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Sicily: Baroque but Physiologically Perilous

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Ape taxis are distinctive fun. They’re a scooter with a tray and cabin. In Italian, Ape means bee and not primate and is pronounced AH-peh. A nod to their industriousness, it’s a companion vehicle to the Vespa which indicates wasp. Designed and manufactured after the second world war, they helped Italy rebuild and are suited to the narrow, twisting lanes of the cities. How cool is this? The mere sight of one wobbling past is instantly cheering.

*

    Pedestrian streets return cities to their citizens. In Palermo and Catania, they’ve wrestled control back from vehicles. This is best seen at Palermo’s Quattro Canti. A Baroque square, it hosts buskers, weddings, gawping tourists, and probably thieves. Strolling down cobblestoned Via Vittorio Emanuele towards the harbour we pass The Navy, a darkly tempting bar.

      Cobblestones — those evocative European symbols — are delightful to contemplate and photograph. However, they are horrifically medieval upon which to walk any distance. They’re romantic but physiologically perilous.

      *

      The highlight of our Sicilian trip was Saturday. Venturing into the Mercato Ballarò, a famed food market, the noise is physical. Shouting and selling, music and meat sizzling on open grills — imagine tending these in a Mediterranean summer! The slender laneways heave with traffic and sensory assaults. Claire and I squeeze through together, gawking at the stalls groaning with non-refrigerated octopi and giant tuna and arancini. Orange juice — squeezed as you stood there — cost less than the 4 euro we were almost slugged in Catania for a tiny cup.

      *

      Unbeknownst until too late, right next door was the Tatum Art Jazz Club & Ristorante. Opening on weekend evenings, we could’ve swung by for a Talented Mr. Ripley hour — minus the messy murder. Instead, 9pm on Saturday was Eurovision o’clock on the TV. Cue: much wailing and moaning and overwrought vocals plus cartoonish imagery and bombastic music. It was largely irony-free. Representing the Antipodes was our the Australian popster, Delta Goodrem. But what fun to see it as it happened — on the continent itself.

      *

        With abundant love, Claire always secures atmospheric accommodation. In the Historical Centre of Palermo, we had a seventh-floor balcony from which we looked out at the Church of San Giuseppe dei Padri Teatini and its yellow and green dome. Our rooftop colleagues were wheeling and squawking gulls.

        Giggling, Claire said, ‘They’re laughing at some very funny jokes.’  I think they were. What joy to sit on that narrow ledge with a Birra Moretti and a limoncello and plates of pasta with pistachio pesto (PPP in certain elite circles).

        *

        The Sicilian capital is now among my favourites. Its insistent energy, compelling history, and painterly cityscape demand this. However, it’s also home to what we named the Sad Fountains of Palermo.  Near us is one called the Fontana Pretoria or Fountain of Shame — think marble nudes on a ghostly building site — but the grimmest example is in the otherwise delightful Piazza Marina. This fountain was, I think, a dribbling garden hose and a horse — lame, bemused, and in a dying bush.

        *

        Often, passing in a train or on foot we’d spy aged men leaning forward on a balcony. They’d be peering out wistfully if not glumly, neither smiling nor frowning. The lines between private and public lives are blurred here. Are they seeking company or fleeing it?

        *

        Sicilian parks are grass-less but loved. This is the opposite of some London parks which are beautiful if entirely ornamental in that gruff signs forbid any human use. In transit to the Cattedrale di Palermo we bisected the Villa Bonanno. It’s unkempt with weeds, parched dirt, and irregular litter. However, it’s well-patronized and bustling with people sauntering, talking with spectacular animation, and eating gelato. Often, all three at once.

        *

        Scampering through a golden twilight square on Sunday evening, we found a crowd bunching outside a bar. One loose circle chattered and drank with fearsome energy. And around what were they gathered? Yes, that’s right! A couple of green wheelie bins! Some were resting their beers on the plastic lids while they yelled joyfully at each other. This is why I love Sicily.  

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          Three Candles in Santorini

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          The Holy Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist is in Fira on Santorini. It’s a still, bewitching hour on a Thursday. Our final night on this striking island before we fly to Sicily. We’ve stolen up and across along the bumpy, twisting alleys from our apartment to this church. Sunset imminent.

          It’s been decades since I regularly visited St Roses in Kapunda. We’re not going to mass. Claire leads me in. We’re just going to quietly sit and think.

          Claire gathers and lights three candles. They glow with warmth and with faith. A candle for her dad, one for her mum, one for her sister Fran. They offer much beyond light.

          Despite my Catholic childhood, at first I feel like an intruder. Church was only for set times, otherwise the door’s shut. Claire leans over and whispers, ‘In Turkey I was told that Muslims have no ceremony or mass when in a mosque. They simply pray.’ In the darkening pews, I nod. She continues. ‘There’s no assistance from a priest or religious person. It’s a singular, private time.’ Claire’s always teaching me things like this.

          Is that what we’re doing now? Using this church for reflection, for gratitude, for remembrance. If churches can be for spirituality and not formal religion, then I think so. I’ve not sat in a church like this before, and it’s peaceful. I wonder if I could cultivate a new, informal relationship with the Catholic church. This might be the gift Greece gives me.

          We stroll around to the Three Bells of Fira. We peer down on the Mediterranean, way below on the bluish, deepening Caldera. The cloudy skies mean there’s few people here on what feels like the brink of the world. On clear summer evenings in a month or two, it’ll be heaving like a music festival. Again, we speak little. There is no need.

