~ ghastly and heart-rending

I’m pretty sure the majority of parents yeilded their bubbling hyper-active children to the first day of the primary school year with a light heart, a gentle smile and an excusable measure of relief. At Pinewood, there was palpable excitement in the air. It warmed my heart to see Polly hugging and nattering with the friends from who she had been separated for what, in her terms, must have seemed an eternity. I can remember just how endless the summer holidays used to feel, and how the prospect of the looming school year seemed so thrilling.

I greeted the other parents - some of who I know quite well, others just by sight. I wondered how their Sunday nights had gone. Getting the kids to bed at a reasonable hour because of school. Perhaps a civilised dinner, at the table or in front of the TV. Perhaps they worked through those comforting, familiar routines on which children are said to thrive, that instil life with a reliability and an aura of security that give them room to develop into balanced, functional adults.

I wonder if any were woken around midnight by a sun-bright flashlight in the face? If any sat upright and stared, immobilised, like a rabbit under headlights, uncertain of whether to trust the unfamiliar voice behind the beam that was instructing them not to panic. “Everything’s alright. I’m a policeman. Could you get some clothes on.”

Some families would have had difficult, even traumatic nights. I know of at least one who must cope with an autistic child who has reached the age where he is difficult to restrain. But I wonder where my night falls on the sine curve that tracks from sweet and memorable to nightmarish?

I wonder how many rode a taxi to a booze bus in the afternoon to pick up a bewildered little daughter who was soon to be in grade two? Did anyone have a burly, tired, worried-looking cop guide them up their own hallway in the dark to confront a scenario which, though ghastly and heart-rending, was becoming all too familiar?

Were any of them unexpectedly required to describe the salient details of their family life to strangers in the middle of the night? Were any asked to contemplate a hypodermic injection of nail polish remover? Were any left wondering what such an act might do to a person?

Who cleaned a mysterious bloodstain from their floorboards after returning from school assembly?

My plans for a month of diligent work are already under threat. I can, largely, close off my emotions and continue to be functional, to address my responsibilities - but grains of stray madness still slip through the cracks and, despite my best efforts, the last few days have been more than a little bumpy.

~ the regalia of queasiness

Sometimes it feels as if this public journal of mine - these Sails of Oblivion, these Pavilions of Lethargy, these Blue Birds of Delirium - are indeed that: the blusterings of a clueless old misanthrope at odds, utterly, with the world and determined, when he has the energy, to rail against anything that pops into his wormy green brain.

Does it feel like that to you? Sometimes ...? And exactly how serious am I when I voice such things?

To be honest, I’m not sure. Certainly, I’m not always so drained and disappointed as I might seem of late, and yet ....

The Oriflamme of Tension ... The Obelisk of Weariness ... The Cinders of Accomplishment ...

On paper, things are looking better - particularly with Jenny’s return to the household. For me, single parenting is a thorny, complex, well-nigh impossible task, and that vision of Jenny on the porch, sparkling, freshly toweled, was like the answer to a prayer. Blue beads of health gleaming in her flesh. Sclera white as the dove of peace. Sudden streaks of blonde, bleached into child-soft hair. She was, at last, an unclouded girl. My uncontaminated woman. With her bags. On the steps.

Better. On paper. But until the passing of the big black cloud, much is relative. In the half-light, my spirit is wrestling a depraved axolotl of tremendous size, while treading water at the bottom of a flooded silo in which the concrete walls are slickened by a mat of phlegm-green algae. Better is when I briefly achieve a foothold. Better is when I steal a decent lungful of air.

The Gonfalon of Apathy ... The Ramparts of Debauchery ... The Regalia of Queasiness ...

But things will change. As they always do. And I think I have some decent karma saved in the soul bank for just this eventuality. I hope though, that during the interim, I’m not boring or depressing you with my tales of gloom and bad fortune. Especially at Yuletide, when most of you will already be battling depression, anxiety, frustration, anger and regret.

Christmas is a time when quality media input is indispensable. I must have my input; it’s as sustaining for me as food and drink.

Yet Jenny says I’m shutting out the world, that I lack the courage to be quiet and listen to the murmurings of my brain. That I’m losing my interest in people other than myself.

She’s right, but only to a point. When I put my head to the pillow and close my eyes, my mind immediately turns to the potential for imprisonment and homelessness. That’s why I need my ipod.

Even today - after Di’s characteristically elegant, inevitably toothsome Christmas feast - I slipped upstairs to have a nap accompanied by my nano and by This Week In Virology. The other night, realising that my pod was low on charge, I meditated upon the possibility of drifting to sleep without Starship Sofa or Pseudopod. Or, god forbid, X Minus One.

Before long I was out of bed, feeding electrons to my constant companion, to my dear and trusted friend.

The Waters of Lethe ... The Undercurrents of Despair ...

If you can, forgive the monotony of my emotional state. And allow me to thank you for accompanying me through such a long, peculiar and eventful year. Consider yourselves in receipt of a warm and loving Christmas embrace and a flurry of New Year kisses.

The Turrets of Crapulence ... The Bulkheads of Chaos ... The Bunting of Madness ...

The Sails of Oblivion ...

~ drawing nigh

For Polly the end of the school year is drawing nigh. Her report has come home and she appears to be doing rather well, particularly in English and art. Her spelling is atrocious, mind you, but I'm reasonably sure it's at least average for a seven year old. Polly's 'interpersonal skills', in the language of today's educators, were singled out for particular praise.

To tell the truth, it's a relief - the tumultuous nature of our 2009 led to a slump in parental participation when it came to homework and assignments and all that slumbers beneath the silky rubric of Extra Curricular Activity.

You see, when it comes to ECA, some parents do. Some parents don't.

With a commitment bordering on the religious, do-bees paint fairy faces, attend Monday morning assemblies and trudge the suburb selling raffle tickets. They sweat through every working-bee. They man the sausage sizzles and the op-shops. And I doubt the school could operate without them.

In the Season of the Yo-Yo, it is they who appease their pleading children - young minds still reeling from a brutal detonation of colour, sound and spectacular skill enacted by some fly-by-night Yo-Yo Demonstration Team. I wonder ... since I still live in the same area ... could it be the same team - many generations of yo-yo prodigies removed - that visited my school when I was six?

Could there be a manager, nearing retirement age, who has eked out a living cynically reigniting the Ancient Greek fad across the primary schools of the city? Has he - like some very lightweight, commercially-minded Ahasuerus - been working without respite for millennia? Is he indeed something akin to the Wandering Jew? Or might he be part of a guild which meets each century to negotiate operational borders and corporate sponsorship?

The yo-yos are brighter these days - ours had a white rim and bore a simple red Coke-a-Cola logo. The new ones are fatter and the plastic is different. Lighter. Ours were of a denser material, an archaic polymer now rarely seen - in my time, if one strayed into a robust attempt at Round The World then injury would certainly result.

Once the yo-yos were made in Japan, now they hail from China. Possibly, the string is all that remains the same. And possibly that devious, calculating, long-suffering YYDT manager is a deserving subject for a short story...

And I have strayed too far from my subject ...

Does the school community have an opinion on the parents who don't engage in ECA? Is a subtle ostracism employed? Is there a suspension of that nod of recognition at eight-thirty each morning? Not to my knowledge... But I know little of such things ...

Both my partner and I help out when we can. But is it enough ...? Let me swear now, on my Honour, that the fruit 'shazliks' I prepare for Polly's end-of-year class party tomorrow will be sufficient. And edible. Even for children.

