Hieronymous the Anonymous

Riding the 57

At about 6.30 last night I hopped on board a tram in Elizabeth Street in the city and headed back towards North Melbourne. This was my old tram, the number 57, that I would catch daily for over a year heading into and out from work. I sat there as the tram went its familiar way. In the way of these things it triggered memories that radiated out from where I sat. It brought to mind those easy and satisfying days at work and all that was associated with that. I recalled Jennie quite particularly, and to a lesser degree Paige. And then as the tram turned into Victoria Street I peered around me remembering this area as it was my neighbourhood once upon a time. I marked the things that had changed, though there were few, and craned my head to take in the old shopping strip in Errol Street as the tram chugged along.

I got off there. It was bright and pleasantly warm. Everything looked the same. A blonde woman I had caught the eye of in the tram went ahead of me, and I followed her across the road. I veered from her to enter the Court House, my old and very fondly remembered local. It was noisy and crowded inside with what seemed like the residue of an office Christmas party. I leaned on the bar and spoke to one of the familiar bartenders, getting his take on the latest batch of beers on tap, before choosing one.

The party cleared, off upstairs for dinner, and soon the bar was magically sparse. I moved to a table by the window, the same table I had sat myriad times before sipping on a beer or supping on one of the dishes from the excellent bar menu. I looked out the window. The declining sun glinted through the wooden slats of the blind at that particular summery angle. I sipped my beer and took in my surroundings and once more felt a flood of memories return to me.

I have not visited North Melbourne since I left, though I have often thought to. I miss the breakfasts and the casual vibe and the proximity to the city and, of course, the Court House. I recalled moments I was here or there, moments that perhaps seemed small at the time but had somehow been captured in my memory and preserved until this moment. I remembered, for example, venturing to this same pub almost 2 years ago to the day, finished with work before Christmas, the sun shining and waiting for a friend to join me. I waited sipping on a beer and received a call from Tim who I happily chatted to. I remember no more than that, not the meal afterwards – one blurs into another – or what was said or done. I remember that fragment, and then my mind moves onto the next fragment, as the mind does.

Once more I felt an association of memories, as if one memory is linked to another like dominoes in a chain. Unsurprisingly many of my memories were of women. I have a varied and interesting life and no complaints, but really what is most important to me are the relationships I have forged, and the relationships that bite deepest are those with the women I have met, befriended, and then somehow lost.

It sounds melancholy perhaps, but is not. Ultimately when you look at the ledger you come out in front. Things could have been different perhaps, but no regrets – it is better to have experienced these things high and low, have met these people, than to have had nothing at all.

My mind ticked over, Jennie again, and Paige, and then Amy to my surprise. Why do I remember these people I asked myself? Does it mean anything? But no, not really. They are just memories, brought to the front of your mind by the association of your surroundings, much like coming across a box of old photo’s during a spring clean. For a moment you pause to look at them and recall the times they represent. Then you put them away again for another time.

That’s how it was for me. My date arrived, we exchanged gifts and got something to drink, once familiar though through repetition this time, wine and conversation and a good duck curry and a taxi home after 10. Another day, another memory.

The smell of damp earth

I was in a taxi coming home last night at about 10 when we stopped at some lights. It was a warm evening after a hot day and the window by my side was open. Sitting there waiting for the lights to change from red to green I could smell something both familiar and good. I turned my head wondering what it was. We were stopped in Wellington Parade right next to Treasury Gardens. I glanced at the gardens and the trees and realised what I was smelling was damp earth. That's an unlikely fact in parched Melbourne, but then I guessed they have their own water supply and had as the sun set watered the gardens, and that was what I could smell.

The strange thing is that the smell reminded me of my grandfather. That was the immediate association, and it was welcome. As we drove off I reflected on that. I pondered the strange way our mind affixes certain sounds and smells and other sensory attributes to particular memories. Whenever I hear a tinkling bell I recall a milk bar I used to go to as a child for example, and how the bell would tinkle every time the door was opened or closed. That's forever locked in my mind as, it seems, is the smell of damp earth associated with my grandfather. It is an apt association. He was a great gardener, and the front garden of his home in Strathmore was full of beautifully grafted rose bushes which he would water every night as it grew dark. He taught me how a garden should be watered to a certain depth, and somewhere in there the smell of the resultant wet earth became something to recall him by.

I am forever surprised by the intricacies of the human mind, and grateful that it is so. Life becomes deeper and more interesting with these complex connections we unwittingly make and carry forward every day.