          Up and down laneways on the cliffside, we then arrive at Volkan on the Rocks. The resort has an open-air theatre, and the audience is at their tables with headphones on. Six nights a week it screens the Abba-inspired film Mamma Mia. We look down at them. In this location that’s neither day nor night, but both land and sea, it could be diverting. We walk on.

          A moored cruise ship hovers below, a colossal modern wonder, all steel and sleek lines. From it dance music erupts up and into the Greek heavens. We imagine those on the decks, clutching drinks, milling about. Then, a smaller wooden vessel, a ketch, glides into view, pop melodies also bellowing up from the silent sea. It slides beneath us to the cliff and disappears into the velvety night.

          Dusk approaches. In amongst the endless, squealing wheels of travel, the stillness of our church visit now feels as an instructive lingering, a wonder of rapt silence.

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          Etna parkrun: Laps on the Lava (No Fire in the Sky)

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          The mountain dwarfs Catania, a city of a million. Snow-capped and pyramidal, Etna looms moodily, shifting endlessly from shrouded and mysterious to clear and triumphant. We’re winding our way to it.

          On the Uber ride up from our apartment, the driver, Mr Orazio, turns up Spotify. His car is a suitably Sicilian shade of black. He loves Queen, Pet Shop Boys, and Sowing the Seeds of Love by Tears for Fears — a glorious 1980s song I’d forgotten, all late-Beatles melody and borrowing the trumpet line from Penny Lane.

          Decanted near a forest by Mr Orazio, we’re rescued by a pair of parkrun locals.

          The pre-run briefing is punctuated by one-liners from local senior men. A dog is introduced and becomes comic material too. Most laugh. I do, too, although the jokes are in rousing, excitable Italian which is beyond me. I suspect this is true for many as we’re from Dublin, Poland, and Lincolnshire. Oh, and Austria — Australia.

          The ceremony concludes with the Run Director holding up his phone and pushing play on a robotic but impeccably Oxford English translation: ‘You are warned to take care. The path can be dangerous.’ With ample reason, as we were about to discover.

          Four laps on Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano. The course twists through pine forest over black volcanic soil and scattered lava rocks, with tree roots and rough terrain. Camp firepits dot the forest floor. Broken glass prickles around these. Watch out!

          The Ionian Sea, cobalt and shimmering, lies quiet and to the east. Below, Catania is still awakening on its smoggy coastal plain. It’s too early, I imagine, for our neighbourhood cats to have begun meowing to each other in their feline chorus.

          Nearby, roaring engines from the Italian South Mountain Speed Championship provide an appropriately seismic soundtrack. Whilst the throaty crackle of automotive speed surrounds us, nobody here seems overly concerned with swiftness.

          Claire decides to walk a lap. Generously, she takes photos and videos. We intersect twice and each time she chirps marital encouragement through the trees like, ‘Ole, ole!’ and ‘Go, you!’

          There is welcome shade although this provides me with limited athletic assistance. I stumble my way along the forest trail, twisting and climbing before descending into a grassy field. The motorsport enthusiasts have helpfully backed their trailers onto our already narrow path. Meanwhile, Fiat fug smothers the course.

          Crossing the finish line for the fourth and final time, volunteers wave and applaud with affectionate energy. I stagger to my water bottle. I’m cooked. At least, Etna hasn’t erupted, hurling lava onto my now simmering head. One of the English runners has taken a tumble and her knee and palm are reddened.

          Afterwards, cake and biscuits are shared, and stories are traded beneath the pines. We record our names in an exercise book — relevantly enough — and leave comments in another notebook like we’ve been to a holiday house and had a grand weekend of laughter and communal meals and carafes of wine. In a way, it is. Scribbling a few kind words, I feel appreciative.

          I finally meet core volunteer Mimmo with whom I’ve exchanged messages. He hugs me warmly. Twice.

          Claire and I stroll down the mountain to the unclouded village of Nicolosi for coffee and pistachio cannoli.

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          Brettos, Plaka, Athens

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          Slipping in off the cobblestones, Claire and I are in Brettos. It’s the Plaka bar that’s nearly as ancient as the Acropolis.

          Two walls are lined with vividly coloured bottles, backlit into a festive and wistful glow. At the rear, a bold wooden bar anchors the room; the place is theatrically staged yet quietly welcoming while the city outside thickens into evening.

          It’s Saturday night in Athens. Brettos is the size of a modest lounge room and is intimate in ways that most Australian boozers fail: too much space and harsh light.

          Michael Brettos opened it in 1909 as a distillery — now relocated. Tastings remain: olive oil, ouzo, wine. However, it’s rare that I have a swig of olive oil when in a pub. There’s excellent table service and the staff leave your receipt coiled in a shot glass.

          We claim twin stools by a kaleidoscopic wall. This affords us slight elevation and vision over the crowd, so we people watch. All are well behaved and happy to be here — devoted to a good evening and each other. Being here makes us grin. Nearby a couple of Scandinavian girls break into Greek spirits-inspired song. It’s a joyous moment although they’re no Abba nor Nana Mouskouri. The Greek capital’s a long way from Stockholm.

          There’s an agreeable sonic bed of chat and laughter which is neither too loud as to make our conversation difficult nor too quiet so there’s constant and involuntary eavesdropping. Vintage pop music plays in English — at just the right volume. It, too, is archaeological. We hear ‘I Try’ by Macy Gray from her album On How Life Is and it underscores the effortless coolness of this place. Not having heard this bluesy soul in decades, I vow to play it later. I do.

