straight off the Dogger Bank.  Think fishwives.  Think voices like a chainsaw cutting corrugated iron.  Think conversation about what was on the menu at the club (reassuring that the prawn cocktails in pink sauce and steak and chips were still mainstays, chicken Maryland had been replaced by the exotic excitement of chicken Marengo, and sweet and sour whatever, was still the mystery dish).  Expansive ?  No, not really.  I imagined Gibbo (the world’s best English Teacher and a lapsed Jesuit to boot) crying into his port over the fate of his “sons”.

“Holy shit !  It’s YOU, Fitzy !”  “Who’s asking ?”  I remembered Fitzgerald as having what Goose described as a “bum cut”  – meaning that it was parted in the middle and stood up, forming a rounded letter “M” in cross section.  It was auburn.  Back then.  It was short, spiky and grey, 16 years later.  “So what are you up to these days ?”  Storeman and packer.  “What about you ?”  “Computer stuff”.  “Good job ?”  “Yeah, not too bad”.

But seeing that the state of play amongst our school cohort was as it had been – but with wrinkles, massive weight gain and adverse changes to hair and economic well-being, was to miss the fact that a lot of water had gone under many many bridges.  It was a mistake, for example to assume that the fishwife and screaming brats that Turner showed up with was the same set that he pulled together just out of school.

I guess the thing that hit me the hardest was learning that Nokka was dead.  The scuttlebutt was that our best and brightest – by a long shot – had died in mysterious circumstances during second year at uni.  There was unsubstantiated talk about doing hard drugs.  I think this was way out of character since Nokka was very conservative about substance abuse – a perspective shaped by an abusive alcoholic father.  And there was a competing (and far more likely) story about a heart attack.  Either way, it doesn’t do a lot of good for morale to learn that the guy most likely to drag himself out of working class poverty hadn’t made it past go; hadn’t collected $200.

And Toombsie.  A tall gangly red head, Toombsie was all knees and no co-ordination.  The nicest bloke, he was a good mate – hilarious, generous and loyal.  A keen but hopeless sportsman.  Died in a car accident on the Henderson Rd.  Aged 20, two years out of school.

After an hour or so of embarrassed and halting attempts to fill in sixteen years of blanks, we drifted off, taking a leisurely and sad stroll along the river for a bit, looking mostly at our shoes and avoiding the conclusion that the aspirations of our school years for many of us were largely unfulfilled.

Listening to the thunking of car boots.  Promising to stay in touch.  Climbing into the car and driving off.  Not looking back.

“How was it ?”  “It was OK”.  “Really ?”  “No, it was shit.  I need a cuddle”.

Russian Monument to Bikers

Whew! Well, that was a close shave… if I hadn’t turned a headlong dive into a combat roll, I’d have gone face first into the tarmac and that, as they say, would have been that. “It would have been ‘Goodnight’ from me; and it would have been ‘Goodnight’ from him!”

Two and a half weeks in hospital, three operations on the foot, nearly $10,000 worth of surgical scrap metal rods, plates and screws holding my foot and ankle bones together, and another couple of weeks of home-recuperation later (and with more operationls to come… “Oh, joy!”) I’m still unable to do much, but I’ve finally recovered enough energy to keep my promise to make a contribution to Poet’s Corner.

To that end, it seems appropriate at the present moment in time to offer you, “Dave, the Mad Biker from Hell”, which I’d like to dedicate to the Bruised and Battered Bikers’ Brigade, and to all the nurses and staff at the RAH, especially the nurses on Ward R3/Orthopaedics.

Dave, the Mad Biker from Hell

1: You may keep your tales of glory
Of wealth and power and fame
And I’ll tell you the story
Of one who wouldn’t play that game:
A hard-riding crazy Irishman
Who, so I’ve heard tell,
Is known by the name,
And it’s earned him some fame –
As ‘Dave, the Mad Biker from Hell’

2: From the cold Streets of London
Young David had come,
To Australia’s sunny shores.
His busker’s life he’d leave behind;
It’s hardships he’d deplored.
A New Start he’d work hard to make,
And he’d succeed for sure…
Until one day fate laid his path
To the Uni’s hallowed door…

3: Now, Dave had but one ambition,
And all he sought was knowledge,
So he studied really hard
At Elizabeth Community College…
Then to Uni off he went,
As proud as proud could be
To study Anthropology
And earn him a degree.

4: He passed with flying colors;
To do honors was invited.
But then they made him student rep
And his career was sorely blighted
When they disestablished the department
Of Anthropology
And he was made to fight his teachers
And the whole Arts Faculty.

