Intimations

There
is no doubt that the Sydney CBD lacks the culinary variety that Melbourne has
in spades and alleys. This particular alleged restaurant was located on the
third floor at the top of an extremely steep set of stairs, which ended up being
my most strenuous exercise for the week. Malcolm is a bit larger than the average
bear, so the effort may have been proportional to the Chinese getting the Olympic
torch up Everest. Malcolm and I have known each other for some years through
the circumstance of work, so we had an obligatory conversation about mail server
infrastructure – which served to confirm my lack of knowledge of network protocols
and that he was a real engineer.
We have a small number of mutual friends, one of whom is far from well – in
fact, with pancreatic cancer we can say that Paul is dancing cheek to jowl with
the grim reaper who has marked his card so as to make it the last waltz – if
he can. But, at the moment, the music is still playing, (probably the Grimethorpe
Colliery Band), although looks somewhat reduced and has begun what will be an
unpleasant bout of chemotherapy and potential hair loss washed down with selective
exposure to Chernobyl strength radiation. The idea is that he will then have
sufficient remission time to travel overseas in what we trust won’t be
his farewell tour. His friends – who love him dearly – expect that he
will continue to sail pan-galactically around the world delighting his wife,
astounding vicars and frightening small craft.
For all that he was amazingly chipper, though pragmatically realistic, when
Terry (yet another work friend) and I went to visit him in his Daylesford retreat.
On reflection, ‘retreat’ does it an injustice. Rather it should
be described as a rout that had been recently stemmed, the forces rallied and
then turned to determinedly re-engage the enemy. The house peers wholesomely
over the arid landscape of rocks and gums and is solar powered with panels feeding
ex-submarine batteries. The water varies in colour according to what is being
used for and the source. Almost mud bick jumper territory.
We listened to Vaughn Williams, I drank his Pinot, ate his quiche, told tales
tall and true, and departed with considerable regret, though only after he had
corrected me that it wasn’t ‘The Navy Lark’ that had the characters
Seaman Stains and Master Bates in it, but Captain Pugwash. A man who remembers
this and likes John Betjeman is a man to be treasured.
This was the story that I relayed to Malcolm, who had originally been enrolled
to go up with us to see Paul, but who had piked at the last minute with a diplomatic
cold. We reflected that we were all lucky to be alive and that there was too
much death going around at the moment.
I have started reading the Obituaries to see if I am in them, but realise that
you have to have had a life of social worth, military stature, or of notable
eccentricity to make the cut. People who do average stuff may be lucky to get
a death notice in the advertising supplement of the Sun Herald.
John Cargher has shuffled off at a venerable age, and Saturday afternoons will
only have a few more repeats of his programs before his gentle middle European
tones delivering Singers of Renown are only a memory to an ever diminishing
few. The loss of these placeholders in the week, like moving the Goon Show from
Saturday at 12 to Friday morning at 5.30 am, are traumatic for those of us who
crave at less two still points in an ever-changing cliché.
It is when the things around which you settled a daily or weekly regime move
that you feel that there might be impermanence to life after all. For many a
year Saturday lunch was eaten to the background murmur of the Secombe, Milligan
and Sellers and the rustling of the second reading of the Saturday papers. Lunch
was never the same again after the perfidious ABC management had its way.
Biologists say that our only role is to procreate with a Lemming-like indifference
to the natural world until we have covered it with our offspring and made it
waste. My brother, and other noted physicists, have nominated that the universe
exists only so that we can bear witness to it, an ego-centricity that has an
appeal
Age makes you appreciate that just to be alive is a gift and that we should
appreciate the wonder of it all before the years makes us too infirm, or some
natural calamity strips the moments of contemplation away in a cyclonic wave,
a military invasion or the next budget.
In the grand scheme of 15 billion years of cosmic history we are as ephemeral
as a particle trace in a cloud chamber. But it’s our trace, our flicker
and our moment in time.