I is for Involved

Every which way we turn as we age, we are slapped in the face with that hoarey old chestnut, 'Use it, or lose it'. I guess this refers to three basic aspects of life: physical, emotional and mental.

Get out of the house, get involved in activities, get involved with other people, confront new ideas and challenge ingrained responses to issues. It is no good just doing more of the same old thing, though. The neural pathways in the brain need to be furrowed deep, but new furrows need to be ploughed in lesser used areas of the frontal lobe. Take up boules. Learn a language. Join a book club. Join a bush-walking club. Join Get-up. Become a 'greenie'. Volunteer to lead the singing at an old-folks home.

Or, like these folk that I steamed the harbour with last weekend, restore an old steam-tug and potter about the harbour for the sheer hell of it!

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H is for History

As the wheels clicketty-clack down the iron track, the child in us all is freed. Our legs, no longer rooted to the here-and-now, swing freely in mid-air. Our head, lolling out the window, breathes in the cinders and the gush of passing air. We permit our mind to indulge in whimsy. A shy grin spreads across our face, until our face muscles ache with joy, and we shrug our shoulders in childish embarrassment. We have released our better self to the imagination of the past.


This week is History Week – a chance for me to indulge a passion that is obvious to you, dear reader. The theme for 2010 is ‘Faces in the Street’ (note there is only one ‘e’). This is borrowed from the eponymous Henry Lawson poem which starts

They lie, the men who tell us for reasons of their own That want is here a stranger, and misery’s unknown, For where the nearest suburb and the city properly meet My window-sill is level with the faces in the street –

It is not a light-hearted poem, but is indicative of Lawson’s bitter-sweet life and his socialist leanings. State Records of NSW has produced a reading of the poem on YouTube, read (poorly in my opinion) to the back-drop of images of Sydney’s back-lanes and Alley-ways. The photographs are engrossing.


The steam train day down to the Thirlmere Railway Museum, was courtesy of Historic Houses Trust where our busload of oldies was hosted by some of the most gracious volunteers it has ever been my pleasure to have met! We were dined (and wined) and chatted to. Helped downstairs and over rails, and finally piled into carriages with hordes of young families for a trip down the memory lane of childhood.


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G is for Godot - waiting at the markets

The setting is Taylor Square markets, one blustery bitter day near the end of winter, our two protagonists shuffle down stage, right and centre. Hush.

She stands in her own space, erect, still, silent, a mill pond of sadness. The market bustles around her: trolleys are towed, parsnips bought, cauliflower traded, tomatoes sorted, money exchanged. She stands there all the while, behind a veil of culture, an Estragon ‘holding the terrible silence at bay’. She watches the crossing, the people crossing, watches them walk into her field of vision. Whomsoever she waits for, would she recognise them, I ponder. Whose face is she searching for, as she waits? Her eyes trace the patterned bricks, until she again hears footsteps.


Yonder, a noisy energy radiates from Vladimiir’s bench in the centre of the market place. Dust motes rise unceasingly into the morning sun, tickled by the late winter chill, exasperated into flight by his constant need to do. To communicate. To talk. To ring. To text. To swivel. He is a whirlwind. He is a maelstrom. He presents an absurd theatre of the now. It is all about him. His tetchiness. All about need. His need to be seen doing. His need to be heard. To command attention. Turn the focus on me. Here I am. You all need me. You must need me – I need you.

The market crowd mills, busy with its own shape and focus. Our two protagonists wait. We cannot tell for what, or for whom.

A participant in the CDPB Theme Day Open Air Markets

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F is for Free

He didn’t start with that name.

He was one of three ‘Heinz‘ dogs that adopted my brother many years ago, too long ago for him to remember. They appeared out of the blue, jumped on the back of the ute, and hitched a ride to where-ever. He had only gone into town for tins of soup and sliced peaches and powdered milk from the Co-op.

They answered to the call ‘dogs’. ‘Car’n dogs! Let’s go.’

A few months later, the two larger dogs, in an explosion of high spirits, jumped off the Jackaroo tray, high-tailed it across the paddock, under the fence, and into the bush. That was the last Baz saw of them, probably got lost looking for another soft-touch to hitch a ride with.

Baz turned to go inside, when he stumbled over the kelpie. ‘Car’n Free. Let’s eat.’

They have been inseparable ever since, Baz and Free.


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E is for end of the road

Like ageing vertebrae, wheel rims slice through the perished tyres, leaving the skeleton of the once proud Kombi languishing within its earthen tomb. The duco peels, enticing rust to penetrate further. Rainwater trickles unimpeded between windscreen wipers to the very heart of the beast which lies silent and bereft within the decaying frame. A door stands absentmindedly ajar, a beacon for a slither of snake and a web of spider, a belfry of bat and a crunch of cockroach.

It rests, past its use-by-date, alone and unattended in the paddock. Within reach of the shed stacked high with spare parts, with oil guns, with wheel jacks, with tyres saved from neighbouring heaps. Inexorably sinking into the squelch of the primordial slime, the van is reclaimed by the jungle, abandoned and exhausted.

A forlorn sight, engulfed by the glowing grasses, consumed by earth, wind, and water, it endures its inevitable fate.


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D is for Dusk

As the night air cools, the city slows and settles on its foundations, relaxing its garments and emptying its mind, easing down. The darkened lane meanders still, up the rise and over the hill, the incandescent globe marking the way through tattered papers and abandoned cars.

Naked branches creak as dew descends, the spring sap still far from flowing. A door slam echoes across the void, a dog barks a warning, a gruff voice responds.

Our weary worker wends her way through the deepening shadows, eschewing the frail bonhomie and heaving nightlife, returning to her stuffy home with its sink of stacked dishes, and her smalls pegged on twine across the dim courtyard. Back to her slippers and sherry, back to her aspidistra and cross-stitch, back to the land of the 7 o’clock News.

Back to her dinner for one on the rise, on the rise overlooking the beckoning town.

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C is for cobwebs

A nip was still in the air as the sun peeped over the clumping bamboo into the orchard, planted twenty years ago beside Molly Milligan, where the loam is deep and fertile.


The dew of the night clung to the handiwork of the field spiders, as the warming air stretched its sleepy extremities. Each droplet blinged its beauty, in anticipation of an unwary insect straying into its clutches.


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B is for Bird's Eye View

The centre stairwell at Westfield, Bondi Junction

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