Forward

..the
diary I note down odd words and phrases that catch my attention and one of them
was a comment on a popular bit of Newspeak. i.e. ‘forward’
is the new black.
This touches on another gripe that probably falls into the realm of yer Grumpy
Old Men, but just as the notion of progress becomes patently more delusional
the older one gets, so the glib platitude of moving ‘forward’ in
any given context becomes more and more irritating.
Keeping a diary tends to back this up.If it was meant to be a remedial exercise
you should be regularly compelled to read your own diaries, but I’d be
surprised if many of my fellow diarists subject themselves to this discipline.
I know I only refer to mine when I’m trying to find out what happened
on a certain day, for say, taxation purposes. If I read on though, it’s
inevitably revealing, and usually depressingly so.
I spend quite a bit of space in my diary recounting the weekend’s encounters
with my son Chris, where the concept of progress is regularly challenged and
just as regularly dismissed. Witness: ‘I should just put out of my mind
for good any expectations of ‘linear progress’ from Chris. If he’s
going to ‘progress’ he’ll do it in his own time. No room for
petulance on my behalf.’
If you’re shocked that I could be ‘petulant’ with my autistic son,
I have to say that it’s almost as hard to record the fact in the first
place as it is to read about later, because I know even as I’m writing
it down that I’m confessing my inadequacies as a human being, let alone
as a parent.
By way of explanation, I’ve observed that in many domestic conflicts between
parents and their off-spring, the parent attacks the same weaknesses in the
child that they most despise in themselves. Chris’ autism magnifies these
genetically inherited characteristics by an incalculable factor; for instance,
he’s quite incapable of initiative while being intuitively adept at manipulating
people around him. There’s no doubt his inherited charm helps in this
regard. (I mean, credit where credit’s due).
I lack initiative, compounded by a propensity to procrastinate, so I have to
be pushed into a corner before I’ll finally react sensibly, causing myself
unnecessary anxiety in the interim. Despite being aware of it as a fixable defect
and chiding myself over and over again in my trusty diary, it remains an issue.
Does this mean I need therapy? Perhaps, and I’ve been there and learnt
a lot about myself and how I got here, but ultimately you just have to get on
with it.
I was just glancing through my diary then and came across a reference to the
episode of Wrokdown we recorded with Judith Durham, which resulted
in the much commented on video of Spectrum accompanying Judith in a version
of Summertime. Tony Naylor told me over breakfast in Manly on Monday
morning that David Hicks, (the drummer rather than the hapless ex-Guantanamo
Bay dude), accompanied The Seekers on a tour of New Zealand and apparently the
sniffer dog at Auckland airport got very excited about something Judith was
carrying in her bags. She was questioned while her bags were opened and searched.
It turns out that it was a stash of broccoli.. (Strangely – I can’t
imagine why she thought that broccoli would be unavailable in New Zealand).
I’m guessing that Judith has underlined in her diary, ‘Do NOT take
broccoli to New Zealand ever again!’