On Friday mornings this year, when circumstances permitted, I would go into the school and do reading with the kids. It's a thing the parents are encouraged to do, and I think I might have been the only volunteer for Polly's class. It's a useful way of keeping an eye on her reading, and it's interesting too; children are always interesting. Polly brought home a couple of cards from her fellow pupils thanking me for my efforts. It was nice. It was no big thing, but it made me feel appreciated for a few moments there ...

She also brought home a stack of artwork - to which, I'm afraid, you will now be subjected. (The final image is, I believe, a kangaroo.)

~ with chicken head and tutu

We’ve performed the BFG more than ten times now before hundreds and hundreds of screaming children. It’s beginning to become second nature: thwacking myself on the head with an inflatable hammer to the beat of John Farnham’s ‘The Voice’, feeding snozzcumbers to an entity called Bloodbottler, interpreting a military operation in dance with chicken head and tutu …

If one wasn’t in the right state of mind, it could be a hellish thing to face every day, but I’m honestly enjoying it. Judging from the state of my costume once it’s over, I must be sweating out litres of fluid per show. Though it probably doesn’t matter to the audience, I’m polishing my act with every performance and keeping thoughts of the Grublets from Blades of Glory far to the back of my head, (along with other black black clouds which I am better off not dwelling on).

Polly is proud that her dad is the BFG, which is a nice ancillary benefit. Yesterday, we traveled out to Ringwood to see her end of year dance concert. What a massive production… There must have been nearly a hundred performers from the steppes of middle suburbia… And what costumes! The sequins, the tulle and the tiffany! The non-stop rippling, flouncing procession of wild colours, demi-pliés and flourishing nubility. It was impossible not to be entertained. There were men who were indistinguishable from women. And vice versa. There was even a titillating wardrobe malfunction. A nipple, which through the course of one particularly energetic number, crept in and out of its cup as its gangly smiling blonde owner jetted obliviously about the stage.

It was a vaudevillian banquet: dance that ranged from the seemingly accomplished to the pitifully incompetent … and, inevitably, to wandering toddlers, smiling broadly in their profound bewilderment or picking their noses and wiping them on their gorgeous Arabian Nights outfits.

There were three two-hour performances to a huge auditorium, packed each time with adoring friends and relatives. As for myself, I had tried to ignore the preparations for this event, but tyrannical organisers continued to demand my concentration with their complex and exacting procedures. The costumes situation became a yawning gyre of confusion and uncertainty. For my own sanity, I had to palm off the task to other members of Polly’s support cabal.

Polly doesn’t want to do dance next year, thank goodness. Something simple and straightforward like Guides or swimming lessons will do nicely.

~ the black hearted babycino vendor

As you can imagine, my life is currently dominated by preparations for Sails of Oblivion: The Gig. Our promoter Dolores is a whirlwind. Things are progressing swimmingly and at speed. There's a lot of interest out there. Already we have 85 confirmed guests on our Facebook events page.

But the general air of excitement has not stopped my ire being raised on the issue of babycinos.

I don’t know exactly when they first appeared, but when Polly was tiny they seemed like a new thing, at least here in Melbourne. They were a nice, efficient way of including her at a café table. A small, sweet, warm treat to concentrate upon, to delay the onset of boredom, to defer the impulse to whine or crawl over her parents. And they remain useful to this day. And they were free. Always free. And fair enough. A meagre quantity of milk-froth sprinkled with chocolate would probably not break the one cent barrier in production costs. And I suspect they’re good for business too. Mothers often like to chat at cafés and can do so with more amenity if their children are preoccupied.

But then, as time passed, café proprietors would occasionally charge. A dollar. A dollar fifty. Perhaps, as the babycino became more popular, they wearied of making it for no reward. Or perhaps they couldn’t get their heads around providing a service for free. As for me, I began to judge the moral tone of an establishment on whether or not they charged for the babycino.

It all reminds me of what happened when they first introduced cat licences. Every Melbourne council had to start providing these licences, and because it involved paperwork a fee was to be charged. My own Monash council charged about ten dollars a year, (though this has risen over time to about twenty-five). Other councils asked for as little as six dollars, but some, if I recall correctly, charged more than a hundred.

You see, there were no precedents. Nobody knew what an appropriate fee might be, so they they flew on instinct and did not bother to confer with each other. And the greedier and more venal the council, the more they charged. Their ethical fibre was exposed. It was an object lesson in human nature.

Now the other day, my wife returned grumbling from a coffee session with her friends. She had been billed three dollars for a babycino - around the price of a real cino. My hackles rose. Deplorable, unforgivable, extortionate pricing. Worse even than the outrageous mark-ups on beer and chips at the football. Or popcorn and choc-tops at the cinemas. And I can tell you, with a high degree of certainty, that the individual who priced that babycino has a black heart

Here is a link that further explores this dismaying issue.

*

While burrowing through old boxes in the shed today, in addition to dust and house spiders and possum skeletons, I found a couple of unused designs for Ears single covers. I can’t work out why we didn’t choose the first one. It's brilliant. I think it’s by Tony Harding, brother of Christine and Anne. The other’s by Gus Till.

~ a fragile beauty in the compost bin

It’s been one of those weeks when things work nicely to plan.

I’ve finished a short play – The Goitre Birds – which will be performed (by myself and the estimable Francis McMahon [He Died With A Falafel in His Hand, The Rage in Placid Lake]) as part of Snatches on Friday May 15 in RMIT’s Kaleide Theatre in Swanston St.

Snatches is the brainchild of my beloved colleague Lynne Ellis, who is Director-in-Residence at RMIT. It’s a gallimaufry of short works stapled together with Lynne’s customary wit and charm. The quality of the performances and the writing range from prime to abysmal, but it’s almost always interesting to behold – and if something’s boring, that’s okay, whatever it is will not last more than ten minutes.

I’ve also completed - at last, just this minute - my liner notes for the Beargarden CD release. We had our meeting – Bruce Butler, Andrew Till and I – and we plotted out what remains to be done. The cover/booklet design is pretty much it. We’re spending the next fortnight trawling for photos, posters etc. Also, we’re going to set up the obligatory My Space page and post all the videos we can find to You Tube. (If you happen to possess anything along these lines, we’d be very grateful to hear from you.)

With my wife away, Polly and I have been thoroughly in each other’s hair. Over the weekend, I was chafing at the bit in the role of daddy, particularly on Saturday afternoon when we played host to one of Polly’s school friends. The house, which I’ve worked so hard to keep tidy, was magically reduced to squalor in what seemed an instant. This week, however, has been a father’s dream. We’re loving each other’s company. There’s been little sign of whinging. Scarcely any procrastination at bedtime. If only family life was always so ideal.

There have been all manner of lesser duties and commitments to be confronted – some of them onerous and connected to the troubles I’ve alluded to in previous posts. Stressful, confusing, but they’re behind me now.

And today a gift was bestowed me from the mysterious unknown.

After noticing a putrid smell in the laundry, I recalled that the compost been building up for at least a fortnight. Every day I mean to move it, but the cold puts me off, or I’m not wearing shoes, or … whatever. This morning, at last, I lugged the heavy bucket of decomposing scraps out back to the compost bin, lifted the lid and was presented with a vision of splendour.



