7dec2014,
this is about 95 onwards, that's nearly 20 years ago. it seems like nothings happened, and a lot has happened since. i just glanced through that other 90s blog. i don't know exactly what i wrote, i just thought, did i write that. around that time i picked up the guitar , for the umpteenth time. i sort of got ok there for a bit, a few dodgy chords but you just keep going. around 95, i was interested in solar power. i started a tech course in electrical trades. at that time there was no interest in solar , only old hippies were into that, although there was solar hot water. it was what industry was interested in, and solar wasn't it. there was more interest in coal and hydro. with me i just done about 10 months of tech , before getting a job in the theater .
12dec2014,
to tell the truth , the nineties compared them other earlier decades, the nineties had nothing in my opinion. it was the catchup and retro decade. then there was windows 95, at which at that time , i knew fuck all. it was big on telly news when it came out. i remember the glad wrap machine pumping them out ,on the conveyor belt. at that time i was doing a module called computers in engineering, as part of the electric trades. i had no interest in computers at that time, solar man, on deaf ears. when i look back at that class and time, it was mainly year 12 (6th form in my currency) couldn't get a job, couldn't get into uni, gen x. the computers in engineering class was pretty much infancy. we all got a floppy disk to muck about with. pre used floppy disks, one had a black white 800kb porn thing called mandy or something, now called a gif, well sort of. i gave them young guys names like girlie, brain wave , cutlet and ball bearing head. girlie got the mandy disk. i flunked the c.i.e. module due to leaving for the theatre job. brain wave was right into the internet outside of tech, them guys sort of grew up with computers at school and what not, i had the bricks. at that time brain waves fav site was kurt cobains body on the net.
13dec2014,
done some thinking about that time, that being 1995. for me it's one of them times when you just want to get on with something , like ideas. with the electrical trades thing, the idea was to learn and do the solar. i stuck it out for 10 months or so, the difference between then and before, before if you had some qualification, like the bit of paper, you could get a job no trouble. but, then around 95, with them gen x or whatever guys. they'd line up for some crummy macdonalds job. actually , i think some did work there. when i left there a few landed apprenticeships, cutlet ended up commuting to sydney to some coil winding thing. brain wave, who i thought quite smart , i seen him not long after i left. he said he was coloured blind and couldn't read the resistor colours. i thought that was a cop out. when i think about a few things happened around that time. i got busted with a small amount of pot, 3.2 grams of shit leave, what i would call kif, they called it cannabis leaf. that was a real setback at that time. i was doing it tough as it was, then i get hit with this $264 fine and 1 month to pay, that was hard, money ways. it was the old 2 steps forward, it was around this time that i felt karma coming in.
14dec2014,
karma, curse or whatever, what the fuck is that shit, you get the idea , no cunt wants to know. then some other dickhead ... well you know that story. with me , i couldn't care the least about fame and that. it's more about getting out of the rut, normality and self sufficiency. that was the main interest in the solar. the guitar was mainly something i put off , cause of no time. the reason i left the tech, was i got this, 6 month government funded thing, some electronic thing . you did a month crash course, then you had to go round and get a placement helping out and the government paid a bit extra money, not a full wage though, probably two thirds. the solar thing wasn't happening with the tech thing. i trumped the crash course, just done that shit at tech. with the placement, that was a hassle.that's were the theatre comes in.
16dec2014,
with the placement , which i didn't like for several reasons. the main being the pay , you're doing the same job as the other bloke and he's getting a proper wage. your less getting government funded starvation wages. that was the start of the downhill really hitting in, the real downhill started around 1981, it depends on who and where you are really. i meet this guy, through this woman , he worked at the theatre, that's where the idea came from.. i got an interview, and got the placement , which was sort of okay, it was and still is day by day existence. like, in my mind was the solar thing. sometime in between the bust and the theatre , i did the move from private to public, housing that is. another public housing tenant.
29jan2015,
it's been a fair while since i wrote here, it might take a bit to get back into this space, seeing it's one that one trys to get out of . i'm watching leonard cohen 1970 isle of wight, the relevance is, if i didn't mention before, i got into his stuff in the nineties part one, i actually learnt suzanne from a neighbour's book , before the move into public housing, around 92 something. it was one of the first songs i could play from go to yo, till it got boring. i couldn't play it today, although i play better now. i learnt, that even playing others story well, it wasn't mine. i played that song for a few months in the nineties, i can't remember how the chords went then, but i remember the lyrics ok. that book had different chords to his songbook, but it worked ok. it was strange how i got into that stuff, and the crowd that followed. that crowd were right into lenny, art crowd. before the move, i had learned about 40 songs, mainly dylan. again this didn't feel right. it was turning into a dylan rut, i was trying to get out of it. it was like john lennon said about playing acoustic, everything's mr dylan. there was always burl ives. with the move , the vibe was different, the visitors were reluctant to visit the bad end of church street. with working at the theatre , i came home not really interested in playing guitar. with the theatre, i made a few sets and things, done a few shows. i never really fitted in with those people, it's all learning really.
1feb2015,
moving on from the theatre , which i lasted 6 or so months. i probably could of lasted longer and took it further. i just didn't fit in, although, i did stir it up a bit. after doing 9 years as a platelayer, there is a slight difference. trying to settle in to housing department, had a few sides. i thought if i had it in the 80's, i probably would have saved and still been platelaying. one bloke , reckoned it was like russia, i knew what he meant. the guitar was disappearing, it's true if you don't use it you lose it, ie suzanne. another side , from the first night, i felt some kind of presence . like people walking in the ceiling and it was like the walls were thin. the idea was to stay for a year or so, till things improved. there was definitely some kind of something going on, at night . when i think about it now, before i moved my stuff. me and this girl, i knew from a long time, was hanging out with a neighbour up the other end, where i lived . we checked out the flat, she told me she lived in a house that was there before, dept of housing built the flats in 1986. she said some spooky shit happen there. now, i can't quite remember what she told me about it, but she said it was freaky and they moved out real quick like. i just thought i'll be right and brushed it off. then things started going pop, things went missing only to turn up later, insects appeared in mid air when there was nothing there, hazy thick air. i told her later about that spooky place. she said, i told you and told me to move.
2feb2015
strange, i thought about me and that girl checking out the flat. she pops up every now and again, i'll have to ask her about her experience again. you know, i don't really like talking about that stuff much. it says in the Bible not to boast about these things, for they shall return, stronger. one time, this other friend, gave me this pinball top, someone gave to her. actually she gave me two. they were just the board out of the machine. they came from enmore, she said a guy bought them for like $10. i wouldn't have minded the whole machine. anyways, i gave one away and kept the other as an ornament. i was trying to think how the numbers were on the screen of the machine. i started to write the numbers down and strongly thinking how they were lined up. then the presence turned up, like a demon or something popped out of the board. very strong it was, the tap in the kitchen started running, keys fell on the floor from the table, when i went to look , they were on the table. there was a clicking noise in the ceiling , as i went close , it moved away to the corner and went. i thought it might have been the years of drugs catching up. when i really thought about it, nothing like that had ever happened in many years of getting stoned. up until that point i was skeptical about the pops and noise synchronisms, the trouble here they happened on a very regular basis.
3feb2015,
the God thing had been pushed upon me since 1963. then from 1971 till 75,76, i couldn't have been farther away from it, but there's always the background or unconscious, sub being below, so the word is unconscious. it will probably pop up in other blogs passed or future. by 1976 , i was in a state of repentance, i just couldn't kick the cigs, man. maybe a few other things aswell , you could say semi repentance. so, with this poltergeist stuff, i had a few defences on my side, or i thought i did. night time seemed to be the main time, also when you were alone, mostly. with my defence , which was my own concoction of prayer, worked okay for a bit. i found the trouble was , when you've got a complex, say lots of flats, the thing just moves on to some other vacant flat, you never really get rid of the thing, for awhile there it had fucked off somewhere else. so, i've put up the john peel world service shows , this would have around this time, as was the little richard thing. i remember having the first tape at the theatre. it's hard figuring out the time period exactly, i did do a few casual things at the theatre, after the placement thing. after the time at the theatre, probably just on the dole, in a rut, depressed going nowhere . started doing a thing called a job club. it was job hunting thing to get you motivated into getting back into the workforce. it was a 6 month thing as i remember. they're mainly retrenched public servants , given the job to help others get into jobs that didn't really exist.
