Jim’s Invitation

(A piece written earlier this year).

 had not written to Jim, that I could recall, for him to ever send me anything in return. More to the point he passed away in 1980 so I thought the spidery scrawl on the expensive, semi translucent wedding paper envelope was some sort of prank. I had gone to bed, not at my usual late hour but at a respectable time.  As I drifted off I realized I had not collected the mail for the day so I swung myself out of bed and walked outside. It was the only piece of correspondence in the box. 

Click here for the complete short story. Jim’s-Invitation.pdf

General Powell somewhere on the Iraq-Turkey Border

I have always enjoyed (and admired) this photo of the General. It contains a few interesting elements. For me at least. Let me try them on you. Read more

A Letter to a Friend

Dear JD,
It’s been more than a week now. I drove home last Friday afternoon up the Waringah Expressway. I was enjoying the sunshine and the clear blue Sydney sky – and the fact that the air conditioning was keeping the humidity at bay. The traffic was light which was surprising since these 6 or so lanes of traffic can get pretty clogged on this side of the bridge. So I glanced at the clock thinking it was earlier than usual. Well, it was but the clock jolted me for another reason, that being the 5.40 I read on the dial. Suddenly the day was less bright as it occurred to me that this was about the same time last week you were enjoying the last minutes of that plane flight. That it was exactly this time a week ago you were enduring something that should never be suffered alone. Away from all your friends and those who have declared their compassion and love for you this week.

You will be delighted to know that such is the memory most have of you. Enjoying life to the full and revelling in anything that was tactile, sensory and dangerous. And of course if it was slightly irresponsible in some way there was an added measure of delight that lit you up. But damn you, last week was thoroughly miserable. I waded through the week feeling a constant knot in my gut and was thoroughly demotivated. I made a checklist of things that needed doing and ploughed through them. Some of my colleagues noticed. Fortunately most did not.

You would enjoy the fact that (ironically) last week I kept turning up things that reminded me of things we did together. I was looking for an old residential address on a bill so I could file a claim – its a long story. Your CV fell out of the file. The one we wrote at the end of 1997 when you were finally convinced that leaving the military was a real option. It was not put into action for another twelve months or more. It is an impressive read even after all this time. You made the time in the Pilbara sound like it was a critical qualification for any future employer. It made me laugh. Then I put it on the dining room table where it still sits. I can’t bring myself put it away. The next file upended the training business plan we wrote. That made me grin too – I won’t divulge where the guts of it came from but you turned up with a massive fax which we turned into a plan. It is probably just as well we never turned that into substance (someone would be chasing us for breach of copyright) but considered it an iterative or instructional exercise. Later in the week I pulled a postcard off the wall at work. From you at Gettysburg. We spoke for hours about the Civil War and Gettysburg was one place I encouraged you to visit. There was your chicken scrawl handwriting telling me you had gotten there at last. I pinned it back but see it every day now when for months I simply walked past it.

I have told maybe fifteen or so folk about what has happened. Everyone has been appalled. But there has been something cathartic and healing in the telling. Something bitter-sweet as the instant memories people have of you and your madness were fond, affectionate and sometimes hilarious. I have spoken with people who have separated from me for some time. Spoken with others from whom I have drifted. And with others still whom I do not know directly but who I know knew and loved you. Laughter and tears. And more tears. From grown men all around the world. You would be a bit abashed. If the overall tenor of the week has been black and depressed the light and bright tone has come from all these reconnections. Thanks mate. Sadly those two or three I told who did not know you were dismissive of the event. I am not sure what to make of that. Maybe I caught them at the wrong time but the end result is that most of last week was spent keeping all this to myself. You would relate to that – the malaise of being a bloke!

You know my world view. Better than most. And would not be surprised that I did share with some sympathetic friends on Thursday evening what had happened. They prayed for Shauna that night and for your parents. I know you never minded that and had an idle curiosity about God. Grace at our table when you stayed with us with a wrecked knee was something you enjoyed. I was encouraged that Thursday night by the fact that somehow, even though Shauna has never met these people, she was being supported and encouraged. I hope she was.

I love you still my friend

BL

Vale JD

Whale on Toast

When building a company there are more nights than I care to remember when I lie awake wondering how this or that will resolve itself. Or be resolved. I learned early on that attempting to deal with issues as I perceived them in the dark hours was never a clever thing to do – some things just never get a proper perspective without the sun being up. That perspective usually presents problems in a significantly reduced magntude. (Mind you there are some sparks of inspiration that happen in the middle of the night as well and some answers have hurredly been written down before I drop back to sleep – and potential forgetfulness).