Of all the curious moulds and fungi I’ve encountered, this has to be one of the most sublime. Like hoar-frost crystallising on the decaying vegetable matter, pristine white, almost luminous in the gloom of the green plastic bin, like something from a fairy dell, or from a child’s dream of Christmas.

~ the commonplace

I derive such succour from the ordinary things, the commonplace events I can reply on to be commonplace, the cherished routines …

School started today at Pinewood. I watched Polly’s green gingham back as it disappeared through the doors amongst a chirruping flock of other six and seven year olds. I’ve been spending so much time with her lately, I felt a flush of sadness this time, on top of the customary relief.

Polly is going to be in a film tomorrow. A student film by the lovely Ben Andrews, in which she is going to walk to a refrigerator, open it and pour herself a glass of milk. I’m not sure she if she quite understands what’s going to be happening. She keeps calling it a ‘play’ - as plays are something she’s reasonably familiar with - but I’m confident she’ll adapt, and not freeze-up or anything like that. I’ve been astonished by her progress lately, her reading, writing, comprehension, all that stuff. And of course, her imagination.

I’ve set her up a desk in my study where she occupies herself while I work. Long gone are the days when work was a pipe dream if Polly was in my sole care.

My wife has retired from the scene for a few weeks, requiring some peace and quiet to mend the inner fabric of her soul. My recent precipitate departure took as much of a toll on her as it did on me.

I am able to breathe a little easier now, though there is a looming darkness on the horizon and it is difficult not to worry about. Strangely, having emerged from such horror and remorseless grinding stress, I feel freshly energised. Particularly with my work. I have a whole lot of projects on the go now, and I am appreciating all the sacred little things, which, for a period there, I thought I might have lost.

The honour of feeding the white duck Immaculata is by no means the least of these.


And, of course, nothing now stands in the way of my intention to photograph and identify the native fungi of Mt Waverley.

~ the party mill

my daughter's first attempt at a sick note

It may seem unbelievable, but in my prep class, there were fifty kids. In Polly’s there are about nineteen and ten of these are girls. When birthdays come up, the boys go to the boys’ parties and the girls to the girls’. There are no exclusions and little overlap.

By the time of Polly’s birthday in November, the ten girls of Prep P were experienced social operators. That is - they were familiar with each other in the celebratory context, (as well as the educational). They’d been to lots of parties and their behaviour was becoming formalised: with the screaming, the dancing, the eating ... Familiarity with the process also makes it easier on the parents; they know what the children expect and deliver it. Nice and simple. A party mill. Drop them off at one end. Let the apparatus do its sweet pink deafening business. Pick them up two hours later.

One can even have it done by a third party. Any Fairy Shop worth its salt will run a lucrative sideline in girls' parties. And, for children of the void, there is always the freakish hamburger clown, whose minions will happily provide a loud, reliable, desolate, fattening sub-celebration.

The birthday girl functions at an extreme level of excitement. Rationality evaporates in a welter of cake and chocolate crackles. Hard won conditioning is lost in a chaos of triumphal screaming. and the security of pack-behaviour. The most trivial of slights or misadventures brings a flood of tears and it is no wonder. The ductile young brain, (perhaps excluding the pre-frontal cortex,) runs red hot at one of these birthday parties. Like locusts the children descend upon table loads of treats, reducing them to a sticky ruin before proceeding to the next vortex of fun. There is something wildly orgiastic about a six year old’s birthday party.

This year, to my shame, I failed to manufacture a piñata. Instead I forked out a ridiculous sum for a prefab: a traditional pink quadruped which might have passed as a horned alpaca or llama, if it hadn't been advertised as a ‘mystical unicorn’...

And the shimmering mountain of gifts. Bratz dolls. Bratz bedding. Bratz stationary. A catadapt Brat. Two Polly Pocket equestrian sets, [horses and dolls with matching outfits and bridles indistinguishable from hats]. A revolving fish nightlight. A Veronicas outfit. Make-your-own-windchimes. Make-your-own-finger-puppets. Jigsaw puzzles. Skipping rope. Hair accessories. And Beados - the replacement for Bindeez. [These ones taste more poisonous than strychnine.]

With the removal of packaging, the gift mountain diminished by two-thirds, but it was still impressive. Too impressive. A monument to over-consumption.

I have a plan for next year and it involves making Polly’s party carbon-neutral. We’ll arrange for a few very nice presents, but beyond that ... guests will be invited to spend potential gift money on the salvation of the moonbears ... or on carbon offsets ...

(... or on the installation of a modish self-destruct switch assembly on the dash of their SUVs. Passing drivers will envy its design ethic and its subtle metallic sheen. They will not previously have seen the colours thream and plome employed in a commercial device, (though they may have heard media reports of their discovery by the deep space robot-probe orbiting Fomalhaut.) ...

- You know, he could just reach over and just ... flick it, observed Ahenobarbus with undisguised envy.

His wife looked up from the pages of her magazine.

Keep your eye on the road, Ahenobarbus.)

Polly’s friend Mia was the odd one out. She’s not at school yet and is just a little timid. She is also innately sensible. When asked why she wasn’t playing with the others, she replied, “I just don’t want to run around screaming, that’s all”.

a guy from one of my wife's life-drawing classes produced this pastel sketch

~ the sweet death knell of ABC Learning

The monstrous entity that is ABC Learning seems at last to be on the skids.

Readers of this blog may recall a couple of posts dedicated to the corporation and its venal progenitor Eddy Groves, and I feel obliged to wind things up with some sort of eulogy

My opinion was, and remains, that something as delicate as early child care should not be run for profit. As I understand it, a publicly listed company must by law attend to the needs of its shareholders before all others – yet the others in this case are very young children in the most formative periods of their lives.

Eddy Groves lived the high life, feeding off this teratological outgrowth of the free market system. He owned basketball teams, luxury sports cars, before, in September, he was at last removed from his position as head of the failing company amid reports of ‘dishonesty’. To my mind, he deserves rotten tomatoes and the stock. A ghastly parasite that would happily fatten itself on our very young ...

ABC’s fall into receivership gives our ostensibly socialist government an opportunity to shift early child care out of the private sector. Sadly, I've heard Julia Gillard say that ‘we are not in the business’ of child care - yet perhaps actions speak louder than words as the Federal Government – albeit of necessity – is providing grants to keep the centres running. We have a government run education system, do we not? What is so strange about extending its boundaries?

Somewhere along the way, it may be discovered that providing good child care at a reasonable price is difficult enough without skimming off the top. Always there will remain the question: should this dollar go to the shareholders or to the children? I caught a news-bite yesterday saying that 40% of the individual ABC centres were unprofitable. It’s curious, as financial overextension has generally been given as the prime reason for the corporation’s downfall. Who knows? Probably, along with the company itself, the structures that generated the appearance of adequate childcare - and they must have been complex – are themselves collapsing. In time, perhaps the receivers will learn the true costs of proper child care ...

Just woolgathering here, I’d like to make clear.

If parents choose a centre run by a company like ABC over a not-for-profit community or council-run centre, they are buying discount child care. The investors expect to be paid off. The skim money has to be found somewhere. That is why, for instance, staff are paid a minimum. In order to restrict expenditure, I am told, ABC centres buy their toys and general supplies from designated providers with whom the company has formed an agreement. One would assume that cost would weigh more heavily than quality in these relationships.