6feb2015,
i guess it's pretty obvious, why i didn't really feel like writing this blog. this time from 97 to 2000 , nothing much happened on the job front. i did think about doing an electronic trades course, i even enrolled as i remember, but didn't feel up to it at that time. the solar thing never happened. the idea was to get into something different by 40. as 40 approached , i reckon i became more reclusive . they changed the dole setup, by closing the c.e.s. (commonwealth employment service), saying it wasn't functional anymore. with doing that, the unemployed became cash cows for the private government funded employment services. the one i was assigned to, reckon i was suffering depression, more like recession. the town was full of ,to let signs. the rents were just to high and have been . their (the machine) solution is to demolish the shops and build monstrosities and put the rents up or bring in overseas players as a band aid solution. with me, i just wanted to fuck off from it, it wasn't far to the park bench for some, at least i had a roof over my head. the flat was like a different world, the pops and shit happened still , you just got use to it. but like a dripping tap it could be very annoying.
9feb 2015,
i never seen myself as born again or so called. my view about the subject , was just that, my view. people i hung out with, were basically worldly. i hung out in the arvo , up the shopping mall, with some old foes from a.a. (alcoholics anonymous) . after their meeting , we'd meet up and have coffee and yarn. i got to meet a few a.a. old cogders, a few have since passed on. i never hung at them places much, before. probably just get a milk shake or cigs or whatever, never really hung there much. the place was packed from 12 say, til 2. then it quieted down after . the a.a meetings finished at 3 . we'd hang there til 4.30 or more. this became a regular rountine. i got to see all the low lifes and nutters, and hear about them. where are they now? no one gives a fuck. i rarely see any of them nowadays, saying that , i'll probably see someone tomorrow. as i write this, i think about one dude in particular, i dubbed him the paddle pop lion, he used to stand outside a supermarket in the complex eating a can of fish with a paddle pop stick. i don't think these behaviors were drug induced , although some may have been. i knew lots of them type of people when i was young, we just called them backward, although some were just spastics . among the crowd was the born again , so called, assembly of God christians. most of which were on some kind of benefit . i sort of had some respect for them at that time. it was a bit like coming out, something i couldn't do, on the christian front that is. like i said earlier i had my view, i knew not much of their church or that.
10feb2015,
there was a hippy artist who i used to visit some nights, i used to go for night walks, mainly as exercise. that's where the pinball board came from, she was right into cohen. we sort of became friends, although from slightly different scenes. i knew a lot of different scenes around the place since the seventies, you could say every nook and cranny, and i don't mean fanny. she's since past, R.I.P. so have many others. a few of the born agains i knew way back in the seventies. they had me go to a tent meeting once i remember at an oval, like a circus tent, i just went to have a look, a lot of young guys there mainly. one guy that used to visit me and hung with us in the arvo, used to smoke a lot of pot and do mushrooms. i picked him up hitch hiking , maybe late 80s early 90s, he was still doing the same old from the 70's. i told him why doesn't he snap out of it , and get into Jesus or something. then, around 91, something i seen him in the street, he looked different. i offered him a hit of a joint, he said no. i just thought wow, that's different, he said he found the Lord. i was happy about that. later on into the near future, i asked myself if it was really a good thing. some people can go over the top with it. that's what i meant earlier on.
21feb2015
i think the judgement of them so calleds , their very quick to pass it on others, but can't see themselves. doesn't do them any favours. there's a very fine line on living in the spirit and a worldly existence. as the year 2000 approached , i decided to have a good clean out. a nun in 1968 said the world would end in the year 2000, this played a lot in my mind. i think a lot of other people thought the world would end or something around that time , ie y2k. i asked that guy for a prayer to read , i could use to help with my deliverance. he said you can't do it on your own, blah, blah. i said don't worry then. the main reason , i think, i wasn't happy how things had turned out really, cunts were still running the world, no end, thanks jarvis. so, if the world did end, i would have done a bit of repentance to help out, a bit like the crash course. i had little interest in most people and their worldly existence, deaf ears, i tried. save yourself.
25feb2015
about a week or so, after asking him for the prayer, surprisingly he came up with the goods. a bit of paper with some words, it was called the sinners prayer. i said, i'd give it a look. i still had the ghost problem, and thought the prayer might came in handy, on them nights . as i remember around that time, there was a bit of weird shit happening around the place. i can't really remember and don't want to, the exact weirdness , i just remember there was. sometime before all this, i used to go to things , like art openings and things similar, some though the hippy woman. one such thing was at her place , where i met one of her friends, another hippy a few years older than her, i thought she was okay looking for her age. another occasion the three of us went to this do up the mountain, an arty farty exhibition at an artists womens place. so, getting back to the prayer, i decided to give it a go, maybe use it to clean up.
28feb2015
now you can see why i split the nineties into parts. so, i gave the prayer a go, skeptical sort of. after a couple of days, i got a phone call from the hippy woman i met . she wanted to come round with her guitar, i said okay. after a while, she turns up with all this stuff, too much. she was interested in a dylan song , i want you. i played it for her, she couldn't get the b flat chord , although i felt or knew she played much better than me. she just couldn't get that chord, i couldn't believe she couldn't get it. after, she pulls out this book and starts reading this stuff, dark shit. it wasn't a good time to hear that stuff. in my head i was just praying, and started sweating, i didn't like it. witchy woman, after that she picked up all her things and left. i felt like there was some kind of battle there happening. a couple of days after that, i got up and had a cig. i froze like i couldn't move, like my spirit had left my body. and that's where the nineties ends. and so begins the battle for the soul.
1march2015
i was going to end this blog there , but i did a google on that book she read . http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27243.Dancing_in_the_Flames "click here". now you can see the battle i had.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Saturday, September 27, 2014
the bricks
27sept2014
the bricks were a lot things in 72, maybe 73. for me personally, or should i say less personally. probably at that time i was below person. it's not that hurtful to write about that time, as it was different. my home life was miserable, school life was shitfull , very dog eat dog. the big difference then is there was some ways to do okay, without having mummy and daddy. nowadays you inherit their debt. if i wasn't scarred (here i mean scar , the spelling gets me) enough, after the bike thing and earlier, the move from my grandmothers was the big hit.
1oct2014
the move from the grandmothers, to a place i didn't like to start with. now, when i look back, i think i was very wild. i think about it , you can't really blame anything really. i never had no proper home for a long time. my parents never had no proper home. the old boys gambling and drinking was atrocious. i could never understand it. to put it plainly he was a prick, when he'd come home pissed. i wasn't no goody goody either, but there's a time for discipline and that's not when you're pissed. i think i was strong, even though i was a scared little chicken when he came home. the move , was just the parents and me at that time. he came home and beat me up pretty bad, ripped hair out of my head. said i smoked marijuana , which at that time i would never. i could go into it more. that's basically it really.
9oct2014
hurt you at home , hit you at school, i hadn't heard that yet, but i sure did know it already. i was just a defeated low nobody. when you're like that, you're so easily lead. i'm talking 1972 here, as if anythings changed, probably worse. the bricks were already happening, with a crowd that i was not part of. even back then, savland was far from normality, not too many could relate to me, no one like me as far as home life. the bricks as they became known, were a pile of bricks next to the school. i never knew anything about them then. apparently students of a different higher class, hollowed out a pile and threw in some p.e mats. not surprisingly, the culprits or part of, were old primary school friends. they would ride their bikes to school early , steal flavoured milk and have it over the bricks, then wag periods over there. eventually they got caught out, some spent weeks or months in a boys home.
25oct2014
it became known about the goings on of the upper class follies, with us lower class plebs it was just follow the rules , morning assembly , roll call and class, maybe share a drag of a fag (cig) or some other nonsensical prank, like the infamous dead leg, or the stomp on a empty milk carton, making a big bang, sliding down the hand rail slide saddle . the games of knuckles, and slaps, and hand ball. so where does one fit into this world of real world preparation .
2nov2014
nowhere really, i never really fitted into any class. the school had only been built for 2 and half years before i went there. the first 6 months it shared another high school until work had finished, so they could open it. as i remember, the shoddy workmanship, seen a wall collapse, a worker injured. when i started, there was all the no hopers under the sun there, waiting for the 15 year birthday so they didn't have to go to school no more. after a time they left , and some sort of school structure started to form. i knew some or most of the no hopers from the pinny shop, the 1st year i hung around them until they fizzled out .
3nov2014
my attendance was pretty good really. sometime after the old boy episode, i got invited by some foes from a lower class, to wag a period. we sneaked through some bushes near the pushbikes, some bicycle racks, then bolted across the paddock. it reminded me of hogan's heroes or some tv crap. i remember it was a sort of rainy day. the old hype of the bricks had died down. we went through some bushes and they had hollowed out a pile, bit of corrugated iron and timber for a roof. they just stacked bricks on it to make it look like a pile. they just sat there blowing smoke rings with the cold air, wishing for real cigs. for me it was an adventure, but i thought you'd be better off in the classroom with the heater. i think the whole thing was just you could do want you want, and not be confined to a chair and table, and listen to bullshit.
