Flipping Sadness

Writing has been a bit of a struggle lately. Handwriting has gradually disappeared down a trigger-fingered carpal tunnel. Two-fingered tapping on an iPad doesn't quite cleanse my chi. However, I subverted my reaction to a funeral the other day and maybe that's worth sharing.

 A dear friend's 90-something mother recently died a worthy death: relatively well; cognition intact; dementia free; loved. It's too easy for me to absorb grief. Recognising this, I avoid it if I can. Daily I balance on a treacherous tightrope below which is a potentially fathomless pit of awfulness in which I'd rather not wallow*. I choose to keep my head up; find joy where I can. But my love of my friend outweighed my need to protect myself. I needed to offer what support I could, by being there as she finds her own way through the maze of grief.

 

It was an afternoon funeral on a blustery but fine winter's day. I was mindful of the funeral as soon as I opened my eyes that morning.  I didn’t want death to dominate my day with its sadness. So I busied myself with the usual morning housekeeping and shopping. After lunch, watching the minutes drag their feet towards funeral time, I google-mapped the address and saw it would take me 15 minutes in heavy end-of-term-school-pick-up traffic to drive the 6.3k to the church. Six point three kilometres? That's a very do-able bike ride. I snapped into action deciding I'd ride the push bike, despite the gusts from the north into which I’d be pedalling.

 

Suddenly it wasn’t about a sad friend whose mum had died but about getting out in the fresh air and being on an adventure. I had a scant 45 minutes. I knew I'd be stepping hard on the pedals, despite Google maps' prediction that the ride would take 26 minutes. Clearly they've never clocked this old woman on her bike. I was wearing a few mostly black funereal layers against Melbourne's 12 degrees minus 5 for wind-chill factor.  It was cold. Thusly, I topped the lot off with my varicoloured wind-breaker jacket. Maybe I should mention that my bike helmet sports four erect cable ties, attached to prevent me from getting hit by swooping magpies during their mating season. It isn’t their mating season.

 

Several kilometres later I was over-heating, unzipping layers, pumping past Fawkner cemetery on the Upfield Bike trail.  By the time I reached Box Forest Road I wasn’t sure which way to head and Google maps wasn't helping, given it's hard to turn hither and thither when you factor in a busy eight-lane dual carriageway and a railway line. On the other side of Sydney Road I asked a couple of busy men at a car wash whether they knew the location of the Greek Orthodox Church. ‘I no speak English. You ask next door. He speak good English.’ I was already late so didn’t but cycled along the footpath in that direction. A pedestrian further along was able to help. ‘There’s a Greek church just up the road where those cars are coming out’ 'Thanks, have a nice day!' And lo and behold, the iconic church, startlingly conspicuous when you’re driving on the highway. Not so much from the Upfield Rail Trail.

 

A mere ten minutes late, having locked my bike,  I shed my plastic clown jacket and baseball cap, slid open the heavy church door and crept on the balls of my feet into a back pew. Heart pounding, I was exhilarated.

 

I breathed deeply adjusting to the darkness of a church filled with sombre people. From the back pew I saw only backs of heads, and shoulders under dark clothes. I'd avoided disturbing the atmosphere when I'd arrived late. Not so the man who came in a bit later wearing trainers that squelched on each step. He made no attempt to prevent the sound, but he was groaningly old, perhaps deaf and oblivious to the sounds he was emitting. Good that he made it, bless.

 

My friend spoke eloquently about her beautiful mum. Her restrained emotion nearly undid me but I bit back on it. I'm sick of crying. It doesn't release any healing for me; just makes me feel wretched in its aftermath. It was a long service. They did this ritual, kind of like a communion. (It's all Greek to me.) A church attendant indicated to each row that they could proceed to the altar and file past the coffin. I assumed it was a coffin. I was too far away to be able to see through my cataracts. I remained safe in my pew. This process, like communion, took a while and as people returned to their pews I recognised some of my former colleagues. Secondary teachers, they may have had mixed feelings: a melange of sadness and end-of-term relief at a Friday afternoon off for a funeral.