As the company crumbled, I read many articles and analyses. Pundits from the business desk treated it as they would any other company, in those terms. It could have been mining, IT, retail or pharmaceuticals. Where are we as a society, if we include childcare in that lot? Happily, amongst it all, I did hear one commentator question, in general terms, the worth and the morality of corporatised early child care. The Greens have suggested ‘that the government use the opportunity ... to lift child-care standards by running centres itself and turning others over to the community sector.” Right on.

Consider: as our children grow, we have the choice of sending them to private or public schools. If we choose private, it is almost always because we expect a superior grade of education. Imagine taking an ordinary old state school – like Pinewood Primary, where Polly goes – and running it for profit

I was going to suggest, with gladness, that this will be the last we hear of the monster Eddie Groves – but, once the forensic accountants have been through his books, we may yet be treated with the spectacle of his punishment.

~ eddie groves' evil empire
~ an exercise in physiognomy
~ more pernicious mischief from eddie 'the milkman' groves

~ aerobones

During our recent trip to Bairnsdale, Polly and I - with the help of Kyowa and the spinal column of a cow – developed the concept of the aerobone. Just one example of the enjoyment that may be derived from imaginative employment of decomposing animal parts.

When I was Kyowa’s age, there would not have been a boy in the land who did not immediately recognise the markings on these vertebrae. For better or for worse, I found myself teaching the children how to draw a swastika. How ancient I have become.

Belatedly, and as promised, I have injected some images into the post The Den of Nargun ...

~ the worm princess

Drawing is one of Polly's preferred activities. She does it as soon as she gets up, hunching her back over the paper while the kids' shows play, barely noticed, on the telly; and as a mess of lidless textas, pastels and glitter pens steadily collects around her. The depth of her concentration is really encouraging, and if she has inherited any of her mother's native talent, then she'll really have something going. As if she doesn't already ...


She's excited about learning to write and lately she's been incorporating text into her pictures. And a little less pink. And crowns. Suddenly everyone is wearing a crown. It's good to watch the little fascinations come and go ...


What I like most are the feet and fingers. And the way she draws the hair. And I really like the fact that anyone looking at these pictures will think she's a happy, well-balanced child, which of course she is - but being an unbalanced, depressive father [with an unbalanced depressive wife to boot] I can't help but worry. I know I needn't. Polly has had a powerful destiny from day one. My only job is to step out of the way.


PS: I was privileged to observe Steve Kilbey on RocKwiz last night. I'd forgotten how rarified an aesthete he is. Poised between a couple of lumpen music nerds, deploying his subtle wit with the ease of a practised raconteur, debating yoga styles with the openly flustered Julia Zemiro, offering his musical erudition to the world like a pious lama - or occult master - descending from the accursed summits of far Kadath with the elder wisdom of mad Abdul Alhazred inscribed on a tablet of gleaming electrum.

~ a ukrainian girl with an altered consciousness

Some of us - perhaps most of us - naturally seek out altered states. To quote Andrew Weil’s classic book The Natural Mind...

"The desire to alter consciousness periodically is an innate, normal drive analogous to hunger or the sexual drive."

And now a concept which may possibly be familiar to you – and which almost certainly, found its origins in this particular study …

"Anyone who watches very young children without revealing his presence will find them regularly practicing techniques that induce striking changes in mental states. Three and four-year-olds commonly whirl themselves into vertiginous stupors …"

For me – and, I think, for a great many others – this ‘innate drive’ gathered steam during my teenage years. Because real drugs – heroin, acid, pot etc. – were not within reach, or barely understood, necessity became the mother of invention. I have no idea how the information filtered down, but we learned that ephedrine , a low grade speed, was easily obtainable over the counter, if you had the right story for the pharmacist.

To our sweet, naïve minds ephedrine seemed like a pretty decent high.

On some nights, I would steal one of mum’s cigarettes, sneak out to the carport and smoke it like a joint. Until I caught the habit, this practice would pleasantly spin me out for about twenty seconds. It was thrilling but pungent, and surprising thoughts would jangle through my brain.

Once, just as my mind was clearing, I heard a monstrous noise in the shadowy dark - a noise I could only equate with the utterances of degenerate mutants or bog monsters from shows like The Outer Limits. I couldn’t believe my ears. The noise came again, and again. Guttural. Deep-throated, phlegmy. Threatening. Hovering between disbelief and terror, I backed away and made haste into the brightness of the house.

Later, I learned it was a brush-tail possum. Before that period – the mid-seventies – the species had been unknown in our zone.

But back to altered states…

I’ve always been prone to fainting – not the neurasthenic crumpling of Victorian England, but the blood-draining kind that occurs when you stand up too quickly after sitting for too long. As you regain consciousness, your brain is suddenly awash with freshly oxygenated blood and the world, briefly, seems vibrant and seething with fresh possibilities. It can feel like waking from a deep and healing sleep to a brand new beautiful day.

With practice, I found I could kick off a fainting spell pretty much whenever I liked. A big long stretch, hanging from a door – these were reliable techniques.. I came to use it - along with the ephedrine – as a revitalising study aid. There still remains an indentation in the kitchen door where my head impacted after a particularly gratifying collapse.

Of course, my parents used to worry. I explained what I was doing, but they tut-tutted and worried still more. They pointed out that there were dangers in passing out all over the place. My mother thoughtfully advised me to clear any sharp objects from the vicinity before I applied the technique.

Sometimes she could be very practical, my mother. Allow me to give you an example

I recall a sunny, somnolent afternoon in Mt. Waverley. It was the dawn of the Nineties and I had moved back there after breaking up with my girlfriend Charlotte, who chose this day to rock up in a condition which could reasonably be described as insane.

Recently, there had been an agreeable but drug-fuelled and ultimately false resurgence in our relationship. Nothing had been solved from previously and things very quickly turned sour. Only weeks prior, after the premiere of my play The Hive, she had lain like the Vitruvian Man on the bonnet of my mum’s kingswood, gripping a windscreen wiper with each hand, while I accelerated before braked hard in an effort to throw her off onto the road. To my drunken amazement, I could not dislodge her.

My mum was first to notice the wiper-damage. I spent some days recovering from the excesses of that night, both in Mt Waverley and in the lock-up at the Carlton police station. Mum, despite her ingrained, depression-era respect for property, managed to see the humour in it, god bless her. She just couldn’t figure out how those wipers had come to be fixed at ninety degree angles to the glass. Of course, I couldn’t reveal that Charlotte had been grasping them for dear life as her unchecked momentum threatened to launch her onto the macadam - so I lied, explaining that evil Charlotte had vandalised them out of spite.

Then she reeled into that quiet afternoon like a drunken harpy seeking bloody vengeance. Observing her approach, I locked the doors, closed the windows, but it was not enough. She found the back gate.

Although it was not locked, she proceeded without pause to scale the five foot hurdle.

Now, Charlotte has refined tastes and very good fashion sense. She wore a tight knee-length black skirt, a white silky blouse with frilled edges and a black velvet jacket. Characteristically, she was bedizened with beautiful Ukrainian jewellery – golden heirlooms gifted by her mother, strewn with diamonds, alexandrites and rubies. But as gate-scaling wear goes, it didn’t rate.

I can still see the image in my mind’s eye, as clear as day. Charlotte, the flashing curls of her dyed cinnamon-red hair framing a lead-white complexion. One leg, in fishnet stocking and black high-heeled boot, thrown over the top, along with a shoulder, one arm and a raging head.

Seeing my mother emerging from the back door, [probably with the intention of offering tea and biscuits], Charlotte immediately seized upon the opportunity to embarrass me. She ramped her invective: Your son fucks prostitutes, Mrs Sejavka! Did you know that?