4nov2014
the bricks wasn't the only spot to hang , but it was the safest, just getting there was a hassle. i'm not quite sure whether i started smoking seriously after or before the bricks. it became the place to go during lunch or wag a period and have a smoke in peace. no jerk coming up and dragging the guts out of your fag. i remember one incident . one lunch , me and smiddy, snuffy smith now deceased, he was one of the foes which took me over there.we were over there probably smoking. i remember it was lunch time. the bell went, and we started going back, then i seen the other foe on the other side of the paddock, with what i thought was a prefect . i told smiddy quick bolt a prefect. he took off the other way like a flash. then i realised it wasn't a prefect it was some bird with a blazer that look like a prefects. i tried to run a get smiddy , but he was long gone. when i went back, i couldn't find them, then i saw his bum rotating up and down unusually in the grass. they were having a fuck, this sight stuck in my head. since the bell had gone i went to the next class, on the way i saw smiddy and told him what had happened .
8nov2014
as i remember we had an easy to wag period in the arvy, so the 3 of us wagged that period, over the bricks. i thought, this is what happens over there. at that time i had never seen the map of tasmania, only the baldy badgers of primary school. tv and movies rarely had them in them, just boobs and bums at best. i remember someone found a picture out of some mag , it had a photo showing the bearded clam , everybody was lined up to see it. it was just a one lucky fucky, he just asked her and she said yes. they asked me if i wanted go with them on the capers on friday night, just say you are going to some fellowship thing in a different suburb. that was the start of me going out friday nights. we met up, on the way raided a few chicken coupes and threw the eggs at cars from the over pass. i thought, is this fun. eventually we got to the fellowship, we didn't stay long. then, we went an hot wired a steam roller , dickhead drive it on the new highway they were building, i couldn't drive at all.
9nov2014
that probably was the start of the going out friday nights, which went on every friday night there after. not the juvenile behavior , just going out and whatever. word soon got out about the push in the bush, and there was 1 less going over the bricks. he got expelled from the school , he was a trouble maker, though.me and smiddy still went over there, but we were in mostly different classes. i had a pushbike , i brought it for $2, i used to ride to the school on weekends . i knew a few younger guys, who lived close. they had motor bikes. as the school was still being built, what became sports fields, was a motor bike track. i'd ride there and watch them ride and that. there was sometimes a lot of activity with different bikes . things like old bsa and villiers, even bridgestone and lambretta, there was the mini bike thing, but it was mainly old shitboxes . there was no motocross much at that time. scrambling was the word.
11nov2014
with living close to the school them young guys knew that area quite well. i started hanging around them , the bricks was part of that. the bricks were there for quite a while apparently. they were going to build a church there. it was strange that the main period to wag was scripture, over the bricks. scripture was the easiest because the whole form was there in the hall. me and smiddy and whoever went to the bricks and smoked cigs and told yarns. on weekends we'd hang at the track, over the bricks, or a someones place fixing bikes or other stuff. we'd catch eels from the creek and put them in bins half full of water or hang them on the goal post.. one guy used to take them home to eat.
15nov2014
probably around august 1973, there was a few bikes and about 10 older type people at the track. it's not easy to remember the exactness of it all. the word was, there was crowd up the quarry, out unanderra. if you read earlier blogs , that quarry. anyways the relevance here, smoking pot. the guys on bikes had to go over the highway being built. there were tracks going to different places were you didn't go on main roads, compared to nowadays. i rode the push bike straight over cobblers hill and actually beat them, that blew them out a bit. up at the quarry there was a few older hippy type people. they passed round a joint, the first time i'd seen that thing. i thought of the old boy , and when it was passed to me i had a drag, thinking i was gonna get hooked . it tasted different , like something i tasted before but couldn't quite figure it out. even after all these years i've never really had that taste from other pot . a few times it had that taste, not many. i only had one drag and never got stoned, more of a guilt trip really.
16nov2015
again the time of this next bit are sketchy at best, not the story but when. i say not long after the quarry , maybe weeks or months. one of the young guys had a sister, who hang around us from time to time. like a lot of sisters around that time, they had elder hippy boy friends with records and that. she was the first person to tell me about pink floyd, before dark side of the moon. it was through her that i bought the album pretty much not long after it's release. one afternoon i was invited over the bricks after school, i had my pushbike which seems strange seeing i'd catch the bus to school and only ride there weekends, anyways, there was about 5 or 6 of us in the bricks and she light up some joints. there was no getting away from it, we were whacked. i was blanking out in that claustrophobic atmosphere, i had to get out. it was like slow motion. i remember riding the bike it seem like slow motion. in them days , when you got stoned you'd get a dry mouth and your spit was white. what happened to that. i had to have a drink, after having a drink. i was fucked, i decided to ride home and not worry about them others. i started riding and got halfway up cobblers hill and fell over. i sat there for a bit, stoned, thinking i can't go home like this. i decided to go back and see the others. they were still there, i just said i was riding round the place. i'd came down a bit, when i finally got home. i just lied on my bed til i'd came down , or there abouts
23nov2014
one school holidays , i told the olds me and a few were going camping up the mountain, like me and a different crowd had done sometime before. instead it was planned , i'd camp over the bricks and the younger guys would sneek out and come over the bricks. it was scary as fuck there at night on your own. the first time i had really been on my own all night before. i used milk creates for firewood they'd burn longer than wood and brighter, heat the bricks up outside and inside would be warm after they went out. you didn't think much about the toxic smoke, like you do today. even with copper wire you'd burn the plastic off the wire. i was hoping that the guy would bring his sister , so i could crack on to her. that didn't happen. after the fire had gone out i crashed out. sometime in the very early hours of the morning, the guy woke me up, no sister though . apparently they were coming and she got busted by their old boy , he hid behind a door and sneaked out later. then another guy turned up. maybe one or two more. we decided to go and pinch milk money, we didn't get much a few dollars at best. while we were out walking the streets , the sister and her old man had came looking for the guy, busted. we got back to the bricks not knowing nothing. i can't really remember what happened next, the young guys just went home. we never saw that guy , and the word got out he was grounded for a bit.
27nov2014
i could go on about other stuff at the bricks, but i think you get the basic picture. besides wagging periods not a lot, others may have used them for whatever. it did grow though, them younger guys had other friends in their form , maybe they went there, whilst i was in class. like i said before, the bricks was just one place, it was whatever was easiest at the time, mainly the creek. near the end of the year, not long before the final exam . a whole bunch of us wagged scripture as per usual , more than usual though.what next, i never knew what for, i think it had to do with job interviews or something. i knew i had done a test for a apprentice brick layer at the steelworks, i don't know. but for some reason my name was called out, i wasn't there . neither was a few others, the big search was on. we didn't know nothing. the next thing we was raided by teachers. rounded up , no use running , we were all busted.
29nov2014
the whole lot of us were suspended pending. being an important time, a lot were scared . i was more scared of the old boy flying off the handle, when he found out. there is a blank in my thinking about this. i know i was out . i had a few clothes and a sleeping bag, i still had the school locker to keep the books in. i just stayed over the bricks and slept there, i remember it started to rain there wasn't much of a roof in them bricks. i ended up sleeping under the portable classroom. i remember that. i don't know what happen after that, i think i ended up just going home and facing the music. the final result was we all had to come to school in full school uniform for the remainder of the year which was the final exam , whilst the rest of the form just wore casual gear. it was strange , cause usually i just wore levi's . now at assembly we had the full uniform and everyone else had just the casual look. it felt like a curse.
30nov2014
before i go on with this, i was a bit troubled about the baldy badger thing. in england if somethings mickey mouse it's shite, in australia if somethings mickey mouse it's alright. i checked out the online urban dictionary , they reckon a bald badger is a penis, to me a baldy badger is just some bald headed bloke ,cunt whatever. i think you got that. getting back to the curse of the saveloi , that was pretty much the end of the bricks. this next bit may have been before the bricks. i never really thought about it much at the time , but over the years i have on occasions. there is some relevance. i remember having to see this bloke, some straight looking dude. even then i didn't trust no one , even with the home life. the bloke just asked me these questions about shit. when i look back my behavior was outrageous to say the least, for that time. the questions that i remember the most was embarrassed . he kept asking me about embarrassed, like what it meant. i just said when you do something and you get a red face. he kept going on about it. i didn't realise, until years later, that he was some kind of shrink, sussing me out. that bloke knew jack shit about me, or the fucking miserable life i had. even i didn't know who i was at that time. he also asked me if i believed in God.