 

At the end of the service the priest invited the congregation to join the cortege and proceed to Northern Memorial Park off Box Forest Road. This is where my day really tumble-turned, filling me with illicit repressed mirth. My friend and her family were already in a stretch limousine with blacked out windows. In front was the hearse, now with its coffin in place ready to lead the cortege. I didn't want to be inappropriate but had to tiptoe through the rose beds to unlock my bike. I was also obliged to put on my very conspicuous raincoat. I may as well have stuck  on a red nose. I set off up Sydney Road to cross the eight lanes at the lights. Unavoidably, I raced the cortege while riding on the footpath, somehow hoping I wouldn't disturb their grief yet simultaneously more conspicuous than an kangaroo hopping along beside a slow moving train. Even more so when the cortege blocked the left lane - a bus was inadvertently caught in the convoy of mourners. At a break in the oncoming traffic I opportunistically signalled and turned right in front of the hearse.

 

Inside the cemetery I tried to hang back a bit, nevertheless catching up with the hearse and stretch limo. I retreated behind a ghost gum and waited until they took off and I almost lost them. No matter.  Glimpsing distant cars, I short-cut through some graves and again got in the way, standing out like, well, a clown at a funeral.  Suppose I could have dumped the bike and my colourful jacket and braved the cold. As a mark of respect I removed my four-pronged bike helmet.

 

I waited at the end of the row of graves while my friend's beloved mum was lowered to her eternal rest. I still didn't want to get within crying range. Yet, with my bike I felt intrusive. To counter this, I clasped my hands in front and bowed my head a little. Minutes later, the berobed Greek Orthodox priest returned through the crowd of mourners. Seeing me, his face lit up with a smile as he gave me a brief salute. Perhaps I brought a bit of brightness to his day. Hope so.

 

*Al, my beautiful basketballer, cyclist, champion, husband, constant companion of 45 years is seeing out his days with a hideous combo of Parkinson's Disease and Lewy Body dementia.

Halcyon Days? Better keep your head down.

 

Were you ever bullied at school? I've been victim and perpetrator, both are inextricably linked. 

It's winter, 1969. A skinny twelve-year-old high school girl – let’s call her Judith - paces along the footpath next to the tram tracks. She's on her way to the bus stop around the corner; on that particular day, a very long block away. She and a quiet companion, Jill, in grey school tunics and blazers, are just ahead of a hunting pack of vixens from their class. Jill, stares ahead, solemn-faced, despite knowing she isn’t their target. The pack taunts and brays at Judith. 'Whaddarya? Cow! Think you're too good? Not so tough now!" Judith's hunched shoulders and white face betray her fear as she hurries along, hefting the weight of her enormous grey vinyl school bag.

The day before, their form 2 teacher had needed to leave the classroom. Before going, she’d handed a pupil, Laureen, one of Judith’s primary school friends, a piece of chalk instructing her to write on the board the name of anyone who talked while she, the teacher, was out of the room.

The class erupted into chatter once the teacher was out of earshot. Laureen joined in the fun, daring with her powerful chalk, cheekily writing names to peels of laughter and protest, then quickly dusting them off. It was fun. Unfortunately, Laureen hadn’t removed one name quickly enough. The teacher returned and on seeing it reprimanded the whole class and gave them detention the following afternoon.

As they left the classroom that day, Judith gave Laureen a harmless push. Well, Judith had been ‘going with’ Greg, whose name was left on the board and who’d been singled out for a vicious, undeserved telling off. As his girlfriend at the time, it was her duty to stick up for him. The detention meant they’d miss the dedicated school bus, have to walk a couple of blocks to the bus stop and get home an hour later than usual. So unfair!

Judith, twelve, oblivious, had poked a bear.

Next day, a miasma of menace swirled through the classrooms and the B block corridor where they had their lockers. It snaked around her. Now, Middlemarch, not Laureen, was the unwitting offender. How dare she have pushed Laureen who’d only been having fun? Who did Middlemarch think she was? She should be taught a lesson. “Hey, no one talk to Middlemarch, that’ll teach her; that’ll teach that smartarse bitch. Hey, let’s get her after school. Yeah!”

