fakery

Standing outside the hotel waiting for taxis after the three-day MM national project officers meeting finishes, my South Australian colleague asks if I was once a drama teacher. I don’t know how she knows this, but confess that indeed I was. I also confess that as a drama teacher I just stepped into classrooms with kids and got them to use their imaginations.

Principals asked what the school play would be and I told them I had no intention of producing one. I wasn’t into plays. I wanted kids to play. Looking back now I reckon I was faking the whole thing, as a teacher, as a drama teacher, as a ‘serious’ professional.

I have a feeling I’ve always been faking it, it being pretty much everything. Even as a school principal I was faking it, making it up as I went along. The first time I rode a motorbike to Melbourne and pulled at the lights and a fellow biker pulled up beside me and gave me a knowing nod, I was faking it, pretending to be a bona fide biker. I was a biking fraud.

When I padded up and went out to the wicket I was faking it, pretending I knew how to hold and handle a bat. I’ve never practiced enough, never studied enough, never prepared or rehearsed much. Every time I step out to present, I’m faking it, flying be the seat of my pants, pulling rabbits out of hats.

I reckon I’m faking my way through life and mostly life seems all too serious, and I’d rather it wasn’t. It’s easier to have no idea what I’m doing, or why I’m doing it.

There are some things I don’t fake. I’ve never lied when writing reports to employers or funders. I always tell the truth in plain English, no jargon, no padding, no flowery adjectives.

 

This afternoon I perpetrate a classic piece of fakery: the report to the government funding body. MM state co-ordinators must report to the federal department that funds us. Comrade S writes the bulk of the report. I can’t believe she believes what she’s written: it’s pure fakery. She loves a false adjective.

Today I play the game; my whole contribution to her report is bullshit, matching the fluff she’s penned. I’m not proud, but I can’t be bothered faking one second more that I take this seriously.

Rock on. 

kindness

I come to Sydney dreading the three-day meeting ahead. The first day is OK, the second ho-hum. I have no official part in the proceedings, ask no questions, draw no attention to myself. The longer it goes, the less a part of it I feel.

Tonight we go out for dinner but I’d rather be alone in my room with a book. Sixteen of us sit down to table. I feel comfortable talking with half a dozen colleagues. None is anywhere near me. The three people opposite are my least likely interlocutors.

I should be kinder to my colleagues. They have been kind to me. The last exercise of today’s meeting involves each person putting their name on a piece of paper which is circulated for every other person to write an anonymous comment, positive of course, fold over and pass to the next person.They write.

“Great conversations and lovely to thrash out ideas with you!”

"I really enjoyed reading your year reflection, thanks. Well done, this has been a challenging year.”

“You are a really interesting man and I really enjoy our conversations together.”

“I love your socks.”

“So important to look after your physical well-being in a job like this. Keep up the walking.”

“Your quirky sense of humour is great. Keep up the odd socks.”

“Thanks for a warm welcome at the recognition event and words of wisdom.”

“Enjoy the work and non-work related chats.”

“Great to have another man on the team.”

“I like your glasses.”

“Quite calm and unassuming nature.”

“I like your socks and sandals.”

“I like your individuality, political persuasion and willingness to be part of an almost all gal team.”

“Calm, thoughtful and not afraid to be an individual.”

“You have incredible quads and knowledge of rail trails.”

I thank them for their kindness.

Rock on. 

running

This year has gone anywhere except where I might have expected. A least expected outcome is being off the bike, doing no exercise. As opportunities to ride shrivel, so does my motivation. The less fit I am, the less inclined to get off my arse.

On Sunday Nicky and I pedal down to Carnegie and back and I show her the house my good woman and I will own on 12 December. Before we get there I comment that my crutch is sore, a foreign feeling for 15 years. That’s how off the bike I’ve been.

This morning in Sydney I wake at six, do some leg raises to ward off any possibility of back spasm, do the first ten press-ups I’ve done since abandoning the gym in May. After breakfast and blogging I take a brisk 50-minute walk interspersed with maybe a dozen hundred metre bursts of running. The beachfront here at Brighton-Le-Sands is perfect for walking and running.

Although it feels good to run, I’m cautious. Last time I decide to run seriously for fitness I run too far, strain a calf. The physio says just run a hundred metres, walk a while, then run again. I’m not built to run, never was, but still it comes naturally. I think I have an economical style.

Ron McLarty’s The memory of running is one of my all-time favourite books. It tells the story of Smithy Ide, obese drunkard whose sister with schizophrenia dubs him the running boy. Much later Smithy rides a bike across America to identify the body of his long-missing sister. No one would publish the book till Stephen King heard it read on radio.

I’ve never been a running boy, obsessed. But at 15 I discover I can run long distances, at speed. I get up early, in the dark, bolt three and a half miles in pretty quick time. I push hard; I’m not jogging. I run like the wind.

I’ll never run like the wind again, but I want to run, naturally, not as though I’m trying to catch up to the belly attached to me that’s dragging me along, or down. I want to feel light on my feet. Perhaps it’s a dream, a memory of running, real running.

My mother loved running as a girl, won the cup as best sprinter at Preston Girls High School. She says she knew she was old when she could no longer run. She must have run in secret because I never saw her run, ever.

I want to be seen running.

Rock on. 

joyce

Dan and Joyce live in Unit 2, behind me. Dan is 82 and has pulmonary fibrosis. He weighs 45 kgs and he’s disappearing before our eyes, dying.

