Not fade away

The Death of St. Joseph, c. 1740, Piazzetta Giambattista. (St Joseph, Jesus's earthly dad, is the patron saint of peaceful death and of anti-communism)

What does it mean to 'make a good death'? Media reports state that Dame Joan Sutherland 'died peacefully in the early hours of (the) morning after suffering a long illness' and that she 'died at home with her husband, conductor Richard Bonynge, and son Adam at her side'. She was 83 and appeared to have achieved all her ambitions. She died at home with those she loved around her. She had been able to convey her wishes to her family about the kind of funeral she wanted and (not surprisingly) the music she would like at the funeral.

It would appear that Dame Joan's death met many (and may have met all) of the British Medical Association's Principles for a Good Death:

• To know when death is coming, and to understand what can be expected.
• To be able to retain control of what happens.
• To be afforded dignity and privacy.
• To have control over pain relief and other symptom control.
• To have choice and control over where death occurs (at home or elsewhere).
• To have access to information and expertise of whatever kind is necessary.
• To have access to any spiritual or emotional support required.
• To have access to hospice care in any location, not only in hospital.
• To have control over who is present and who shares the end.
• To be able to issue advance directives which ensure wishes are respected.
• To have time to say goodbye, and control over other aspects of timing.
• To be able to leave when it is time to go, and not to have life prolonged pointlessly.

How many deaths meet these criteria? None in our family has. It is just not possible that a hospital, however humane, will be sufficiently attuned to each individual patient's decline to alert family members in time for them to make it to the bedside for their final moments. I heard too late to be at my grandmother's bedside and got to my mother's about half an hour after getting the call with the news. To die at home may be a fond wish for many of us, however, dying at home alone and lying undiscovered for days as my Dad did is a godawful way to go.

Knowing when death is coming and understanding what to expect implies a level of acceptance. My mother and my mother in law both felt angry and cheated to know that death was imminent when they, at 65 and 72 respectively, still had a few things left to do and were not ready to leave their friends and families.

Then there are the suicides - my grandfather and my brother. Maximum control over the circumstances and means of their deaths, exercising the ultimate in pain and symptom control but completely bereft of dignity and support.

In his 1951 poem Do not go gentle into that good night Dylan Thomas urged his father/us:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan beseeches his dying father, and by extension all of us, to express our indignation at death and to leave an indelible impression of our vitality with those left behind. Not for him reclining in the arms of Jesus and Mary and fading away as St Joseph is depicted as doing.

As an atheist, the modern tendency to celebrate a life at a funeral rather than to seek comfort by proclaiming the existence of continuing meta existence in some ethereal hereafter obviously appeals to me. But the new ceremonial is by no means send off 'lite'. I was at funeral recently that was planned and conducted in difficult circumstances. It was another died at home unexpectedly and not discovered for some time situation. The police were involved, an autopsy performed and an inquest required. The person himself was reclusive, moody and obsessive and had had fallings out with several friends and family members. He was also a committed gardener and environmentalist, the compassionate rescuer of a stray dog and a custodian of our local history. In his eulogy the dead man's brother did not omit references to his some of his prickly qualities but his words and the reminiscences he invited other's to contribute all struck a note that was both tender and reverent to the man's memory and that truly celebrated the value of all life. To be one of that gathering was to feel a sense of community, of human connection and of wonder at what can be contained in this 'brief hour in which we strut and fret upon the stage and then (are) heard no more'.

The ideal of a 'good death' is a rarely realised. The good marking of a passing is eminently achievable.

LOL cats remind us of the reverence with which most aspects of life (and death) should be treated.

Footnote: Not only was Dylan Thomas anti death with good grace, he was, according to Socialism Today (the monthly newsletter of the Socialist Party of England & Wales) 'a thinker with a grounding in Marxism, and a self-proclaimed revolutionary socialist'! Perhaps Thomas is a candidate to become the patron (anti) saint of wealth redistribution and shamelessly shambolic death? Weren't his own last words: 'I've just had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that's the record'?

Expendable Women

The ultimiate eroticised felmale victim, Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks.

In the past few weeks I have finished reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and seen the Swedish film of the novel, watched the last two episodes of series 2 of Breaking Bad and seen In My Father's Den , a NZ/British co-production of 2004. Something that strikes me about all three of these dramas is the extent to which the vulnerability and potential or actual victimhood of women is key to their plots. Our book group voiced real concern about Mikael's and Lisbeth's decision to leave the series of sexual tortures and murders unreported at the conclusion of the first Millennium novel and I hear, from those who have read ahead, that this decision does not sit easily with the protagonists in the next instalment.

In the NZ movie, an adaptation of a 1970s novel, the character of Celia is at once the personification of freshness, hope and the will to transcend a stifling, brutal, closed culture and the fated victim, sacrificed to the tawdry, melodramatic conflicts that bedevil the family at the centre of the plot. The film is very dark but the most distressing element is undoubtedly the confirmation of Celia's death. I think the film maker, realising how completely devastating and demoralising this denouement was, played with the chronology so the last shot shows her walking confidently toward a new future.