1dec2014
in 1973 or when ever it was, god was dead. a concept. the reason i went to that school was , i'd had 7 years of catholic school and never thought my life was for the better. well was it . in 1973 i thought god had had its day, i pretty much believed in worldly stuff, like tv shows and records and materialism . so the answer was no. it's easy to say no, or have it turn into a philosophy session of never ending dribble. not long after that he left. i never really thought about that time , until years later. never saw the dude again. probably somewhere someone who has interest in me reads his report . i've still got some old school books from that time , and have a laugh sometimes when i come across them.
3dec2014
i'm pretty much bored with the bricks as much as you are. sav of the bricks. the curse is, the powers that be, reaction and answer to such folie. at first it seemed like an achievement, but as time went on and things change it turned into a curse. their answer was to delete scripture from the curriculum (hey, i spelt a word with getting it wrong, achievement or curse). so, maybe still every tuesday finished 40 minutes earlier than every other day. i know i used to see them going home earlier on tuesdays when i drove pass there in the 80s and 90s. i often thought if they knew why they were going home early on tuesdays. thank the bricks.
the bricks were a lot things in 72, maybe 73. for me personally, or should i say less personally. probably at that time i was below person. it's not that hurtful to write about that time, as it was different. my home life was miserable, school life was shitfull , very dog eat dog. the big difference then is there was some ways to do okay, without having mummy and daddy. nowadays you inherit their debt. if i wasn't scarred (here i mean scar , the spelling gets me) enough, after the bike thing and earlier, the move from my grandmothers was the big hit.
1oct2014
the move from the grandmothers, to a place i didn't like to start with. now, when i look back, i think i was very wild. i think about it , you can't really blame anything really. i never had no proper home for a long time. my parents never had no proper home. the old boys gambling and drinking was atrocious. i could never understand it. to put it plainly he was a prick, when he'd come home pissed. i wasn't no goody goody either, but there's a time for discipline and that's not when you're pissed. i think i was strong, even though i was a scared little chicken when he came home. the move , was just the parents and me at that time. he came home and beat me up pretty bad, ripped hair out of my head. said i smoked marijuana , which at that time i would never. i could go into it more. that's basically it really.
9oct2014
hurt you at home , hit you at school, i hadn't heard that yet, but i sure did know it already. i was just a defeated low nobody. when you're like that, you're so easily lead. i'm talking 1972 here, as if anythings changed, probably worse. the bricks were already happening, with a crowd that i was not part of. even back then, savland was far from normality, not too many could relate to me, no one like me as far as home life. the bricks as they became known, were a pile of bricks next to the school. i never knew anything about them then. apparently students of a different higher class, hollowed out a pile and threw in some p.e mats. not surprisingly, the culprits or part of, were old primary school friends. they would ride their bikes to school early , steal flavoured milk and have it over the bricks, then wag periods over there. eventually they got caught out, some spent weeks or months in a boys home.
25oct2014
it became known about the goings on of the upper class follies, with us lower class plebs it was just follow the rules , morning assembly , roll call and class, maybe share a drag of a fag (cig) or some other nonsensical prank, like the infamous dead leg, or the stomp on a empty milk carton, making a big bang, sliding down the hand rail slide saddle . the games of knuckles, and slaps, and hand ball. so where does one fit into this world of real world preparation .
2nov2014
nowhere really, i never really fitted into any class. the school had only been built for 2 and half years before i went there. the first 6 months it shared another high school until work had finished, so they could open it. as i remember, the shoddy workmanship, seen a wall collapse, a worker injured. when i started, there was all the no hopers under the sun there, waiting for the 15 year birthday so they didn't have to go to school no more. after a time they left , and some sort of school structure started to form. i knew some or most of the no hopers from the pinny shop, the 1st year i hung around them until they fizzled out .
3nov2014
my attendance was pretty good really. sometime after the old boy episode, i got invited by some foes from a lower class, to wag a period. we sneaked through some bushes near the pushbikes, some bicycle racks, then bolted across the paddock. it reminded me of hogan's heroes or some tv crap. i remember it was a sort of rainy day. the old hype of the bricks had died down. we went through some bushes and they had hollowed out a pile, bit of corrugated iron and timber for a roof. they just stacked bricks on it to make it look like a pile. they just sat there blowing smoke rings with the cold air, wishing for real cigs. for me it was an adventure, but i thought you'd be better off in the classroom with the heater. i think the whole thing was just you could do want you want, and not be confined to a chair and table, and listen to bullshit.
4nov2014
the bricks wasn't the only spot to hang , but it was the safest, just getting there was a hassle. i'm not quite sure whether i started smoking seriously after or before the bricks. it became the place to go during lunch or wag a period and have a smoke in peace. no jerk coming up and dragging the guts out of your fag. i remember one incident . one lunch , me and smiddy, snuffy smith now deceased, he was one of the foes which took me over there.we were over there probably smoking. i remember it was lunch time. the bell went, and we started going back, then i seen the other foe on the other side of the paddock, with what i thought was a prefect . i told smiddy quick bolt a prefect. he took off the other way like a flash. then i realised it wasn't a prefect it was some bird with a blazer that look like a prefects. i tried to run a get smiddy , but he was long gone. when i went back, i couldn't find them, then i saw his bum rotating up and down unusually in the grass. they were having a fuck, this sight stuck in my head. since the bell had gone i went to the next class, on the way i saw smiddy and told him what had happened .
8nov2014
as i remember we had an easy to wag period in the arvy, so the 3 of us wagged that period, over the bricks. i thought, this is what happens over there. at that time i had never seen the map of tasmania, only the baldy badgers of primary school. tv and movies rarely had them in them, just boobs and bums at best. i remember someone found a picture out of some mag , it had a photo showing the bearded clam , everybody was lined up to see it. it was just a one lucky fucky, he just asked her and she said yes. they asked me if i wanted go with them on the capers on friday night, just say you are going to some fellowship thing in a different suburb. that was the start of me going out friday nights. we met up, on the way raided a few chicken coupes and threw the eggs at cars from the over pass. i thought, is this fun. eventually we got to the fellowship, we didn't stay long. then, we went an hot wired a steam roller , dickhead drive it on the new highway they were building, i couldn't drive at all.
9nov2014
that probably was the start of the going out friday nights, which went on every friday night there after. not the juvenile behavior , just going out and whatever. word soon got out about the push in the bush, and there was 1 less going over the bricks. he got expelled from the school , he was a trouble maker, though.me and smiddy still went over there, but we were in mostly different classes. i had a pushbike , i brought it for $2, i used to ride to the school on weekends . i knew a few younger guys, who lived close. they had motor bikes. as the school was still being built, what became sports fields, was a motor bike track. i'd ride there and watch them ride and that. there was sometimes a lot of activity with different bikes . things like old bsa and villiers, even bridgestone and lambretta, there was the mini bike thing, but it was mainly old shitboxes . there was no motocross much at that time. scrambling was the word.
11nov2014
with living close to the school them young guys knew that area quite well. i started hanging around them , the bricks was part of that. the bricks were there for quite a while apparently. they were going to build a church there. it was strange that the main period to wag was scripture, over the bricks. scripture was the easiest because the whole form was there in the hall. me and smiddy and whoever went to the bricks and smoked cigs and told yarns. on weekends we'd hang at the track, over the bricks, or a someones place fixing bikes or other stuff. we'd catch eels from the creek and put them in bins half full of water or hang them on the goal post.. one guy used to take them home to eat.
15nov2014
probably around august 1973, there was a few bikes and about 10 older type people at the track. it's not easy to remember the exactness of it all. the word was, there was crowd up the quarry, out unanderra. if you read earlier blogs , that quarry. anyways the relevance here, smoking pot. the guys on bikes had to go over the highway being built. there were tracks going to different places were you didn't go on main roads, compared to nowadays. i rode the push bike straight over cobblers hill and actually beat them, that blew them out a bit. up at the quarry there was a few older hippy type people. they passed round a joint, the first time i'd seen that thing. i thought of the old boy , and when it was passed to me i had a drag, thinking i was gonna get hooked . it tasted different , like something i tasted before but couldn't quite figure it out. even after all these years i've never really had that taste from other pot . a few times it had that taste, not many. i only had one drag and never got stoned, more of a guilt trip really.
