We took JJ down to Darling Harbour this afternoon to join her friends on a harbour cruise and fireworks spectacular. She is not likely to forget it. Back home, the house was like an oven and even now, it feels like someone is smelting iron just around the corner.

I will retire before midnight, not counting its passing as of any consequence. But the entertainment and explosions are a nice thing for the kids and the tourists. They speak volumes, also, about the Emerald City.

Happy New Year! May the next decade auger better fortunes for life on Earth.

The months long street protests in Hong Kong, shocking as they are to outsiders, might well provide a kind of beacon to those young people who are terrified about climate change. For some time now there have been largely peaceful protests in Australia, with a few outlying acts of civil disobedience. But thus far they have failed to sway the opinion of the Federal Government, whose mantra of growth and fiscal rectitude remain its only dismal rejoinder. That, and the irrelevant notion that we are only minor emitters of carbon, comprise the piss-poor response from this supine generation of politicians. It is a wonder that younger generations have been so peaceful in their protests.

But that may change. If you feel your very life is threatened by the inaction of your elders, nay, that they are complicit in over-riding both the science and the legitimate fears of millions, then I think that there is every possibility that the nature of protest will change. Young people are equipped with the knowledge and skills that could make a campaign of industrial and economic sabotage plausible and potentially devastating. I do not advocate it - my methods are peaceful - but I understand that groundswell of feeling that might unleash it.

Listen up in Canberra, and elsewhere too!

This time, thirty years ago, a group of teachers and students from Castle Hill HS had already embarked on a six week tour of the UK and Europe. They were a performing arts group comprising senior students and staff, who had been working for almost two years at both fundraising for the trip and developing and rehearsing material to perform. It was a fairly unique undertaking in scope and daring but it was very successful. The performances (a mixture of performance art, mime, short sketches and story-telling) were adaptable for a range of age groups - the same show could be tweaked and performed in the same space before an adult, high school or primary school audience - and also left room for improvisation if needed.

I raise these ancient facts because the other day I stumbled upon my diary from the trip, which set me to thinking. Where were all the students now? I'll wager that most of them went on to successful lives, these six weeks having given them a chance to grow from children into young adults. I wondered too what had become of the others who were so important on this trip. I had lost touch with my two colleagues (both remarkable educators in their own distinct way) when I moved schools at the end of 1991. That is just what happens. My thoughts also flew to another gentleman who was significant during this time, the coach driver, Barry.

Barry had been flown in from the UK when our original driver was found to be unfit to continue. I am pretty sure that he gave up his Christmas to take command of the coach and steer us from Switzerland to Austria to Germany to The Netherlands. And then, around the UK. In the course of doing so, he became a companion. We had dinner and drinks together, shared a room on one occasion and talked often. I tended to sit at the very front of the bus in that seat that is adjacent the driver, the one that gives a spectacular view out the large front windscreen. So, we came to be the front-end boys, so to speak. I was sad when his duties came to an end and I think he was too.

But, whilst searching FB yesterday, I found the same Barry, alive and well in Stoke-on-Trent. I sent a message and I hope that this might be a happy reunion for us, after thirty years. Who knows?

Barry at the helm



My younger self at the Firth of Forth Bridge.

I was disappointed to learn the other day that my step-daughter JJ was subjected to a racist rant. She was travelling home by train from the city on Christmas Eve with a friend and the two were chatting quietly in Thai. I know that they would have been speaking quietly because this is her default setting and her friend from school is equally shy. Apparently a man in hi-res(what else?) took umbrage and told them to speak only in English. He added that this was doubly important because it was Christmas Eve.

So the remark was both racist and stupid, two conditions that are often quite comfortable with each other. It is a shame that I was not present because I would have taken the matter up vigorously, and to his cost.