Joyce feeds Idji the ginger cat when I’m away. She comes to my front door at seven, negotiates the deadlocks, gets the kangaroo mince from the fridge, gives the cat more than he should get.

Dan used to buttonhole me in the drive, go on and on about this and that: Chester’s car’s too heavy for the concrete driveway, Adrian drives too fast down the drive, a fence-post in his yard is loose. Joyce rolls her eyes, wanders off to get his tea ready.

Dan can’t get to the top of the drive now. He’s been haemorrhaging from where a tooth used to be, wakes with blood around his mouth, Joyce says. Now I see her in the driveway, taking out the bins, going for the morning paper, off to the bus stop. Yesterday she tells me Dan fell on Saturday afternoon, split the back of his head. She was out. So was I. He came to my door for help.

She’s always respected his privacy, never gone into the doctor’s rooms with him. He’s told her the pulmonary fibrosis is getting better. The other day, she says, she went in with him. The disease is extensive, incurable, in its final stages. Her daughter has checked with Dr Google. Dan’s been keeping it from them.

I stand at the top of the driveway with her. Joyce’s eyes well a bit. Not much to look forward to, she says. I’m sure she’s known for a while that Dan’s on his way, but a country girl from St Arnaud just gets on with things.

“I never wanted to be a nurse,” she adds. “Still don’t want to be. I’m 78. It’s enough.”

The cat eats but doesn’t want to go out at seven. Joyce comes back at nine and he’s sitting by the back door, ready for the day now. After late afternoon tea-time—she feeds Dan about five thirty—Joyce comes back, lets the cat in, feeds him again, more than his due. She says he’s all over her when she’s getting the food, runs away from her outside.

I’m loath to ask her to feed the cat these days. She has Dan to care for. I’ve asked so often lately—six trips away in six weeks. She says it’s no trouble, always obliges. I thank her profusely.

She’s a hearty soul is Joyce. I expect she’ll have ten or fifteen years after Dan goes. I hope she enjoys them.

Rock on. 

upgrade

My day begins with hectic quasi-veterinary activity. I make a vet appointment for Idji with the bung leg for 9:45 to appease my mother. But before the vet visit I enter a pet warehouse—there are no pet shops any more—and purchase six months’ worth of dog flea treatments for $77. Yesterday I bath the wee boy and uncover an infestation on the back of his neck.

As if he knows what’s coming, Idji the ginger moggie disappears. I track him down under the house but can’t lure him out. I crawl the length of the house through curtains of cobwebs, past mouldering rat bodies, stuff the cat under an arm, scrabble back to the outside world.

The cat squirms and opposes the vet’s blandishments. She says she has a ginger boy of her own, can’t find a cause for his bung leg, shoots him up with antibiotics in case another cat bit him—no evidence, advises rest. So, I learn nothing, fork out $132, end up doing what I was doing.

My good woman and I meet at the bank at 11 to explore income and mortgage protection. Like me, she thinks this is the bank trying to scare a bit more money out of us. I do, however, leave the bank with a cheque for my new car in my pocket: the dealer emails me this morning to say I can pick it up from 4pm Friday.

All this leaves little time to finish packing and head for the airport again. I drop the JRT at my good woman’s, arrive at Europcar’s long-term car park on the appointed stroke of three, punch my reference number into Qantas’s boarding pass dispenser at 3:15. It rejects me, tells me to proceed to the baggage counter.

A young Turkish woman asks if I’m OK to fly on the 4:30 instead of 4:00 flight: they’ve run out of seats. The pay-off is I go business class. A split-second’s memory of my return from Perth, tiny seat, jostled by big men’s elbows on both sides, and I agree. I have misgivings, don’t fancy being thought of as a wanker by people like me as they shuffle past into cattle class.

In business class I’m offered a drink before the plane so much as backs away from the airbridge. The drink comes in a glass flute rather than a plastic beaker. Afternoon tea is a cut above: heated sourdough bread, sun-dried tomatoes, proper cutlery, a damask napkin.

The seat is comfortable; I stretch the legs. Flight attendants buzz round us, address me by name even though I’ve been hijacked from another flight. At journey’s end I’m off the plane before the afterburners stop whining and the first taxi on the rank is mine.

Go, an Indian, drives me to the Novotel at Brighton-Le-Sands. The foyer reeks of sandalwood. Sam, the spunky young thing behind the reception desk, tells me that my breakfast and all my needs are catered for. She hands me my e-key for room 914.

“We’ve upgraded you,” she says.

  

Rock on. 

rift

My mother and I don’t disagree about much. If we do, we simply avoid the moot point.

I know when I tell her I have a cat with a broken leg and have done my own diagnosis rather than consult a vet she’ll be snaky. And she is. Citing all the evidence to suggest that a vet visit is a waste of time, energy and money gets me nowhere. As expected. I should have told her the cat was a picture of health.

Later in the afternoon my message bank and voicemail fill with urgent pleas to ring her. She’s spoken with my sister and my niece, a veterinary nurse, and exhorts me to get the cat fixed. In what way ‘fixed’, I ask. She equates a visit to the vet with being fixed. I tell her the cat just needs to be contained and rest, as is the case.

The conversation gets a bit testy: she’s annoyed and so am I. I feel put upon, and after five weeks of being unrelentingly put upon by my employer and life in general, I’m mad as hell and not about to take any more.