For the record, it was not true. Charlotte was so infuriated by my betrayal that she had cast her breeding and decorum wholly to the wind – and was just spitting out the worst kind of poison she could cook up. My mother – a trained nursing sister, but nearing seventy years of age - assessed the situation and with a caring expression advanced towards the girl.

Gently, she took Charlotte’s hand, softly stroked it, calmly told her to remember who she was, to think about what she was doing. I can’t recall the words exactly, but they were effective; it worked. My mother had been a nurse all her life and would have had tricks up her sleeve to soothe a savage patient.

Charlotte was dumbstruck, as was I. Then she exhumed her rationality - at least partially. After that, my memory fails…

I realise I've strayed a long way from my intended subject. But I couldn’t resist the sharing of such a nutritious tale, and, Charlotte, if you’re reading, I trust you can look back fifteen years to see the funny side.

Oh, and my original subject? Next post.

~ he and eve

Erin and Henrik were married in a blustering wind on a beetling ocean cliff. Behind them the sky was a startling unreal blue, streaked with long clouds which were beginning to glow orange with the coming sunset. On the shore beneath, waves beat themselves to a chaos of spume on dark jagged rocks. With only a fragile wire fence between the swooning couple and certain bloody death on the murderous crags below, one could be forgiven for mistaking the ceremony for a suicide pact - if it wasn’t for all that love in the air. And this particular agglomeration of freaks - at least one of whom was in a mouse costume - were plainly no run-of-the-mill Death Cult.

To be brief, it was by far the wildest wedding I’ve seen. At one point, to my bewilderment, I found myself getting quite weepy. There were origami envelopes with messages of love, communal gospel singing and, I’m told, a streaker - a large dark skinned man whom I believe was aiming to cause a ruckus. Instead, Lynne gave him a couple of dinner plates to use as nipple protectors. Others nodded in greeting before he scaled the back fence and evaporated into the darkness.

As the light faded the scene grew ever more Gothic. The shadows lengthened, the sea raged and the wind grew piercing. Stark against the brute elements, Heathcliff and Catherine stood hand in hand … but Heathcliff was wearing a top hat so lofty it resembled a chimney and Cathy could not resist flaunting her arterial red vinyl hotpants. What cool vibes there were. I loved how Erin just kept kissing Henrik the whole way through. ‘Nobody told me I was limited to one kiss’, she said.

Erin and Henrik, like are rusted-on arty types they are, turned their wedding into a three day carnival on the Mornington Peninsula and christened it The Love Fest. Polly and I travelled down on the Friday, just prior to the wedding itself, with the carless Lynne in tow. We pitched our tent and erred off the edge of the world for two dreamy sparkling days.

Almost immediately, Polly found a friend – Pepita – the daughter of some organic farmers from New Zealand, and somehow, after all that time in the sun, in a triumph of parenting, her cheeks were the only part of her the slightest bit burnt. On the Sunday, she was brave enough to spend eight minutes on a yacht before freaking out over its sloshing movements …

I had promised to do a reading of my egg poem [the ovist] but things were so bleached out and hyper-real that I couldn’t imagine actually doing it. After all, I only knew a handful of the people there and I was somewhat monged out and Erin’s father was doling out quantities of his excellent Buckley’s Beer … Yet I held to my word and it proved to be a pretty good performance. Raving, gibbering absurdity on an idyllic Australian beach … I’d hoped to use an emu egg as a prop, but had to settle for normal one … probably funnier in the end … I’m going to do another performance of it at Lynne’s Snatches show at RMIT.

The whole crowd was dressed in white that day and at one point we clustered together while Henrik took a series of 3D lenticular photos. I had unearthed a Najee suit direct from the Eighties and could easily have been mistaken for Simon Le Bon.

Such a fabulous weekend. Children dragging huge flaccid branches of kelp. Mirror ball helmets. Lou Lou, a circus girl from Cologne. Tierra del Fuego plagued by black and white rabbits, their rivers clogged by feral beavers from fur farms of long ago. A man who took too much viagra and could only see the colour blue. Rich kids in the Mediterranean getting themselves microchipped so they can be scanned as they enter clubs. Great permanent piles of frozen penguin shit in the Antarctic with a tart, fishy smell.

Lynne told us there are several categories of children at kindergarten: pushers, biters, pinchers, scratchers and Chinese burners. She asked Polly, ‘which are you?’ ‘All of them,” Polly replied.

~ more pernicious mischief from eddy the ‘milkman’ groves

'The board of directors “must act in the best interests of the company as a whole’ with their main task being "to drive the performance of the Company" - ABC Learning Annual Report 2004, p. 32'

And how far down the list of priorities are the children?

Can’t stop myself. Sorry. But it isn’t every day a bone fide capitalist swine meets a sticky end. With his brown winkle-pickers, his Ferrari and his basketball team [the Brisbane Bullets], he is the corporate vulture to end all corporate vultures.

Since my earlier post on the subject, I’ve learnt some more things about Groves’ operation which I just have to share. In Sunday’s Age a financial commentator named James Kirby discussed his fall in a wider context. The piece was far too apologetic for my taste - concentrating on Groves' impact on the business world rather than on our society - but Kirby did point out some of his failings – hubris was the word he used.

In 2003 Fast Eddie sued the child-care union for defamation. It began with his insistence that carers [then on $10, now on $14 an hour] wear uniforms and pay for them themselves. The LHMU [Liquor Hospitality & Miscellaneous Union] reacted with an ‘Uncle Scrooge’ campaign. distributing ‘defamatory’ pamphlets at his centres. Groves spat the dummy, “they made it personal and they are going to regret it. I'm looking for $500,000 in damages.” He refused to meet with the union, and the case, though it did reach the courts, seems to have fizzled out.

In a 2003 article, Kirby wrote that ‘big profits are drawing free-wheeling entrepreneurs into the industry’. One financial adviser commented, 'I'm 77 and the child-care business is the best business I've ever seen in my life. The Government pays subsidies, the parents pay you two weeks in advance and property prices keep going up."

Kirby tells us that ‘diamond miners, dot-com pioneers and real estate agents are getting on board.’ but it does trouble him that due to a lack of appropriate regulation ‘anyone in any business, from cigarettes to strip joints, can buy a chain of child-care centres’. That was four years ago. I wonder if anything has changed? It does tell us that Groves was not the only one with his finger in the pie – he just stole the biggest slice.

Claire Kimball [a ministerial advisor to Howard's Minister for Children Larry Anthony] was quoted as saying. "There is no regulation of ownership and there is no reason to believe there should be."

Astonishingly, the maleficent Michael Kroger [and, for a time, father in law Andrew Peacock] also got involved in the child-care industry. I wonder, would someone like him be in it for the money or the children? Or, a more pertinent question, would you put your children under his care? Kroger’s company Child Care Centres of Australia would up getting into hot water with ASIC and pulling its horns in.

While on the political angle, The Age also draws our attention to the aforementioned Larry Anthony who, after he lost his parliamentary seat in the 2004 election, was appointed to the board of ABC Learning. Anthony was Howard’s Minister for Children. He was instrumental in the creation of the 30% government child-care rebate, which was largely responsible for those ‘diamond miners’ jumping on the childcare milk-wagon. Labor accused him of a conflict of interest. Anthony would give Groves ‘unparalleled access’ to the Howard government. Indeed, I recall reading that a new defence Department building had chosen ABC to manage their in-house crèche.