After the detention on her way to the bus stop, Judith knows she’s in for it. There’s no escape; no rescue. Jill is keeping out of it and daren’t draw attention. She’s brave even walking next to Judith. Judith is defenceless.

The pack was straining to give Middlemarch what she had coming.

One of the pack broke ranks and overtook Judith on the footpath. Brenda, with her sharpie swagger and hitched up school tunic, seemed to be walking ahead. Suddenly she turned. Smiling, she sashayed back and slapped Judith hard across the face with an open hand. Judith felt the sting on her teeth and her eyes filled with treacherous tears. Jill said nothing. Stunned, only faltering slightly, they continued their determined march towards the corner bus stop. Once there, Judith, heart racing, knees shaking, was backed up against the shop window. surrounded by vicious, slavering teen-girl delinquents.

“Throw down your bag and fight! Whaddarya? Chicken! Fight! Bitch!”

Clutching her bag, trying to look unfazed, Judith held her ground despite her trembling legs. She dared not move, waiting for the pack to attack and rip her hair out. Fortunately, sticks and stones didn’t break her bones but the words left permanent bruises. Eventually the bus arrived and Judith scrambled on, sitting at the front near the driver to avoid the scowling mob who’d sauntered to their usual back seat. With snarled threats and insults, one by one teen girls alighted at their respective stops. Judith’s was last and she was home free.

The threat passed and within a few weeks the pack, the curiously attractive rough girls, had another victim lined up in their sights. Anne hadn’t done anything, but she’d unconsciously entered no man's land merely by being in that school corridor at that age – twelve, thirteen - and somehow being noticed. Parting her hair ‘wrong’, wearing her school uniform wrong, being quiet, being loud, being dumb, being clever, looking at something? “Whatcha lookin at?” Who knew? Getting above herself, not quite understanding the vagaries of pubescent etiquette, Anne, too, needed to be knocked down. Judith, subdued, had watched from a safe distance across B Block locker bay as a mob formed, hoping for an impromptu bash-up before third period. Judith didn’t step in to help her primary school friend, Anne, whose blonde hair framed a face drained of colour while Sharon stood over her, berating her, wanting to fight. Judith was simply relieved it wasn’t her.

So here I sit, 54 years on, wondering why I’m attending the 50-year reunion of that high school where I formed those hellish memories.

Sugar, by Carly Nugent

I’ve just read Carly Nugent’s Young Adult novel, Sugar. Its protagonist, Persephone, aged sixteen, is initially bleak, confused, desperate, isolated and flat-lining with grief. A boy at her school has called her a cunt, she’s punched him in retaliation and they’re both suspended. She wants to understand why she deserved this appalling label from someone she barely knew and determines to find out. She also discovers a dead woman on a bush track and feels a connection with her. Persephone wants to understand what thirty-year-old Sylvia had done to deserve her death, believing this will somehow explain her own feelings of guilt. 

Persephone is the only child of Demi, also struggling with grief since the death of her husband, Persephone’s father in a car crash, twelve months earlier. Persephone had collapsed at his funeral and was subsequently diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. In her grief, Persephone conflates both events. She feels responsible for her father’s death which she irrationally believes she caused. Diabetes is her punishment.

Demi and Persephone are temporarily providing refuge to Iris, a nurse and her son, Steven, both sheltering from a violently abusive man. Nugent sensitively examines the dangerous attraction of such 'love'. 

Through these and other characters, Nugent deftly explores grief, teenage angst, domestic violence and relationships...

And did I forget to mention WHAT IT'S LIKE TO LIVE WITH TYPE 1 DIABETES? This was the thing for me. Diabetes is as much a presence in this narrative as any other character. Author Carly Nugent, herself living with Type 1, nails what it is to live with this dark passenger, with whom I've travelled now now for more than forty years. If you've ever 'sympathised' with someone's diabetes - 'oh, you poor thing it must be awful!' - or casually dropped some remark like 'my friend's dog died of diabetes' or suggested that a person with diabetes should eat lemons or cinnamon because it cures diabetes or... I could go on with a whole conference full of crap that I've endured over the years, you should read this book. Let Persephone enlighten you.