          After a day of traipsing about, my local beer tastes like exotica. Claire’s cocktail’s comforting. It’s a snug coda to our time in Athens. The airport bus leaves Syntagma Square early tomorrow.

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          A Run on Tianzhu East Road

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          I see no one else on Tianzhu East Road, running in a Glenelg Tigers jumper.

          It’s a wide and attractive thoroughfare, lined with parallel sweeps of evergreen trees. On the city side are colossal buildings, dedicated to aviation and aeronautics. To my east is the Beijing Capital International Airport.

          It feels later than it is. Probably as I’ve flown from Adelaide to Melbourne to Beijing. At 3am the cabin lights came up ahead of a compulsory chicken or pork breakfast. Once customs, visa, and quarantine were complete, I had to catch a train from the terminal to a distant hub to retrieve my luggage from the carousel. This is a serious place.

          Flying from Adelaide to Beijing to then get to the Mediterranean (Athens, Milos, Santorini, and Sicily) might seem desperately circuitous. That’s because it is. An unexpected bonus was that we’d visit China. The Great Wall beckons on our homeward leg. That’s the ancient fortification not the affordable family vehicle.

          Between me and the airport lie enormous, empty blocks — menacing in their scale. I doubt they’ll remain vacant for long. I feel tiny here, as I imagine many of the 1.4 billion do. Nation is everything. The Cotswolds could be replicated on any of these blocks within a month, also leaving plenty of room for Clarkson’s cows and tractor.

          As we taxied to the gate I could see a brown smear of smog over Beijing, but pale blue now paints the sky. The breeze is stern and crisp and unpolluted. Come winter, when it blasts in from Ulaanbaatar, I reckon my Glenelg Tigers jumper, despite its triple premiership warmth, might be a little thin.

          My running streak nears 1,100 days, so I press on and suddenly a mountainous fence stops both vehicles and modestly exercising comrades. Some fences wink and invite you to sneak around or over and continue your business. This one does not. While I can see no glum-faced guards, I decide to return to my hotel. I leave the fence’s deeper symbolism uninterrogated.

          I’m accompanied by streams of modern cars, all SUV-sized and finished in black, white, or grey. The footpath beneath my Brooks shoes is smooth and clean and there’s a peculiar near silence. I’m unsure why I’m surprised. Often, on our vast planet, similarities are more striking than differences.

          My mind is sharply aware of others when travelling. Claire’s in Athens asleep by the Acropolis, my boys are moving through their Mondays in Adelaide, and many other dear ones are commencing their week, scattered about this bluish green sphere.

          I veer across the concrete prairie of the hotel car park, obedient buses awaiting duty.

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          On watching 2001: A Space Odyssey with my boys

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          Alex and I watched Kubrick’s magnum opus one Sunday afternoon when he was in year 9. The other night Max and I did too. Not only a film, it’s a cultural icon, and is representative of the rich, examined life I want them both to enjoy. Max asked great questions and found it puzzling and provocative.

          The next morning while he was asleep, I watched the DVD of extras with its series of documentaries and I found myself taking pages of notes — part observation, part response. What follows are a few of those reflections.

          *

          The famous jump cut features the spinning animal bone. The slow motion drags us all into the poetic arc and the bone is concurrently a tool, weapon, and art. It is replaced by the space station. In a single cut, the infinitesimal holds millions of years. We are forced to leap across a chasm of history. This invites contemplation on the aspirations and achievements of humanity. The presence of the monolith with its 1:4:9 ratio invites us to consider that an external intervention may be responsible for our evolution.

          When Dr. Floyd is travelling to the moon, he does so as a commuter who is often asleep. He never looks out the window as the view has become mundane to him. Ironically, Floyd’s lack of interest in his journey provokes awe in us: imagine being bored by the majesty of space! What a life it must be, to nap on your way to the moon. Or is Kubrick warning us not to be seduced by our own cleverness, and to retain our innocence and wonder? At various points, Max leant forward from his chair.

          While profoundly visual, the film also functions as an opera. Strauss’s Blue Danube was chosen as it conjures unsurpassed beauty, and Kubrick wanted us to also see space as joyful. This, and the other music, form the film’s architecture. It slows the action and makes us behold the exquisiteness of space travel and the machines in which we push out into the universe. It is a tranquil prayer, as all prayer should be.

          Kubrick also allowed silence to act as its own instrument. This is most telling when Bowman uses an explosion to re-enter Discovery One — there is no sound in space, so we hear nothing. We’re conditioned to expect a large accompaniment of noise but the lack of it heightens the drama. Silence enhances our response.

          The score is singular with often only one sound at a time unlike the dense and complex noise common in cinema. The dominant, disturbing breathing of the space-suited astronauts can be interpreted as rhythmical or even musical, and it draws us into the character while evoking empathy and fear. It’s tempting to see its influence in Darth Vader’s breathing — but here Bowman is prey, not predator. Max and I spoke of the legacy of 2001. He recognised its influence in Star Wars and Project Hail Mary. I told him he should next watch Interstellar.

          Taking advice from Carl Sagan, Kubrick decided to not show the aliens responsible for the monoliths — located on the African veld, lunar surface, and above Jupiter -— but only their unseen influence. He wanted to move away from the science-fiction of the 1950’s with its unconvincing humanoid aliens, preferring wisely to not ‘show the face of God’. Their appearance is not relevant, it is the impact they have, represented by the monoliths. This is like the first hour of Spielberg’s Jaws when we don’t see the full shark and this amplifies our terror. Even now when swimming in the shallows I know the worry is not what you can see but rather, what you can’t.