The seductive magic of Breaking Bad has been that whatever new low Walter White has sunk to we have had a grudging or even a right on, sympathy for him. From the moment he stood and watched Jesse's girlfriend, Jane choke on her own vomit without raising a finger to help her because her death would cement Jesse's dependence on him, it has been a whole lot harder to like Walt. As the concept has gone on to Seasons 3 & 4 I can only wonder at what the writers, and Bryan Cranston, who is superlative in the role, will do to make me give a solitary damn about him from now on.

Even Lynda La Plante, queen of the telly crime thriller genre and creator of feminist icon, Jane Tennison, peppers her plots with plenty of tortured and mutilated women. While Wire in the Blood also originally the work of female crime writer, Val McDermid, at least distributes the sexual voyeurism around by showing Robson Greene strung up, the helpless, hapless victim of a sadist at least once.

I am not trying to be a political purist here. It is because women and girls are vulnerable and because rape and murder are crimes primarily perpetrated by men against less powerful victims that they become the stuff of crime drama. Steig Larsson's Millennium trilogy has been hailed for giving us a strong female heroine and the film adaptation of the first novel in no way exploits its subject matter. Our perspective is always Larsson's, Lisbeth's, Mikael's, Harriet's - we are never titillated by the situations or recounted incidents, even with the addition of film imagery. It will be interesting to see if , the entirely superfluous, Hollywood remake can tread such delicate path.

Caption Contest

This photo of the late La Stupenda was just crying out for a caption. Winning entry from Boolomo "Ai, yi, yi yiiiii, Get off my taiyil". Runner up, Wol with "Adam, if I've told you once, glassware goes on the top rack"

Is TV's Top Gear secretly a witn(l)ess protection program ?

According to Wikipedia the first name of Stieg Larsson, author of 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo', 'The Girl Who Palyed With Fire' and 'The Girl Who Kicked a Hornets' Nest'...' crime thriller trilogy, was originally Stig, the standard spelling, but in his early twenties, he changed it to Stieg to avoid confusion with his friend Stig Larsson, who went on to become a well-known author before he did.

Now isn't this an all too convenient story? I contend that it has been fabricated and put about to disguise the writer's actual career move in the years 2003-04 immediately before his purported death from a heart attack.

Larsson's anti right wing activism is well known. He and his partner Eva Gabrielsson were subject to frequent death threats and required police protection. Surely a chance to adopt new identities would be irresistible? And who would be more likely to offer this duo of democracy champions an opportunity to assume those new identities, to 'hide in plain sight' so to speak, than the internationally renowned humanitarian and playful host of Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson?

My exhaustive research suggests it may very well be so.

Study these images:

Stig Secrets
Is it possible the crusading Swedish couple have been
morphed into the cast of Top Gear?

In the press at least two famous racing drivers - Perry McCarthy and Ben Collins - have been rumoured to take the role of The Stig in Top Gear. The Stig is a character whose face is never seen and whom Clarkson and his producer allegedly created and named for the nickname given to new boys at their boarding school. There have been law suits threatened when either of these drivers has attempted to take credit for portraying The Stig. But now, how likely is it that Clarkson and his producer, Andy Wilman, would have indulged in teasing and name calling at an English public school? Or that they would think that a silly fictional character from their childhood would even vaguely capture the imaginations of their viewers? Ockham's razor - my explanation is both simpler and more feasible!

While I am asserting that Stig Larsson IS The Stig I am not suggesting that James May and Eva Gabrielsson are actually the same person, just that it has been arranged so that Ms Gabrielsson can slip seamlessly into his spot on the show (thus earning an income and remaining near Larsson). What else can account for May retaining that humiliating and completely outre hairstyle?

The ultimate proof: in a world where celebrities - whatever the source of their fame - constantly rub shoulders on all sorts of occasions (e.g. Naomi Campbell, Nelson Mandela, Liberian President Charles Taylor and Mia Farrow all at the same dinner in 1997), The Stig and Stig Larsson, Eva Gabrielsson and James May have never been photographed together nor are there any recorded witness accounts of their ever being in the same place at the same time!

All the speculations about which professional racing car driver is behind the full face helmet on Top Gear are just (Swedish) red herrings... No wonder the Brits wanted Clarkson for PM, he is a genius!

Roselands We (I) Love You!

The Fenwick Estate, 1800 (Lakemba, now Roselands)

When it was built in 1964 Roselands was probably the first, and was certainly the largest, shopping centre in the southern hemisphere. What has since come to be termed a 'mall' was a new phenomenon back then, an attempt to create a 'city in the suburbs', enabling south west Sydney residents, by a short drive or bus ride, to reach a retail precinct that offered more delights than they could have previously imagined. The original Roselands contained hundreds of variety shops and was dominated by a Grace Brothers department store. It had the country's first food court (Papa Guiseppe had his genesis there), a ladies rest room - the Rendezous Room - where one could relax and shower and even iron a frock before seeing a film at the Roselands Cinema Beautiful or dining & dancing at The Viking licensed restaurant. And of course, Roselands had the famed Raindrop Fountain (below left) a series of nylon wires down which a mixture of water and glycerin trickled into a faux rock pool at its base!