Not only is Persephone dealing with one of the hardest things for anyone to suffer, the loss of her father and all the other issues that beset any sixteen-year-old, she also has Type 1 diabetes as a constant companion. Diabetes, the needy child who never grows up and moves out, constantly ready to potentially kill you if you don't keep your balance on the tight rope, a metaphor which Nugent uses in Sugar.

I've often been grateful that I wasn't diagnosed until I was twenty-five. I had my own demons during my adolescence and diabetes would have been the perfect weapon against my family or myself. Type 1 diabetes is best held in check by obsessive routine. Even so it's a constant challenge. Nugent seems to encapsulate all of this in Sugar, where each chapter begins with a blood glucose value. For me, this added another layer of tension, knowing what I know. I was desperate to advise Persephone and save her, so real was she. 

I was totally immersed in Persephone's world. The characters were credible, the story beautifully written, including a great exploration of the power of the 'c' word. I could see the bush tracks along which she 'escaped' with her dog, Hermes. I've read books and seen films about Type 1 diabetes, but this is the first I've read that really connects with my own experience of living with this particular chronic illness.  

Warm regards, Carly Nugent. If I could have found you on social media I would have dropped you a line.

Correction: the dog's called Berenice, not Hermes 😊

Still putting the P in procrastination

 I sit at my desk ostensibly to do this week’s German homework; meine Hausaufgaben – my home tasks. Focusing on homework, when I eventually start, is mindful and has led to me swanning confidently around Berlin, interacting quasi-fluently with the locals.

I sit at my desk to work and I’m instantly distracted. Through the window my garden courtyard in the sun winks; beckons. But if I go out there I won’t get even halfway through my coffee before I’ll be disturbed by needy weeds and a lawn begging to be mown. At least pulling weeds I’ll be absorbed for the ninety minutes or so before my back requires rest and ibuprofen.

Sit at my desk, side-tracked by Blu-tacked notes and cards.

In front of me, a photo -card hangs on a lanyard. Al W. Athlete. Basketball. Australia. World Masters Games. 2017. My Al W. husband; beautiful human. Lifetimes ago. Tears.

Another card: RAIN. An acronym.

Recognise what is happening. I’m ruminating on Al; what’s befallen him. For no reason other than it was written in this chapter of the book of his life.

Allow the experience. Crying. I cry. I allow myself a few seconds of tears.

Investigate with interest and care. Life sucks. Parkinsons Disease. Lewy Body Dementia. Why wouldn’t I cry? I’m crying for both of us. Al doesn’t. He shrugs. Why him? Why not him? He said that when he got prostate cancer too. Not long after those Masters Games.

Nurture with self-compassion and care. Yeah, yeah. Poor me. It’s okay to cry, but crying doesn’t really work for me. Doesn’t provide any catharsis. I’ve stopped now anyway. I’m regularly astounded by my adeptness at putting one foot in front of the other. And weeding.

Another card: how do you eat an elephant? Bit by bit. This prevents overwhelm in my German language learning.

Another: perfectionism is the mother of procrastination – as is looking up quotations about perfectionism. Rather than writing that novel, memoir or even blog post. Too true.

Up high another card reads: Das ist mir Scheißegal. Quite a coarse German expression which I quite like. Google translates as ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ I think it sounds better in German.

Nietsche is there on another card:  …ce qui ne me tue pas me fortifie. That’s French for what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

Now about that homework.

 

 

 

Addicted to quitting

Sometime early in the millennium, I quit drinking alcohol - chardonnay - for a few months, just to see if I could. I counted the days. After several self-congratulatory alcohol-free months, I cautiously reintroduced it. Al and I were on our first trip away without the kids, who were then about 19 and 20. The Kangaroo Island wines were irresistible. What was the harm in two glasses? Clearly, I could control it, having gone so long without.

Two weeks later, I was back to daily work stress and self-soothing every evening with most of a bottle of chardonnay, carefully leaving at least one glass in the bottle. Why shouldn’t I drink?  I worked hard. I also commuter-cycled about 14 kay a day and despite years of living with Type 1 diabetes, I was fitter than most people my age. I didn’t have a drinking problem.