My mother anthropomorphises animals. They’re little humans to her, substitute children. They get rushed to the vet if they so much as squeak. I’m sure my mother has the pet equivalent of Munchausen Syndrome by proxy. Only my mother’s Persian cat could look pale. Only my mother’s poodle could have gallstones.

I’m pretty sure my cat has a broken leg. There’s no evidence of swelling or a bite, no displacement of bones, no discomfort when I squeeze the sore limb. I’m also sure that he just needs to minimise walking, lie down a lot, and not jump fences. I’m fairly sure he has more sense than my mother when it comes to his own health.

Unfortunately I don’t have his good sense when it comes to my relationship with my mother. I should have stayed mum about the cat’s bloody leg.

Rock on. 

rags

My good woman meets me in front of Baker’s Delight at Eastland at 3 pm. For three days she has been looking at men and the clothes they wear. We have a deal that we will upgrade my wardrobe.

Driving to Eastland I think of some ground rules. We will regard today as reconnaissance with actual purchases made at a later time. All thinking about garments must be predicated on getting the shoes right because shoes are the item I have greatest difficulty obtaining.  

I’m feeling hassled and put upon when I arrive at Eastland after a conversation with my mother. My good woman wants to rush into the first shop but I ask for five minutes grace to compose myself, and plonk my arse on a park-type bench in front of a hot biscuit vendor. I’m short on most human virtues right now.

My good woman walks ahead of me into the Myer store. Not ten metres from the ground floor entrance is a rack of clothes with the label Rodd and Gunn, a thinly disguised ruse suggesting its buyers are hunters and big-game fishermen. I’ve seen the name before, regard it as clothes for wankers. I’m about to join them.

A dumpy blond woman with most of her rubicund cleavage on view asks if I’d like to try on the armful of garments my good woman has acquired in the space of two minutes. We make our way to a fitting room. A jacket—price tag $400—is draped on my shoulders. As far as jackets go—and I’ve never thought of myself as wearing a jacket—it looks pretty good. At 30 per cent off it’s a snip.

A pair of long pants follow. I don’t wear long pants, no matter the season, no matter the weather. This concession is part of my attempt to look the part for my job, seeing as the income has assumed a new importance now I’m about to have two mortgages to deal with.

To cut to the chase, we never leave Myer, visit two other fitting rooms and I try on another 20 articles of apparel for the spiffy gent. I amuse myself by entertaining the dumpy cleavage with my wit. Nearly two hours later my good woman and I stand in front of the till with two shop ladies.

I buy two tee-shirts of superior quality, three button-up shirts with collars, two pairs of long pants made by Rodd and Gunn and Sportscraft, one pair of long shorts, and the fancy linen jacket. I have resigned myself to this being a major cost. At $785 it’s more than I’ve spent on clothes in 30 years, totalled.

I’m not sure how I’m going to live with myself.

Rock on. 

the lizard

It’s an irony of grand proportions that I’m travelling the continent to train presenters for the SKIPS program with The Lizard.

I first meet The Lizard while walking dogs around Menzies Creek back in the 1990s. My two heelers—Fleck and Meg—and her two heelers—Rocky and Ginge—buck and lunge when we bump into each other unexpectedly, dragging our restraining arms out of their sockets.

One day in 1997 I visit a community program for unemployed kids in Ringwood because a colleague at my school chairs their board of management. And there is The Lizard who works there.

We next strike up a conversation in 1999 when she walks past with her dogs and comments on the Sold sticker on the For Sale sign at my front fence. I tell her I’m moving to Croydon. She tells me she’s moving to Ringwood: her marriage is over. We wish each other good luck.

In 2000 I attend an after-work meeting with all the staff of my new employer. The Lizard enters at the same time I do. We share our mutual surprise: we work for the same employer though at different sites in different suburbs. Later my manager tells me to interview and pen a staff profile about The Lizard—“our first female program manager”—for the staff newsletter I edit.

A couple of years later we go on a date, not successful , but we give it a second go. For s couple of years we have a nice relationship. It ends badly when work issues cloud the business of us, especially my ability to offer her the support she needs. I’m compromised: I work well with people she has fallen out with.

The Lizard works with people with mental health concerns and does a half day’s training as a possible SKIPS presenter. Not long before I leave our common employer I co-present her first ever SKIPS presentation at a Catholic primary school in Scoresby.

Now she’s the SKIPS co-ordinator and I’m the hired gun through my business to co-present with her the roll-out of presenter training in each Australian state. Last year and early this year we train people in Sydney. In the past month we train groups in Newcastle, Brisbane and yesterday and today in Perth.

  

Today I watch and admire as she does her thing: she fields questions better that I do, reads her audience with aplomb, critiques new presenters’ attempts at parts of the program with a fine combination of honesty and tact.

It’s a great pleasure and honour to work with her, one of the finest human beings I’ve met.

Rock on. 

west

Football is the backdrop to my life. As a boy it’s the whole play, the only thing. By the time I reach double figures I can name every VFL premier and every Brownlow medallist. I know the number of every player in the twelve VFL teams. I’ve been to every ground with my father and his football crony, Reg.

Fitzroy play at Brunswick Street, Footscray at the Western Oval. The train belts along behind the narrow Glenferrie terraces. My father asks a yob to curb his language at Punt Road. Windy Hill and Vic Park are no places for Carlton supporters but we go there anyway.