S&M

Cafe in Lane Cove, on Longueville Road. Two days before Christmas and the sweat sticks to my skin The day is overcast and threatens, then delivers, even more humidity as the sky lets loose a light shower, closes up, then releases another once the pavement has dried off.

The heat is exacerbated by a furious kitchen that churns out lunches and coffee. It is a busy place abutting a small village shopping centre that is bustling with last minute shoppers. Like myself. Who is not only a last minute shopper but a two minute one as well. A hunter gatherer approach to shopping.

Around the corner eight year old girls play a cello and violin and sing. They and their instruments are decorated with tinsel, as if to make up for the fact they are not in tune, in sync, and clearly have only put their ensemble together in the last two days since school closed for summer. And competing with the two boys playing carols on their trumpets two shopfronts down. Also out of tune but fervour and filthy lucre drive their performance. Each has an instrument case open which catches a generous shower of silver from bustling shoppers. It’s that time of the year after all.

The obligatory black T-shirts and strappy tops adorn the girls behind the counter and those who rush around the tables which spill onto the street. Entirely appropriate attire for this glistening sweat day. And good for those who admire a tanned shoulder or decorously adorned decollete. Don’t we all?

Kids saunter past with foam reindeer antlers on their heads, mouths rimmed with chocolate. Some are well behaved and fresh to the street. The rest have clearly been out all morning and are irascible and ready for home. Faces of their parents confirm it.

Plates clatter, bottled drinks clink as the fridge is raided. Cutlery chatters as it is unloaded from the dishwater. As the dishwasher door had opened the sharp smell of detergent bit the senses and a billowing cloud of hot vapour rolled to the ceiling and into the cafe, adding to the humidity. A five cent piece tings off the floors as a kid fumbles his treasure and argues with mother about ice cream flavours. Happy shouts as friends discover each other.

“Mate, whadayadoing?”
“Nothing mate. Keeping my head down. Going slow. Bugger of a day.”
“Yeah, mate, need a coffee to keep going.”

That it is a hot coffee is illogical but no one cares, or minds.

“Who’s next please?”
“James! Howya doing?!”
“Next please!?” Shouted a little louder and through yet more friends focused on catching up first, before placing an order.

Traffic creeps past, all leaking condensation onto the road from air conditioners. A shower of rain waters us all then stops again. Indian accents. Muslim headgear. Irish accents. Australian “ocker”. All mixed up and adding to the tableau. S&M arrive. Shane and Mark. (Apologies to any of you who have gotten this far and were hoping for something else).

We order lunch and spend a couple of hours talking about everything and nothing. Which is part of the pleasure of these sorts of friendships. Indeed, Shane referred us to C.S. Lewis (well known for his Narnia series but for the thinking person a deeper well in his other writings) who he is reading at the moment, and Lewis’ description of four loves, one of which is affection – the sort of love that is delivered without any expectation of anything in return and which, in the view of C.S. Lewis is most commonly expressed in its purest form between men. Not erotic (Lewis discusses eros in another context) I would hasten to add, but those friendships forged between men through tough times, especially war. But also common through early friendships and which can last a lifetime. Something I must dig out and read for myself.

The converse is no doubt true. At a time when male suicide rates are at an all-time high in this country how little salve might have been applied through a firm friendship? And a death prevented? What tough times do we share with reach other. What welding of friendships occurs through heat? Not much these days. We are all individuals and are all the poorer for it.

Whatever the view of C.S.Lewis, a pleasant lunchtime interlude, with pleasant company, in a great city, all at a time of the year when we are full of goodwill towards each other and we are all grateful that we are alive. Even if it is humid!

St Matthews

In 1981 I spent six months on a training course in Toowoomba. Semi rural Queensland. It was a bachelor’s life. And thoroughly pleasant for that. I sketched this old stone church modestly posing behind a large pinus radiata, but parading with something more exotic in its other garden. These sorts of buildings lend themselves to sketching. But I may have been attempting some sort of atonement for my primary school stories of churches. Most of those stories and the accompanying sketches have the church burning down. A child psychologist would have a field day with that.