          The final scene with Dave Bowman in a neoclassical bedroom is inspired by the Dorchester Hotel located near Hyde Park in London. The notion being that the aliens would want him to feel comfortable as he undergoes the transformation to Star Child. He is now foetal, yet preternaturally alert and serene. Bowman is about to be born into a form beyond the physical in which he’ll exist as pure consciousness and light.

          *

          Like the film’s black monolith, I hope 2001: A Space Odyssey promotes a life of curiosity and contemplation for Alex and Max. I cherished the chance to invite them into this luminous world and wish that it might be a catalyst for a small, continuing evolution in both.

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          Gather Round – Aural Tattoos and Antique Hair

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          Noon and I am at Barossa Park after a voyage by foot, tram, train, and bus. My unicycle tyre is flat. As she’s today’s Auslan interpreter, Claire arrived separately, around breakfast, for a succession of production meetings. My journey’s highlight was, of course, the psycho-geographical pull of the Womma train station and its triumphant desolation.

          Lyndoch #2 hosts a gluttony of food trucks — or as they were known effectively for millennia, stalls. A stage awaits the post-match concert. The coffee van’s doing a brisker trade than Pirate Life. As the official beer of the Fringe and now Gather Round, these ale arrivistes are everywhere. Once compulsory at Adelaide events, Coopers is now vanquished. But not on my Friday veranda.

          It’s 9 degrees with an apparent temperature of 2.9. Gloomy clouds are menacing over Nuriootpa. When I was a kid, this was always the way. Last year Gather Round witnessed cricket weather. I’ve missed the footy’s start but large screens —are these Jumbotrons? — show the Fox telecast. On the wing, an opportunity for face-painting. I resist.

          Inside, the crowd throbs about the fence. The scaffolded stands have empty seats. Brisbane gets a goal although I can’t see who. I know neither the goal celebration song grab, nor the player for whom this is an aural tattoo.

          I circumnavigate the ground once known, with admirable topographical honesty, as Lyndoch Oval but now recast for the viniculturally vulnerable of the eastern seaboard as Barossa Park.

          On a grassy expanse called the Barossa Terrace, I note outdoor lounge settings along with bar tables and stools. Of this languid arrangement, I approve. Wine barrels punctuate the vista.

          There’re additional purveyors of sauerkraut and shiraz (not in the same glass). I’m pleased that the local footy and cricket clubs have fundraising booths providing tasty grub. But I wonder how much they had to pay the AFL for the right to do so on their own ancient soil.

          Beyond Kangaroo blue and white and Brisbane Lions jumpers and scarves, the bouncing throng is flecked with Freo colours and Carlton kit, Hawks beanies, and the clashing colours of the Crows and Power. Gather Round might be the truest meeting of all the tribes. A bloke on the concourse sports a retro tracksuit with Fitzroy Runner on the back. It could only be improved if he were in Ciak shoes and dragging on an Ardath.

          I’m tracking towards the south-eastern goals when an arm shoots out of the crowd and apprehends me. A voice then chirps, ‘How are you, fella?’ A circle of chaps, some of whom I’ve not seen in a decade. We’re all burdened by antique hair but otherwise are in acceptable nick, given weight for age (WFA) provisions.

          I talk to Jason about recently completing the New York marathon. I ask if he hit the wall.

          ‘Yeah, about thirty-five k in.’

          ‘You got through it?’

          ‘The worst bit is the finish. You go over a bridge, look up and there’s a sea of bobbing heads. It’s a really cruel hill.’

          I offer, ‘Nothing like making it easier at the end.’

          Meanwhile, as Stephen Colbert says (at least for a few more weeks), the footy continues. Swells of pop songs tell me Brisbane is surging. If I were a Lion and launched a successful bomb from twenty-five, could I use Frank Zappa’s Billy the Mountain? I imagine rookies have had Kevin Bloody Wilson rejected.

          I chat with Fish about the charms of country footy, especially when you’ve no investment in either team. Squally Saturdays, sitting in the car, wipers slapping, honking appreciation before a half-time canteen dash.

          Fish and his wife have taken in local footy on the Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas, the Clare Valley, the Riverland. He tells me, ‘We kept notes for a while on the various pies and sausage rolls and if they’d Southwark Stout in the bar.’ I say, ‘There’s a book in this.’ Fish nods.

          After the final siren, I glance up at a big screen on my way to Gate 2. Charlie Cameron’s being interviewed. On the other side of the host, my wife is interpreting. I pull out my phone to take a photo of nine-foot Claire. It’s flat.

          But I’ve got a shot of Womma. That might be enough.

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          Can It Already Be Five Years?

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          Triumphant and a little startled, we strolled into Kapunda Foodland. A supermarket, yes — but that day it felt like a secret cathedral, as though the ordinary had been quietly transformed just for us. We glided through the aisles, past magical shelves, freshly stocked and bold. It was a vivid intrusion in that old town: affirming light catching on the joyous earth, revealing colours and fragrances previously unknown. The trolley rolled easily before us, as if it, too, wished to blaze our celebrations.