If not at the ground, I’m absorbing footy on the radio, ABC radio. The voice of the West is George Grljusich. George brings me the scores from the WAFL. I know the teams: Subiaco, Claremont, East and West Perth, South and East Fremantle. George played 12 games for South Fremantle. When the Vics play the Sandgropers George doesn’t hide his bias the way the east coast commentators do.

This morning the Lizard and I stand on the warm concrete footpath outside the warm concrete hotel where we’ve spent a pretty much sleepless night after the transcontinental flight from Melbourne to Perth. The place is airless, stuffy, insufferable.

Joanne, our driver and Perth contact woman, picks us up, chauffeurs us. Our gig for the next two days is at Subiaco. I picture myself working a room with a view over what naming rights deem these days to be Patersons Stadium, the home of the Eagles and Dockers.

In fact we’re presenting at the home of the Subiaco Football Club, Leederville Oval. The space is upstairs in the main grandstand overlooking the greensward. The goalposts remain in place over summer here, the terraces arc around the outer side of the ground. Two grassed hills remain in opposing forward pockets.

This is how footy was in my youth: terraces, standing room only, walk up early or miss out. No online ticketing and booking fees. To me this a better view than the harbour from the Swansea RSL when we did Newcastle. I peer through the glass, wonder if a young George Grljusich played a game here. Must have.

A rangy bloke in his fifties, Kevin, sets up the room for us. He’s a former coach here, six years, life member. Now he runs the place, does everything, even fills the dishwasher after us. This is a real footy club and it feels good to be here.

Rock on. 

curfew

The local council has a cat curfew: in by dusk, stay in till dawn. I observe it, but my good woman scoffs at it. I don’t want the cat killing baby possums. Last night is balmy and the cat wants to stay out. I haul him in at nine thirty.

Later my good woman comes to comfort me and the cat kicks up a ruckus about being indoors. My good woman tells me he will do harm; let him out. I open the door and he bolts. He doesn’t return when I go to bed. More surprising is that he’s not baying at the door for food when I wake at five. No sign of him at five thirty when I’m leave for Shepparton either.

I’m attending the second breakfast meeting of an ineffective local community response to youth suicide group. I’m not local, have nothing to contribute. I’m promoting the MM workshop I’ll present here in late March. After the meeting I go to another meeting at a secondary college, then it’s a two and a half hour drive back to Croydon.

I ditch the hire car at two in the afternoon, have to leave for the airport and Perth at four. I unpack one set of bags (Shep) and pack a different set (Perth).

Outside the cat lies in the back garden in the sun. I’m relieved to see him. He doesn’t get up to greet me. Later he limps up the four stairs to the back door, front driver’s side leg dangling. He disappears inside. I look for him, find him in a cat castle in the bike room. He’s gone in head first, can’t get out with a useless front leg. Carefully I upend the castle and he slithers out onto the floor.

He goes straight to the dog bed in the other front room, lies down. I suspect a broken leg. He lets me examine it, purrs like a lawnmower. I jump on the interweb, consult Dr Google. Cat’s have high pain thresholds, carry on with broken legs like nothing’s happened unless the bone is poking sideways through broken skin.

He chooses his moment well. Could he be more inopportune? I poke and prod him, searching for internal injuries, other discomfort or pain. Nothing. He just keeps purring. I feed him kangaroo mince and he eats, comfort and pet him, explain that I can’t stay: I must catch the plane to Perth.

What to do? I mosey round to unit 2, inform Joyce, ask her to keep an eye on him when she feeds him. I give her my good woman’s home and mobile numbers, tell her to call my good woman if the cat deteriorates. If he ends up with a permanent limp, so be it.

Rock on. 

balm

On Tuesdays my good woman works late. She and a psychologist colleague run a therapy group for problem gamblers. It can be an intense affair that taxes her skills. Tonight is their last night for the year and the group are dining together.

My good woman comes round after the dinner, late, to see me. I leave a message on her phone during the day telling her something of yesterday’s distress. “Why did you not call me yesterday? What were you thinking?” She knows why I didn’t call.

Now she comes to pour balm on my catastrophising. I read yesterday’s post to her. She scoffs at my notion that losing my job will bring the house down.

“Pah! So what? I have been through war; we lose everything. I have lost a house before: it’s nothing. We can sell the house. Who cares? It’s just a house.”

She tells me what a good presenter I am; I counter with all my misdemeanours, which pretty much amount to being underprepared most of the time simply because I haven’t had the time to prepare. My presentations have been crap. I’m not of top of the material. I’m a footballer with no pre-season under his belt, always playing catch-up.

She gives me strategies for dealing with my managers, not that I haven’t been concocting them all day. She strokes me relentlessly, but also has the grace to listen to me pouring out my shortcomings. I determine a little while back to hide nothing of my fragility with this woman. If she buys me, she needs to know what she’s getting.

Last night as I think all the worst thoughts, one good thought comes to me: if all this turns to shit, this one woman will stick. And she will.

OK, so I’ve fucked up at work. Some of it’s my fault but it’s not all my fault. A conspiracy of circumstances has brought me down, but circumstances change. I’ve been gathering my determination all day, to get through this day, and the next day, then the day after that.

This too will pass. I am weak, but I have the love of a good woman. As I tell often her, “My good woman is the best good woman.”

And to think that I nearly lost her.