I have also come across a very revealing 2006 report by The Australia Institute, a left-leaning think-tank based at ANU. It was gratifying seeing many of my perceptions and suspicions given weight by a scholarly paper.

Though there is much disparity in the quality levels of ABC centres, they are generally deficient compared to independent or community based centres. There are poorer staff-to-child ratios. Staff have insufficient time to develop relationships with the children. Some centres have no cleaners, and the staff must pick up the slack, as well as wrangling a large amount of paperwork - leaving too little time for their primary responsibility.

There is often insufficient food or it is of poor quality, or lacking in fresh fruit and vegetables. Qualified cooks are poorly paid. ‘Equipment budgets appear to be adequate but… staff felt limited by the fact that these budgets must be spent at an ABC Learning-owned toy company that does not provide a wide enough variety for programming which is developed for individual children.’

‘Staff were ‘expected to present a professional program without being paid or treated as professionals. A number said that they and other staff regularly complete tasks at home. Some said that they were not paid for set up time, clean up time, or for evening staff meetings. One said that since the introduction of the Work Choices legislation, staff had been told that they were no longer permitted even to claim time-in-lieu for these necessary tasks.’ [Some familiar Work Choices horror scenarios follow].

In my previous post, I quoted many ex-staff members who felt obliged to lie. Something similar crops up here. ‘Staff appear to be discouraged from raising any concerns about the operation of ABC Learning centres outside the company itself.’ The report goes on to suggest that since so much public money is paid to these centres, then the public has a right to know what’s happening in them. They conclude, wisely in my opinion, that the government ‘should consider the wisdom of allowing any further expansion of corporate chains in the long day care sector’

It’s a detailed paper and I suggest you look at it, if you’re interested in the subject. It reports that ‘children are secondary to concerns regarding efficiency and cost-containment’, and warns that if there is pressure on the share price – as there is now - these strictures will tighten.

You may wonder, where did this all start? Who let the dogs out? Well, perhaps you can guess.

‘In 1997’, quoting Kirby, ‘the Howard Government scrapped special subsidies to non-profit child-care centres and in a single stroke, child care was changed. Privately owned and non-profit child-care centres could charge roughly the same fees. Now… the reality of a privatised child-care sector is hitting home.’

I couldn't sleep at night if one my centres was not up to scratch – Eddie Groves.

~ eddie groves' evil empire
~ an exercise in physiognomy
~ the sweet death knell of ABC Learning

~ eddie groves’ evil empire

For some time now - probably since I became a father - I’ve been tracking the fortunes of baby-faced, sports-car-driving Eddie Groves, the ‘high profile’ unconscionable bastard who prides himself, with his wife Le Neve, on making millions out of early child care with his company ABC Learning.

Now it looks like his evil empire is turning to shit. It seems the hedge funds, sensing his vulnerability to the current debt crisis, have invoked various arcane stock market mechanisms to bring him down. The sharks are eating the sharks.

In the beginning, Eddie must have scanned the business horizon, looking for a place to stake his claim. He chose to make his millions out of early childhood development, not pausing to consider that it might be inappropriate, that there might be just a few ethical considerations to take into account, that it might make him a vulture …

The image of Mr Burns taking candy from Maggie Simpson comes to mind. What caring person would deliberately set out to become a child care mogul? And if he’s suspect in this way, I doubt not, with the current crisis, that it will be too long before more putrescence comes to light. Already the spectre of HIH has been evoked.

My daughter Polly spent two years at Brandon Park child care centre. It was a terrific place, community owned and run, but I was left with the distinct impression that money was always tight. This is what makes me wonder what Eddie Groves is doing to extract his profits.

Rumours abound and none of them are good. Brandon Park had its own cook and food was prepared on the premises, but at ABC, it is said, canned or frozen foods are used and children are allowed two slices of bread, but never a third.

‘They try too hard to make it look like this big colourful, educational centre but lack in the caring, friendly personalities they should have.’

‘Some parents who send their children there think they’re great, but you will never come across a former staff member who would agree. Perhaps because one of the worst things about them is that staff are consistently instructed to lie and hide things from parents.’

‘There’s too much emphasis on making things look good for the parents; they seem to have lost track of the fact that they are there to provide high quality care to the children. It’s all about keeping the parents happy; what they don't see won't hurt them.’

‘I know one woman who took a demotion from Director of an ABC to Group Leader of a not-for-profit centre just to get away from the stress of constantly lying and covering up to both parents and certification authorities.’

'I'm an early childhood teacher and have worked in a number of ABC centres and I would never ever send my child there … I have seen babies left crying on the floor or in the cots screaming when they obviously are not ready for bed.’

The horrors stories abound. I don’t have room for them all.

As independent centre operator Patricia Wilschefski has said the biggest difference between her centre and ABC's is the personal attention. At Brandon Park, parents were at the helm, involved in board activities, money raising, working bees. At ABC Learning, because it is a listed company, the shareholders are the priority - not the parents, not the teachers, not the needs of the children.

Then there is the Sunshine incident. A child escaped an ABC centre and the company was fined $200. ABC challenged the decision, attempting to set a precedent that it was the worker not the corporation who was responsible. If they had succeeded, this would have allowed them to get off the hook virtually no matter what happened in one of their centres.

All the money, none of the responsibility. That’s the ticket. That’s where they come from.

In 2006, as part of their aggressive expansion, they attempted to buy out independent Sydney centre Moore Park Gardens. The parents waged war against a behemoth that sometimes pays as three times the market price to put its competition out of business.

Director Alice Voigt said she “‘was worried about the potential impact on staff and children’. A centre she worked at two years ago in inner Sydney changed dramatically after it was bought by ABC. ‘The effects on the staff and the children were quite severe,’ she said. ‘I would feel extremely threatened that our staff numbers would be reduced. I just don't believe in what ABC child-care is about, which is making money.’"

One parent at Moore Park Garden was quoted as saying "If ABC was actually committed to child-care they would not be operating on minimum staff ratios.” A parent from a different region writes, ’ABC built 3 centres all within a 5 min radius of my home this year. In the process they also bought my son’s centre and 2 others and shut them down in matter of weeks with no respect at all for the parents or children.’

I wonder how we would react if a greedy business started taking over primary schools and making them uniformly compliant to their business formula? Not positively, I suspect. Well, guess what? In 2006 ABC established up a satellite company called ‘Independent Colleges Australia’ and began taking enrolments for its first Primary school in Narre Warren. In Caroline Springs - one of the desolate McMansion parks on the outer fringes of Melbourne - property developer Delphin allocated land to ICA ahead of a proposed Catholic school. More schools have followed, most in similar suburbs. ICA claims to be not-for-profit and independent of ABC, but no one believes them.

Basically, it appalls me that anyone could see a profit to be made out of children at such a delicate and crucial stage of their development. To apply brutal unforgiving business models to child-care is capitalism at its ugliest, and if Eddie Groves is about to go to the wall, then I, for one, am mightily pleased.

~ an exercise in physiognomy
~ more pernicious mischief from eddie 'the milkman' groves
~ the sweet death knell of ABC Learning

~ dormitory zone

Having inhabited the dormitory zone of Mt Waverley off and on for most of my life, I have come to consider it a refuge of aging wage slaves, Lathamesque aspirants and cashed up bogans.