16nov2015
again the time of this next bit are sketchy at best, not the story but when. i say not long after the quarry , maybe weeks or months. one of the young guys had a sister, who hang around us from time to time. like a lot of sisters around that time, they had elder hippy boy friends with records and that. she was the first person to tell me about pink floyd, before dark side of the moon. it was through her that i bought the album pretty much not long after it's release. one afternoon i was invited over the bricks after school, i had my pushbike which seems strange seeing i'd catch the bus to school and only ride there weekends, anyways, there was about 5 or 6 of us in the bricks and she light up some joints. there was no getting away from it, we were whacked. i was blanking out in that claustrophobic atmosphere, i had to get out. it was like slow motion. i remember riding the bike it seem like slow motion. in them days , when you got stoned you'd get a dry mouth and your spit was white. what happened to that. i had to have a drink, after having a drink. i was fucked, i decided to ride home and not worry about them others. i started riding and got halfway up cobblers hill and fell over. i sat there for a bit, stoned, thinking i can't go home like this. i decided to go back and see the others. they were still there, i just said i was riding round the place. i'd came down a bit, when i finally got home. i just lied on my bed til i'd came down , or there abouts
23nov2014
one school holidays , i told the olds me and a few were going camping up the mountain, like me and a different crowd had done sometime before. instead it was planned , i'd camp over the bricks and the younger guys would sneek out and come over the bricks. it was scary as fuck there at night on your own. the first time i had really been on my own all night before. i used milk creates for firewood they'd burn longer than wood and brighter, heat the bricks up outside and inside would be warm after they went out. you didn't think much about the toxic smoke, like you do today. even with copper wire you'd burn the plastic off the wire. i was hoping that the guy would bring his sister , so i could crack on to her. that didn't happen. after the fire had gone out i crashed out. sometime in the very early hours of the morning, the guy woke me up, no sister though . apparently they were coming and she got busted by their old boy , he hid behind a door and sneaked out later. then another guy turned up. maybe one or two more. we decided to go and pinch milk money, we didn't get much a few dollars at best. while we were out walking the streets , the sister and her old man had came looking for the guy, busted. we got back to the bricks not knowing nothing. i can't really remember what happened next, the young guys just went home. we never saw that guy , and the word got out he was grounded for a bit.
27nov2014
i could go on about other stuff at the bricks, but i think you get the basic picture. besides wagging periods not a lot, others may have used them for whatever. it did grow though, them younger guys had other friends in their form , maybe they went there, whilst i was in class. like i said before, the bricks was just one place, it was whatever was easiest at the time, mainly the creek. near the end of the year, not long before the final exam . a whole bunch of us wagged scripture as per usual , more than usual though.what next, i never knew what for, i think it had to do with job interviews or something. i knew i had done a test for a apprentice brick layer at the steelworks, i don't know. but for some reason my name was called out, i wasn't there . neither was a few others, the big search was on. we didn't know nothing. the next thing we was raided by teachers. rounded up , no use running , we were all busted.
29nov2014
the whole lot of us were suspended pending. being an important time, a lot were scared . i was more scared of the old boy flying off the handle, when he found out. there is a blank in my thinking about this. i know i was out . i had a few clothes and a sleeping bag, i still had the school locker to keep the books in. i just stayed over the bricks and slept there, i remember it started to rain there wasn't much of a roof in them bricks. i ended up sleeping under the portable classroom. i remember that. i don't know what happen after that, i think i ended up just going home and facing the music. the final result was we all had to come to school in full school uniform for the remainder of the year which was the final exam , whilst the rest of the form just wore casual gear. it was strange , cause usually i just wore levi's . now at assembly we had the full uniform and everyone else had just the casual look. it felt like a curse.
30nov2014
before i go on with this, i was a bit troubled about the baldy badger thing. in england if somethings mickey mouse it's shite, in australia if somethings mickey mouse it's alright. i checked out the online urban dictionary , they reckon a bald badger is a penis, to me a baldy badger is just some bald headed bloke ,cunt whatever. i think you got that. getting back to the curse of the saveloi , that was pretty much the end of the bricks. this next bit may have been before the bricks. i never really thought about it much at the time , but over the years i have on occasions. there is some relevance. i remember having to see this bloke, some straight looking dude. even then i didn't trust no one , even with the home life. the bloke just asked me these questions about shit. when i look back my behavior was outrageous to say the least, for that time. the questions that i remember the most was embarrassed . he kept asking me about embarrassed, like what it meant. i just said when you do something and you get a red face. he kept going on about it. i didn't realise, until years later, that he was some kind of shrink, sussing me out. that bloke knew jack shit about me, or the fucking miserable life i had. even i didn't know who i was at that time. he also asked me if i believed in God.
1dec2014
in 1973 or when ever it was, god was dead. a concept. the reason i went to that school was , i'd had 7 years of catholic school and never thought my life was for the better. well was it . in 1973 i thought god had had its day, i pretty much believed in worldly stuff, like tv shows and records and materialism . so the answer was no. it's easy to say no, or have it turn into a philosophy session of never ending dribble. not long after that he left. i never really thought about that time , until years later. never saw the dude again. probably somewhere someone who has interest in me reads his report . i've still got some old school books from that time , and have a laugh sometimes when i come across them.
3dec2014
i'm pretty much bored with the bricks as much as you are. sav of the bricks. the curse is, the powers that be, reaction and answer to such folie. at first it seemed like an achievement, but as time went on and things change it turned into a curse. their answer was to delete scripture from the curriculum (hey, i spelt a word with getting it wrong, achievement or curse). so, maybe still every tuesday finished 40 minutes earlier than every other day. i know i used to see them going home earlier on tuesdays when i drove pass there in the 80s and 90s. i often thought if they knew why they were going home early on tuesdays. thank the bricks.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
wayne
20august2014
those couple of usual spy eyes, who read the bit about my cousin in the other blog. i decided to write a bit of a blog about him. i tend to let the dead bury the dead, but with this i'll make some kind of exception. i think it has an underlining piece of importance of understanding life and death. his was the last funeral i've attended. it was a strange affair, in that there was no coffin. the service was held at a small chapel at the hospital. things had changed.
23august2014
i'm in a few minds about writing this. probably wayne was the closest thing i had to a brother, by blood. i had closer friends, even cousins that were more like brothers, but not by blood, blood is thicker than water, like they say. as you may or may not have read it the other blog, i only knew him about 70 times, as if. things like christmas at my grandmothers place, that's about it really. most of my cousins around here are mostly younger than me. i think wayne was born in 1970 , so he was 10 or so years younger than me, 10 years was a long time then, time seemed different.
24august2014
just trying to think when i first meet them. although his old boy, my uncle, was wayward, they were pretty much brought up clean cut, as i remember. i would have seen them on occasional weekends, when i lived at my grandmothers. they were just little kids. i would have gone over to the bush, or gone up the pinny shop. when i moved from there i would have seen them less. i remember one christmas they turned up for christmas lunch dinner thingy tradition at the grandmothers, they would come every year. they used to say jokes and things and make the oldies laugh. the story that year, was wayne had a pet lizard, he took it to school . the teacher confiscated it. he told the teacher , give me back my lizard you bastard. that got a laugh around the dinner table. they still had that clean cut barber shop hairdo though. probably 1977 something like that. i thought how the fuck are these guys gonna fit in. wayne had 2 brothers
25august2014
i never seen them until years later, their old boy got good money in the mines. i think he joined the masons or something, and pretty much turned his back on the family. my old boy had to teach him maths and shit, so he could get a deputy ticket in the mines. it only took him 86 goes at trying, i remember that, among other things. them times i was on the street , out riding or working or just out. so i didn't know much of home. actually i used to get a lift home with him in 1975 , we worked in the same mine. eventually he got over the mason thing and was back to christmas dinner in the 80's. that's when i seen wayne and his brothers had grown. they sort of made me feel a bit low. here they were talking about jobs this and that, money la la. poor old rob just slogging it out on the railways. and per usual i didn't fit in. i done things though. when i look back , they were fitting in and i was struggling. but if i really look back i chucked it in years before. so who gave a fuck, i never thought about that shit much . i'm just a happy bloke, really. i think them mine guys lost the plot years ago, long before arthur scargill.
26august2014
i never really had much to do with them. some time around 1989, i think, their mother died of cancer. at the funeral wake thing, the youngest didn't even know who i was. i hadn't see them in years , and he was young then. after leaving my grandmothers place, in the early seventies , i only went there a few times, other than christmas. i was probably out there somewhere, sleep in the day , roam til 12 o'clock train , so i didn't see them much. i remember i seen wayne over at the uni around 1992, i was friggin around with them little macintosh box things in computer lab, making a book about nintendo codes. he was walking to the pool there to do some laps. he said hi and that, he said he was doing okay. i never thought i'd see him over there. that's all really. i never really seen him much. the nineties seem hazy. compared to post 2000, i smoked pot a bit then. it's hard to say whether i smoked more in the 70's 80's or 90's. i can say i drunk more in the 80's, but pot ??. i thought wayne was straight clean cut, that's the way i seen it.