Rock on. 

deep shit

My job at MM is in jeopardy. And if I lose it, the world as I have constructed it—buying a house with my good woman—will come crumbling down.

In my working life I have experienced two deeply horrible days. Today is one of them. When three people out of eight return for the second day of my workshop in Beechworth last week, I know the shit will hit the fan and fly spectacularly and mostly in my direction.

Of all the states, we in Victoria are seen to have a chequered MM history, none of which is my fault. But management are touchy as buggery about things not going well here. And they’ve created a rod for their backs—me. The decision to appoint someone part-time is a big mistake.

In my previous job I had three days a week to service a dozen mentoring programs in one region. With MM I have three days to service every secondary college in three regions. And I’m expected to master 16 days of professional development workshops to boot.

I’m still not sure why five people opt out last Friday. I don’t believe it is all about me. But the national manager clearly thinks it is all about me. My cause is not helped by being impolitic and a bit eccentric. It can be a boon, but at times like this it’s a lead saddle.

Comrade S works full-time. She works bloody hard, does many of the things I don’t have time to do, won’t do because I find them irksome. Early on we are solid, talk a lot, but I’m sure she’s decided I’m too needy, is distancing herself from me. Today I bemoan the fact that we three co-workers in Victoria are losing the togetherness we had. She flips back that that suits her.

During the day I work though thirty or forty emails I’ve had no time to consider. One contains my performance appraisal document. I have to fill it out asap. Some of the language on it is foreign to me. It serves only to heighten my fears, play into my distress.

Every thought screams at me that I’m not good enough, not up to this job, and worse, not up to any job, that I’ve fucked up, big time. No amount of good self-talk is going to do me any good today. It’s my nature, the self-doubt, the lack of confidence—been there since day one, as a little boy. I’m needy all right: I need constant stroking, wilt at the slightest slap.

I’ve had a big slap today. The dream job has become a nightmare. And I feel sick to the core.

Rock on. 

moroney

Moroney Crescent lies on a steep southern slope of Menzies Creek where the sun doesn’t shine. The crescent is a dead-end, but the view is pretty good. I move with my kids into a log cabin surrounded by weeds. It’s mid-1989 and life is OK: I have a job I enjoy and family support all around me.

I have one neighbour, Eunice, Miss Boettcher, known to Menzies Creek as The Goat Woman. She has a herd of between 30 and 40 goats, all kinds, all colours, kids and all. She lives in a single-roomed hut, shepherds her goats around the Creek, drives them through my place late in the afternoon. She never looks at me, never utters a word.

Nothing much else distinguishes our year at Moroney Crescent. Nothing much distinguishes the cabin: the rooms are pokey and dark, the carpet tiles stained and lifting, the south-facing verandah along the front of the place too narrow to do anything but walk along.

The kids grow up a little bit more. In summer we swim at Aura Vale Lake, behind the wall of Cardinia Reservoir. They play with their three cousins. I type my application to be Berengarra’s principal on my first computer, print it in dot matrix. The biggest huntsman spider in creation gets himself splattered across the logs.

Beyond Eunice’s hut is the construction site of the grandest house in Menzies Creek. Moroney Crescent ends where its driveway begins. The kids and I wander down there to look at the house sprouting from a pit in the ground, the built-in pool, the curved retaining walls, a grand folly on the dark side of the hill.

When my application to be principal succeeds I want out of Moroney Crescent, figure its time to buy my second house. My first house is long gone, sold to reduce Carol’s mortgage, any benefit lost when we split. Now I must do it all again. My father is keen to invest, knows of a nice little place for private sale in Church Road. I don’t like it.

Six months pass and he still thinks it’s a good buy. His contribution of $30k convinces me to sign. The owners’ daughter and I do the conveyancing. In October 1990 I move house using only my own labour and a six by four trailer.

For an atheist Church Road augurs badly.

Rock on. 

occupation

According to my good woman, and she’s quoting someone else, three things are the ingredients for happiness: someone to love, something to look forward to, and something meaningful to do. So for me it’s tick, tick, and I’m not sure about the meaningful occupation.

To do something is to be occupied. The be paid to do it makes it your occupation. To my good mother, who thinks my father retired far too early and lost the meaning of life, occupation is everything and joblessness akin to premature death. This from a woman who hasn’t worked since she was 24.

On 1 January I begin this blog in search of and to explore the making of meaning when you’re 60 years old and unemployed. On 1 January I anticipate forced semi-retirement—who will want to employ an eccentric, slightly cynical 60 year-old? I see myself eking out a meagre private income via my business, maybe finding other part-time or casual employment.

I picture myself fully occupied whether business is quiet, employment slow, intermittent or absent. I might not be occupied in the job sense, but certainly in the always having something to do sense. I see myself making meaning by co-existing happily with the earth and my neighbours.

Coming to the end of the year, I’m 61 and overemployed, not enjoying it much. My business is contracted to present six two-day training workshops, five interstate. My three-day a week job with MM is demanding: the travel consumes time and energy; the networking is difficult to establish and maintain from a Collingwood office; and teachers are a demanding and difficult clientele.

On a Saturday morning after a tough week, unrelentingly occupied from the previous Sunday morning when my good woman drives away till seven thirty this Saturday morning when I drop my boxes off in an empty Collingwood business centre, fill the hire car’s tank, drop it off and walk home, I ponder the meaning of it all.

