old boys

Thirty years seems a likely gap for a reunion dinner so it must be 1999. If ambivalence can have depth, mine is fathomless. I’m about to meet again the boys, the old boys as private school alumni call themselves, of what is now in true-blue American parlance referred to as the Class of 69.

We mingle in a semi-swish reception rooms in a leafier part of Caulfield. Two refuseniks, the former school captain and his vice-captain, me, dress casually to spite the gilt-embossed invitation’s request that we appear in suits and ties. I’ve not possessed a suit or tie since the school dance of 1969. I never bother to ask Will where he left his suit.

The old boys are older, stouter, smugger. Privilege sits on every sleeve. Here be doctors, lawyers, and men of commerce, men who run things. None ascends from the bottom; we all begin halfway up the ladder. A very few have fallen off and a couple may have jumped. I think my former Greta Football Club team-mate Gunna might have climbed down while no one was looking.

Here’s most of his latest blog post.

It has been a confusing couple of weeks. There's so much to deal with every day. I'll not dwell on my workload or current affairs or politics or business anxieties. They mean nothing, amount to nothing; here today, different tomorrow. 

What moves me is what lifts and prevents me drowning. My dog resting her chin on her front paws as she waits my every movement. The two grey fantails flitting about in the garden. The dead eastern spinebill I pick up from the road. The fresh blackberries I eat while reclaiming sections of the farm from rampant weeds. The dead chestnut tree I'm cutting up for firewood which succumbed after 35 years of good health and growth. The fresh eggs from Lib's chooks. Watching bees belting the blossom on a lilly pilly hedge. The warmth and resilience of my friends who give their time at Nobelius Park as volunteers.

These things in this last week give me a spiritual connection to the earth and my human tribe.

Gunna’s what southern Yanks might call a good ol’ boy. I wonder how many of the school’s old boys know a spinebill from a hundred dollar bill, a fresh egg from a tidy nest egg, or feel much for their tribe.

Misanthropic me doesn’t feel much for his tribe. Gunna and his blog remind me why I should.

Rock on.