When the Premier of NSW, Robin Askin, opened Roselands in late 1965 (a view of opening day appears below), he declared that Roselands was a ‘million dollar spread of merchandise… bring(ing) the city to the suburbs in a glittering way that must rival even the fabled Persian Bazaars’. He also referred to it as the essence of 'the motor age' - a quaint description to use just 4 years before we landed on the moon! But however you looked at it, Roselands was the stuff of dreams! A quaint blending of nostalgic and futuristic vision*. It had contemporary art, CCTV coverage of the childminding centre, illuminated signage (mermaids & pirate ships that lit up on the seafood outlet), held massive trade promotions and civic functions and offered live entertainment as well as having its unique boutique cinema.

People flocked to its opening - cars were bumper to bumper along the approach roads. Their interest was maintained and many developed an abiding loyalty and affection for the centre.


There were dozens of variations on it's signature tune the 'Roselands we love you/need you' jingle. The one I particularly recall from 1970s 2SM is - 'Roselands we love you - we think you're Christmas'. At about the same time Edna Everage (yet to be made a dame) went one step further and said she imagined heaven as 'one big Roselands'. Even if heaven was/is more delightful than Roselands in its heyday, Roselands could not have been much more heavenly! Apart from all the attractions I've mentioned, I remember the amazing animal sculptures for kiddies to climb on up in the Leopard Spot play area on the roof. My archive trawling reveals that the ground level boasted a wishing well/water wheel as well as the so 60s chunky copper the Rose Fountain (pictured below).

Roseland's funky Rose Fountain - the height of hip in south west Sydney in the era of Graham Kennedy, Charmian Clift and Bandstand.

Roselands had the most extensive and convenient parking lot a shopping centre had ever had (no customer need walk further than 100 metres from their vehicle to retail bliss) - it pioneered the colour coding of levels. And although praised for its compact 3 tier car park, Roselands had more than enough land around it for the additional parking lots that have appeared since the 1980s.

Roselands was built over (and named after) a 9 hole golf course (that was a sub-divided 18 whole golf course) owned by local mayor and business man Stanley Parry. Before that the area was known as Fenwick's Paddock recalling the Fenwick Estate (see top picture) established in the 1880s by a tug business operator. It's homestead Belmore House became the golf clubhouse and stood on the site until the 1940s. Before all that the region was the traditional land of the Daruk (or Darug) people.

Roselands was first refurbished only 5 years into its life when it was damaged by a spectacular fire allegedly caused by fireworks Grace Brothers had in stock for the Queen's Birthday weekend. It has since been remodelled and 'made over' out of recognition with each passing decade. Most of the innovative features, including the fountains and the cinema, that made it remarkable when new have now vanished. I think the remnants of the Viking Restaurant remained until the 1990s as I vaguely recall eating schnitzel there when my kids were little.

Ironically Roselands has gone from being the biggest mall in the country to being one of the most human in scale. The extensive spread of land around it (which contains several houses, a bowling club, a memorial rose garden and an aquatic centre) contrasts pleasantly with complexes like Miranda Fair and Chatswood which loom too large, dominate their locations and where queues of cars can build up at the entry points. Entry to Roselands is via one of three leisurely stretches of road and I have never known it to run out of parking spaces (even at Christmas time).

Back in the 60s, as a newly arrived pommy immigrant, Roselands enticed me with its scale and modernity. Now it has won me over anew with its proximity, manageable size, variety of goods and services (I went to Weight Watchers there and now I go to aquarobics at the Roselands pool) and its rambling setting that, with a little imagination, can still evoke Fenwicks Paddock (below) .


* chronicled in Michaela Perske's meticulous 1998 broadcast on the ABC radio program Hindsight, an MP2 of which the staff at the ABC very generously created and provided to me.


POSTSCRIPT:

Right is a lovely sharp focus picture (particularly for a mobile phone image) my daughter took of the ugly rusted sculptural evocation of a rose (?) that dominates the memorial garden in the grounds of Roselands adjacent to the pool and opposite the auto service centre. Circa 1960s I'd say.

It is in the centre of what must have been a pool of reflection but which is now an empty litter collector. Does anyone know anything about its history/origin? Will do a little more research.

The Dorriteers show their vesatility

Being a charming, worthy Mr Nice Guy is so boring - do you mind if I play a control
freak wife abuser? (Fine, Matt, see 'Criminal Justice' 2008)

As far as Matthew Macfadyen goes I seem to be a late convert - I found 'Spooks' portentous and totally lacking in credibility. I somehow missed him playing D'Arcy to Keira Kneightly's Elizabeth Bennett in the 2005 film version of 'Pride & Prejudice' (but I, like everyone else, was in thrall to Colin Firth then any way). The trailer for the 2004 NZ film 'In My Father's Den' looked good, and he looked good in it, but I haven't seen it (one for the Quick Flicks list). I thought he was a competent, pudgy, but hardly charismatic, straight man in 'Death At A Funeral' (2007).