By retirement, I’d reduced my normal drinking to about two glasses of chardonnay a night. I relished that punctuation mark in my days. We’d had a rough couple of years since I’d finished working and wine, I thought, helped. Except when I was wide-awake every night after only 90 minutes sleep, berating myself for having stupidly drunk wine again, despite the absolute knowledge that it was ruining any chance I had of sleeping.

I quit drinking again in 2019. Seven months this time. I wasn’t euphorically alcohol-free – I was dealing with too much grief - but I felt in control. I cautiously reintroduced white wine one hot afternoon sitting in a piazza in Cordoba, Spain. Honestly, I was a bit bored. Wine felt right. I knew it would interfere with my sleep. So what? For various reasons I wasn’t sleeping much anyway. I might as well enjoy wine in Spain. Right?

Back home, into routine. One or two glasses of wine a day isn’t a problem, is it? Plus, I had a couple of alcohol-free days each week when I went out to evening choir rehearsals. Except for the nights I’d get home around half-nine and quickly down a couple of chardies ‘to help me settle’. Settling meant three hours sleep on a good night, then, fuck, wide awake, and cursing myself as I journalled that I’d stupidly done it again.

How did I become this addict? Why do I have this problem with alcohol? Why have I battled to control this habit? Could it be that the problem is the alcohol?

Alcohol hardly featured in the English part of my childhood – 1956 until 1964 - before we emigrated to Australia. ‘Adverts’ from the time, proclaimed that ‘Guinness is good for you’. In one memory, my mother, in her late twenties, is sideways on her car seat, legs out of the open passenger door, smiling, face raised to the sun, as she savoured her drink. ‘Ooh, shall we stop, Fred?’  she’d said. It had been a tease, a game that my older sister and I were invited to enjoy. Kindly, Dad – how lovely he seemed - parked the Wolseley at the country pub, disappeared inside then returned with a tray. Lemonade for my sister and I, and crisps, with a twist of salt in a blue wrapper and shandy for mum. He’d have a ‘half of lager’. I don’t remember hearing the word ‘beer’.

At home, as far as I was aware, tea was the drink of choice. Almost from infancy we drank tea with milk and sugar. If it was too hot, we poured some into our saucers, which was later discouraged for being a bit ‘common’. Lemonade and Tizer – bottles of ‘pop’ - were special treats. Another bubbly thrill that I associate with our maternal grandmother was Dandelion and Burdock; ‘sassparilla’ she said in her Yorkshire accent. We drank fizzy Lucozade if we’d been ‘poorly’ and needed pepping up with a bit of glucose.

Once after a family dinner outing, my mother, wearing her fur coat, fainted in the doorway of a Chinese restaurant. I’d gone outside with her while my sister, Ruth, remained inside while dad paid. Mum had been feeling unwell. I stood solemnly next to her. ‘She’s probably drunk,’ I heard from a couple of passers-by. ‘She’s not, she’s my mummy and she’s fainted,’ I declared, standing guard. So I knew that ‘drunk’ was bad.

My parents didn’t become drinkers and smokers until after they’d begun their Australian lives. Their late-1960s/early 70s social life involved beer, wine and Craven Special Mild cigarettes, mum’s dispensed fashionably from a black Glomesh case. Ruth and I practised our teenage smoking by filching mum’s cigarettes. Couldn’t pinch dad’s. He’d know and his reprimands, depending on the mood he was in, could be ferocious.

My parents drank beer – there’d usually be a couple of long-necks in the fridge – and wine. Wine came in glass flagons and was dispensed into a carafe. Sophistication. That was before the wine bottling parties of the early 70s. My parents and a few friends, all with kids our age, pooled their funds and bought plastic vats of claret and chablis. Dad had a device to cork the bottles. Empty bottles were washed and sterilised in the oven. My sister and I, with dad's encouragement, happily drank an inch or two from the tops of the accidentally overfilled bottles so the corks could fit. Fabulous fun; joy and conviviality. Mum was entertaining and flirtatious – usually not with my dad, who was cheerfully engaged in the practical tasks of wine bottling. At evening’s end, the wine was divvied up and the adults, fully tanked, drove their families home.