Into the past

Something of significance happened a couple of weeks ago which, for some reason, I've held off on discussing until now.

Some background is required. Back in 2001 I met and fell in love with a woman, Tania. For a couple of months we were close and intimate and making plans for the future. Looking back I think that is the happiest I've been, but naturally it couldn't last. Tania was a lawyer working in the corporate world and going places. One day she told me she had been offered a posting to Singapore to become the Asia Pacific regional counsel - the very job she had been striving for.

Now the job was hers she didn't want it. Why now, she asked, just when I've fallen in love? I was quiet, shocked in my own way but unwilling at first to say anything. Tania was torn up, distressed, damned if she did and damned if she didn't. When finally I spoke I told her she must go, that I did not want the shadow of her regret getting between us. After further discussions she agreed, and we resolved to part as a couple but too remain friends. It seemed easier that way.

To cut a long story short she left amid all sorts of other things, and about 2 months later I followed her. My actions were romantic, even whimsical, and a belated attempt to prove the commitment I had been unwilling too earlier. Quite typically I went beyond the call, resigning my cushy job, selling my car, letting out my apartment, and effectively burning my bridges. It's history now that it didn't work out. I returned to Melbourne as 9/11 crippled the world and in a state of deep sorrow. WE kept contact with each other for perhaps another year and that was that, over and out.

Till the other week.

It was a Saturday when I was online and browsing Facebook when I saw one of my friends had a new contact with a person who shared the same surname as Tania. On impulse I typed her full name into the search box, and much to my surprise saw her profile and her picture pop up on screen. It was her, the woman I remembered. For long moments I stared at the picture disbelievingly, as if it was the last thing I expected. But there she was.

The temptation was to fire off a quick message, hey, guess who, how you going? I didn't though. Instead I went about my business before going to bed. In bed I found much I had forgotten of that time come back to me. I lay in bed ruminating on our relationship and from the perspective of many years on pondering what I could have done differently. I concluded there was quite a lot, though without too much rancour.

In the week before I had met with Whisky and he told me a story of the woman he was falling in love with. Like Tania she had come to him at the crucial time and told him she was likely to be heading back to London, where she had a house. Whisky had said nothing, neither for or against, and had sensed she was upset by this.

Over a beer I told him that was the worst thing he could have done. He needed to say something and, I thought, the best thing was to be honest with her: tell her how you feel, tell her how you don't want her to go, explain that you understand but want her to stay. I told him that more than anything else she was looking for reassurance. She wants to feel loved and cherished, she wants to know that it matters to you, and that her future is wrapped up in hers.

I had little doubt as I spoke that what I said was true - and as I did I realised the irony in the situation. I was advising him to do the thing I had not. Stupidly I had taken the (characteristically) selfless tack with Tania, had looked upon it objectively and sacrificed any feelings I might have in the service of what I thought was the greater good.

It might have made no difference at all, but I should have spoken from the heart, should have been unreasonable. I should have told her that I understand the dilemma but I don't want you to go. I should have told her I loved her and that her future was with me - be it here in Melbourne or in Singapore or anywhere else. I should have been true to what I felt; instead I was reasonable.

Lying in bed thinking that all these years later was almost liberating. I've long since recovered from my disappointment and any consideration of what might have been is no more than that now. I was glad to think it though because it was the truth revealed, and in its revelation was the proof that I have learned. that was a seminal relationship for me in a multitude of ways, and I look upon it now much as the relationship I had to have if I was to mature as a man. For all the pain I felt at the time it made me a better man. With that thought I fell asleep.

The next day I resolved to write to Tania. I was not sure if it was appropriate after all these years, but considered if she thought it not she would not respond to me. I wrote a simple email and sent it off. Within a couple of hours she had answered, how delightful to hear from you after all this time...

We exchanged a couple of further small messages and in those I learned she was back in Australia and that she had a 5 year old boy. That gave me pause to think in bed that night. This time it was to wonder at the things I have missed out on. Perhaps in another universe that boy would have been mine. I was taken aback. For a little while I felt it deeply, not her, not the boy who might have been, but rather the absence of what I might normally have expected for myself. I looked it was not there.