'Little Dorrit' (see last post) was the breakthrough for me - Macfadyen brought to Arthur Clenham (so boring on the page) wonderful humanity, warmth and humour. I'd put him up there with James Stewart in 'Harvey' for making niceness* acceptable and admirable on screen.

'Little Dorrit' was full of fine performances and I was tantalised to see three of its stars, Macfadyen, Eddie Marsan and Maxine Peake, reunited in 'Criminal Justice' which the ABC has just run as a 2 part drama over the last two Sunday nights (but which was actually filmed to be shown as a 5 part series in the UK the same year as 'Little Dorrit', 2008).

I have enjoyed Eddie Marsan's work since I first saw him in as the hyper tense driving instructor with stalking tendencies and anger management problems in 'Happy Go Lucky'. His Pancks in 'Little Dorrit' was a wonderful blend of grotesquery and zeal. He outdoes them all for wearing his east end Jewish heritage like a badge, making Bob Hoskins seem like Ralph Richardson by comparison. In 'Criminal Justice' he was clerk of chambers in the practice where MacFadyen's character worked as a barrister and god father to his daughter. We saw him seemingly callous, 'I've go a nice rape for you in Manchester', but also touching in his obvious regard and love for his colleague and when recounting how his character's father came to London in WWII as part of the Kindertransport.

When I saw Maxine Peake as the enigmatic and manipulative Miss Wade in 'Little Dorritt', I thought 'I know that face', then I read her screen credits but nothing rang a bell until I saw she was Twinkle in Victoria Woods' Dinnerladies. Hard to believe it, but her recent performance surpasses even that sublime creation! John Preston in Britain's Daily Telegraph called her work in Criminal Justice 'a marvel' and so it was. To quote him further, the production suceeded in:

ratcheting up the tension with 'Hitchcockian precision' and (using) the weight of the character's dilemmas to drive the narrative forward

Can't omit reference to the performances delivered by Sophie Okonedo and Alice Sykes either - all the cast were just outstanding. Superlative telly!

* Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd in 'Harvey': Years ago my mother used to say to me, she`d say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me".

Don’t call me that!

'Little Dorritt is such a silly name, mind if I call you Fanny Chuzzzlewit?'

They call me 'Hell'

They call me 'Stacy'

They call me 'her'

They call me 'Jane'

That's not my name

That's not my name

That's not my name

That's not my name

They call me 'quiet girl'

But I’m a riot

Mary, Jo, Liza

Always the same

That's not my name

That's not my name

That's not my name

That's not my name

The Ting Tings 2009

I just loved it the Sunday night before last when Claire Foy (as Amy Dorrit) snapped at Matthew Macfadyen (as Arthur Clennam - above) “Don’t call me that” when he addressed her by the absurd sobriquet ‘Little Dorrit’ just once too often?

Dickens’s penchant for creating mawkish models of immature womanhood (whether dolts or angels) was never more cloyingly demonstrated than in fashioning ‘Little Dorrit’. I struggled with the novel, and with that epitome of selfless, sexless devotion, Amy, when reading it as an English Lit student in the 80s. Once again, I pay tribute to Andrew Davies for having breathed new life, and not inconsiderable mojo, into the characters of a ‘bonnet drama’ with this adaptation for television. And good on yer, Claire, for making 'Little Dorrit' a spirited and likeable heroine.

During the following week my 19 year old son also had occasion to insist ‘don’t call me that in public’ when I farewelled him thus: 'goodbye, honey bun’ on the steps of my office building after we'd shared a delicious Yum Cha lunch.

All families use pet names, don't they? The Mitford sisters were 'Decca', 'Nardy', 'Bobo' etc. My sisters and I are known to one another by similarly absurd terms. But when and where you use a pet or nick name is obviously a matter of judgement. When referring to sports stars the use of an epithet seems almost compulsory - 'Shark', 'Tiger', 'Brick with Ears'... for some other public figures too - I have no idea what 'Weary' Dunlop's or 'Chopper' Reid's given names actually are!

The above are all nicknames conferred on their bearers by others as distinct from an adopted name under which one chooses to perform or publish; Prince, Phiz, Madonna, Englebert Humperdink, Guillaume de Gnome de Plume come to mind. The difference being that it is presumably NOT embarassing to declare loudly and publically 'It is I, the Scarlet Pimpernell' while it is probably cringe-makingly awful to be greeted with 'Oi, I thought it was you, Silver Bodgie'. Unless of course you're Richard Roxburgh in which case you might be quite chuffed!

Coming soon: Guillaume Gnome de Plume's Reminiscences of Cooks River Vineyards

The chronicling of Marrickville-Sydenham's lost wine industry is long overdue...

In an interview soon to appear here, Guillaume Gnome de Plume reminisces about the acradian charms of the Cooks River vineyards.

The rich sullage content of the Cooks River combined with the run-off from the many wool stores lining the river along Canal Rd created incomparable soil for the cultivation of grapes.

Guillaume explains that there were two renowned vintages - the Vin Extremely Ordinaire and the Vin Barely Palatable.