28august2014
after his mother died, his old man was on the loose, chasing birds, as if he ever stopped. he ended up buying a brothel in the Philippines, or something. i remember he won some money in the lottery , lottery again. third prize or a large prize, not first. that was in the sixties , when money was something. he went to japan, and was gonna bring back one of those geisha girls, but my grandmother wouldn't have it. he stayed at my grandmothers til he was about 32. so in the nineties he was back and forth to philippines . then, one day he brought back a wife and her five kids. everybody said what the fuck, he's off his rocker. i used to go to my olds for sunday lunch, he turned up with his wife, who was a year or so older than me. he wanted my mother to teach her english. i remember going to my grandmothers for Christmas or some do, around 1993 , and seeing all these asian kids running around the backyard. i seen wayne , and said what's this, he said yeah i know.
31august2014
the events after that point are a bit sketchy , at best. it must have been sometime before august 97. i was up town , i seen some bloke walking down the street, spaced out. then a couple of days i seen him again. then i got close , it was wayne. after talking for a bit, i gave him my address. he came round a few days later. he told me he didn't get along with his step mother, it was either him or her. he lived somewhere i can't remember. he and a mate went to england and amsterdam . he done a bit of travelling. he reckoned his mate flipped out on the drugs and killed his mother , then tried to kill him. i sort of remembered that on the news, but i wasn't really into the local news. he had a flat in some suburb, the guy killed his mother then came round to the flat to kill him , but he couldn't get in and left. he said he was into the doors, he said his old boy, told him that music goes right through me. the doors seemed to be popular for that generation. on me, he said he remembered my 21st birthday party and a girl i had. i got the photo album out and showed him my party and the girl , and in the photo was wayne, must of been 8 or 9.
1sept2014
with the before august 97 bit, thats when my grandmother died, so he had to have told me about the doors before then. cause i remember calling him the lizard king then. in reference to his lizard story and jimbo. he came to my place a few times, he was living at the illawarra pub. his brother was stabbed by a stranger there. apparently he was staying there , answered the door and some bloke stabbed him. in one of me and waynes conversations , he said there was some trouble at nannas. i can't remember exactly, but my grandmother told them not to open the back door, cause the dogs will get out. waynes brother open the door and let the dogs out. she blamed wayne and that's the last time they were there. not long after my grandmothers death is when he got stabbed.
4sept2014
here's the photo of wayne on the back left at my 21st, i been working 2 days in the hot sun and my face is sunburned . the other photo is me late 75 it should go in the 1975 blog, i was only 7 and a half stone, street boy song.
6sept2014
them photos tend to put me off track a bit. they reckon a picture tells a thousand stories. but i think the thousand stories are the time that's in between those photos. wayne? ,if it wasn't for wayne these photos would not be there. so, getting back to 1997, wayne turned up from time to time. people on the gear have this strange attitude to those who aren't. i'd put it this way, they're fucking liars. we talked more about this and that, he reckoned he was living at the illawarra pub and had a job doing some electrical work out port kembla. on the news was a story about a transformer blowing up, he was working 20 feet away . i'm not to sure about the time. around this time i was bumping into him regularly. i thought this blokes got no life skills. i asked him, didn't his mother tell him any thing. he said she'd tell him when he got older. i didn't see him for some time after that. at a sunday lunch at the olds , i learned his old boy was in hospital, getting some cancers removed. i visited him , after a bit i asked , what's with wayne, he just looked at me. i felt this time was like some kind of karma. the whole time was like some kind of build up. i really felt that .
9sept2014
again i'm not to sure of the time, it was either before or after . he turned up to my place all soaking wet from the rain . i had the heater on , he just put his wet shoes still on his feet next to the heater. i told him to take his shoes off and let them dry out. i told him he'll get sick if he leaves them on. for some reason he took offense, and took off. i never seen him for quite a while after that. it must of been after 2000. when i did see him , i had been through my own thing. he'd been to Thailand, he reckon he had a kid over there. he had a tiger tattoo, and was wearing some Buddhist thing on a necklace . a little square clear plastic thing with a picture inside. i told him he was fucked in the head, you've got your own spirit stuff. getting into eastern philosophies would only upset the balance. he just went , yeah yeah.
11sept2014
he ended up having a girl friend, according to a friend,she wasn't that stable, and with a substance problem, the writing was , not on the the wall but somewhere. they lasted a fair while, long enough to have a kid. a bit sad really. how many like that? i seen them around town over them few years. i think that whole generation has been pretty much decimated by very harsh drugs and poison . i think lots of generations have their tragedies , whether it be war, drugs , drink , disease or whatever. then, one day my mother said wayne was dead. i can't remember now, how i felt at that time. i know i thought , what most teenagers think, they wont live long. i thought if it had been me , they would have had some kind of understanding, but wayne. i think it upset my mother greatly. the guy had the world at his feet, had a trade, traveled the world. and chose the noose. i sort of think he ,just couldn't cope, i don't know.
19sept2014
the funeral was a low key affair, like i said before. the chapel at the hospital . no coffin or body, this puzzled a few people there. it wasn't until some years later, that i found out. if you suicide then you lose control of your body. so who knows what happened to waynes. as for the spirit, that's a different story. there was this constant wind at a particular spot outside the hospital. my mother said she thought of wayne every time she walked past that windy spot. since i started writing this blog , i walked past the hospital a few times, and noticed that the wind had died down in that spot. maybe this blog has finally buried wayne, R.I.P.
those couple of usual spy eyes, who read the bit about my cousin in the other blog. i decided to write a bit of a blog about him. i tend to let the dead bury the dead, but with this i'll make some kind of exception. i think it has an underlining piece of importance of understanding life and death. his was the last funeral i've attended. it was a strange affair, in that there was no coffin. the service was held at a small chapel at the hospital. things had changed.
23august2014
i'm in a few minds about writing this. probably wayne was the closest thing i had to a brother, by blood. i had closer friends, even cousins that were more like brothers, but not by blood, blood is thicker than water, like they say. as you may or may not have read it the other blog, i only knew him about 70 times, as if. things like christmas at my grandmothers place, that's about it really. most of my cousins around here are mostly younger than me. i think wayne was born in 1970 , so he was 10 or so years younger than me, 10 years was a long time then, time seemed different.
24august2014
just trying to think when i first meet them. although his old boy, my uncle, was wayward, they were pretty much brought up clean cut, as i remember. i would have seen them on occasional weekends, when i lived at my grandmothers. they were just little kids. i would have gone over to the bush, or gone up the pinny shop. when i moved from there i would have seen them less. i remember one christmas they turned up for christmas lunch dinner thingy tradition at the grandmothers, they would come every year. they used to say jokes and things and make the oldies laugh. the story that year, was wayne had a pet lizard, he took it to school . the teacher confiscated it. he told the teacher , give me back my lizard you bastard. that got a laugh around the dinner table. they still had that clean cut barber shop hairdo though. probably 1977 something like that. i thought how the fuck are these guys gonna fit in. wayne had 2 brothers
25august2014
i never seen them until years later, their old boy got good money in the mines. i think he joined the masons or something, and pretty much turned his back on the family. my old boy had to teach him maths and shit, so he could get a deputy ticket in the mines. it only took him 86 goes at trying, i remember that, among other things. them times i was on the street , out riding or working or just out. so i didn't know much of home. actually i used to get a lift home with him in 1975 , we worked in the same mine. eventually he got over the mason thing and was back to christmas dinner in the 80's. that's when i seen wayne and his brothers had grown. they sort of made me feel a bit low. here they were talking about jobs this and that, money la la. poor old rob just slogging it out on the railways. and per usual i didn't fit in. i done things though. when i look back , they were fitting in and i was struggling. but if i really look back i chucked it in years before. so who gave a fuck, i never thought about that shit much . i'm just a happy bloke, really. i think them mine guys lost the plot years ago, long before arthur scargill.
