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.