Things are starting to take on the form of normalcy at 2RPH. Last Wednesday I had a reader present in my own studio with me, rather than sitting the other side of a pane of glass. Being able to pass comments or articles across the desk certainly beats having everything sorted in advance, which can be restrictive at times. The lengths of articles, the speed of the reader and the time constraints of each segment mean that quite a lot of fine-tuning is required in real time, something that is far more difficult if you have to walk between studios. In fact, it is quite impractical.

I have to say that, of all my jobs volunteering over the years, this is probably my favourite. There is something dynamic about going live to air, no matter that we have a job to do, with all the chance occurrences that can crop up. Last week part of a studio roof fell in while during a live program. No-one was hurt but the program had to be continued from another studio, with some sort of explanation for the audience. 

Little glitches occur all the time - a wrong button pushed, a reader beset by a bout of coughing and so forth. I heard of one program that never went to air because the presenter forgot to flick a switch in the control room. Their audience was themselves! Another issue of course is 'dead air', long unexplained silences that, we are told, are quite unprofessional. I am very keen on avoiding the latter and so, plan every segment in advance. Better flick to a sponsor or station message than leave the listener wondering if they should spin the dial.

Today is such a ripe peach of autumn. The day is warm and sunny. Many of our trees have shed a goodly portion of their leaves, though I am waiting for the maple by the fence to begin turning. Still, brown, yellow and red foliage clings like so many survivors of a shipwreck, and at every moment another one drifts on the tide. Magpies and cockatoos inspect the fallen, fling them with their beaks, then march on.

I have always thought autumn is the most glorious time to be alive. If life were to have any glory, then this would it, and who could complain. Sure summer and spring get all the attention - they are the sexy seasons apparently - but my heart is in the fall. 

I was reading Mary Oliver's lovely "The Summer Day", though this might seem an odd place to bring it up, when the last two lines reminded me of another poem, though I could not bring the title to mind.

"Tell me, what is it that you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

It is not a sentiment reserved only for summer, rather for any time when you are deep in reflection, or engaged very much in the moment. What a world of tiresome distractions we live in, where the act of living is constantly upended by trivia and its accursed bedfellows!

I am not sure what I will do with the remainder of my 'wild and precious life' though it is food for yet more thought. I won't procrastinate, just abide with that which comes and goes, time's endless little deliveries.

Some Lines Discomposed on the 7.42

'The train sways and shunts
And long into the distance,
A city rises, all oblong steps,
As poor as any patch of weeds
Its saps the life on which it feeds
It must come down.'

Today is Anzac Day, a topic I annually write about though often as not, think about. I was lost in thought last week having read a story about the Covid restrictions for today's commemoration when I glanced out the window and there was the skyline. The lines above followed quickly thereafter and I meant to write a full poem but lost interest.

Sydney is a very different place to that which greeted the first Anzac marches after The Great War. Old photos show the care that went into planning for buildings and structures in what is now the CBD. Many of these are now lost, replaced by glass and concrete shards that are unrecommended by any single feature, except their uniform awfulness.

Still, this is a day to remember other kinds of losses. Don't get me wrong, I don't buy all the saccharine guff that comes wrapped up in flags and political must-speak. I have read too many soldiers diaries and accounts to realise that many young men were motivated by things other than honour and sacrifice.

But that is surely the point. Once you were in the thick of it, no matter why you enlisted, you had no choice but to step up and do the job. And what a terrible job it was. And what a bleeding loss for a young nation.

"at the going down of the sun and in the morning,

we will remember them."

Lest We Forget.

I engage in a few activities to ward off the potential loss of memory function. Crosswords, scrabble, hand-eye coordination games and so forth form a daily regime to keep the wolf from the door. In addition, I've always been fairly sporty, though recent injuries have kept me housebound. Cycling is starting to fill that gap. I can report that my new electric-assist bicycle is doing well.

But nothing can stop an impairment that occurs in addition to the normal ageing process as a result a say, a genetic predisposition, or trauma. I have mentioned before how unreliable my memory of the 1970's has become. But just recently, I have noticed some alarming gaps that I can locate in the 1990's, such as completely forgetting students I have taught (to my embarrassment) or even looking through photos from the time and drawing a blank.

Once again, the time period for this phenomena is quite selective, because my recall of the 1980's is vivid. I ran into a student from my first year of teaching and remembered her name and details about her almost perfectly. Fast forward ten years and I am forgetting even my best students.

It's puzzling and frustrating, though it does not impact in any way of my capacity in the present. Perhaps it's time for a check-up.

I have been wondering recently if I haven't always been a bit of an old fogey. One the one hand I have happily embraced ideas that were at the edge of cultural thinking - after all, I was a performing arts teacher given to many avant-garde adventures. On the other hand, I have an old person's perspective on much that is everything else.

I remember as a young man arriving in England, only to be told by my somewhat alarmed relatives that I was an 'old head on young shoulders.' I worried too much about the world, they said. Being interested in international politics, fretting over the arms race - these were things best left to the middle-aged.

There is often a kind of tension within me between opposing elements - the sacred and the profane, progressive and conservative and so forth, that leaves me a little breathless. I don't always know where to plant my feet, or what positions I should stake out. Why do I have a copy of The Economist in one hand, and The Guardian Weekly in the other?