In my childhood it was a nursery suburb. The streets overflowed with kids. But as the years passed, the young departed, the parents ripened and Mt Waverley became sleepy, secure, a bastion against change. Behind the shopping centre, near the railway station, fifties brick-veneers are routinely obliterated and replaced by multiple one storey units for those who time has rendered decrepit; who can no longer tolerate stairs, and whose daily exercise can be effected by shambling a few hundred metres to the shops.

I have always felt an outcast. Though I doubt there is any real community here, I’ve always thought I was precisely the kind of person it would shun. Not because I’m vicious or criminal, but because my habits and appearance, my house and its yard, for some may be strange and alarming.

Whatever the reality, for years I’ve been content to keep to myself. Contact or familiarity means exposure – perhaps to disapproval - and I treasure the asylum I have forged here. I’ve expunged the kind of trivial social contact that can devour precious time. I am far happier than most to spend my life in solitude, installed in my ancestral seat, babbling freakishly on my meagre plot – my pinprick of lunacy on the tumescent map of conformity and deadly tedium.

My friends and colleagues all live elsewhere. Aside for the odd neighbour, or shopkeeper, or fellow slave of Spasmo-Nemigron, I know precisely no one here.

But then Polly was born, and in time Polly went to school. And if there is one thing with an ability to magically generate a sense of community, it is children.

And, as the ageing population of Mt Waverley falls from the vine, there are more and more of them about. And they make friends. And these friends have parents, who you wind up having to talk to, and invite into your house.

It seems conceivable, though perhaps far-fetched, that friends may even be made in such a manner. It has not happened yet, but my wife is well down the track in a number of cases. It is always the women who build the social links, who bring people together, who breed connection – while the men … well I’m not a normal man, so I don’t know what they do exactly. Perhaps you could look it up on Wikipedia? As for me, I read and write and generate lugubrious piles of matter.

Last night, we made the wildly optimistic decision to attend a cocktail party at Polly’s school, a gathering designed to bring parents together socially. [As my wife was getting dressed I heard Polly say the following in a commanding tone: You have to wear a dress to a cock party! Polly is proving a useful source of sartorial advice. I've also learnt that ballerinas never wear undies.]

Our low expectations may have had something to do with it, but we wound up having a pretty stimulating evening. I spent the first half hour speaking with a web designer and an event organiser with a background in theatre. The subject was climate change and these guys - with kids in Polly’s class - were amazingly up to speed. Perhaps there is hope for us yet if this is any indication of how the middle suburbs are thinking. Promisingly, environmental concerns slithered in and out of most conversations last night. Alarmingly, I picked up some dire new statistics.

I found all this connection quite rewarding – though I have to say that for an ethnically diverse school, the Anglos were over represented. My wife made fast friends with Polly’s rather attractive teacher, and – in a sign of improving health - offered to help with the face-painting stall at an upcoming fete. Remarkably, I even heard her discussing a possible trip to Confest with one of the mothers. The local possum lady was in attendance too - always good value - and soon she’s going to bring a baby wombat to school.

But where were the greedy renovators and daft prattling airheads? Where were the frowning Presbyterians and beer-swilling boors? I think, in my isolation, I’ve failed to notice that the suburb has changed in more than just land value. I came away from that party feeling just a little optimistic. Perhaps I won’t be isolating myself quite so much anymore.

Both my wife and I have always been paranoid about other parents thinking we were freakish, and so disadvantaging Polly. At least some of those fears were put to rest last night. Even the parent who recognised me as the guy who doesn’t wear shoes when he goes shopping thought it more funny than frightful. Am I rationalising, or has Mt Waverley, in the fullness of time, become a bearable, even interesting place to live?

Hmmn. Hard to get my head around.

Time will tell.

~ polly's at school

I couldn't resist posting a few photos of Polly's first day at school.

~ sleep is a mouse

Each night, when I was very small, my parents and I would kneel and say prayers by my bed, heads bowed, hands clasped together in reverence. On the wall was a painting of the biblical Samuel in a similar attitude, giving homage to what appeared to be a supernova. I had selected that image from a wide selection at the church shop, because the holy man depicted bore my name.

Most nights, my father would sing me a lullaby in Latvian, his native language: aijã zuzu lãca berni. It was a story of a mother and father bear bringing honey and berries to their cubs – though I never knew the meaning of the words. The lullaby has stayed with me. It’s the sweetest memory I have of my father. And it’s the only piece of real Latvian culture he left me.

It saddens me, but I don’t blame him. I know what he went through, and how frightened he was. He kept as far from the local Latvian community as he could for fear of communist spies. And spies there were. It was not just paranoia.

When I travelled to Latvia, early this century, I made sure to get a recording of the song. I learnt that it was generally known as ‘The Latvian Lullaby’ and was based on a melody by one of the great composers.

From the liner notes …

‘The Latvian mind imagined that sleep is provided by a dear, sweet little mouse. The mouse is seen as a tiny quiet creature, the colour of the evening dusk, who is able to simultaneously guard boundaries and cross them.’

’As the magical moment of sleep arrives for the children in our arms, we rock them with an age old movement and we sing to them. What else could one do at suck a moment? Sometimes you can’t even call it singing – it’s crooning, humming, lulling – something heartfelt and primordial.’

After my return, Polly was born, but by that time – of course – I’d misplaced the CD. Throughout her short life I’ve been singing her the pigeon-Latvian version I remember from my childhood. My dear friend Ieva - a magnificent woman of honour and intellect, who guided me compassionately through the reunion with my estranged aunt – promised to post me another copy and each day since Polly has been checking the letterbox without result. The months passed and it seemed that the CD had been lost in the mail.

But today, on the eve of Polly’s first day of school, the disc arrived - and from this point on I can invest her with this little silvery flake of her heritage.

[It's a rather beautiful album, by the way.]

*

I have removed the post ‘Lemon and Orange’. Much to my surprise it was discovered by the subjects of the article and, though no names were used, there was predictable outrage. It is my tendency to colour reality as brilliantly as possible and in this case I succeeded in making an already seedy series of events appear shockingly squalid. I can only speak for what I witnessed; what I learned second hand seems to have been the product of emotional heat.

All up, it was the result of my naïveté as a personal blogger. I have much to learn about what I should and shouldn’t say – though the urge to tell it warts and all is almost irresistible. [I wonder if James Packer will go for me next?]

I must admit, I have been warned – by Pink Light and by Donald – but I thought the use of pseudonyms would be sufficient.

*

As a footnote to my previous post, Robert’s boarding house is not – as I suggested – at peace. The management and the police are doing very little to restrain the troublemakers, not all of whom have been imprisoned. More threats have been issued and another resident has been assaulted. Robert is working towards a restraining order.

~ loathsome mrs coyle

On one of our regular walks around the block, Polly, Tweety Bird and I encountered a young girl named Gabby. Gabby is nine, nearly four years older than Polly, yet despite the gap they have become fast friends. Gabby lives opposite the small playground of mulch and cracked plastic that you pass on the way down to the grey creek. And that’s where, a few years back, the two of them met.

Gabby loves to talk; within seconds we were up to date on the travails of her netball team, the likelihood of her getting a daschund for Christmas and any number of other girlish facts of importance. Gabby is a determined child and very bright; she’s also slightly fascinated by my partner Jenny, whom I think she may regard as terribly dark, exotic and libertarian.

I can’t recall quite how the subject was broached, but I asked Gabby to remind me where she was going to school…

- Oh? I responded. I went to Holy Family.

