You avin' a larf?

I recently watched 'Almost the truth...', the doco about Monty Python. It did my heart good. It's not so much that you forget how funny the dead parrot sketch or Mr Creosote are... it's just good to revisit them and giggle all over again. First time around in the public service I kept the lyrics to the Galaxy Song next to my desk:



Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

At the end of the documentary, Eric Idle's musical collaborator remarks, after Eric performs the song, 'of course the facts have changed now' - and Eric replies that the facts can't possibly have changed but our interpretation of them has.

Second time around in the public service the facts have changed very little but I hope my interpretation of them has. I think as an idealistic young trainer I believed in the perfectibility of human relations and of organisational life. I delivered sermons on equal employment opportunity with a zeal that sought to transform individuals and the workplace and tirelessly championed the rights of the complainant when accusations of discrimination and harassment were made. I still consider myself someone who values social justice and ethical behaviour very highly but my tolerance for gung ho activism and proselytising has gone.

This time around the narcissists I've encountered pushing their vanity projects and pet causes regardless of the stated priorities of the agency, good governance and economic constraints are completely pissing me off. I just don't think these jokers know or care about the damage they do. Their personal holy grail or hobbyhorse takes precedence over considerations of resources, relevance and rationality. Ego trips & chest beating either triumph or exhaust the reserves of the rest of us trying to out manoeuvre them!

There, that's my rant. I bounced back from my Christmas/New Year break all rarin' to go but one or two people keep putting spokes in my wheels. Eh, why should 2010 be so different? As Mr Idle says just before he breaks into song:

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown, and things seem hard or tough, and people are stupid, obnoxious, or daft, and you feel that you've had quite enough...

Just remember that you're standing... etc

Oh, brothers, Wherrett - thou little rippers!

Our latest book group choice was Desirelines - the reminiscences of Richard & Peter Wherrett. Both bros sont morte now - this book was published in 1997. I knew about Peter's lifelong attraction to cross dressing - I think I'd heard an interview with him when the book was published. And I knew that Richard had died of an AIDS related illness - he knew he was HIV positive when the book was written.

What I wasn't ready for was the intensity of the Wherretts' struggle to survive their childhood with an alcoholic, violent, epileptic, cross dressing father! They suffered almost every indignity and shame the 1950s could throw at them. A mother who stayed in an abusive relationship out of misguided love for their father and because her economic situation would have been highly tenuous without the guaranteed full-time employment her husband's pharmacy business gave her. A father who initially scared the life out of them with his mood swings, abusive behaviour toward their mum and unexplained epileptic fits and wounded them with his distracted indifference to their talents and achievements. Inner battles with their sexuality/gender identification - Richard being gay and Peter compulsively drawn to expressing his 'feminine' side via cross dressing - and carrying their 'guilty' secrets for years. Class consciousness engendered by their father's shame at being the only one of 5 brothers not to qualify as a doctor, living next door to a pub at the height of the primitive 'six o'clock swill' and trying to cut it at a private school (Trinity) when their domestic circumstances were shabby and constrained - they lived above their father's chemist shop. A depressive aunt who had lost her husband in WWII, and her marbles progressively in the ensuing years, and so on...

Peter lived the last 2 years of his life as Pip.

Their story resonated with me. Their mum was a dewy eyed, devoted bride with no insight into her husband's 'issues', as my own mother had been. Their childhood neighbourhood, commercial premises in West Ryde, my own father grew up opposite the milk bar his mother ran in North Ryde. Their journey from puzzlement at their father's behaviour, to championing their mum, then to seeing both parents as somewhat pathetic in their choices. Their salvation via reading and recognition at school. Growing into their personalities, charm and personae. The evolution of left politics. Richard Wherrett's favourite EM Forster quote 'only connect' from Howard's End and mine being the same. Wherrett senior growing up in Marrickville (where I lived for 20 years) opposite the town hall (which I have visited often). See the once gracious 'Luscombe' by clicking here.

Desirelines is not a great book, but it is an honest and fascinating one. Peter's contribution is braver and more interesting than little brother Richard's who, having been a cultural hero of the Whitlam years/my youth, turns out to have hidden twee shallows. Peter is a flawed protagonist who undergoes a journey of self discovery and self expression, whereas Richard did really seem to have a charmed existence once he left Ryde. It was Peter who, as the eldest, confronted his father's rages head on and had to say 'enough is enough' and arrange his committal while Richard was discovering divine bohemia and coming out.

Richard Wherrett did give us the unforgettable Elocution of Benjamin Franklin and Nicholas Nickleby though - truly rich and exalting experiences in Australian theatre!

Vive les Wherretts - warts and all! Their memoirs capture a whole panorama of the Australian experience and their journeys toward self actualisation reverberate strongly for me and I am sure for many others. Their lives prove the old adage that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger; their survival and flourishing is an inspiration to us all.