I woke and once more whatever I had felt the night previous was processed. Time to move on, I thought. I had been curious to hear of Tania again, to reconnect with her briefly, but our time was long ago and had long passed. In general I don't believe love can come twice with the same people. It springs up between two people in a time and a place made for it, nurtured by the environment you live in. It is an unlikely event in much the same way conception is, a million to one shot made possible by a string of unlikely events becoming so. It takes at that time and so can last forever - or fails and falls away into the past.

This is what this is: part of the past. We exchanged some nice emails and then I let it go. I was glad to have had the opportunity to speak with her again, and feel better for it - but it is to the future I must turn. One more stone turned.

Travelling back

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Last night I drove through the warm streets of suburban Melbourne back into a small part of a previous life.

I grew up in a place called Lower Plenty. It was a good place to live as a kid and I had great adventures. Every so often I would hop on the train with my mates and head into town to watch a movie. I remember that trip very well, repeated hundreds of times over the years, through Macleod, Rosanna, Eaglemont, Ivanhoe and so on. I remember occasions when we would hop into my Dad's car and head off, to visit my grandparents maybe, or to go to the footy in Essendon. Sitting in the car I would look out over the route slowly absorbing it, until it became second nature. Then one day I moved away and never returned and the memory faded, and even the thought of those days hardly recurred.

Last night I went to dinner at some friends living beside the railway line in Macleod. I've been before, but last night chose to go by another route. I cast my mind back and went by the roads I knew as a child, and driving again became nostalgically familiar to me. Stopped at some lights I glanced in the rear view mirror at the girl in the car behind, a battered red Japanese something, putting her make-up in the pause and on the way to some party. Then the lights changed.

I turned onto Upper Heidelberg Road before veering off onto the Lower version. I glanced around me at familiar landmarks, remembering times and conversations from the past. Passing Ivanhoe Grammar school I reflected how I very nearly went there. By now I was travelling by nose, enacting a long forgotten but seemingly preserved sense of direction. A couple of times I would pause remembering, then it would become clear to me.

I remembered those trips out of the suburb, and by extension remembered where they led to. Stopped at another set of lights I recognised the small shopping centre there and in a flash of memory remembered an occasion many years before when my grandparents - my Mum's parents - had picked me up from school with 2 weeks of holidays before me (what a joyous feeling that always was). I recalled we stopped at that very shopping centre on the way to their home, where I was to stay for a few nights. I remembered how waiting in the car I looked at the car beside us and the driver, and wondering at the days before me.

Then the lights changed again.

As it happens it was a night of nostalgia. Besides my friends I caught up with an old and dear friend I had worked with at Shell over 10 years ago, where we had all met. I walked in smiling and embraced Cheryl, 10 years my senior and a person I had always had a cheeky and familiar relationship with. It was like yesterday, and I found myself falling into the old bantering pattern teasing her as she fired back. It was a lovely night. We sat on the back decking in our shirt sleeves thinking what a good life this is, and how lucky we are really to have and to enjoy this. The sky darkened, it was warm, we laughed and talked and remembered, and then I drove back home through the dark and familiar streets.

Coming and going

I was in my kitchen making my morning coffee first thing while a few stray thoughts crossed my sleepy mind. I was in that state when nothing registers too deeply, when the day ahead is something vague and gladly so - lets think about things after coffee.

One of the stray thoughts was about Amy. I have not thought about her for months, and so after a moment the surprise of it pulled me up short. As my mind focussed I thought it must be near her birthday. I remembered her birthday party 3 years ago, and then remembered the terrible trip I made to Perth straight after it. Then I realised, or thought I did, that today is her birthday. How strange. And as I sipped my coffee I figured it was no accident that she popped into my head today. Though I was not consciously aware of it the fact of her birthday had lodged itself deep in my memory and like some reminder that flashes up on your computer screen the memory had made its way to the surface.

Last week I ran into an old flame in Camberwell. It always seems unexpected when it happens, and on this occasion I was so surprised it was only really when she had passed that I realised. S was a very attractive girl when I knew her, with reddish gold hair that fell straight and long like a waterfall of hair from her head. She had a good smile and a silly sense of humour we would spend hours playfully indulging. She looked like a model, and in fact did hand modelling on the side, something that always gave us cause for mirth, and excuses to speak about George and the hand model episode in Seinfeld. She was a nice person, sweet and good and fun.

I was on my way to an appointment on Thursday when out of the corner of my eye I spotted her. She had a smile on her face as if she had already seen and recognised me, but it became different as she remembered how things had ended between us - not bad, but awkward. By now I was past her and was only then registering her in my mind. She looked little different, older, perhaps a little too slender now, though attractive still, I thought she must work at the same as she did 10 years before, just around the corner.