The first had a nose of long-concealed frommage, notes of honeysuckle, melon and nuclear waste and left a calcium buildup and an almost indelible high-tide mark on the back palate. But with a plate of head cheese and a packet of Gauloise, it was without peer.

The latter was voted for three consecutive years by the readers of Joggers' World magazine as the best Australian wine to run away from.

MORE TO COME...

(With thanks to David Latta)

How do you write a blog about Maria?

...how do you catch a wave upon the sand?

After being bored and slightly irked by the 1965 film as a child, The Sound of Music barely entered my consciousness again for 45 years. Like everyone I was regularly exposed to those aerial shots of Julie Andrews whirling in Alpine meadows in Oscar presentations or programs about cinema history. At some point in my adult life I came to realise that there are people who are quite obsessed by the film. A friend knew all the lyrics by heart, a colleague showed me a video of her large family re-enacting the So long, farewell, auf wiedersehn, goodbye number, I saw a cabaret artist deconstruct the entire plot in his act. However, nothing prepared me for the impact the choice of The Sound of Music as the school musical would have on this family's life!

Some time in February it was rumoured that my 15 year old daughter was likely to be cast as Maria. Weeks of suspense and conflicting emotions followed. She did have the best voice in the school, didn't she? She'd demonstrated that and her acting ability in previous productions. Would they consider her mature enough to 'carry' the show? She was pretty iffy about that responsibility and about playing an ingenue nun with a bizarre belief that singing about deer, goats and copper kettles cured most of life's ills. Weeks passed and she greeted the music teacher's secret assurance to her that she would be cast as Maria with a mix of dread and derision, while we greeted it with skepticism* without something more concrete like a note home.

When the casting was confirmed and the arduous rehearsal schedule began our relief let us become foolishly complacent about our child's actual attendance every time she was required. Shrill phone calls from the director commenced. 'Must do better' we resolved. Huddled conferences with the director, music teacher and the school counsellor occurred. I was asked to become my daughter's 'personal assistant' and to remind her of each and every rehearsal. They offered to send cabs to collect her when she was exhausted or off colour. Could she really cope at all? They suggested she play a lesser nun. We convinced her to hang in there. Her School Certificate exams were rescheduled so that she could concentrate on learning all her lines and blocking every scene!

They were aghast that she had never seen the film. We hired it. She hated it. She became determined to create a Maria as unlike Julie Andrews as she could. We started making jokes about the script and lyrics. 'What is it Maria, you c*nt face?' How do you solve a problem like Maria? You marry her off to God or if that doesn't work to a randy old Austrian millionaire. The self consciousness kicked in. Various Von Trapp kiddies were taller than her, thinner than her, the Baroness had all the jokes, she had nauseating sweetness and unfounded optimism.

Above: Julie Andrews and the baggage my daughter wanted to shed.

We trawled the op shops for garments that were demure but not hideous. The smell of nylon that had encountered much sweat over many years remained in our nostrils. We got a pair of pearlescent cream high heels for the wedding scene for $2! Then we found a convincingly Laura Ashley/30s Austria like floral number on eBay... It would be an improvement on the checked rag of a dress I'd already had to darn twice. But would our bid win it? And would it arrive in time? At $14 we paid over op shop odds for it but it was just the ticket and arrived in time for the two public performances.

Then in the actual week of the performances, with a masterstroke of bureaucratic absurdity, the school suspended her for skiving off after an excursion the week before. Which days did they choose to have the suspension take effect? The days of the first two performances. Did they tell us? Yes, by snail mail that arrived after the suspension was meant to occur. (Our daughter had been handed a copy of the letter too but found it all too silly and distracting to contemplate and just buried her copy in the depths of her school bag). Blithely unaware that we were contravening a Department of Education direction and could be inviting police action, we ferried her to and from the performances, went through lines one last time, applied make-up, moved scenery and helped her struggle through costume changes. When we became aware of the suspension we were livid.

Any way, that idiocy aside, the public performances went ahead gloriously on 18th and 19th June. Our girl is a prodigious talent and acquitted herself brilliantly.

The Sound of Music remains a very silly story (and an atrocious departure from far more interesting real life see: http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2005/winter/von-trapps.html ) The values of the film are wildly artificial and anti-feminist but to give Rogers and Hammerstein a bit of credit, the stage version does contain two very droll numbers shared by the Baroness, Max and Captain Von Trapp and the anti Nazi theme is explored more fully (arguing over collaboration is actually what breaks up the Captain and the Baroness).

This production was far from silly in its quality and effect and we are proud and thrilled to see how our girl has grown, quoting Maria she can now declare:

Strength doesn't lie in numbers.
Strength doesn't lie in wealth,
Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers,
When you wake up, wake up!
It can be all I trust I leave my heart to,
All I trust becomes my own!
I have confidence in confidence alone.
I have confidence in confidence alone!
Besides, which you see,
I have confidence in me!

Well done little Diva, clever Belle Starr!

*Once bitten you see, my high school music teacher planned a production of HMS Pinafore and offered me Buttercup only to snatch away our chance at fame and acclaim by telling the class that God had told him in a vision not to proceed with the show (for 'God' read the Principal and the school's accountant, I suspect).