The tables are turned. My busy friend Rock has been at home under doctor’s orders, recovering from ripping a bicep off the bone. A whole term off school, fully paid. He tells me he’s had a better sense of purpose, tending himself and his garden with one arm, letting the world of busyness do its thing without him.

Me? I’m jealous as hell, mind occupied wondering how I achieved my current stress.  

Rock on. 

mettle

Friday morning at the end of a long exhausting week. Jackie, the proprietor’s daughter, tall, leggy, country to the core, pauses from setting up the tea and coffee urns, asks where my participants are. It’s after nine. I’m so engrossed in hyperlinking a couple of slides I’ve not noticed the time. I whisper that I won’t mind if none turn up.

The receptionist drops by to say the three SSSOs are not returning. A bit rude. I sit with a young teacher, tell her that if less than four people return, we’ll call it quits. In the end three turn up. We whizz through the important things, eat morning tea together, and they go. I pack up, load the car, wonder what happened.

Is it me? Is it the workshop content? Is it them?

Ever the diffident dude I look first at my own shortcomings. Then I try to be kinder to myself: hell, I’ve been presenting for twelve years and I know in my heart it’s not me. That leaves the content and the participants. Or a combination thereof. It’s professional learning for teachers and three of eight are teachers, the three who return for day two. Why did the others come at all?

Any way I cut it, it leaves a bad taste. I hear myself on the blower to the national manager on Monday explaining myself, sounding unconvincing. I hear the doubts in her mind about that “strange bloke we appointed in Victoria”, wondering if my employment is a big mistake. And I wonder too.

I drive home, listen to the radio, hear nothing. It’s sunny but cool outside. I retrace my route of two days ago, but the glorious scenery travelling north loses its splendour travelling south. I diverge from the highway along Killingworth Road from Molesworth to Yea to distract myself.

It’s a week to test the mettle, the spirit, the strength of character, and I’m wanting a bit. I remember trying to buck up Comrade S in a Sydney taxi bound for the airport when she tells me she’s feeling a bit daunted and disillusioned. I want to ring her, have her reciprocate, buck me up. She’s called in sick.

I try to practice good self-talk, all the sound advice I give teachers about their mental health and well-being. Five minutes of this isn’t going to cut it: I’m going to have to work hard at the positive self-talk all weekend.

Rock on. 

beechworth

Mid-November mid-week Beechworth slumbers. The occasional retiree wonders aimlessly along seven-pm streets. The famous bakery just closed, the odd tradie rambles out of the town’s three pubs.

Two upmarket restaurants look empty; the menu prices pinned to the front door and the gate give a clue, keep me away. I end up in an Indian restaurant. The dhal soup and malai kofta are fresh but bland. Work is paying so I don’t care.

Back at Miners’ Cottage 2 at The Old Priory I set up the laptop to prepare tomorrow’s slides and spiel. After two and half hours sleep the previous night I just can’t summon the energy, set the alarm, and crash. At five in the morning I resume.

The stress gets to me: am I ready, do I know my stuff, what will my participants be like, what will they expect? I shit myself empty, take a 20 minute walk, photograph the priory cats. At eight I set up the room, connect the IT, test that it all works.

Eight people arrive, two half an hour late. The day goes well, the activities work, my words flow. When they leave at three I’m stuffed, retire to the cottage, start work preparing tomorrow’s presentation. I fall asleep with my fingers on the keyboard. Voices off rouse me. Someone has come to visit me.

It’s a local health promotion officer; I arranged a late afternoon meeting with her while in Brisbane on Monday, three days and an eternity ago. We sit on the verandah and natter away. She’s been around the north-east for years, knows everything and everyone. We get on well; she’ll be my key to networks in the Hume region.

She knows SKIPS and three of the participants in my Beechworth workshop. She scoffs when I tell her they must leave early tomorrow for another meeting. She doesn’t believe a word of it.

At six  thirty she departs, still talking as she disappears round the corner of the building. I tog up, roam the town looking for dinner. Two pubs invite me in but the fare and the pensioned clientele turn me off. I get takeaway from the Indian, eat in the cottage, fall asleep, alarm set for five thirty. Sleeping in.

Rock on. 

respite

I walk in the door from the airport close to one in the morning. The dog and cat caper round, the dog hungry for a late dinner. I unpack my Brisbane bags, write an angry email to someone wanting to pull an article in the newsletter I sent off on Sunday, get to sleep close to three.

I wake at five thirty, start thinking about the day ahead; the main event is getting me to Beechworth. But before the drive I have calls to make, housework to do, anything to shrug off the past two days in Brisbane. My first load of washing is whirling round just after six.

I call my father. He usually picks up because my mother is in the garden; at this hour she’s still asleep. I ask about his health. “Not bad for an old feller.” It’s taken a long time to admit to being old. He wouldn’t do it at 78, but at 87 he’s no longer in denial.

Despite being not bad, he says he’s got a busted knee, a broken rib. The second fall, the rib, gets him to the doctor. Finally the knee, done two weeks ago, gets looked at. I encourage him to get an OT from the local community health service to come talk to him about falls. He says they’re not falls, but trips, not about dizziness or balance, but poor eyesight—he can’t see changes of level.

I exasperate, tell him a fall is a fall is a fall, regardless of cause. I get stern too, tell him not to be pig-headed as we blokes can be about our health. I don’t cut much ice.