Being a foreigner in another country is difficult enough. The times I experienced racism in Japan (not often, but now and then) were humiliating and bewildering in equal measure. We should look beyond our skin colour or nationality - they are accidents of birth. Alas, it seems that no measure of education can inure a person against these kinds of lapses. Fear of The Other is still strong and may grow stronger given the mileage that populists get from invoking such fears.

But, meanwhile, let us all appeal to our better natures.


the silence
between his hockey stories...
a banana
thrown on the ice
to trip a black player

Chenou Lui

Like a great many yuletide traditions, Boxing Day was invented by the Victorians. It has nothing whatsoever to do with pugilism, but rather, as a day on which servants took home boxed presents from their masters to give to their family. It was a charitable gesture - the rich would give presents to the poor at Christmas, or, at least, the day after, which they had off. This probably emerged from a sense of duty, both Christian and civic, attitudes which informed so much of this period.

Boxing Day today has lost the meaning but retained the name. It might be better to call it Bargain Day, since it has become yet another excuse to go shopping and buy more things. In fact, it is the biggest retail day of the year. You know where I am going with this, so I will say no more.

Outside of the Christian Churches, very little remains of the actual Christmas celebration. Yes, there are still carol singing events, concerts with Christmas themes and TV programs that touch upon the original intent, but for the most part, this is forgotten. It is simply a time for retailers to tempt you to open your wallets or rack up debt on credit cards or worse (such as payday lending), and spend. Then spend some more, no matter what. More recently, the festival has been invaded by foodies and their sybarite friends.

On Monday night at midnight at a large shopping mall in Sydney, a dozen or so people were crushed and five ended up in hospital after balloons filled with gift cards were released from the ceiling. The intention, of course, was to promote the shopping season with a fun give-away. But it ended, sadly, in a crushing melee of shoppers desperate to get their hands on a prize.

I think this sums up what Christmas has become, and why the Churches should try to reschedule the whole event to another time of the year. Let the pagans have their traditional winter festival back, allow that to become a handmaiden to consumerism, then quietly go back to basics.

So on Christmas Eve, I leave you with this poem by another of my favourite poets, Thomas Hardy.

Merry Christmas and Peace on Earth!

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

the toad fire squats -
patient on haunches for wind and heat,
bloodying the moon

Black gum-leaves fell from the sky yesterday. They were whole, still veined and intact with those characteristic galls on the surface, but entirely scorched. They must have been subject to an incinerating heat momentarily before being rapidly ejected by an huge updraft high above the fire-ground, than carried by the prevailing westerlies into towns dozens of kilometres away. I haven't seen the likes of them before - ashes, embers and dust, sure - but never whole leaves. It speaks to the intensity of the fires and the weather that we have such a dismal rain, so wholly unwelcome.

They are spooky too, coming unbidden, as they do, from scenes of chaos and destruction. They drop like omens of the calamity we are bringing on ourselves. Of all the threats that might bring homo sapiens undone, and these vary from war to famine to disease, or cosmic interventions like asteroids and gamma ray bursts, it is human rapacity and short-sightedness that may ultimately do us in. I hope not, but how much hoping can a man have? That well is almost dry.

Tomorrow has been gazetted as a catastrophic day for fire in NSW. As noted in my last post, we are surrounded by gigantic blazes on at least two sides, both of which have grown since my last mapping of them. A catastrophe is a very serious matter, at the higher end of that hill named disaster, so for that reason I would quibble over the use of the word. It suggests not only that something very bad can happen but also that it is imminent. People are panicked when they should be merely concerned and alert to any potential danger. I think the designation extreme is quite sufficient, but then, who am I to argue.

Ann wants to go to the temple at Annandale tomorrow and I have an extra shift announcing a program at 2RPH in the afternoon. So we will be heading out early (if the trains are running) and will hopefully get back in the evening to a house still standing and in good order, presumably. Fires, in hot and windy conditions, often create their own weather and so, can be unpredictable. The firies are exhausted from weeks of battling multiple conflagrations that seem to have no end, under circumstances that are exceedingly difficult. We owe them a gratitude that goes beyond our ability to express.