Memories of the Sydenham 'push'

The Cobb & Co Diner Princes Highway, Tempe in its heyday, 1964

My recent archival trawling has led to a lot of interesting discoveries about the Marrickville - Canterbury area where I live. Unearthing the 1964 picture (above) of the now sadly reduced Cobb and Co drive-in diner on the stretch of the Princes Highway that approaches Sydney airport led me to seek out locals with memories of the era. Meeting Guillame Gnome de Plume* (below) has been a revelation. I had no idea that this region of the Marrickville municipality had a French Quarter (the 'Paris end of Sydenham' as Guillaume refers to it) or that it was a hotbed of radical politics. I reproduce fragments of an interview with Guillaume about the Tempe - Sydenham region below. I hope his recollections will delight readers as much as they did me.

My informant - Guillaume Gnome de Plume sporting his beret (and Blunnies -not visible)

As we sat down to talk in one of Marrickville's many chic cafes Guillaume enlightened me that back in the 60s the Cobb and Co Drive-In, (which he still insists on calling 'Le Cobb avec Co'), although best known for its speedy late night service of burgers and 'foot long dogs', actually also housed a little known private dining area frequented by French expats and the intelligentsia of Tempe.

Guillaume:

It is true, there was this romantic little dining room off to one side that had an understated decor of pinball and cigarette machines. Very, 'ow you say, 'post-moderne'. Reminded me of the Left Bank. On many nights I could be found there in my beret and striped boat-neck t-shirt reading Flaubert, teaching the truck drivers to play boule or discussing philosophy with the radical students.

Me: So the Cobb & Co diner was a centre for the Sydenham - Tempe avant garde? Is it true that it fomented subversive political thought and even action?

Guillaume:

Ah, oui, I remember it well. There were plane trees along the Princes Highway in those days (that stretch we knew as the Paris end of Sydenham). It was May and they were shedding their leaves, carpeting the asphalt where the autos stopped to get their burgers. There was a chestnut seller who had his little oven on the island in the middle of the Cooks River nearby, he rowed his wares across to buyers... he was, 'ow you say, the 'chain smoker' and always cursing the rising price of Gauloises.

It was May of '68 when the infamous Tempe student uprising occurred. The local youth rose in solidarity with their French counterparts and tried to take control of the electricity sub-station near the bus depot. Tempers flared when it was found the fence was too high. The streets ran yellow with Passiona* that day.

Me: Passiona?

Guillaume:

Coke was regarded as capitalist, Fanta, bourgeois, and le Cobb avec Co did not have a licence to serve anything stronger.

Me: So how close to achieving 'le revolution' did the Sydenham push come?

Guillaume:

Well, inevitably, in those early days of the revolution, difficulties, setbacks arose. At the announcement of the manifesto, there were those at the back of the group, standing close to the rumbling lorries travelling along the Princes Highway, who had their attention momentarily distracted. Chapter XI, dogma 6 makes reference to youth rabble-rousing. Several of the more fervent students must have misunderstood. They disappeared for days. It was said they had spent that time searching the areas around Tempe for small fluffy bunnies and for a long time afterwards, many of the local rabbits appeared unreasonably agitated...

At this point Guillaume launched into a lament in broken English on the hardships of conveying the revolutionary message to the proletariat and to naive young students and the unfortunate consequences of misplaced zeal for 'les lapins emigre'. We finished our cafe au laits and bid each other adieu. I feel it will not be the last time I speak to this incredible old gentleman about his memories of Tempe political and cultural life.

*Thanks to David Latta for sharing Guillaume's insights.

The Time Traveller's Riff

I have been thinking about the transient nature of social institutions - the way we seek our entertainment, commemorate our dead, travel around our city - all are subject to fashion. In the 1930s we flocked to elaborate picture palaces but 3 decades later most were demolished or converted to other commercial uses. Between the world wars we replaced many of our simple, poignant early memorials with big enduring edifices modelled on the obelisks and pyramids of the ancient world. In the 1950s we ripped out the tram network that had served the city & suburbs effectively for years and introduced greenhouse gas belching buses, and so on. As I've mentioned, I was distressed to learn that Sydney's Town Hall and Central Railway Station are built over graveyards where convicts, free settlers and Aboriginal people (above) were buried. Scant attempt was made to relocate remains or headstones or even to chronicle the names and other details of those disinterred or simply submerged.

Anyone who has read this blog knows that I am not religious so my objection isn't that such redevelopment disturbs 'hallowed' ground a la Poltergeist (the 1982 Steven Spielberg film where a house is haunted and finally subsumed because it is built over native American burial grounds). Although the fact that respect for ancestors is common to most cultures suggests it really is something the human psyche requires. What really pisses me off is that we have casually eroded so much of our history. First we (Europeans) decimated traditional Aboriginal lands and then we razed the evidence of our own early settlement. The monument in Rookwood Cemetery (right) to those whose 'resting' place was once the old Sydney Burial Grounds (where Sydney Town Hall now stands) records the name of the serving mayor of the time but not those of anyone whose grave was disturbed. The siren song of progress coupled with shame or indifference about humble or criminal origins prevailed. Were there historians then who thought the manner in which these building projects were executed a bit rash? Were there any - apart from the clergy - who raised the alarm some 100 years later when Camperdown Cemetery was resumed as public park land and its headstones crowded around the newly erected walls of St Stephens to crumble away?