They come and they go. I guess you're always going to bump into these memories occasionally, and I guess there's nothing terrible in it.

In my web

I wrote last night about that memory that back to me upon picking up de Montherlant's The Girls. I explained it as if it was a random recollection, yet I realise there was nothing random about it, and that my mind was only doing what it does best: recalling just one of the intricate pattern of associations we unknowingly create each and every moment.

Perhaps the second time I read The Girls was on a hunting trip far north of here, in NSW on the Darling River. The book I have is actually four books in one, and I would take a break between reading each instalment to read something else.Reading the book then from cover to cover might take months. Though it seems jarring reading a book about 1920's Paris in outback Australia is an almost perfect combination.

I recall that trip very well. I remember climbing into the crook of a large and sprawling river gum where I sat reading between going out into the bush. The river was low and slow, but the vegetation around it pretty gums of all descriptions with deep sunk roots and other natives. Away from the river it was red earth country littered with the bleached bones of long dead animals and with hardy scrub and stunted trees in the dry terrain.

It was dark by night and desperately cold - any water left uncovered overnight would be ice by morning. We would sit by the fire and drink and spin yarns, or else listen to one of my tapes with Otis Redding or Same Cooke crooning into the outback night. I recall fishing in the river and snaring a Murray Cod we cooked up that night, and another night we had emu schnitzel.

Somewhere amongst all that I read, and in so doing associated the book with a hunting trip which in turn was associated with another, later, trip, and in so doing associating itself with the story I wrote of last night.

I've spent the last couple of nights reading the book again. It is easy going, and much of it as I read familiar. It is not my intention to read it all again, but if I continue like this I may do it by stealth.

Reading it other associations are forced upon me, and perhaps this is why this book has resonated so strongly with me. The character of Andree Hacquebaut recalls to mind a woman I once knew. I'm sure I've told the story of my boss's wife, how she would give my boss letters to pass to me, her fascination with all I did and thought, wanting always to discuss the books I've been reading or the music I've been listening too; and how she effectively stalked me, on one occasion following me in her car as I walked down the street. She infuriated me. She was a naive woman herself into believing something that wasn't, much like Andree. It's a common problem after all so it should not surprise, yet there is much more to remind me. There were times I thought she was almost my opposite, and times I felt a kind of disgust with her.

Looking back I tend to think of her as someone who might use a lot of fine, high sounding words to describe something very simple. She seemed to view life through a prism dictated by what she had read or heard, via the pristine and romantic principles she had come to live by. The result of this was that she did not really live as you or I do. By her own choice she lived at one remove of the real stuff because she refused to engage - or even acknowledge - the nitty gritty realities of life.

This was very foreign to me. I could understand how one might want to put 'life' within some kind of intellectual context, but surely you had to know - to feel - life to do that? She was unwilling to do that, instead becoming a dilettante to real feeling, happy to postulate and ponder but not to experience.

Perhaps she liked me because I was her opposite. At that time I was seeking to learn, to understand a lot, but I lived a robust lifestyle she could only imagine. As I think back I think that was almost certainly part of it. I lived the sensual lifestyle that both scared and attracted her. There was some vicarious thrill at engaging with me that was the nearest thing she came to really living outside of her books and music and theatre. Perhaps she hoped to break free of her self-imposed limitations. Perhaps given time she might have become more adventurous, more confident. Perhaps I was her training wheels. But then, perhaps not.

I remember once asking her what the fuck she wanted from me? She laughed at that like a tourist amused, titillated almost, at the rustic manners of a local, but she couldn't answer me. Afterwards I wondered why I didn't just fuck some life into her, but the reality is I couldn't abide her.

All this run through my head like an unravelling thread as I read last night, and like a thread it led to other things I had long forgotten.

I remembered a very banal episode with a woman I didn't know on my bed in South Yarra, name unknown. Then I remembered another woman, someone I saw a few times before we went our separate ways. I remembered a cold winters night at home sitting in front of the TV and looking forward to watching a movie that was about to come on. She rang then, this woman, and asked me to come over for a fuck. I remember thinking, do I or don't I? Did I really want to miss the movie? Of course I went. There's always re-runs, but then sometimes a fuck is just a fuck.

