Floating Life

Yes, it’s true; the “bargain pack” I bought a while ago — at least it was made in Australia — contained 12 rolls, and I swear they have vanished down the s-bend in the time one or two rolls would have taken in the 1950s! If we used rolls, of course; honestly, torn-up Daily Mirrors were more the go in Sutherland’s pan toilets, and they could double as flaming torches for dealing with the redbacks at night on candle-light visits to the outdoor dunny… They also gave you something to read while squatting in the unique environment of a non-sewered outhouse.

Ah the good old days, when everything was “nice”, as Sirdan’s friend B, a great Pauline Hanson fan, said on Sunday. “Yes. Bring back the dirt roads!” I said…

Since Sirdan’s lost childhood is in Rhodesia before Ian Smith or Mugabe, he said little. (Sirdan is a recovering racist, and a lovely man.)

Take trains. Thomas did yesterday. Now I have to say I blame City Rail for closing the windows, especially given how ineffective the air conditioning is on some of the older models still in use. Back when I was a boy the old red rattlers+ at least minimised the pong. (That’s a link to Floating Life Sans Words+ — they’ll always have that + at the end.) You could also, if you didn’t mind the danger, hang out the door and let the breeze cool you down, so long as you watched out for trains coming the other way, or tunnel walls. And we did. Sometimes we had no choice as the crowds after around Hurstville — I got on at Kirawee or Sutherland — sometimes forced passengers quite literally out the doors on the other side of the carriage.

Even then I knew you should never catch an all stations.

And smelly people. We had a family in primary school that had never seen soap, I swear, and there were seventeen in that family… The mother was known as “Mrs Anyday” because that was her usual state of apparently permanent pregnancy. Her husband was a dunny man, so smells were no doubt not noticed. The worst punishment was to be made to sit next to one of them; I drew the short straw in one class photo (Grade 4).  Unfortunately I no longer have a copy, but I do remember the way my nose was peculiarly wrinkled in that pic, as I had to stop breathing while the photographer did his thing. Mind you, none of us bathed more than once or twice a week in those days, and I suspect we had never even seen a shower. Most kids never changed their socks — but then they didn’t wear shoes either, or underwear, so I guess that was OK. Later on at Dapto High there was one class where, having sniffed the ambience, Dale said “Today’s lesson will be about soap.”

This morning I was early on the street, having, as Jim Belshaw did yesterday, risen while it was still dark. At 7.25 am I went down for a coffee and the paper and noted a busload of Mine students. I couldn’t help thinking how weird that was. Why, *back in my day* we would have probably been shot (not literally) if we had gone to school so early; in fact the 7.25 from Sutherland was the usual train I caught. Now here are these kids, many if not most coming from somewhere west of Ashfield, in some cases as far as Liverpool, arriving at school each day at this ungodly hour, no doubt for training, choir, or even lessons. You may well wonder what time they got up. 5.30 am I suspect, in some cases. Wouldn’t they really be better off in a good local school?

I love nostalgia. I indulge regularly.

And *in my day* there weren’t any bloggers either…