Browsing the pictorial archive sites is a form of time travel. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I found the pictures of my childhood haunts that I wrote about in my last posting. The same thing happened when I found the Tivoli shots and the 1953 photo (below) of a tram running alongside Belmore Park (following the same route as the modern light rail I pass every day). I am not quite sure why. I wasn't born when the pictures were taken and, despite attending the odd political rally there, wasn't really familiar with Belmore Park or Hay Street until recently. I think it is the idea of 'those feet in ancient times' having trod the same pathways that I tread today and the reverberation of all those other presences that awakens a sense of awe and wistfulness in me.

The book The Time Travellers' Wife powerfully evokes our bittersweet relationship with the past. I suppose it is a paradox: all that we know, all that is familiar, everyone we love, only exist and have meaning for us because of what went before. As Henry DeTamble the time traveller of the novel's title learns when he repeatedly revisits the scene of his mother's death, we can not intervene to change the past. There really is no point crying over spilt milk but by viewing it from the different standpoints in our lives we can better accept the spillage. And, without being completely deterministic about it, there are certain inevitabilities about our lives and our task, should we choose to accept it, is to discover and enrich the events that will befall and have befallen us.

Time and chance happeneth to all people - Eric Bana as Henry DeTamble fades when his past self briefly visits his wife and child after the death of his contemporary self.

I guess you could call me a bit of an obsessive. Time travelling is what I am doing this month, maybe next month it will be all human rights as I work with my daughter on 'our' To Kill A Mockingbird assignment. Now there's another deservedly revered novel...

Shooting (and surfing) the past*

I have been living in the past recently or, more accurately, I have been indulging in trips back and forth between the present and the early, mid and later 20thC.

It started with my discovery of my local council's photographic archive, spread to exploring the City of Sydney Pictorial Archives and thence to looking on the 'net for images of locations that are significant to me from my UK childhood (such as the one at left of The Kursaal amusement park, Southend-on-Sea). This posting is really an excuse to share some of them with you, dear reader.

Southend-on-Sea was the favourite seaside haunt of my Essex born and bred grandmother (whom we always called 'Nanny'). My sisters and I spent many happy hours in her company visiting the rides and stalls at The Kursaal and walking through
the landscaped parkland that I now learn is (Pythonesquely) called The Shrubbery .

The Shrubbery was the site of an eccentric precursor to the modern theme park, Never Never Land (see picture right). Never Never Land was nothing to do with Michael Jackson but was, to quote the Southend History website:

...truly a mystical place, a land of mythical castles, goblins, dragons, fairies and lights in the trees, and even a magical model railway with stations and mountains and bridges. The model castle was at the entrance and it had lights in the windows and a little rowing boat crossing the lake at the bottom. It was worth the price of pennies at the turnstiles to get in. During the 1950s, Never Never Land packed in thousands of adults and children each year...

Apparently business trailed off during the 1960s but that's when my siblings and I were Never Never Land enthusiasts. I have vivid memories of the animated illuminated models of fanciful creatures and the miniature train that traversed the cliff side terraces. I recreated the latter back at home forming chairs and cushions into carriages, populating them with my sisters, dolls and teddies and pouncing on Nanny as soon as she got home from work, insisting she don her special Never Never Land jacket and board the train to imaginary stations with names like 'Knives & Forks' and 'Eggs & Bacon'!

The other seaside setting for our youthful walks with Nanny were Lytham St Annes/Blackpool (home of it's own famed illuminations). The Esplanade at St Annes is pictured left in the early 20thC. The little shelter with the dragon on top it was still the when I visited in the 1980s (below right) but its setting was rather less exotic than I remembered. The pseudo Chinese lakes and garden beds surrounding the shelter seemed much more modest, and of course smaller, than they had seemed to me as a 5 year old (or whatever I was when I first encountered them).

What did impress me was that they and so many other sights and locations I remembered were intact and cared for, and in some cases even restored! A derelict 16thC church on the hill outside our village of West Horndon became something of an obsession with me in 1967-68 (the two years prior to our emigration). It was rumoured to have connections with Henry IV and Anne Boleyn and housed tombs of local aristocrats, the Tyrells, from the period of its origin. I did a school project on the church, named All Saints, East Hornden (pictured below as it was in the 60s), replete with copies of inscriptions from the tombs and brass rubbings.

Remembering it as totally disused, populated by sparrows and pigeons, its pews, rafters and bell tower steps all liberally coated with their droppings, I was astonished and very moved to find it in use for concerts and cultural gatherings (rather than for worship) when I visited in 1984.