1949 Robinson Harvester

Other creative pursuits in the past have included pen and ink and pen and pencil sketching. Far too little of it though since my school days. In one summer holidays from school I worked on a farm in northern Victoria. It was 45 degrees and oven hot. Most days. I sketched this one afternoon when it was too hot to do anything else. The sweat evaporated before it reached the ground – though some remains smudged in my sketchbook to this day. I tried to catch the harsh light on the gums in the background by putting little detail in there. To no effect given there is so much white background. The harvester had long gone to the cracked timber and rusty frame boneyard found in every farm. I was wary of it because the occassional black snake would rest under there.

Remembering Shorty and Hobbs

Like the rest of the country I heard that we had lost two people in a helicopter accident off Fiji yesterday. But when I saw the papers this morning and the front page carried this photo I was jolted somewhat. Here was a face to the name. And somehow it still seemed that part of the family had died, even though I have been out of that family for many years now.

In April 1984 two Mirages collided above Bluff Downs in north Queensland. I was posted to RAAF Townsville, the air base from which the visiting Mirages were operating. I was at home at the time and the news spread over the back fences of the married quarters in a flash. I remember all the families standing out in the street in sobered silence. Even the scampering children were still. We were all saddened. Strangely, we had never met Wylie and Rim yet we behaved and felt like a member of our own families had died. This was really the first time the notion that the military could be a family came home to me. A grossly neglectful family. But a family nonetheless. So much so that thirteen years after they died, and after I had departed the service, I visited the little plaque, lost under the frangipani at the edge of the air movements pad at RAAF Townsville, which remembers them.

There was a similar personal and community sentiment a few years later when we lost our first F-18 after it ploughed into Palm Island during a late evening training sortie. I drove past the base from university to my married quarter and sensed something was up. There was more activity around the parked aircraft then usual so I called in and heard we had lost young Jefferies. And had nearly lost the CO at the same time if I recall correctly. But again we spent the next week sobered by the fact that we lost someone we knew so well but had in fact never met. One of our own. It is a strange sensation and is some sort of vicarious grieving. Surreal but very real. It happened later again when young McNess and his colleague were lost in a F-111 accident. McNess had just moved in across the road from me and I hardly had gotten to know him when I read his name in the paper. He was another of those keen shiny faces that came issued with every new F-111 aircrew member, reflecting their disbelief at the fact that they were actually flying these amazing planes. Yet revelling in every moment of it. Barely introduced and then gone.

So when the defence chiefs get up and declare to the press they are saddened by the loss I am inclined to believe them. I am not so sure about the politicians.

There are two exceptions for me – exceptions in the sense that the grieving was not vicarious. Shorty and Hobbs. Two F-111 crew who I knew well. Steady. Keen to be friends. Hobbs so ready to help in my first days in the squadron when I was still trying to work out which way was up under the stern gaze of the OC each morning. Shorty, always trying to know more, asking endless questions. Quiet but quick to laugh. And both forever forgiving of our (non aircrew!) shortcomings. Both keen to help, and both very inclusive, welcoming us into the squadron fraternity and making us feel part of the club.They died in a F-111 accident in 1999 in Malaysia, years after I left the squadron. That loss I felt keenly. And rued the inability to say goodbye or to somehow express the connection I had with them. I regretted not knowing them better than I did. Men’s men who were all that was, and is good about serving in the military. I remembered them both today when I picked up the paper and grieved the loss of Captain Bingley, a man I never knew.

Gratitude

Funny what prompts you, but I was just bouncing through another blogger’s site where the author had a quick note to observe how grateful she should be for the things she has – but is often not. My own response is usually a glib line but it is a conviction as well if I test myself – that I am grateful every day that I awake, that I am breathing, and that I am upright. Sometimes I am OK with that formula if the upright bit is left out. But breathing is always a good start.

Anything from that point on is “up”. That I have a family. Who loves. And who I love. That I have friends who pray for me. And the family. Who pray when the going gets tough. Who keep me grounded by reminding me that I need prayer – that is, I can’t do all (any) of this by myself.

Five minutes in places like Yemen, China or Vietnam, or the Sydney Central Station reminds me that I should be grateful for he material things I have. A job. More money than most in the world. Fresh water. Choices of food. Ability to travel. Freedom to worship. To vote. To say what I think. All freedoms the majority of the global population, in all its history, has ever had, or even has today.

To the Author of all this and more – thankyou.

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