          Our congregation assembled on the croquet lawn of Kapunda High School while we stood within an intimate orbit, newly bound and certain. On that Saturday afternoon, beneath a leaden sky and the wide, welcoming arms of the Moreton Bay Fig, we traded whisperings during the ceremony — small, private currents skipping through a most public moment. A joke passed between us, barely audible, yet enough to capture and delight.

          In the midnight quiet, the walk home from Dutton Park. We crossed the railway line, passing the train in its silent playground and Rawady’s Deli — all of it seeming to conspire, finally, in our favour. The world had softened into black velvet, the sky dusted with a delicate pepper of stars. The town slept, offering a kind of reverence, and Baker and then Hill streets became church aisles of their own. We walked them together, up and down the gentle rises, the trees along the footpaths like chaperones, bearing witness as we began.

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          Mystery Pub: Plenty of Room at the Hotel Colac

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          In a suburb stuffed with notorious pubs, The Colac was Port Adelaide’s worst. It was known as The Bloodhouse. It was abandoned for decades. The land around it formerly summoned The Great Gatsby.

          This is the valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens

          The pub has reopened and is splendidly appointed. Opulent furnishing, sublime art, strangely odourless air. Light drenches the two stories and three distinct spaces, having bent in from the becalmed Port River. Later jazz, a piano ready on the stage. Wagyu and other prized cuts in a cabinet.

          The wait staff were welcoming but began yapping at us like terrier pups, having gone from attentive to nutso annoying.

          How were the customary hot chips? Sprinkled with fetta, garlic oil, wolfed.

          The Colac is now crowded in by eager rows of boxy terrace homes, like an English village. Is the invigoration of the Port finally underway?

          *

          Home, with the dark descending. It’s my favourite hour for a vinyl album so I popped on Hotel California.  Shoeless, Claire busied herself cheerfully. I plonked myself in a chair.

          I read recently the title track is, among many other things, a reggae song. This genre is difficult to love due to its repetitive boing-boing. For me The Eagles’ tour de force is now tainted. I hope I can reverse this.

          Clasping a refreshment, Life in the Fast Lane began with its sunset swagger. As Claire scurried in and out, I contemplated how the guitars are like a Chevy Impala hurtling down Mulholland Drive. The melody and the lyrics marry. When sound mirrors the meaning is this word painting the musical equivalent of onomatopoeia?

          The penultimate track is the sun-kissed Try and Love Again, sung by the late Randy Meisner. He’s best known for Take It to the Limit, where his voice soars — arguably their finest. But the nightly demand of it became a private terror. ‘I was always kind of shy… They wanted me to stand in the middle of the stage… but I liked to be out of the spotlight.’ He quit at the zenith of their fame. How cruel to be haunted by your gift?

          *

          Saturday saw the next in this year’s succession of milestone parties. A 5.30pm start for our dear friend, JB. On the veranda, I wondered aloud to nobody that our social functions now conclude at the hour they once would have begun.

          The theme was a reprise of her previous big celebration: come as the person, you’d like to be, so Claire and I both transmogrified to seventeen-year-olds. A school dress (Claire) and Kapunda High blazer (me). Are we misguided in wanting to be younger versions of ourselves?

          At JB’s 2016 birthday, I’d gone as The Dude from The Big Lebowski. He remains a profound inspiration but now proved too difficult to properly source, sartorially.

          Across the backyard, Eagle Rock chugged. With Michelle’s kind kidnapping, I participated — trousers hitched. Later the song Mickey played. Trish performed a cruelly accurate impression of year 12 me doing the Health Hustle.

          In the courtyard, they danced on, sweet with summer sweat — some to remember, some to forget.

          It was a heartening weekend.

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          The Eighth Caller Through: The Cars, Neil Young, and Goanna

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          Aside from Derek and Clive, Caddyshack, and late capitalism, old mucker Lukey and I natter and laugh about music. He played drums in 90’s Adelaide bands Imelda’s Shoes and Fuge. I remember my late-night excitement at hearing him keeping time on a song Richard Kingsmill introduced on Triple J. At 10pm on a Tuesday, it was fame by association.

          Last Christmas, Lukey dropped off a stack of old vinyl — hefty, musty, and packed with sentimental promise.

          *

          The Cars – Greatest Hits

          I recall Shake It Up as a mood-lifter, and I’m sure the Grand Prix night of 1986 when Chrisso, Lukey, and I were in Nick’s unhinged Honda on the Freeling straight, there was plenty of brotherly love. Doubtless, The Cars roared out the open windows of that hatch-back as we hurtled past the darkened barley.

          Can you imagine how many Triple Tracks of The Cars were rolled out on SA-FM across the 80s? If I had an icy-cold can of coke for each one then, well, I’d be diabetic and dead. I connect this Boston band with adolescent summers and oddly enough being in cars — like Nick’s Honda — rushing to the cricket, the drive-in, the beach at Port Willunga.

          The songs are mostly upbeat with guitars and robotic Roland synths. Although I’ve made no deep investigation, the lyrics were the usual love’s good or love might be good or love’s a mess formula. Yes, mostly empty but we were nineteen, music didn’t need to be apocalyptic and Dylanesque. Solemn examinations of the human condition optional.

          Uh well dance all night and whirl your hair
          Make the night cats stop and stare
          Dance all night go to work
          Do the move with quirky jerk

          Given The Cars drove, err, in a tight lane, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s all the same song, but I like Just What I Needed, You Might Think, and My Best Friend’s Girl.