26august2014
i never really had much to do with them. some time around 1989, i think, their mother died of cancer. at the funeral wake thing, the youngest didn't even know who i was. i hadn't see them in years , and he was young then. after leaving my grandmothers place, in the early seventies , i only went there a few times, other than christmas. i was probably out there somewhere, sleep in the day , roam til 12 o'clock train , so i didn't see them much. i remember i seen wayne over at the uni around 1992, i was friggin around with them little macintosh box things in computer lab, making a book about nintendo codes. he was walking to the pool there to do some laps. he said hi and that, he said he was doing okay. i never thought i'd see him over there. that's all really. i never really seen him much. the nineties seem hazy. compared to post 2000, i smoked pot a bit then. it's hard to say whether i smoked more in the 70's 80's or 90's. i can say i drunk more in the 80's, but pot ??. i thought wayne was straight clean cut, that's the way i seen it.
28august2014
after his mother died, his old man was on the loose, chasing birds, as if he ever stopped. he ended up buying a brothel in the Philippines, or something. i remember he won some money in the lottery , lottery again. third prize or a large prize, not first. that was in the sixties , when money was something. he went to japan, and was gonna bring back one of those geisha girls, but my grandmother wouldn't have it. he stayed at my grandmothers til he was about 32. so in the nineties he was back and forth to philippines . then, one day he brought back a wife and her five kids. everybody said what the fuck, he's off his rocker. i used to go to my olds for sunday lunch, he turned up with his wife, who was a year or so older than me. he wanted my mother to teach her english. i remember going to my grandmothers for Christmas or some do, around 1993 , and seeing all these asian kids running around the backyard. i seen wayne , and said what's this, he said yeah i know.
31august2014
the events after that point are a bit sketchy , at best. it must have been sometime before august 97. i was up town , i seen some bloke walking down the street, spaced out. then a couple of days i seen him again. then i got close , it was wayne. after talking for a bit, i gave him my address. he came round a few days later. he told me he didn't get along with his step mother, it was either him or her. he lived somewhere i can't remember. he and a mate went to england and amsterdam . he done a bit of travelling. he reckoned his mate flipped out on the drugs and killed his mother , then tried to kill him. i sort of remembered that on the news, but i wasn't really into the local news. he had a flat in some suburb, the guy killed his mother then came round to the flat to kill him , but he couldn't get in and left. he said he was into the doors, he said his old boy, told him that music goes right through me. the doors seemed to be popular for that generation. on me, he said he remembered my 21st birthday party and a girl i had. i got the photo album out and showed him my party and the girl , and in the photo was wayne, must of been 8 or 9.
1sept2014
with the before august 97 bit, thats when my grandmother died, so he had to have told me about the doors before then. cause i remember calling him the lizard king then. in reference to his lizard story and jimbo. he came to my place a few times, he was living at the illawarra pub. his brother was stabbed by a stranger there. apparently he was staying there , answered the door and some bloke stabbed him. in one of me and waynes conversations , he said there was some trouble at nannas. i can't remember exactly, but my grandmother told them not to open the back door, cause the dogs will get out. waynes brother open the door and let the dogs out. she blamed wayne and that's the last time they were there. not long after my grandmothers death is when he got stabbed.
4sept2014
here's the photo of wayne on the back left at my 21st, i been working 2 days in the hot sun and my face is sunburned . the other photo is me late 75 it should go in the 1975 blog, i was only 7 and a half stone, street boy song.
6sept2014
them photos tend to put me off track a bit. they reckon a picture tells a thousand stories. but i think the thousand stories are the time that's in between those photos. wayne? ,if it wasn't for wayne these photos would not be there. so, getting back to 1997, wayne turned up from time to time. people on the gear have this strange attitude to those who aren't. i'd put it this way, they're fucking liars. we talked more about this and that, he reckoned he was living at the illawarra pub and had a job doing some electrical work out port kembla. on the news was a story about a transformer blowing up, he was working 20 feet away . i'm not to sure about the time. around this time i was bumping into him regularly. i thought this blokes got no life skills. i asked him, didn't his mother tell him any thing. he said she'd tell him when he got older. i didn't see him for some time after that. at a sunday lunch at the olds , i learned his old boy was in hospital, getting some cancers removed. i visited him , after a bit i asked , what's with wayne, he just looked at me. i felt this time was like some kind of karma. the whole time was like some kind of build up. i really felt that .
9sept2014
again i'm not to sure of the time, it was either before or after . he turned up to my place all soaking wet from the rain . i had the heater on , he just put his wet shoes still on his feet next to the heater. i told him to take his shoes off and let them dry out. i told him he'll get sick if he leaves them on. for some reason he took offense, and took off. i never seen him for quite a while after that. it must of been after 2000. when i did see him , i had been through my own thing. he'd been to Thailand, he reckon he had a kid over there. he had a tiger tattoo, and was wearing some Buddhist thing on a necklace . a little square clear plastic thing with a picture inside. i told him he was fucked in the head, you've got your own spirit stuff. getting into eastern philosophies would only upset the balance. he just went , yeah yeah.
11sept2014
he ended up having a girl friend, according to a friend,she wasn't that stable, and with a substance problem, the writing was , not on the the wall but somewhere. they lasted a fair while, long enough to have a kid. a bit sad really. how many like that? i seen them around town over them few years. i think that whole generation has been pretty much decimated by very harsh drugs and poison . i think lots of generations have their tragedies , whether it be war, drugs , drink , disease or whatever. then, one day my mother said wayne was dead. i can't remember now, how i felt at that time. i know i thought , what most teenagers think, they wont live long. i thought if it had been me , they would have had some kind of understanding, but wayne. i think it upset my mother greatly. the guy had the world at his feet, had a trade, traveled the world. and chose the noose. i sort of think he ,just couldn't cope, i don't know.
19sept2014
the funeral was a low key affair, like i said before. the chapel at the hospital . no coffin or body, this puzzled a few people there. it wasn't until some years later, that i found out. if you suicide then you lose control of your body. so who knows what happened to waynes. as for the spirit, that's a different story. there was this constant wind at a particular spot outside the hospital. my mother said she thought of wayne every time she walked past that windy spot. since i started writing this blog , i walked past the hospital a few times, and noticed that the wind had died down in that spot. maybe this blog has finally buried wayne, R.I.P.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
oxford hotel
22june2014
sort of hard trying not to think about the 1990s, and think of other things. i thought i write something about the oxford hotel. i'd been going there ,probably since about 76, 77 , around then. their just about to pull it down, that's been on the cards for about 6 or 7 years now. around here their pretty good at pulling things down and jack hammering all fucking night. they've nearly pulled down the whole fucking town. then forever to build a shithouse, with rents that are so unrealistic, that makes things bullshit. they build these arcade things with the same shops as anywhere, people go there for a week that's it. they've been doing that shit for years in the name of progress, it just kills everything.
6july2014
i was going to put a photo up , but i may have left it to late, the scaffold is up. my earliest memories was just a dive of a pub in 1975. i used to walk past it when walking the street, as you did back then. i remember looking in there, the ladies lounge was just that old outdoor wooden furniture. like most old pubs, not really old , there just not the same anymore. back then most pubs had a public bar, a saloon bar and a ladies lounge. in the early days women weren't allowed in the public or saloon bar. the saloon bar the beer was a penny dearer than the public bar to keep the riff raff out, mainly business people drank in the saloon.
19july2014
it's sort of hard figuring the year of the first time i went there. this is mainly because a lot of things happen in such a short space of time. i can remember the day and how, but year is difficult. the day would have been a saturday. me and a mate had been riding down a place called oilies , a name given to parts of the beach, south beach. surfies have nick names for such parts of beaches. other names along the beach are shitpipe, where they used to just pump the sewer in the sea. oilies was an industrial part, where they pumped sand in and built on it, and there was a large flat and small tracks to ride bikes. it was my first time there. i bought my first bike off a bloke i worked with for $260, a dt 175 yamaha trail bike. i was pretty hopeless at riding. i remember the day i bought it. after learning and crashing a few times, i got around here and there. an old friend said we should ride to tracks down near the beach. looking back now it's strange how certain people pop into your life from the past. he was another kindergarten friend from way back. i had been an urchin , and now i had a bike a so did others, he took me down to the oilies track. down there was this big group of old friends with their bikes, doing really good riding things. there was a couple of toffs with good bikes, bragging. i went there a week or two later, and one of the guys said we should ride up town to the oxford , apparently they just done it up. we rode up along the beach and i nearly rode into the shitpipe channel, luckily i hit the skids and the front wheel just went in a bit, i remember that.
22july2014
i remember riding up to the pub and parking the bikes out the back car park. i'd never really been there before that. my local was unanderra pub or morwarra as it used to be called. i didn't mention before, that there was also beer gardens, just an outdoor drinking area really. it was late in the arvy, when we got there . we just checked it out , at that time they where still doing refurbishments . we were pretty grubby from riding , i think we just had a beer , a cig and something from the snack bar. oh yeah , pubs used to have good snack bars them days. we decided to go there later that night and check it out. that's when i started hanging with some old friends and/or enemies from high school. certain nights were certain places with that crowd. nothing was on that night so it was the oxford.