5: He knew it was no accident,
The situation had been crafted:
Volunteered, real ‘Army-Style’;
He knew that he’d been shafted…
Now the winding road it calls him,
For he knows that he must find
A different kind of future
To the one he left behind.

6: Now he rides the lonely road
In silence, and solitude serene
While he ponders on the irony
Of all he’d heard and seen.
Even those who had supported him
Could now all kiss his ass
For those he’d represented, (of course),
Had been mostly middle-class.

7: Like his life, Dave’s ancient bike reflects
Cruel hardship and poverty
The clutch worn through, the brakes near gone
The tyres as bald as he;
But he doesn’t care for he knows full well
He’s more chance now than then,
Of survival, as he rides this wreck,
As ‘Dave the mad biker from Hell’.

Hope you like it!

………………… Theseustoo

The Mighty Ducati 900ss

If there’s something more captivating than cuddling up to a quietly ticking Ducati 900SS on a coldish night in the Brindabellas and disappearing a flask of that fine product from Bundaberg (not the molasses, Merv, the distilled afterthought), then I’m yet to discover it.

Bike touring on a big twin is something delightful and an adventure that I can heartily recommend to readers, non-readers – and would be readers – of that old Robert M Pirsig classic “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. As Mr P says, it gives one the opportunity to travel in the landscape, as opposed to seeing it flash past in the climate controlled six-speaker sound system four wheeled tin cocoon.

In summer one can savour the searing blast of a run across the Hay Plains at a fair clip in an open-face helmet and strain the occasional hopper through the moustache in a headlong rush to the next schooner of life saving chilled foamy liquid – carefully balancing a couple of hundred kilos of fine Italian metalwork, exquisite engineering and completely unpredictable electrics with the need to stay under the legal limit but be relaxed and wet enough to slip through the drought.

The point is to ride a machine that has a fair chance of allowing you to kill or main yourself, and an equal chance of not starting in the first place – leaving you to watch people you used to think were your mates disappear in a haze of smoke and raucous laughter down your street on only their back wheels, leaving you to fulfil the role of designated gooseberry – whose job it is to call Emergency Services when only Tommos Blue Heeler returns on Sunday night.

Unless you ride a classic bike, you miss out on the adrenalin rush associated with listening through the roar of bevel drive camshafts and mechanically-closed valves for those tiny telltale sounds that suggest a bearing is on the way out at 6,000 revs and you will be tasting the tarmac before you get to Bulahdelah. Go ahead. Nobody is going to notice you watching the temperature gauge and getting ready to go for the clutch.

Riding a big old bike and maybe sailing to Hobart are the last two ways you can scare yourself shirtless and experience the thrills and let’s face it pure terror of getting from Time to Timbuktu.

So how come it is those two dilettante fairies on SBS – Ewan Macgregor and Charlie Boorman can turn a major event like riding from John O’Groats to Capetown into the biggest and most boring festival of todger bothering on the small screen ?

Did you catch any of that tripe ? I watched just the first episode and saw them struggle mightily with really fascinating things like getting a visa for their Yank friend to go through Libya. Next time I’m going to ride through Libya, I’m going to enlist a couple of drop dead gorgeous ladies native to that turf to help ease my application through their customs formalities. Yeah, right.

That, and Charlie’s dear wife being hospitalised just before kick off with some semi-fatal chest infection (in true scout fashion the old trout insisted that he go and she promised to pull through and cough a few encouraging bon mots down the sat line). Give me strength.

From Chuck and Ew, I learnt quite a lot about international long distance bike travel. Apparently these last thirty years, I’ve been doing it all wrong. Instead of freezing crossing from Strachan to Hobart and getting snowed on in February (saved only by an open fire, a steak, a kilo of chocolate and several rums at the Derwent Bridge pub), I was supposed to be rescued by my backup crew and take a warm bath in the mobile home that was supposed to be following us a few dozen metres behind,

Just in case, you understand.

In case some of the extras from the remake of Deliverance wanted to get us to interact with the local gene pool – like it or not. Sorry, I’m hopeless at doing pig impressions.

I think I need a few million dollars worth of film crew, support vehicles, the finest touring machines, a spare parts catalogue larger than California, several managers, my personal field surgeon, masseuse and a charismatic mate just like Charlie with eyes like two piss-holes in the snow. The advantage is that nobody could tell that Charlie has just ridden non-stop through the deserts of Sudan (Go Ian Drury ! – I always wanted to squeeze him into a piece.) because Charlie always looks like that. The purlieu of the mega wealthy – ultimate scruff – and the ability to hire someone far less attractive than oneself as a sidekick. That’s IT ! I have gone through life totally without a Charlie-esque sidekick ! Although Merv would argue that I AM a Charlie-esque sidekick – or he might have said dropkick. I’m not sure.