          *

          Comes A Time – Neil Young

          The muted tone of the sleeve triggers a memory of a TDK C-90 tape, though I can’t remember who dubbed it for me. I was fourteen — an age when life arrives without notice. Side 2 could’ve been Glass Houses by Billy Joel. How does music find us?

          Unlike his noise-guitar work with Crazy Horse, this is mostly quiet — occasionally country, but entirely Sunday afternoon.

          Lotta Love is a favourite song from it. He sings in a fragile, upper-register voice that threatens to fray into a whine. But doesn’t. Nicolette Larson provides harmony vocals on it and across the album. She covered it soon after and it became her signature song. Melburnian Courtney Barnett did a worthy version too.

          The title track, Peace Of Mind, and Four Strong Winds are other standouts.

          *

          Spirit Of Place – Goanna

          Arriving during the summer I turned sixteen, whenever I flick across my car radio at the lights and the urgent drums of Solid Rock pound through the speakers, I’m instantly back in hot and hilly Kapunda.

          It was among the first pricks to my conscience regarding the harm caused to Australia’s original inhabitants. The satirical use of marketplace warned me that money could be more important than people.

          Out here nothin’ changes
          Not in a hurry anyway
          You can feel the endlessness
          With the comin’ of the light of day
          You’re talkin’ ’bout a chosen place
          You wanna sell it in a marketplace, well
          Well, just a minute now

          I haven’t dropped the needle on it since I had nut-brown hair, so I’m gladly startled by its warmth. Burnt country and ragged outsiders hang in the melodies. I partly expected it to feel dated, but the songs and the storytelling are timeless. Shane Howard’s vocals are gracefully commanding, all woodsmoke and Kimberley sunsets.

          Razor’s Edge, On the Platform, and Four Weeks Gone are my top picks.

          *

          Thanks, Lukey, for rocketing by in the DeLorean/ Black Thunder to drop off my prize pack. I must’ve been the eighth caller through to Vinny and Cameron on SA-FM’s Morning Zoo. Vinyl isn’t just a nostalgia machine — the needle, the hiss and crackle come first, and then the music — and for a heartbeat, it isn’t the past at all. It’s right now — the way it found us in the first place.

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          Waiting Under the Bucket

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          Steering away from Becks Bakehouse, my bland sausage roll begins its sluggish transit. I turn up the Mississippi bluesman, Elmore James, so Max and I can hear the chugging genius of Dust My Broom

          I’m gon’ get up in the morning
          I believe I’ll dust my broom.
          I’m gonna get up in the morning
          I believe I’ll dust my broom.

          Our trip to Victor Harbor had begun.

          It was time to talk against the rhythm of (hopefully) agreeable activity, to gently explore Max’s inner and outer worlds, to scrutinise his present and point an encouraging telescope towards his future. We go nowhere new. Sometimes the best excursions are to known places.

          Granite Island is everybody’s favourite isle and we’ve circumnavigated it often. On the ocean-side I realise I’ve not looked at the rolling waves, rocky cliffs, or blue sky, extending above us. I am immersed. We are talking and walking.

          We stop at a gnarly tree, years ago its horizontal trunk the setting when Alex slipped while climbing. His tumbling then straddling generated much hot grief. Max and I laugh at the image.

          Our holiday cabin is agreeably spartan, so we sling in our stuff and venture to the waterslides. Hopping out of the pool, I point to the big bucket, tilting slowly, thrillingly on its hinge. ‘It’s been a while since we stood under a bucket,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’ Max follows me there.

          I can see him there as a five-year-old — smaller, impatient, bouncing with limitless energy. We step underneath it now. There’s no one else waiting. The mechanism teeters as it fills. It takes longer than I remember. ‘It’s going to go,’ Max says. But it doesn’t. Not yet. Then it does — all at once — a hard, cold weight of water, and I let out a yelp I didn’t mean to make.

          A late afternoon drive to Goolwa wharf and its bars and cafes. Max remembered a school excursion here to ride on the old paddlewheel ship, the Oscar W. A riverfront German bar is selling litre steins of beer for $25 each. The straggly-bearded bartender asked, ‘Can I get you one?’ I decline and later say to Max, ‘One of those bad boys and I couldn’t drive home!’

          We pulled up outside the Port Elliot townhouse which hosts my annual writing retreat. I wanted to remind Max of life’s possibilities. Then a lap of Horseshoe Bay. The swimmers had all gone. The short jetty we’d leapt from that cold January day was empty. Max said, ‘I like this beach.’ I smiled, ‘Me too.’

          With shadows stretching by the games room and the camp kitchen we hit the ignite button and barbecued our dinner. Park dwellers scurry past us. We devour the meat and token salad.

          In our cabin Eminem rapped as we scanned the rules of backgammon. Max likes chess, so I thought another strategic, quietly played pastime might suit us both. Accompanied by the regular percussion of rattling dice, we enjoy a couple of lingering games. Neither he nor I is especially competitive and so we play kindly, even cooperatively. The scoreline is 1-1.

          Throughout there’s easy talk about cars, footy, travel. Max asks, ‘Would you go to Berlin or Munich?’ I offer what I can. He nods, carefully. I fear he’ll soon be in Germany.

          *

          Running along the esplanade in the windless dawn, I feel a melancholic gratitude. Max is asleep back at the cabin. We’ve had a sparkling series of chats against this coastal backdrop.

          Parenting, though, guarantees a background anxiety. I try to picture the next time Max and I might escape like this, just the two of us. But I wonder how many chances we’ll have to huddle under a tipping, giant bucket.