I recalled another woman I later dreamt of. Joanne. She was more serious. One Christmas day I came home to find her message on my machine: I've left my husband. She was an attractive, vibrant woman who loved me and promised to conquer me. I was not so sure. I remember she wouldn't have sex with me for a couple of months, but when she decided to she wanted nothing else. Later we parted, later we had a very messy episode, and later still we became friends. I dreamt of her last night afterwards and it was her pussy I remembered as if I had taken a polaroid of it all that time ago and stuck it under my pillow. There's no point being coy: I can see it now.

Amid all this recollection I realised that I had much in common with Costals even if we are different. I have a million stories like these, and have known a lot of women over the journey. I've forgotten a lot. Like Costals I have always had a lot of women around me, but have always been very selective about who I get close to. I have used words to keep my distance whilst using words to keep them close. I can recall at least one woman saying to me something that Andree Hacquebaut said too Costals: you're too nice. And perhaps she was just as deluded as Andree. Because I have never completely engaged with most of these women it has never been difficult for me to manage the balancing act keeping them near though not too near. 

Writing it seems almost cold, though I have never felt myself to be that. By all accounts I am fun, sometimes charming, and mostly interesting - like Costals. And like Costals I have managed this from a genuine affection for women. My curse has always been that I did not feel enough when I wanted to, and could not pretend what was not there. All the same there is the sense of a spider in the corner of his web.

If it is any consolation I believe in karma, in the universe balancing. In my case the curse has always had a flip side: if I do not feel enough then I feel too much. That is true enough. When it rains for me it comes down in painful torrents. That's my story.

Memory fades...

When I wrote last night about "Moments of intensity, of intimate importance that slowly fade away into the past." I instinctively recalled this one moment many years ago when I was returning from a hunting trip in the hills. It was winter and I remember it had rained often while we were away. Driving back into Melbourne the sky was grey and low. The road was straight and sparse of traffic, and ahead was the city and home and all I had left there. Returning there was a sense of journey, the hunter home from the hill. I felt content, but glad to be going home.

Then I'm driving by Berni's place. It's Friday night, I've showered and changed my clothes and heading into town. On the way I detour by her place and place a card in her letterbox, extravagantly inviting her to dinner next week. This is a happy thing to do.

Then I am in the city at a bar amongst familiars. They are my old work colleagues, Grunter and Toopy, Royston was there too amid others I knew and strangers. I had moved on to another job and on arrival was the star turn, everyone wanting to catch up to hear the news and to buy me a drink. They are all in their suits while I am in jeans and carrying a 5 day beard. I am aware of this, feeling pleasantly separate, blood not long washed from my hands and the knowledge of another world safe in me. The night goes on, conversations occur, one person I tell off, and all the while there is in the back of my mind the remembrance of slipping that card into Berni's letterbox, and the knowledge she must have read it by now. Can I go home to her I wonder. I yearn to do that, to cut out early and to knock on her door and lay with her in the dark muttering to her what I had seen and felt, what I had thought, holding her and feeling it in my bones as she answers me, telling me of her week, what has happened...

Of course we had that dinner a week later, and much happened besides, keenly felt at the time, but now slowly fading away into the past...

Gone and still to come

Friday night I went out drinking (La Buena Vita and Cabinet), which culminated in a midnight feast at Crown gulping down KFC and Krispy Kreme donuts. In other words, a typical, unhealthy Friday night.

On Saturday I was content to take it easy. The sky was low with cloud, it was cool, and through the morning a few showers passed by, which became late in the afternoon a heavy, hushed rain. I stayed in bed late and when I got up I tended to the usual Saturday chores and routines.

In the afternoon I set myself a task. I have about 300 odd CD's crammed tightly together in the draw of my entertainment unit. There are few I play with any regularity, and even those are rare. I'm almost ashamed to admit that most of my music is now heard in mp3 format or something similar, in my iPod or iPhone, through the iTunes on my desktop or streamed to remote speakers. CD's seem very old hat these days. And so I decided to clean out the drawer, toss the CD's I don't want (giveaways, prizes, ill-considered purchases), pack away the CD's I never play, and generally make space in the drawer for the CD's I listen to, and the growing collection of DVD's that don't have a home.

There are worse jobs than this. I sat on the coffee table in front of the unit sifting through the CD's putting them into different piles while outside it was cold and dreary. I played an audiobook as I worked, a 'young adult' book as it happens by John Marsden, Tomorrow, When the War Began (pretty good). Time passed quickly and easily as I paused to decide which pile a CD belonged to, or stopped to consider a CD I had long forgotten.