Robert and I have been playing phone tag. He and Natalie own my good woman’s and my new house till 12 December. I call again, leave another message. He calls half an hour later and we try to find a date to meet to talk about their continued tenancy while they build next door, and for us to come and measure rooms, gaps, heights.

I hop on a local bus to the car hire place, return in a silver Tiida, transfer my boxes from the Jazz. I peg out a second load of washing, cut up and bin branches cut off the carport roof the other day, haul garbage bins up to the roadside. The dog waits for a walk he’s not going to get. The cat pings around the garden, shoots up trees.

Just after one I’m on the road. The car’s been in the sun. I roll down the windows, stick Paul Kelly’s greatest in the CD player, crank up the volume. Victoria is still as green as five bastards, mid-week traffic sparse. My mood heads north along with Paul and the Tiida. I gun the vehicle along the twisty Merton-Euroa Road over the Strathbogies.

The freeway is less fun, not so scenic. I sing with Cher, arrive Beechworth just before five, pootle round town to find my accommodation; I forget to get the street name. It’s a century-old priory, polished staircases, mysterious passages. I’m in a miner’s cottage out the back, a world away from the Bermuda Triangle of the Beenleigh Yatala Motor Inn.

Rock on. 

feral

Queenslanders cop plenty of stick from us southerners, and they sling it back in spades.

By day’s end The Lizard and I aren’t too keen on Queensland. Our two days at the SKIPS training coalface are a success by most measures, but it comes at a price, and at a bigger price than any other training we’ve run.

We sit in the late afternoon sun at the empty Coffee Club in Jimboomba and read the evaluations. Oh, they liked the training and they like us well enough. But some participants feel we should have sat on some of the other participants. And they’re right, dead right. I wanted to do it, didn’t know how.

On day one Madame M reveals herself as bipolar. She speaks eloquently about her illness, although she prefers the word condition. Her story is in context and appropriate as part of the workshop. We praise her, acknowledge her courage. Little do we know the beast we have unleashed.

An Indigenous woman, Auntie V, sits at the same table, loud, maybe funny. She interrupts constantly. Trouble is, neither the Lizard nor I can make out anything much of what she says; she mumbles rapidly and mostly with her head half turned away. She means no harm, but makes no sense.

On day two Madame M thinks she has carte blanche to comment on every sentence The Lizard and I utter as presenters. I can see the shut-the-fuck-up looks around the room, but how to tactfully ask someone with bipolar to stuff a sock in it eludes me.

At morning tea she approaches me in tears, tells me the session was pretty heavy for her. Well, I feel like saying, who’s fault is that? At lunch she approaches again, tells me Auntie K, another Indigenous participant, mute so far, is not well. What, am I a doctor? I nod sympathetically, mumble incoherently. I’m losing the plot here.

By early afternoon Auntie V seems to be in drug-fucked coma, head on the table, her comments more inane than ever. As if fed up with it all, the three of them depart early.

In the late afternoon sun, exhausted, flat, feeling a bit defeated, I listen to as The Lizard tells me the three roomed together somewhere last night, and some unspecified melodrama happened.

Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s. They seriously impaired the workshop and others’ enjoyment of it. They gave their ‘types’—mental health condition and Indigenous person—a bad name. They behaved in ways rednecks like to joke about.

Turns out they all came across the border from NSW.

Rock on. 

going bogan in logan

I’ve Beenleigh for 61 years. And now I’ve been to Beenleigh. Nothing to see. Today I’m going bogan in Logan.

A week back I awake to a bright Sydney Monday. It seems light years ago. At seven o’clock on this bright Brisbane morning The Lizard burps the rental car along the clogged M1 to the Bryants Road exit. We’re looking for Fitzy’s pokie palace, our home for the next two days training SKIPS presenters, in a suburb that doesn’t know if it’s Shailer Park or Loganholme.

We locate Fitzy’s, then focus on breakfast. Dad’s Pies across the road looks good to me, but even I can’t quite bring myself to consume a vegetarian pie at this hour. I ask Dad’s advice re breakfast but he has no ideas. I promise to come for a pie or two and we motor away, figuring on blundering into some coffee dive that serves toast at the very least.

Just as Beenleigh is a wasteland of places to eat dinner on a Sunday night, the Loganholme Hyperdome, a shopping megamart dead to the world at this hour, is another wasteland. No coffee place, no entry, even to the acres of car parking spaces. The Lizard tells me I’ll have to break my fast at McDonalds, photographs my shame eating hot cakes at a plastic outdoor table.

The pancakes are gooey, the sachets of whipped butter and artificial maple syrup adding little to the experience. The Lizard’s two bacon and egg McMuffins do nothing for her well-being either. We are strangers in a strange land.

Food on the move is a mixed feast. I’ve eaten majestically in Adelaide, tragically in Sydney. Last night’s hunting in Beenleigh leaves us no choice but Noodle Box. True to its name, there’s a box and lots of noodles. A couple of bits of rubbery broccoli hide under the box flaps, but further down is a vegie-less tangle of slippery noodles.

Because we’ve been to Beenleigh and found our way back to the motel we retrace our journey tonight, hoping some better eatery presents itself. That place is Bobby’s: Indian, three tables. Bobby’s real name is Jarmuja; she prefers Bobby. Her food is fine.

The Lizard is desperate after the catering at Fitzy’s—white bread sandwiches filled with lettuce and onion. I think she’s being harsh. I like onion and the scones and cream for morning tea achieved universal approval.