          4

          A Brief History of the Triple Jump and Human Suffering

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          Today I made a return to Sports Day. Some things have changed. Others absolutely have not.

          The digital watch had just struck ten when the first vomiting incident was reported. A technicolour hula-hoop on the freshly mown turf. He’d not over-exerted nor breathed in his body-volume in energy drinks. Just an early morning vommie. To open proceedings.

          I wandered to the fundraising BBQ. This year it was burnt by the Art Faculty. Disappointingly, I could buy no Picasso Chicken Patties or Last Supper Sausages.

          In a relaxed corner, under some trees, there were games for those who find traditional sports unappealing. These included Giant Jenga and Connect Four. These are, of course, London beer-garden pursuits and should be encouraged as they develop essential life skills.

          Meanwhile the resident DJ played Eminem, who would appreciate the irony. I imagine he has little truck with athletes and enthusiastically despises them. Even if some now sport Mum’s spaghetti on their singlets — courtesy of an early morning puke.

          Much of my day was officiating the triple jump or as it’s variously known: the hop, step and jump, or in certain depraved circles, the hop, skip and jump. For most, it’s an exercise in assured humiliation as the poor souls approach the take-off mat with halting trepidation, their adolescent eyes wide with fright.

          Often, instead of the triple jump, they then perform a sad sequence of biomechanical accidents borrowing from John Cleese’s Ministry of Silly Walks, a little boot-scootin’, and the dying buffalo in Apocalypse Now. Participants have three attempts but while I was on rake and tape measure duties, it was mostly one and done.

          They fled the triple jump as if a spitting cobra was loose.

          There must’ve been an Ancient Greek who drunkenly happened across this, in dusty Athens, following much ancient vino.

          Christos: Watch this, Aristotle. I call it the triple jump.
          Aristotle: Why not simply run from Point Alpha to Point Beta?
          Christos: Too sensible. My invention will inflict psychological suffering on schoolchildren for millennia.

          Christos then invited others to try it. Some thoughtlessly agreed and inexplicably, it caught on. Hereinafter was set loose centuries of global misery which continues unchecked to this day.

          I love many sports and am sympathetic to many athletic pursuits. Running, jumping and throwing all have worldly value. But the triple jump, unlike other physical disciplines, is utterly non-transferable to real life. It may be the most futile human endeavour imaginable. If a ravenous beast — real or mythical — were on your Hellenic tail, who would break into a hop, skip and jump?

          I enjoyed Sports Day. Congratulations to all who won a blue ribbon.

          Thus, the ancient suffering continues.

          4

          McCartney

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          Scott Fitzgerald? Dylan? Richard Ford? These loom large. But, for me, the most significant cultural figure is Paul McCartney. I was reminded of this again last Sunday as I sat in a packed Prospect cinema watching the post-Beatles documentary, Man on the Run. It asks, what happens after you leave the most important band in the world?

          When I was a boy, the Beatles were a blissful part of my life. Mum played music in our home. She had the ‘Love Me Do’ single, which she bought in 1962. I loved the cartoon series and especially the opening credits, when they tried to outrun mobs of screaming girls. During this ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ played and it was the most exciting thing in my world. I understood little of their lyrics, but as I sat on the orange carpet in front of our boxy Pye television, their charismatic melodies sent something electric through me.

          Paul is my favourite Beatle. It’s largely his endless optimism and sunny nature. Even at eighty-three, his hopefulness is his defining, irresistible trait.

          *

          Following Paul through the 1970’s the film focusses upon his new band, Wings. Even without the Beatles, if he’d simply arrived in 1971, his catalogue would still be magnificent. Among my favourite ever musical moments is the soprano saxophone on ‘Listen to What the Man Said.’

          Regardless of context or mood, I’m always uplifted by it. The saxophonist was Tom Scott and his very first take ended up on the song. With Claire’s consent, we included it on our wedding playlist. It’s golden light falling across a tropical beach.

          Any time, any day
          You can hear the people say
          That love is blind
          Well, I don’t know, but I say love is kind

          *

          It agitated many that Linda was in her husband’s group. A common view was that she couldn’t sing, play keyboards, or contribute much, at all. The film naturally slants towards McCartney’s opinion. Another reason that I hold him in such boundless affection is his reflections on this and love. He speaks glowingly of her talents and her skills as a wife, mother and artist. In the cinema dark I thought of Claire and shed a tear when he stated that from his wife, beyond all her other gifts, he ‘learnt so much.’

          *

          Lennon and McCartney were like brothers. Both lost their mothers young. They wrote bridges for each other. They argued ferociously. Reflecting upon their long partnership the surviving Beatle remarked how when things got out of hand, Lennon would sometimes take off his glasses, lay them on the table, smile across at him, and say, ‘Paul. It’s me, John.’

          *

          I’ve long believed that one of the very best ways to spend half an hour is by listening to a Beatles record. Another fine investment is to immerse yourself in the boyish wonder and brightness of Paul McCartney’s subsequent music. Fifty years later, sitting in my cinema seat, that optimism still feels like the most exciting thing in the world.

          2

          Mystery Pub: The Cremorne, Unley Jets, and 1996

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          My last footy club was the Unley Jets. In my career-ending game my eyebrow was split like an overcooked sav, so I spent an eternal afternoon at Flinders Medical Centre. A fistful of stitches.