This was us being happy. My parents, ‘respectable’ good, church-going people, had our best interests at heart. I never saw them ‘rolling drunk’ or passed out. Dad occasionally admitted to having had too much to drink on a night out and had once confessed to parking the car until he’d recovered a bit so he could drive home. This was acknowledged as a bad thing; one shouldn’t get this drunk. Drinking to such a point was scorned. If mum was ever sick, it was because she had a migraine. As teenagers, we never doubted this.

I began drinking at 14. I learned early that I hated ‘the spins’ and even worse, vomiting, after too much. An excruciatingly nauseous experience with beer put me off it for life. My drinks of choice: apple cider, sweet Spritzig and Mateus rosé, Moselle, Bacardi and coke, whiskey and dry ginger, Advocaat and Lemonade and when I wanted to look cool, portagaff - stout and lemonade. With alcohol, I could socialize, joke, slide down stairs, sing and dance like an exhibitionist. My parents knew my sister and I drank illegally at licensed premises but accepted it. We were still up early for church on Sundays, where I sat in the front pew in my surplice and veil with my fellow choristers. I was developing nicely into a normal drinker.  

During my lifetime, I’ve pitied people who don’t drink, wondering what sort of twee fun they could possibly be having. I’ve generally had hilarious times drinking with others or relaxing solo-drinking chillouts in front of the television. I've sneaked cask-wine into dry church socials and a bottle of whiskey into a dry end-of-year school ball. Without alcohol, I considered these events to be unendurable, and perhaps they were. I’ve also combined my passion for wine with cycling kilometers around wine regions in Victoria, France and Germany. Healthy, normal living. And normal sleeping, well, for a couple of hours before the inevitable waking and self-admonition until dawn. Occasionally I’d stick a couple of fingers down my throat so I could vomit and stop the nausea. But this was only at special events, once or twice a year. Or so I tell myself. Otherwise i drank a steady, measured stream of chardonnay, which I started drinking in 1981 for ‘medicinal’ reasons: it had less sugar and I had-newly diagnosed diabetes mellitus, as they called it then, that is Type 1.

I’ve quit on and off over the last 52 years, like many habitual drinkers, to periodically prove to myself that I wasn’t an alcoholic, with all its gutter connotations. I didn’t touch a drop during two pregnancies but shamefully admit that my children were introduced to alcohol with their breast milk. What hope did they have? I protected them from all manner of harm, swaddling them in sensible swimwear and smearing them with 50 plus sunscreen. Yet we raised them in a happy, functioning alcohol-filled family.

Like so many, I succumbed to the lie, in advertising and my environment, that alcohol is essential to every occasion worth enjoying. I’ve never, until recently, considered that it’s a highly addictive carcinogenic drug that has altered my brain chemistry. When I was young, I didn’t want my parents to know I smoked tobacco and didn’t smoke in front of them – both smokers at that stage – until I was 19. I quit smoking completely at 23 and was roundly congratulated. No one ever encouraged me to just have one, because it wouldn’t harm me.

Just over a month ago, I quit my wine habit for good, largely inspired by my son, now in his mid-30s who quit alcohol completely six months ago. I’m resolved never to drink again having battled with my addiction for too long. For support, I've immersed myself in a whole new world of 'quit lit' and sober social media, something I've never tried before. 

Now I just need to quit banging on about it.

 

 

 

Beware: Mansplainer behind

I’d just cruised uphill on my e-bike*, a fold-up two-wheeler I’d been struggling to take seriously, what with its little wheels, sit-up-and-beg handlebars and toddlers’ pedalling radius. Truth is, the only thing to recommend it is the motor. Otherwise, it’s a toy, hugely outranked by every other road or hybrid bike I’ve ever ridden. I'd considered selling it. But on this day, I’d found a new love for my plaything.

It was my second attempt that morning to get across Melbourne to a ten-thirty meeting. I’d aborted the first after a three-kilometre ride up and down a valley and along a bike path when I realised my phone was still at home on the charger. Had I been riding my push-bike, returning to retrieve my phone would have been a sweaty struggle. I’d have cancelled my day out.