One of the piles was of CD's I wanted to listen to again for olds times sake, and possibly to rip to my iTunes library. Towards evening I took these CD's into my study and began sorting through them on my Mac.

One CD I bought many years ago was by Rickie Lee Jones. Though it was an unusual CD for me I had searched for it a couple of months ago wanting to play a song from it. The CD is Pop Pop, a collection of covers of classic songs. It's a better CD than you might think, though for me now the CD is inextricably associated with a time in my life. It has sentimental value.

That's one of the things we love about music. How it frames our lives, our consciousness. It is great in itself, but of course there is a lot we come to associate with particular moments, or eras in our life. Music is a memory carrier, we need only hear certain songs to be transported back to other times.

That's how it was for me again on Saturday. As I played Rickie Lee Jones and listened to her sweet, slightly slurred delivery I remembered Berni. In particular I recalled a bright, warm Saturday afternoon when I lay on my couch in the early nineties - '91 perhaps? - and listened to this very CD. As I lay there I thought of Berni. Earlier in the day we had met at a house warming party of a colleague of ours, a Canadian girl called Maria and her husband Terry, at their new home in Burwood. 

We knew hardly anyone there and so Berni and I stuck together. Our relationship was always so delicate, and in this period we had slowly begun coming out of one of the difficult phases where she pulls away, uncertain and afraid of what she felt, and of the perils of commitment. She was bright though on this day sitting by my side in the bright sunshine, playful and cheeky and at her best. I was relieved to see this and delighted, and responded in the same way. Like this we bat things backwards and forwards between us in the style that always had other people smiling and shaking their heads at the wit and inventiveness and sheer affection that bounced between us.

What was notable about this day was after all these months of fraught relationship negotiations she slipped and made comment about when 'we are married'. I said nothing and made no sign that anything unusual had occurred, but I was secretly thrilled. This was a breakthrough of sorts, an acknowledgement by her of our relationship. What was significant was that she said it aloud, had made some sort of public commitment she could not rescind.

Once said though more came. We discussed what it would be like and what we would do and pondered what the children would look like. I went along with this gently, not pushing too hard or too fast, not revealing any of my own excitement. I acted as if everything was perfectly normal, afraid of giving her fright.

I think that's what I thought about on my couch as I listened to Rickie Lee Jones. There was one song which caught me more and which in the weeks and months after as our relationship fluctuated that I found myself coming back to again and again. Comin' Back To Me is a melancholy seeming tune that seemed to seep into me as I lay there. I didn't know what was to come. I didn't even know what I should think of our conversation hours earlier. All I thought was how I cherished her and wanted to hold her close to me, and shelter her; and how complex she was. The day dwindled into dusk and I lay there not wanting to get up from where I lay, not wanting anything to shift for those moments.

That doesn't happen though. Things shift and change always. At some point after that we argued and came together again and argued then for the last time. We shared good times in my home and hers and there came a time when I believed that the promise of that day was about to be realised, only to find a day later that it was all over. In time we parted and never saw each other again. Then years later I heard of her death, something I can never forget.

I remembered all that as I sat at my desk playing this long-forgotten music.

That might be end of the story, but it isn't.

I went out yesterday to a party at my Mums. It was surprisingly good and I got home at about 7pm with a few more wines under my belt. For the next few hours I lay on the couch and flicked through the TV stations. At some point I happened across Notting Hill, and stopped.

For a start the scenes in bustling Notting Hill reverberated in me for reasons I'll explain shortly. Then of course Hugh Grant meets Julia Roberts and though it's very unlikely they share a moment. Most blokes at that point would have accepted it for what it was, taken it as great story to tell the mates down the pub. Of course in the movie Hugh Grant contrives to meet again the unattainable movie star, and of course, in the way of movies, ends up landing her. No doubt they live happily ever after.

As I watched I felt my excitement grow as if this meant something. Here was a message or a meaning.

On Saturday morning I had woken to find an email waiting for me from a head-hunter inviting me to apply for this you beaut job in London for double the money I was earning in my last job and with a 40% bonus. My first thoughts were sounds great, but...why don't these jobs come up in Melbourne? It didn't seem feasible, and though I ruminated on it over the rest of the weekend that seemed pretty much it.