Smoke is hanging over the Blue Mountains like a foul mist, insinuating its way into every cranny. Even though all our windows were shut, I awoke this morning to the sharp hint of smoke in the air. Looking outside, it was difficult to make out the roadway and beyond, our neighbour's house appeared to be floating on a thin cloud.

It is no news, of course, that we are ringed by fires at many points of the compass. To the north, a massive fire at Gosper's Mountain squats like a giant toad just north of the Bell's Line of Road. To the south, a huge conflagration at Green Wattle Creek threatens havoc. Given the right conditions of heat and wind, both of these fires could go rogue through the vulnerable ridge-line of townships that comprise the bulk of the Blue Mountains population.

There is no getting away from it. When you live in a national park, then the risks and the benefits are symbiotic.

Anyway, X marks our approximate location here in Hazelbrook. For better or worse, here we go.

Books have a way about them that tell stories that other media like kindles and tablets do not. Apart from their contents, which can be replicated, a book has a personal history that is apparent in its construction and use - how and when it was read, where it was kept, who owned it and where it has been since. School texts are different but essentially still tell that same story, albeit under different conditions. When I was teaching, books in our faculty typically had a school stamp inside the front cover with a list of the names of students who had used the book. The list usually grew longer as the book grew tattier and more prone to graffiti and other misuses.

Yesterday I received a second hand copy of Larkin's The Less Deceived from the UK. My original copy had gone walkabout and rather than buy a new one, I went for pre-loved, as they say in the motor trade. The book was in good condition, about 25 years old and had a tell-tale plastic laminate cover that is often a clue to where it has come from. Inside the front cover was, yes, a school stamp and a single name in the entry section. I am not going to reveal the name of the school or the student, which would be unfair without consent, except to say that the school is an independent school in Surry (a large pile in beautiful grounds) and the student is now a well-known London socialite.

I found this out in a few minutes thanks to Mr Google and toyed with the idea of sending the former student a message on Facebook (she has at least two separate pages). Then I thought the better of it, for what would a wealthy London gal(and former reality TV star) want with such information? She probably thought Larkin was an old fuddy-duddy. Then again, after a quarter of a century of adult life, a messy divorce and children, well maybe she would like to have another read. I don't know and I am not going to find out.

Bushfire

Shirtless he came gently down
To where the furthest boundary
Met the fire-ground, then crouched
To hold the still warm, floating
Knuckle-dry earth,
And poke the entrails
Of a bike.
There he found
The ghost-shadow of a tyre,
And shards of fencing
Laid like funeral bones
In smashed patterns
About an endless pyre.
The air, a fluffy screen of ash,
Seemed like incense to the
The puncturing screams ,
A rising sense that something lived
Still in the shattered space,
Something between
A life and a death.

It came on fast they said,
Roared like hell’s own train unfurled,
No time for thought, or breath
Just ignition and the foot flat down,
The giant heat and race to
Be somewhere unburning.
So on returning, there was a
Kind of second death, an
Untrod alien land, seeming,
Making unbelief much easier
Than believing.

I know quite a few smart people, even some who come close to being brilliant. But I have to say, for a mixture of practical and theoretical knowledge, it is hard to find better than my skin doctor. This is the fellow that I go to twice annually for a skin cancer check, the same who has wielded a canister of liquid nitrogen above my quivering skin, on occasions. He is a good doctor and I have asked him many specialised medical questions and seriously, he seems to know everything. He is a polymath and also, I found out only today, a poet too.

In fact we spent most of the consultation discussing poetry and he produced a volume of verse, which he kindly presented to me. How many doctors do you know who whip out their Collected Verse after a physical examination? I know of no other. He claims as an influence, Charles Bukowski, a German/American poet and novelist but I suspect the voice in his work is entirely his own.

Here is a short one.

Architect

Let me survey
Your every boundary
Line nook and cranny

Lets compare plots

These crazy properties
Of our love