Yet there I was, breathing easily at the top of the hill, pleased with my little bicycle’s power.

Signalling to move right, I glimpsed another cyclist a couple of metres behind me. ‘You’re okay,’ he called, waving me ahead. As I waited for traffic at the intersection, he pulled up on my left. He smiled and nodded, as if we were companions on a Sunday jaunt.

I sensed him beside me as I surged across the road - you can do that on an e-bike. Fun. Then we were neck and neck, with him riding out in the middle of the quiet street. I couldn’t seem to shake him off, so I stopped trying. He seemed harmless.

A shortish man, riding a toy like mine, he had shaggy grey hair fraying out below his helmet.

‘You want to be careful riding that.’ Friendly, but unsolicited counsel. ‘Stay out of the traffic,’ he added.

My e-bike is shiny and still has plastic film over its trip computer, suggesting perhaps an old ‘dear’ taking her first cautious solo ride. Mansplainer bait.

It seemed my accidental chum was up for a chat so I resigned myself to it. Experience has taught me that perceived impoliteness can incur a rebuke. I shared my reservations about my new toy; told him I’d already considered selling it.

‘Don’t throw it on the scrapheap yet,’ he advised. ‘You just need to get used to the smaller wheels.’

Me, thinking: I’ve got the hang of it, mate. After more than 200 kilometres riding it, I’d had quite enough of its inadequate manual gears and had even swapped its original wide-arse saddle for something more comfortable.

‘I haven’t got a car any more,’ he said. ‘I’ve just got this’. His bike was vaguely similar to mine. ‘My doctor told me I need to get more exercise.’ He chuckled, knowing he was just throttling along at 6 kph, not even pedalling. He trailed one foot, like those ubiquitous delivery riders.

‘You should only ride on the trails,’ he advised. ‘You know, the bike paths? Moonee Ponds Creek trail? And there’s one along the Upfield train line.’ He was scanning a map in his brain and sharing it with me.

‘Actually, I’m a seasoned cyclist,’ I said. ‘Long time bike commuter? You know, for years I used to ride to and from work? I’ve cycled around Melbourne for ages.’ Just making it clear.

‘There’s the Capital City Trail. You can mostly stay off the roads. Drivers are dangerous.’ Apparently, I can’t be too careful.

‘Yes, I’ve been riding my whole life.’ I popped this into a brief gap in his monologue.

‘You can’t trust drivers,’ he warned.

‘I know. I’ve been abused and had empty cans thrown at me.’ Interesting? Evidently not. Suppose he could have been deaf.

‘Just stick to the parks and cycle paths and you’ll be right.’

‘I’ve cycled through Vietnam. A hundred kay on one day, and all over France and Germany,’ I piped in.

‘Take it easy and you’ll soon get the hang of it.’ He was leaning over his handlebars, his left toe skimming the ground. ‘Just start with shorter rides.’

We’d come to a roundabout. ‘Well, I’m off to Tai Chi,’ he announced.

‘I’m off to Fitzroy Gardens.’ We were about 9 kilometres away in West Brunswick.

‘Ooh, that’s a long trip,’ he noted, concern in his voice.

‘Yes, it is,’ I said, accelerating at last, incredibly glad to have that little motor to make good my escape. ‘Byeee!’

* After heaps of research I bought a Leitner Libelle. Including delivery and assembly at a bike shop it cost just under $1500. Note: it isn't as easy to fold and lift as it appears in the video on the website. Who knew?

Get Back. Thanks for the memories.

 

‘I'm surprised they ever recorded any music,’ said my husband, Al, watching Get Back, Peter Jackson's startlingly evocative film of The Beatles' 1969 final sessions. (Streaming on Disney+) Admittedly, at times I too was wondering why they didn’t just get on with it. But they didn’t create like that.

I watched through intermittent washes of tears prompted by floods of memory and emotion. Experiencing Get Back was like finding some part of my own childhood and adolescence that I didn't know had been filmed.