Seeing this movie re-awakened that possibility. I could be living in those streets, I thought. Why not? What is there to lose? It dawned on me then how quickly things can change. We never know what's around the corner, and even when things seem darkest it does not take much to light things up again. I watched Hugh Grant in his clumsy pursuit of Julia Roberts and I admired his persistence - he lived the dream, and though it's only a movie, he got it. That's the thing, you have to for it. You have to believe in the dream and live it.

When I heard of Berni's death and found she had killed herself I was profoundly moved, as you might expect. There is one abiding outcome from that which may seem odd. I grieve for Berni, I loved her with all my heart and even all those years later she had only to call on me and I would be there to help her. That was not to be. Her life seems sad and unfulfilled, and I was part of it. I have felt ever since that I have to live for her as well, that in some way I had to make-up for what happened. 

Anything is possible. You can't curl up in a ball and hope things will right. And I don't think you should settle. I picked up the phone and called the friend I was out with on Friday night. She has been struggling one way or another in recent times. I told her what I thought. Don't give up. Keep believing, keep doing. She began to cry. I reiterated how quickly things can change, and that soon enough we might be laughing at how things turned out. And then, as she prompted me, I told her how it might be in every detail, how it might happen, realistic, but sweet.

As for me, I'll have a crack at the London job. Hard to believe there isn't anyone over there as well qualified as I am, and I don't expect it to happen, but, who knows. Live the dream, right?

Old dogs and old masters

As the sun eases towards the horizon the dog walkers come out. There are many dogs in this neighbourhood, and many parks for them to frolic in. There is a fellowship between dog walkers. You smile and nod your head to those you come across, members of the same club, familiar with all the same challenges...and happily so.

Amongst all the dogs in the area there are old dogs too, slowly, stiffly walking behind their old master as they follow familiar trails, growing old together. There are times this seems a poignant sight, a deep and abiding relationship tailing off towards its end.

I am reminded as I watch of my grandfather, how each night he would walk their dog, a border collie called Lassie. He was a gentle, reserved man, very old school when looked at from the halcyon days we live in now, the product of other times just as I am the product of times since.

I spent many school holidays staying with my grandparents in their home in Strathmore. I remember the pinched face of my grandmother, always on the go as if she were driven to keep doing, a sharp mind behind what was occasionally a sharp personality. She adored me, and I expected no less. I remember her apple crumble made from the apples my grandfather grew in their suburban backyard. He was a clever gardener, splicing together the shoots of different apple varieties so that they grew on the one tree. He There was  a quince tree too, and an almond tree in the corner. There was always a lot of fruit.

Year after year I went there, growing each year as determined by the mark on the wall my grandfather would make. Besides my grandmother he always seemed slow, measured, almost wise in his reserve. His face was red, I remember, a pleasant looking man with a full head of lush hair, and always well turned out.

I remember how when I stayed we would walk the dog quietly together, down the pathway cut between streets and to the park - what was it called? He's long dead now, and so to my grandmother, and I dare say the apple trees and quince from their yard in Strathmore have been cleared since by some young family looking for space for their children to play in.

More to do yet

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Thirty years ago my dad got a transfer with his job from Melbourne to Sydney. We all uplifted from rustic Lower Plenty where we lived then to the leafy and upper-crust north shore of Sydney. We settled in Gordon in a large and lovely tri-level house built on the side of a hill. My sister and I joined different schools - I went to Turramurra High School, where I quickly settled in.

We spent about 18 months in Sydney before my dad was transferred back to Melbourne. Back home we settled into the same house and, for me, the same school. And from there I settled into my Melbourne which has, barring brief interludes in Sydney and Brisbane and regular trips abroad, continued ever since.

A couple of weeks ago back in Sydney we took the opportunity to re-visit some of our old haunts from back then. Quite remarkably my sister had not been in Sydney since we left in 1980. Unlike my own her memories of that time remained pristine because they had not been diluted by visits since. In her mind and memory Sydney remained the place she had loved then and left in 1980.

I've made the sentimental journey to these places a few times since. Over the years I've hopped in a mates car - a mate I met at school then - and driven by our old home and checked out the school I went to. My sister had not planned this trip, but once in town was determined to hit the road and re-visit her memories of that time.

It was a Saturday, a lovely clear, warm, Spring like day. We crossed the bridge and drove through North Sydney towards the northern suburbs. It's a trip I've made dozens of times in the years since leaving on my various trips north, but for my sister this was the first time for 30 years. I sat in the car and gazed out at what was familiar to me while she exclaimed at sights that became familiar to her again as the memories returned. As she spoke I found myself looking out upon the scene as if I saw through her eyes. Though it was familiar it became fresh again: and in becoming that my own memories that been submerged or overlooked made their way to the surface.