          One dead-of-winter Tuesday, we were told to bring a ten-dollar note to training. In our footy gear we jogged with coach Darryl Smith out of Jet Park (Kingswood Oval) onto Belair Road and to a handful of pubs including the Earl of Leicester, the Unley, and the Cremorne. Leaving the club Smithy advised us ‘to tuck the tenner into your sock.’

          This was a tremendous drill. In each front bar, we had a butcher of beer (200ml glass). It was a morale boost and, above all the rainy nights of circle work, laps and criss-cross handball drills, this is the session I remember. Now, butchers and cash are relics. I wonder if the Jets still follow this tradition.

          I recall the Cremorne being daggy and dark in 1996. Even as the surrounding suburbs were elegant and expensive. But it was cosy and reassuring with hazy light flickering from tiny TAB monitors. Claire selected it as our Mystery Pub for February.

          In 2026 it’s renovated with an abundance of glass and steel, and light and space. There are no British boozer-type nooks. No butcher glasses either. The smell of old smoke’s replaced with that of roasted eggplant.

          Between the front bar and Unley Road is a beer garden but it’s hot out and we don’t fancy traffic noise and pollution as a weekend entrée. The Chaser — the dopey quiz show and not the satirical comedy — is on the big outdoor screen and this, too, is a disincentive.

          Tradition insists that the host buy the first round. I claim a window table and like an opening ceremony, Claire then appears with a white wine and an XPA for me. The pea-soup appearance suggests my beer’s from the bottom of the keg. Does it taste better? Probably not. Nostalgia improves most things.

          My Unley Jets nostalgia continues. At the neighbouring table I spy former team-mate and club icon, Hoggy. Shaking hands, I introduce Claire. And just like that, it’s 1996 again. I ask, ‘You still working at the courts?’ He replies, ‘No. Been out of that for a while. At SA Pathology now.’ Hoggy was a goal sneak with great game sense. We trade news and sightings of former club mates. I love bumping into people.

          Back at our table, I scratch at my calf. Is it a sentimental ten-dollar note magically itching to be eased out of my sock?

          No, it’s 2026.

          Footy training’s now just a memory for me. At the bar, I take out my phone and ding, pay for my final XPA pint.

          No sock required.

          0

          Right Then, It Was Perfect

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          I entrusted the itinerary of a warm Saturday afternoon to Claire.

          Walking towards Moseley Square past Colley Reserve and the Beach House, we caught the scent of salty air and summery promise.

          Claire’s first stop was the Bay Discovery Centre, housed in the billowing white of the Town Hall. How had I never been? My excuse is I’m certain there’re Parisiennes who sullenly avoid the Eiffel Tower too.

          Inside was the kitsch and the considered. We saw displays featuring pioneering aviator Jimmy Melrose, a local history of forbidden beachwear with the bikini only allowed a few short decades ago — racy Brighton before coquettish Glenelg.

          Also, a section dedicated to objects found on the ocean floor. A wall of vanished keys, jewellery, pocketknives.

          Unforgivably, I’d cheerfully ignored this museum since last millennium.

          *

          Claire now steered us south. Easing off Jetty Road in Brighton we arrived by the Windsor Cinema. It’s functional rather than Art Deco beautiful. The cook/cleaner/usher/ barista/projectionist explained, ‘We had trouble with the first feature so your film’s about half an hour later.’

          So, an opportune intermission with a shared coffee and melting moments biscuits. The third of these tempted us and Claire said, ‘Let’s have half each.’

          Right then, it was perfect.

          We settled into the Windsor for The Senior. Watching a middle-aged Texan chase a lost college football dream felt like an odd choice for Claire, yet there we were — her gift of endurance for a genre in which she has no earthly interest. Knowing I’ve an interest in the sport, my kindly wife picked the film for me.

          I enjoy, as Paul Kelly observed, how moments of sporting grace can be found amidst danger. When a goal or wicket or touchdown is conjured from the most despairing of situations. As the most critical member of any team in any sport, the quarterback can create in astonishing ways.

          Being set in West Texas, there were compulsory mentions of war and religion, and these remain the same thing. It had a predictable plot of redemption — personal, family, marital — and these all occurred for our good ole boy but there was a warmth to the story we both liked.

          *

          Monday was Alex’s eighteenth birthday. On the phone I asked this:

          ‘I know you’ve got parties and things planned but what do you want to do on your actual birthday?’

          I imagined he might want to go out to dinner with his girlfriend Harriet or head to the city with some friends. To my delight he announced he’d be happy to go to the Broady, have a pizza and his first legal beer.

          Table 9 and its multi-generational party were ahead of us in the queue. They ordered multi-course meals and lavish drinks with glacial urgency. Aunt Maud’s turnout was bigger than any of us expected. We got served after a prolonged fashion.

          In the beer garden Alex and I took our table by the ill-fated frangipani. Under the pergola a sloppy clot of blokes sipped Guinness. With relaxed animation we chatted of his weekend; university offers (Flinders and the VCA); how Harriet’s dad is taking him to see The Beta Band; his road trip to Sydney to hear an avant garde Japanese guitarist; the Pink Floyd vinyl both Harriet and I bought him — Wish You Were Here and Relics.

          I relished his company and our soaring hour vanished into the indigo sky. Alex is curious, grateful, and seems to have a growing toolkit of what I hope he’ll need. I’m delighted that he voluntarily seeks support — what Richard Ford, in The Sportswriter, calls ‘the illumination and warmth it mutely offers.’

          I dropped Alex at his girlfriend’s. With Three D Radio for company, I drove home through our sparkling seaside suburb.