The Beatles mostly comprised the soundtrack to my formative years. In the playground in Sheffield, England, my playmates and I pledged our undying love for either John, Paul, George or Ringo, a different Beatle depending on the day. This group stirred passions we couldn’t understand. My sister and I would wait expectantly to dance to The Beatles on Top of The Pops on the tiny black and white TV in the corner.

My adulation migrated with me to Melbourne, along with 'insider knowledge' that I imagined gave me some sort of referent power, clout as I navigated the alien dynamics of the Australian playground. You see, my uncle Bob had once been a bouncer at a Beatles' concert in Hull in England’s north in the early sixties, something I'd share when we children started comparing notes on pop stars. And who was Col Joye anyway? Some Australian girls were going on about him. For me it was the Beatles and Mick Jagger. I was eight.

I've never bought a Beatles' LP record. Too expensive. The records in our home were more Frank Sinatra or Dave Brubeck Quartet back then. No Beatles’ albums, but dad did buy She Loves You on a 45-rpm single, which we played repeatedly on the radiogram.

I’d learned all the words to Yesterday from the radio.  It was my first solo singing performance. Our grade 4 teacher, Mr Evans, the charming sadist, ordered his charges to either sing a song or get 'the cuts'.  (Imagine that today!) He'd line us all up at the front of the room and give us the choice. A single cut of the strap on your open palm or sing. No brainer. Other children’s post-strap grimaces suggested Mr Evans wasn't holding back. Me? I enjoyed singing and an audience and, do you know you can keep singing Yesterday for a very long time if you order your verses just so? I think Mr Evans had to threaten to strap me to make me sit down. Wonder if there's any connection between my solo rendition and subsequent bullying.

During the next four years, I evolved with Beatles' music, my hormones pulsing to the rhythm. The Beatles were simply there, usually on the radio. Mum called me inside from my play one Saturday morning in 1966 to listen to the satellite broadcast of All You Need is Love. ‘They’re making history,’ she told me in a wobbly voice, probably missing her home in England.

Aged thirteen, I attended a party for all the instrumental music students at my school. Old Mrs Florimel, my violin teacher, generously held the party in her gloriously shabby two-storey house – long since demolished - on a hill overlooking the Maribyrnong River. Someone had brought along the Abbey Road album which played continuously in the garden throughout the afternoon on a portable record player. Something, the George Harrison song, seemed to have floated down from heaven, the most sublime song I'd ever heard. Hormones? Perhaps, but it's still an extraordinary number.

1969. Sobbing in the schoolyard when we learned that The Beatles had broken up. It was the first time I’d allowed myself to feel grief. Remember how long life seemed and how grown up you felt at thirteen? How could this have happened?

All these memories fired as I watched Get Back. Jackson's three-part film is genius in its production values. The events seem to be happening in real time, all over again and yet we know they aren't. John, Paul, George and Ringo - and Yoko – don’t get me started! - are living in the minute. Obliviously carefree, apart from having to create an album and documentary from scratch in limited time. They smoke and drink through their days with no concept of what's written in the next few chapters of their lives. Ah, the overflowing ashtrays of youth in the sixties. Don't you wish you could still just smoke and drink with impunity?

My mind was in overdrive throughout the film. I didn't want it to end.

But this is the thing that bowled me over: the film allows us to witness the birth of songs that have become part of the canon. We see, for example, Paul playing the chord progressions of The Long and Winding Road before he's even thought up the words that we all know so well. This happens many times in the film. How is art created? You have nothing, you work at it and then you have something that didn't exist before you brought it into being. And The Beatles were well-practised, gifted artists.

Al, sitting next to me on the couch, was also a huge Beatles' fan. Watching the joking, chat, interruptions and delays as The Beatles worked on their songs, he became frustrated, wondering whether they'd ever accomplish anything. But I was transfixed, secure in the knowledge of the fabulous musical outcomes. My deep delight and satisfaction came from observing the creative process, despite the limpet-like presence of Yoko Ono. (It puzzles me, incidentally, that no one banged this apparently deeply insecure woman over the head with Maxwell's silver hammer. Too soon?)

Sure, I love lots of music, but The Beatles were my coming-of-age band.