There were many memories, of the cinema in Roseville I would go to with my mates; the Green Gate hotel we would occasionally visit though I was under-age; past the familiar shopping centres where once there was a restaurant we went to; past the old church that remained unchanged, and then down St John Woods road near to where we used to live.

My sister spoke first. I can't remember it being this pretty, she said. It was pretty too, well presented cottages and lovely homes amid over-arching trees. I thought something of the same, and reflected it was probably little different - it was just as children we did not acknowledge the beauty that as adults seemed so obvious.

Was there not a golf course down there I said at one point, the memories crowding back. I had played golf there every so often, a straight hitter I could beat the average weekend hacker (as I would beat my adult self) knocking the ball around the undulating course (undulating in my memory at least).

We drove up and to and stopped at the house we used to live at 25 Vale Street. It seemed unchanged for all the years. An imposing home at the crest of a steep rise and set amongst terraced gardens and the greenery that was a feature of this area - over the back was a national park. I recalled as I looked upon it dad's old Commodore he would park in the car-port halfway up the rise; and how each morning Ben our golden lab would fetch the plastic wrapped SMH from the road and bring it up to us. I remembered how the lorikeets would alight on the large balcony off the loungeroom. If I closed my eyes I could imagine the exact layout of the house, and my room at the top of it. And I remembered the next door neighbours, the Meggitts, for whom I would occasionally baby-sit watching the Winners on the ABC late at night, and the back-yard pool they put in I helped to dig out.

We went from there to my sisters primary school. I knew the route instinctively, and my sister was not far behind, recalling the stops and starts of the old school bus. As we drove towards our high school I looked out upon the houses and thick bush on either side of the winding and beautiful Comenara Parkway. Every day coming and going I would look out upon that, oblivious mainly unless I was looking out for a girl.

I have visited THS maybe 2-3 times in the intervening years, but don't recall experiencing quite the same sense of deja vu as I did on this occasion. We walked through the quadrangles a group of us, my sister, her husband and little girl, my dad and soon after a friend of mine. I looked about me thinking how little had changed. It seemed odd to think that 30 years had passed since I was a student there. The place had not aged, and the only difference I could discern was a new multi-purpose building. That and the trees I used to climb were now bigger.

My sister I think felt something similar. We ambled between the buildings casting our eyes one direction and then another like tourists at a historic site. There's the room I had Maths in, one of us might say. Do you remember Miss Thursby? We remembered all their names one by one, and the moments associated with them returned to us fresh. I remembered so much.

My memories were tinged with a distant melancholy, not because they were sad or even because they were lost. I stood there thinking how 30 years ago I may have stood in the very same spot. Around me would have been my friends talking and around us the wider school playing and talking and running and laughing between classes. I imagined myself as I might have been then, and then saw myself as I am now, 30 years on. Where did it all go?

Thirty years ago the future was something vaguely in the distance. Like most kids I lived in the moment, but when I ever stopped to consider what lay ahead I had a sense of excitement at all the things I would see and do, all the great things I would experience. The future was undeniably golden, and all mine.

Now I stood there 30 years older and thinking the future I envisaged then is now 30 years less than what it was, and 30 years gone. I asked myself, what have I learned in that time? What have I achieved, what is it that I have felt? Has it lived up to what I expected? I felt a pensive intensity as I considered this. How do you measure these things, how are they to be tallied?

I might not have felt this as keenly, or at all, if I hadn't gone to Sydney for a funeral. It's natural, I think, to consider the end of things when you have stood by and witnessed a funeral, listened to the eulogies and the memories and felt everything wrapped up in those few words, that ceremony. This is how it ends - but what comes before it?

We left, my sister thrilled by the memories while I was puzzled by them. It was a weekend so the school was empty but for some mysterious Asians in the old tuck shop area and in a couple of the classrooms. I could imagine something ghostly in it, the ghosts of old memories, and schoolmates now passed. And yet I knew on Monday it would be alive again with kids now as we were then, and everything ahead of them as it was us, and happily oblivious of it.

In the end I felt something tender. Regardless that time is a part of me as it is my sister. And while 30 years have since perhaps, there is 30 years and more ahead of us. The journey continues, the accounting can wait.