Through Ewan and Charlie’s august travel doco I also learnt how to cultivate a look somewhere between puzzled incomprehension and stifled frustration – possibly caused by having dental work inferior to my handsome, unfazed movie star colleague. Or possibly because I have no actual idea what’s going on now, or what’s going to happen next – neither of which do I care to donate ordure over which of whatever. Of.

Hang on. Can you wait on a bit ? I’m practising diagnosing a mechanical problem by staring blankly at the silent engine cases and getting ready for my jovial and patronising exchanges with local tribesmen. This one insists on giving me his spear ……..a fair trade for a travel doco this bad……

Emmjay

Shopping is not anymore what is used to be. Remember buying biscuits loose by the ounce and the shopkeeper knowing you by name? All gone now. A typical experience is now often bereft of contact with anyone, unless through a person with trolley rage. By the time one fights for parking with the usual hoons giving the two finger greeting, the tone is set and with grim determination one sets forth for the task ahead.

The wrenching of a trolley out of a long row of tightly jammed together stainless brothers is just the beginning. Of course after one goes through the one way electronic gates, the trolley decides to go off at a tangent when pushed, and as the return through the gates for another one has now been barred, one sadly tries to ‘shop’ with a dysfunctional trolley.

Silently one trundles through row after row of vegetables that are often now pre-peeled and mayonnaised, perhaps even pre-digested. Most meticulously sealed and ready to throw out. Lucky that the onions and carrots are still recognizable, so are beans and celery. On the left are the delicatessen and fish counters. By this time the trolley has been loaded with some items and now obstinately refuses to go straight at any cost and the hapless shopper is forced to counter this by pushing from the side and aiming for the next isle totally askew. This means that one side of the trolley is further away from the shopper than the other side. To compensate for this discrepancy, the pusher has to cross one foot over the other occasionally in order not to end up on floor.

With some basic maths and luck one might end up at the delicatessen side. After waiting to be served, and being the only customer with a cramp in one leg, a large bearded lady tells you to get a ticket. Finally: three hundred grams of double smoked ham, please. The bearded lady rubs a plastic bag between kransky like fingers, blows in it, sticks her hand in it and turns bag inside out. Now, ( get a little closer to the screen now) this is silver platter stuff and ultimate platinum service. She grabs a fistful of double smoked ham and forces it in the inside out bag, kneading the item unconscious and to a pulp. Will four hundred fifty grams be ok? Meekly, yes ok. Anything is alright now, hoping Mental Health will not be necessary.

Next, the dairy products need to be bought and isle after isle of the most miserable items are limbed through, also traversing past acres of toilet papers called ‘symphony’ (with a hint of Ludwig’s 9^th and oh so choral) and ‘confidence’, then through a puddle of spilled mock vanilla slush. One finally arrives at the butter, frozen foods and cheese section. Bedlam here. Why are the isles so full of shoppers? What is it that seems to draw and fascinate shoppers inexorably to all those frozen boxes? Do they come here for a good read like to a library? One shopper is deeply immersed in studying the instructions on a frozen instant lasagne box while her three year old is scooping violent crumble bars out of a huge sack.

The only way to put up with this punishment and unrelenting abuse is to take a leaf out of how I bravely try to get even with the abusers.

I want to share this with you.

Go for ‘specials’ that have been discounted. Not so long ago at a carnivorous Woollies store, I bought smoked salmon that was on special as well. Going through the counter I was charged the full price. Overcharged items incur full return and item given for free. Check small print near check out. Try and concentrate on items that you could get overcharged with! That is the secret. You will get them free. A win win!

So, free salmon after going to the customer desk. It is important NOT to tell cashier at check out about mistake but calmly pay up and get refund and free item from customer service after. As you have been overcharged, show some indignation.

So, back I went for another smoked salmon. Another refund and more free salmon. I did this until I collected 2 kilos. This is all legit. Oddly enough, Helvi is not impressed by my canny devices to balance the injustice heaped on shoppers. I have now exploited this many times with different items and pride myself as a modern Robin Hood of the Shopping Mall. I always check for mistakes and the girls at the desk know me by now and are powerless, also don’t care.

Those trolleys of course are abused by hoodlums who skate them away for miles, across kerbs and open wastelands. Helicopters fly overhead, tracing them. Reward posters for errant trolley are on telegraph poles. Suburbia and shopping malls have become war zones.