I have also been tempted to seek out old photographs of sites closer to home, my current home, Sydney's south-western suburbs, and to my work, in the Haymarket. A plaque on the building where I work at 323 Castlereagh Street states that it is the former site of the Adelphi and Tivoli theatres although I've discovered that the Sydney Tivoli actually had its first incarnation at 79-83A Castlereagh Street where Skygardens now stands . A colleague tells me that state rail employees still refer to the part of the line just before Central that passes our building as 'the Tivoli Junction'.

In the photo above you can see the 'Tivoli' sign on the right. The mass of trees is Belmore Park then Central railway station is in the background. The Tivoli met the fate of most early 20thC theatres of ceasing to show live performance and being converted to a cinema, then, with the advent of television, ceasing operation altogether. It was demolished in the 1960s.

From the 1920s onwards most Sydney suburbs had at least one picture theatre. Some, like Campsie and Earlwood in the Canterbury area where I live, had several. My last indulgence for this posting is to show you two local extant cinema buildings that somehow escaped the tide of progress. I have also been looking for the locations of others that didn't survive at all or have done so in a drastically unrecognisable state. However that, and some information about Sydney's predilection for building over its cemeteries can wait for another posting!

Above left: The Orion at 155 Beamish Street, Campsie, built 1936 now a 'community function centre' and home to a local amateur theatre group. Above right: the old Mayfair, at 324 - 330 Homer Street, opened 1927 and closed 1958, now a Greek deli & wine outlet. Pictures from Pictorial Canterbury website

* this posting's title with apologies/acknowledgements to the excellent 1999 Stephen Poliakoff television series.

Suffer the little children*

Paedophilia must to be the west's favourite focus for moral outrage in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. We're talking the epoch that brought us the Mi Lai massacre, the Bosnian war, Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and murder, the Tutsi/Hutu slaughter, 'nine eleven'... you get my drift. I am not trying to trivialise child sexual abuse. Exploitation of and cruelty towards children is reprehensible, indefensible, sickening. It's just that righteous indignation about alleged interfering with kiddies seems to be the cause celebré for so many, including a fair share of misogynist, racist, callous reactionaries who don't normally give a hoot about human rights.

My attention has been drawn again to the topic by the current outrage over the pontiff's seeming complicity in covering up sexual abuse of children by the clergy in Ireland and Germany. Both atheists and disaffected believers are decrying Ratzinger and the priesthood (or selected members of it) for the blind eyes they have turned. But, at the risk of sounding cynical, should we be surprised? Sexual abuse thrives in institutions where there is a massive power imbalance and no avenue for victims to be believed, comforted and supported.

Allan Innman, cartoon originally published in the newspaper of the University of Mississippi, The Daily Mississippian, 2003

Perhaps one of the reasons I did not react to the incidents of abuse in David Hill's 'The Forgotten Children' (which we have just read for book group), with shock and horror (apart from the fact that they are quite sloppily and sketchily reported) is that the only surprises for me were (a) that it wasn't rifer than his account suggests and (b) that there was ever a time or a society that thought the odds were on a kid's side if you ripped him/her from family, friends and familiar environment and sent them to be 'cared for' by unqualified Imperialist exiles, nursing frustration over their lacklustre military careers, thousands of miles from scrutiny. It is a recipe for bullying and abuse!

My book group has also just watched Pt 1 of 'The Leaving of Liverpool' to more fully bring alive for us this sorry exercise in British-Australian child development via 'centres of care'. That 90s miniseries isn't set in secular Fairbridge Farm School like Hill's book, but in St Bedes - a (fictional, I think) centre run by the St Vincent de Paul brotherhood. Of course child molestation and rape occur, hard on the heels of verbal and psychological abuse and thwacking a boy hard enough across the head for him to lose his hearing (that incident back in the British orphanage).

One of our members who is from Chile expressed her disbelief that families could so readily submit to fragmentation without resistance - it would never happen, even amongst the poorest in Chile she feels, family and community bonds are too strong. Another, of Eastern European Jewish background, wondered at the notion typically identified with English Victorian society that children 'should be seen and not heard' suggesting that view inevitably ignores children's need for love and silences their voices when abuse occurs. We also talked about parallels with the Australian government's systematic removal of Aboriginal children of mixed race from their homes and families. There was no pretence there that the children were orphans or abandoned as was argued in the case of the British kids. Once institutionalised the treatment was similarly brutal with the added abuse of trying to expunge all cultural, linguistic and spiritual ties with their communities. Given the importance of land and kinship in Aboriginal culture it is hard not to see the practice as the attempted eradication of an entire people as has been claimed.

So, in complete contradiction of John Howard's view that we can not be held accountable for the actions of previous generations, we are ALL complicit. So alienated was British-Australian society in the 1930s-70s from an appreciation of the crucial role played by family and community in nurturing a healthy, happy child, that we gave policies and practices that included the most appalling neglect, isolation and exploitation a free reign.

The church is an archaic institution - is it any wonder that denial of the rights of children - no longer condoned by our secular society - has flourished for so long within its walls?

*Matthew 19:14 - I know this quote is misinterpreted constantly and that 'suffer' means 'allow' in this context, but its an irresistible title for this post.