A few days ago on the way to Sydney a couple in front of me on the train were chatting. As the skyline of the CBD came in to view, the man said to his partner, 

"Just look at that view."

He meant it as a complement, but I thought, 'Yes, look and weep.'

Yesterday I was reading the Newcastle Herald live over the air when I came upon a story about a repurposed local government building that was considered a masterpiece in the 'Brutalist' style. As brutalism goes, and generally it is plain awful, it wasn't a bad looking building, though I would not have stopped to take a picture. And yet I love a lot of modern art.

You see, there is tension, born out of inconsistency, that I cannot get rid of. 

And on the subject of poignant remembrances, this verse from St. Vincent Millay confronts the unavoidable, though entirely unwelcome trigger, for much that is tender, if only in recollection.

"I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned."

Whether we are resigned to it or not is surely the point, though fighting the acceptance of oblivion and all those who are cast into it may not be a choice after all. 

"Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind."

"Dirge Without Music" is a lovely, sad poem, to my way of thinking, something I might like to have written, had I the skill. 

 Rondeau

Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in:
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I'm growing old but add,
Jenny kissed me.

Leigh Hunt  1838

A surprise first kiss from a lover or beloved is remembered with greater intensity that much else besides.

During my time living and working in Japan (oh, not this again!-ed.) I often journeyed into Osaka to buy text books from Books Kinokuniya in the Hankyu Railway Station in Umeda. I could have ordered through our school secretary and sometimes did, but when we were choosing new texts or were tired of the old, there was nothing beating thumbing through an actual copy in your hand. I would probably have dispensed with textbooks altogether, but our Japanese students insisted on them. So be it. I tended to build lessons out from them, using them as a starting point.

Yesterday I went into town with Ann and JJ, hobbling as I do from place to place, when a sentimental notion struck me and I and popped into the The Galleries Kinokuniya, adjacent the QVB. I had almost forgotten what a magnificent book shop it is, the kind where you wander slightly gobsmacked around the massively stocked shelves. It was chockers with eager shoppers too.

I was in the ESL section (force of habit) when I took this picture through a glass pane. Lovely! What an autumn day is was.

I read a lot of nostalgic guff about how good the good old days were. This is particularly popular with that generation who grew up in the 1970's, the tail-end of the baby boomers. I am one of that group.

Invariably, posts include long-gone phenomena like milk bars, record players, tape decks, kids running in the streets, Holdens and Fords, folks sitting in front of black and white four-channel-only TV's, and so on. Often there will be a meme with some sarcastic remark about how the current crop would be hopelessly out of their depth in such a paradise.

Now, readers of this blog (surely none - ed.) will know that I have a black spot in my memory when it comes to the first half of the only-too-heavenly seventies. But I know enough about human nature and I read enough about that period to realise that this is just another manifestation of a very old circumstance. The old have forever pilloried the young and bemoaned how change has ruined everything.

Now sure, the world we confront today seems more out of control than it once did. The Cold War had it's own curious certainties that made it palatable, though not for me. The lack of anything other than a fixed phone line meant people had to make the effort to see each other. Gossip in the street or at a friend's house passed for what today is a flood on social media. Everything seems faster and because of innovations in technology, there is a whole lot more information coming from everywhere.

So there are grounds for thinking that there is a kind of overload taking place when people hark back to 'simpler times'. I can't blame them for it but I would argue strongly the case for developing discernment, the capacity to winnow the wheat from the chaff. I love the instant information I can get through the web, but I remain alert to it's accuracy and provenance. I cast a wary eye over much that passes for news - some of it out-and-out infotainment - and generally try to keep my wits about me.

Become discerning and you will worry less and live more in the present. There are lots of things about the 1970's that I could joyfully list, some of which are now lost. The same can be said of now - human nature doesn't change - and one day in the future, extinction events permitting - today's young will mourn a similar loss, if only for want of another pair of tinted glasses.

After yesterday's cheery post, I thought I would make a short initial report on my new bike, the Himo C20. Ordinarily, I would not have bought a bicycle with an electric motor, but given the state of my limbs, I had little choice. I needed help with the hills and climbs, of which there are many in the Blue Mountains.

Firstly, the bike is quite heavy compared with my alloy mountain bike. The electric motor in the rear hub and the battery in the cross-frame probably account for 6 kilos. The steel wheels don't help either.

After getting used to the bikes setup (digital readout, gears, power assist system) it was time for the road test. After a few days of short rides (5-7kms), it's clear that the C20 lives up to at least part of the advertising hype. With the exception of huge hills, the inclines really are a breeze. I avoid the former whilst joyfully indulging the latter. You can be as lazy or as fitness inclined as you wish by simply adjusting the power and gear settings. You can turn the power off altogether and just use human propulsion.

Here is a photo I took just a little while ago after a second outing. She is becoming more and more enjoyable to ride.

Suppose I presented you with a newspaper front page for today, April 1st, which had the following headlines.

"Thousands of Nuclear Warheads Primed and Ready."

"The Sixth Mass Extinction Accelerating."

"Climate Change to Wreak Havoc on Cities"

"Worse Pandemics than Covid Predicted"

I am pretty sure that you would think it was an April Fool's joke. But the sad truth is that each of these headlines and their accompanying stories would be grounded in fact. People can try to deny facts or come up with outlandish conspiracy theories to deflect them, but the facts and their pesky consequences will still be there.

And that's no joke. I wish it were otherwise.