Sunday, December 12, 2021

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.

 

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Pitfalls of a Covid relationship

Anyone else settled for a Covid relationship? I know how it happened in my case. I wasn’t out there, interacting, socialising, looking around.  So, after much painstaking online research I’d convinced myself that this was it. 

Initially the relationship almost met my needs. We seemed to work okay together. Admittedly, I was feeling a little cramped and constricted from the start. But better than being without, right?

 

I kept up the pretence and strode out in my new partnership, but at day’s end it hurt and I just wanted someone to rub my feet and tuck me into bed.

 

Then that day when it teemed with rain, we had a bust up. I was walking on eggshells trying not to get upset, literally struggling to just stay upright with my head held high. I’d had enough. What were they thinking with this match?

 

I called the company to complain.

 

“I didn’t expect this,” I said. “I should have been warned. I was promised something watertight that would see me through all kinds of weather, not trip me at the first hurdle. I didn’t pay all that money for a fair-weather relationship. I’ve been ripped off. I thought I was getting something else. Where were the signs warning me about this?”

 

Getting nowhere, I called an independent counsellor for advice.

 

“Just work through it,” she said. “Put it in writing. Be very firm. Demand your money back. Or threaten to go public. They don’t like a bad Google review. It should work out but here’s a case number if you need to get back to us. Believe me, I hear you. Things like this happen all the time.”

 

Well, I tried all that without success. However, the weather had fined up, so, as you do, I thought I’d give it another go. Perhaps time would rub off some of the friction; soften the edges. Things would get more comfortable between us. It didn’t really help, but we continued to stumble around together, hoping for a better outcome.

 

Then suddenly, like dawn on a new day, lockdown ended and I could go out again. Everything appeared brighter on the horizon. I even developed a spring in my step, despite the tightness I’d been enduring for so long. Like a veil had been lifted, I saw that what I’d been subjecting myself to was just crazy. It was over. Done. Mark it down to a Covid relationship, one that you put up with during a pandemic but one that could not endure under new-normal circumstances.

 

Consider it a lesson learned. Reframe it. See it as a gift. I’d lost nothing except a little money. and what else was I spending it on anyway?

 

The relationship simply wasn’t a good fit. I ended it.

 

Those overpriced, allegedly waterproof walking shoes, that ridiculously turned into skates in wet weather, have gone to the op shop.


(I may have bought dud shoes that weren't fit for purpose but I won't out the company here. After I did my due diligence - contacted ACCC and followed their advice - the company refunded 30 percent of the purchase price of the shoes. And hopefully, whoever buys the shoes from Savers won't break their neck if they wear them in wet weather.)

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Checkout Security Alert

Not much to do in this apparently unending lockdown, is there? But there's always the shopping. Anyone else relishing the variety afforded by a trip to the supermarket? 
Was checking myself out at my local Coles, when a tall young man, wide-eyed, with curls escaping under his cap, stood outside the checkout area in my line of vision, awaiting my acknowledgment. He patiently watched unitl he knew I'd sensed him in my periperal vision. I looked up to meet his enquiring gaze, wondering. Ex-student? One of my kids' friends? Hard to tell in our masks. He reminded me of a neighbourhood boy who'd now be about the same age. 
'I notice colours,' he told me. 
'Okay,' I responded, bit quizzically, continuing with my scanning and packing. 
'I noticed your colourful jacket!' A proclamation. 
'I'll take that as a compliment,' I said, scanning a block of cheese. My big raincoat was indeed colourful with its swirling pastels. 
'Please do,' he said, nodding politely before walking away. 
Some minutes later, he returned to where I was finishing my packing. 
'Goodbye,' he said earnestly, another nod as he left. 
'Bye,' I called after him, smiling under my mask. 
It was curious and diverting, but no problem. Not according to the shop assistant supervising the self-checkout. Apparently, with just a few baskets to clear and registers to routinely sterilise, she had time to be extra-mindful of customer safety. She power-walked over to me. 
'Don't go until he leaves the store,' she ordered, eyes alert watching his back. I glanced over. He seemed to be exiting in an unremarkable fashion. 'You can't be too careful,' she added. 
'Sorry? Does he have a reputation? Should I be alarmed?' He'd seemed harmless, if not delightful.
'No, but you never know.' 
'Don't worry, I'm tough,' I said. 'I used to be a secondary teacher. I can handle it.' I raised an arm as if to show my muscled bicep, hidden beneath my coat sleeve. Don't think my sense of humour made it out from under my mask.
'Just go straight to your car,' she advised, still checking the entrance. 
A middle-aged customer bustled over with her shopping bags to share her thoughts. 'Remember that man who murdered a woman in Brunswick?' Her eyes were wary under raised eyebrows. 'He used to shop here. Every week he'd come here to buy his Benson & Hedges Red.' 
'Did you tell the police?' I asked. 'It could have been a vital clue.' I was gathering my bags to leave. 
Both women eyed me icily before shifting position to close me out of their gossip. 
I left without calamity and haven't since spotted the man who noticed colours and brightened my day.