This was the next Catholic primary school up the road.

- I have a friend there. She’s in grade six, said Gabby.

- I only stayed till grade four.

- Why?

- I moved to another school.

- Why?

- There was a teacher there who… caused me suffering.

- What did she do?

- She singled me out. Picked on me. I was kind of a nerd, nervous, awkward, thick glasses …

Or perhaps Mrs Coyle just didn’t like the sound of the name Sejavka… There was a lot ethnic bias back then in suburban Australia. Perhaps, it was just because I didn’t have the resources to defend myself.

I wish I knew why this young woman took so much time out to torture me. The year before, she had much longer hair and had been known as Miss Ballantyne. Perhaps there was marital strife that fuelled her spite...

Let me describe some of her behaviour.

Once, I captured a grasshopper and was keeping it imprisoned in my palms with the purpose of presenting it to Mrs Coyle as a form of conciliation. I know it doesn’t make much sense, but I was just a kid.

Lunch hour was over and we were arranging ourselves on the white painted dots in the courtyard, when the grasshopper nipped me. I cried out and violently cast it away. Mrs Coyle came down on me like a flash. I recall trying to explain my intentions and failing. I recall her punishing me, but not how, only that it left me emotionally devastated.

During grade four I had a problem with my heels. A chronic soreness. It was diagnosed as tenosynovitis, then later as something else. I was forced to rest my feet and wasn’t allowed to play at lunchtimes like the other kids. I would either read or my mum would drive me home, where I would warm a chocolate biscuits in front of a blow heater and lick off the melted chocolate.

One lunchtime, returning before the rest of the class, I saw an empty bottle on the platform beneath the blackboard. A line of chalk radiated about foot out from its base. My immediate and reckless thought was that it had been left there by some children who had not bothered to clean it up.

Studiously, I threw the bottle in the bin and rubbed out the chalk line. When class resumed, Mrs Coyle’s first action was to question where the ‘sundial’ had disappeared to. Horrified, I owned up. I pleaded that I was ‘only trying to help’ – I recall the words distinctly, but they bore no weight with this pitiless woman. She took obvious pleasure in pointing out my stupidly to the room and provoking their laughter.

Perhaps that was what it was. She thought I was stupid and ought be punished for it.

I think it was about this time that I began taking a shower as soon as I got home and crying beneath the soothing hot water. My mother was worried, I know that … I don’t know what discussions went on between my parents, but ultimately the authority of the school seemed to take sway … My father, in mortal fear of Communists, would do nothing to aggravate the authorities, and my mother was simply inhibited

Then, on a particular morning, we stood together, said the morning prayer, and …

- Everyone sit. Except for Sam.

I was always very proud of my efforts at school, and actually believed I was to be singled out for some honour.

Mrs Coyle ordered me to the front of the class. I can easily recall the growing realisation and the mounting terror I felt on that journey from desk to platform

She commanded that I repeat the sign of the cross before the class, who in those times would have been at least forty strong.

I began to see the problem and took care to make the sign correctly, but I became flustered.

- No. Do it as you did it before.

I was never any good at the Sign of The Cross. I’d always get my shoulders confused with my forehead or breast or whatever. I obeyed her and must have got it wrong because once more she solicited a riot of laugher from the class. Again I was deeply humiliated.

Her next act was to abandon her pupils and lead me through every class in the school. She stood me on each platform and asked me to repeat my flawed gesture and be humiliated. Again and again. Forty laughing children a shot. As extreme as it sounds, it is the truth as I know it.

I cried as loudly as I could on the way home that afternoon, I cried so loudly because I knew no way to find respite from my abuse. I remember a man asking someone what was wrong with me, and feeling a faint sense of satisfaction …

I told my parents I would run away from home if they didn’t send me to another school. They believed me and acted accordingly.

I actually feel shocked writing this, it brings back some strong emotions. Gabby was shocked too.

- Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you report her?

- Kids weren’t allowed to stand up for themselves in those days, was all I could say.

Gabby - with her clear sense of right and wrong, and her determination - made me think of how far we’ve come with how we treat out children; we listen to them more, invest them with a strong sense of self, and an awareness of danger. It was a positive omen for Polly, I thought. If anyone like the evil Mrs Coyle ever happens upon her, I’d like to think she’d know how to defend herself.

- You know there’s a Mrs Coyle teaching at my school, said Gabby.

My mind ran ahead of itself. I have always wanted to seek revenge.

- I’ll ask her if she ever taught at Holy Family. I mean, it’s close by….

But too long ago, surely, I thought.

I carry with me the image those primary school teachers with their bright synthetic Sixties dresses and their long hair. They were young, probably in their early twenties. I recall my bewilderment when one of them leaned over, peered into my eyes and asked me – in complete seriousness – if I was wearing false eyelashes. Mrs Coyle was present too. In the corner of my memory, forcing a smile.

I’ve done the calculations. It happened thirty-nine years ago. Mrs Coyle could easily be the woman in her early sixties working as a librarian at Gabby’s school.

I have to ask myself what I will do, if it is her. It’s a moral question of quite some complexity. I don’t think she scarred me for life, in fact she may have made me stronger. But she did hurt me badly, cruelly, when I was too young to even be sure what she was doing was wrong.

If it does turn out to be her - and I will try to find out - I think I’ll write a letter, calling her out, demanding an apology. If for nothing else than to let her know that an adult now bears witness to her crimes.

And perhaps to find out why.

Polly, Tweety Bird and I finished our walk home.

Polly begins prep next year and Jenny has just finished acquiring her first uniform. We found her sewing a name patch onto the inside of her sun-hat. Jenny had found a forgotten roll of embroidered name patches reading ‘Sam Sejavka’ in the back of a cupboard - and with motherly thrift had just clipped off the Sam and begun using them afresh, after forty odd years of dust gathering. And species extinction. And climate change. The further sophistication of weapons and war. The conversion of greed from a vice into a virtue…

At least here, in this time and place, we’ve learnt to treat our children better.

~ a strip of decaying rag

I was gardening earlier in the week when I found a piece of old rotten fabric. Here is a picture of it.



I was about to flick it onto a rubbish pile when I was struck by the remnants of gold and pale blue patterning on the cloth.

Now, I have in the past found the odd bit of nostalgic refuse in the yard: antique marbles I would drop into beds of moss just to see the neat hole they made, a sheriff’s badge of primitive white plastic which was unmistakably a relic of my childhood.

But this minging bit of rag, I swiftly realised, was a piece of my parents’ bed. Now, assuming [pretty safely] that my parents never fired up their sex lives with any extra-bedroom antics, this would have been the bed I was conceived on.

Long gone, chopped up and left out with the hard rubbish – but for this little decaying reminder…

I showed it to Jenny.

- there may be a few of your brothers and sisters left on that

After my parents died, I did have a slight problem getting rid of their stuff. [I have a problem getting rid of any stuff] If I had to throw out an article of clothing that held an emotional resonance, I would cut off a little piece and keep it in a memory box. There was a winter coat of my mother’s - brownish with tiny little coloured woollen spots sewn in. During Mass, as a very small child, I would love to pick off those coloured nubs. My mum didn’t like it, of course, but I guess it kept me from squirming … Naturally, there’s a sample of that coat hidden somewhere in the house… in some box …

I used to take photos of things too, before I threw them out. Our old stereo. My dad had been proud of that. I snapped a shot of it on the nature strip before the trucks came …