Rock on. 

interstate

The Lizard and I meet at the airport, gate lounge 3. There are no lounges, just bum-polished cheap fabric seats. Urgent calls for passengers and other people’s flights interrupt every thought, every attempt at conversation. The Virgin crew summon us bang on schedule to our Brisbane flight.

We park ourselves in row 4, behind the Perspex partition and silly metallic rope that separates us from four business class seats. Wankers.

The flight lifts off and touches down on time, the promised turbulence on take-off and landing never eventuates. Night descends on Brisbane in the time it takes to make our way from the plane to the baggage carousel. We cross the airbridge to the rental cars. Two of us can drive, one can navigate. As in Newcastle The Lizard drives. She’s good at U-turns.

The dark, lack of a decent map, and this foreign place confound my sense of direction. We find our way onto the Gateway Motorway, four lanes of light Sunday night traffic winding vaguely south-west. We negotiate ourselves onto the Pacific Highway, heading vaguely south-east and disappear off the edge of our inadequate map. It’s wits only from here on.

We dismiss exits to Eagleby, Shailer Park and Jacobs Well. We’re hunting the exotically named Beenleigh Yatala Motor Inn. Lost after a series of roundabouts with up to seven exit points we pull into a side road to do a u-ey. And find ourselves in the driveway of the motel, all motley-coloured bricks and Martian architecture.

The motel is a triangular island: the Gold Coast railway belts along one side, the M1 Motorway booms past the back door, a major arterial road forms the third side. It’s the Bermuda Triangle for unsuspecting interstate travellers: you arrive without knowing how you got there, then there’s no escape.

The option of a short walk after dinner is short indeed; any further than fifty metres in any direction will get you pasted across the front of a B-double or an express train.

Rock on. 

emerald

Living with Carol ends in tears—hers, not mine. I walk out in January 1989, my departure undercut by having to walk out of someone else’s house, not Carol’s. We are visiting her friend Rosie in Flemington when the last straw breaks my camel’s back. I quit Rosie’s house in high dudgeon, go back to Chum Creek, begin packing.

The kids are nine and seven when we move into a rental at 14 Crichton Road in Emerald, a simple brick veneer, painted white, opposite the gate into the old Nobelius nursery. The Nobelius Siding packing shed is right there and Puffing Billy runs along a shallow embankment across the road.

I retain scant memory of our time there. I teach at Berengarra, my kids go to Menzies Creek Primary where their cousins are, not Emerald. But I can’t remember taking them to school each morning or where they go after school before I pick them up. My mother? My sister?

Only one significant event comes to mind. We have a break-in—kids’ bedroom window—and stuff is stolen: a VCR, my expensive new red 85 litre Macpac backpack, and two porn videos. I’d not worn the backpack one step into the bush; its departure hurts, especially as I guess it to be of no interest to the robber other than as a receptacle for the VCR.

The ancient dog fails to protect our property. She’s 15, diabetic, almost blind, partially deaf, comatose in a bamboo grove separating our place from the next.

The break-in destroys any affection I have for Crichton Road. The house is pleasant enough, but I’m desperate to get to Menzies Creek where all my family are. Mid-year a teacher is unexpectedly transferred and her family’s rented log cabin in Menzies Creek is available.

I break my lease on Crichton Road quick as a flash, ferry my meagre possessions from Emerald to the Creek and get used to a life without sun on a southern slope in Moroney Crescent.

Rock on. 

undersold

I advertise the Jazz on CarSales.com for $12k. Why piss around at $11,990? Who’s fooled by that? I get no nibble in a month, pull the price down to $11.5k. Still nothing. I regard this as undervaluing the car. In the end no enquiry in two months.

So I pull up outside the VW dealer in Ferntree Gully and sidle into the showroom. John, the bloke I deal with, shakes my hand once more, asks for the keys to the Jazz, disappears outside. I’m not wanted out there. I wander in the showroom and out on the forecourt, checking versions on the Caddy I’ll take delivery of next week.

John comes in, says he’s going to get another opinion on my Jazz. That opinion is $6k. No dice.

I detour on my way home, waste time trying to find a parking space at a shopping centre. The young Chinese woman tells me “short staff”, suggests I come back in 45 minutes. Again no dice. My neck and shoulders remain stiff, knotted, unmassaged.

Back home I write invoices for work done in my business, $2.5k’s worth. I’ve worked hard for the money, undersold myself, as usual. But I refuse to undersell my car. Crazy.

I ring a woman in Bendigo, the subject of an article I’m writing for my former employer. We have a pleasant conversation and I email her the finished piece for her approval.

At two I meet my good woman at her bank in Donvale for the fourth time. Today we sign the big one, a loan for $600k. I can hardly believe the amount, but between us we have assets more than enough to secure the loan. Seems I've undersold my value to a bank. Nonetheless, the repayments will keep us busy.

Our lender advises us to come to another appointment, enjoins us to consider insurance for the contingency of one us being unable to pay his way—injured, dead, unemployed.

Back out in the car park we talk about bookings made for a short holiday the week before Christmas; four nights in Port Stephens, somewhere north of Newcastle, otherwise unknown to me. My good woman is a beach person; I’m not. But I defer to her in this. I have no holiday preference other than being with her. The winter holiday alternative is snow. That I won’t do.

I need a holiday. The year has taxed me in ways I never imagined. I’ve worked harder than I could have thought, travelled interstate more that a dozen times.

Rock on.