1august2014
with the refurbishments came the new trading hours. i'm not to sure, but i'm pretty much sure, trading hours used to be 12 hours a bar. so some pubs had bars opened at different hours. in the early days , some early openers were 6am to 6pm, some were 7.30am to 7.30pm. most pubs up to that time opened 10am to 10pm. as a child , i dreaded 10.30pm , you'd hear the old boy coming home pissed as a nit. the oxford was the first around here to open at 11am to 11pm, with a small corner public bar that opened and closed early for the old pisspots. you could just move into the new part after it closed. us young crowd mainly turned up thursday night was the main, friday and saturday nights. saturday could be a dead night if something else was on. they decked it out okay, mainly to sell more grog. there was no bands at that time . mainly just drinking and conversation , there may have been a jukebox, there was one later . the wollongong hotel was where the jukebox was then. most pubs had jukeboxes and pool tables and maybe a pinball , although they came later.
3august2014
me writing about a pub, you'd think i like them. i never really liked pubs to tell you the truth, although they did have an air about them. some say the oxford had a ghost. ghost ain't uncommon to such places. you could rent out rooms and live there , as we all know. one lived there in the 90's , and died there upstairs. they closed the top part up for that reason apparently. but even before that there was trouble. in the fifties some hungarians stab the bar manger to death, a woman. i didn't know that until the 2000s and somethings. before that incident ,there was some kind of harmony between the races. that changed after that, as well as the hungarian bloke who kidnapped a lottery winners kid and held him for ransom, and eventually killing him.although not related to the oxford, here is the lottery story. the oxford was a dive after that. that end of town always had a bad vibe.
4august2014
so did the top end called piccadilly , but that's another story. hey , i could easily go on type this oxford hotel crap and any other blog nonsense. at this point in time , i could n't give two fucks either way. two fucks, two minds who gives a shit. at this point in time , i feel it's not really going anywhere. i've said a few things. i feel like just not doing it anymore, let things pass. maybe if i'm still around i'll come back to it, the truth about the oxford hotel is it was a fucking dive , just like any of them places. if they were any good people wouldn't let them go.
sort of hard trying not to think about the 1990s, and think of other things. i thought i write something about the oxford hotel. i'd been going there ,probably since about 76, 77 , around then. their just about to pull it down, that's been on the cards for about 6 or 7 years now. around here their pretty good at pulling things down and jack hammering all fucking night. they've nearly pulled down the whole fucking town. then forever to build a shithouse, with rents that are so unrealistic, that makes things bullshit. they build these arcade things with the same shops as anywhere, people go there for a week that's it. they've been doing that shit for years in the name of progress, it just kills everything.
6july2014
i was going to put a photo up , but i may have left it to late, the scaffold is up. my earliest memories was just a dive of a pub in 1975. i used to walk past it when walking the street, as you did back then. i remember looking in there, the ladies lounge was just that old outdoor wooden furniture. like most old pubs, not really old , there just not the same anymore. back then most pubs had a public bar, a saloon bar and a ladies lounge. in the early days women weren't allowed in the public or saloon bar. the saloon bar the beer was a penny dearer than the public bar to keep the riff raff out, mainly business people drank in the saloon.
19july2014
it's sort of hard figuring the year of the first time i went there. this is mainly because a lot of things happen in such a short space of time. i can remember the day and how, but year is difficult. the day would have been a saturday. me and a mate had been riding down a place called oilies , a name given to parts of the beach, south beach. surfies have nick names for such parts of beaches. other names along the beach are shitpipe, where they used to just pump the sewer in the sea. oilies was an industrial part, where they pumped sand in and built on it, and there was a large flat and small tracks to ride bikes. it was my first time there. i bought my first bike off a bloke i worked with for $260, a dt 175 yamaha trail bike. i was pretty hopeless at riding. i remember the day i bought it. after learning and crashing a few times, i got around here and there. an old friend said we should ride to tracks down near the beach. looking back now it's strange how certain people pop into your life from the past. he was another kindergarten friend from way back. i had been an urchin , and now i had a bike a so did others, he took me down to the oilies track. down there was this big group of old friends with their bikes, doing really good riding things. there was a couple of toffs with good bikes, bragging. i went there a week or two later, and one of the guys said we should ride up town to the oxford , apparently they just done it up. we rode up along the beach and i nearly rode into the shitpipe channel, luckily i hit the skids and the front wheel just went in a bit, i remember that.
22july2014
i remember riding up to the pub and parking the bikes out the back car park. i'd never really been there before that. my local was unanderra pub or morwarra as it used to be called. i didn't mention before, that there was also beer gardens, just an outdoor drinking area really. it was late in the arvy, when we got there . we just checked it out , at that time they where still doing refurbishments . we were pretty grubby from riding , i think we just had a beer , a cig and something from the snack bar. oh yeah , pubs used to have good snack bars them days. we decided to go there later that night and check it out. that's when i started hanging with some old friends and/or enemies from high school. certain nights were certain places with that crowd. nothing was on that night so it was the oxford.
1august2014
with the refurbishments came the new trading hours. i'm not to sure, but i'm pretty much sure, trading hours used to be 12 hours a bar. so some pubs had bars opened at different hours. in the early days , some early openers were 6am to 6pm, some were 7.30am to 7.30pm. most pubs up to that time opened 10am to 10pm. as a child , i dreaded 10.30pm , you'd hear the old boy coming home pissed as a nit. the oxford was the first around here to open at 11am to 11pm, with a small corner public bar that opened and closed early for the old pisspots. you could just move into the new part after it closed. us young crowd mainly turned up thursday night was the main, friday and saturday nights. saturday could be a dead night if something else was on. they decked it out okay, mainly to sell more grog. there was no bands at that time . mainly just drinking and conversation , there may have been a jukebox, there was one later . the wollongong hotel was where the jukebox was then. most pubs had jukeboxes and pool tables and maybe a pinball , although they came later.
3august2014
me writing about a pub, you'd think i like them. i never really liked pubs to tell you the truth, although they did have an air about them. some say the oxford had a ghost. ghost ain't uncommon to such places. you could rent out rooms and live there , as we all know. one lived there in the 90's , and died there upstairs. they closed the top part up for that reason apparently. but even before that there was trouble. in the fifties some hungarians stab the bar manger to death, a woman. i didn't know that until the 2000s and somethings. before that incident ,there was some kind of harmony between the races. that changed after that, as well as the hungarian bloke who kidnapped a lottery winners kid and held him for ransom, and eventually killing him.although not related to the oxford, here is the lottery story. the oxford was a dive after that. that end of town always had a bad vibe.
4august2014
so did the top end called piccadilly , but that's another story. hey , i could easily go on type this oxford hotel crap and any other blog nonsense. at this point in time , i could n't give two fucks either way. two fucks, two minds who gives a shit. at this point in time , i feel it's not really going anywhere. i've said a few things. i feel like just not doing it anymore, let things pass. maybe if i'm still around i'll come back to it, the truth about the oxford hotel is it was a fucking dive , just like any of them places. if they were any good people wouldn't let them go.
Friday, May 23, 2014
nineteen ninties part one
24may2014
before i go on with this, it's happy birthday to b.d. it's also the birthday of an old kindy classmate, one of the pot thieves, reds mate. we used to celebrate cracker night on 24th of may , that guy was an orphan ,and he love that his birthday was on cracker night, that's all he had. then they moved it to june for the queens birthday weekend, which isn't her birthday anyway. then they banned crackers in favour of fireworks. now they let off fireworks every other day , except queens birthday, they might remember some years for a political purpose. that pretty much sums up the 1990's.
26may2014
i'm not surprised no one as yet has viewed this blog ,excepting for the usual spy eyes, all 3 of them. what a fucked decade that was, maybe it was just my age at that time. i would not have liked to be born, or have grown up ,or done anything i had done before in that decade. thinking about the year 1990. firstly my lifestyle had changed dramatically. i was now living in a car, well a van actually , more than less in a state of depression. i still had a few possessions scattered about the place. it was drive here , crash out there, shower where. gypsy? not relating to many people. there's one incident that stands out, among a few, that year. i had driven halfway round australia, 3 states and a territory, the year before. the van was playing up. every time you'd get to a certain speed or a hill, it would die in the arse. i took it to one bloke, he reckoned i needed a tune up, so i paid $128 to get a tune up, ripped off. the fucking van was sitting there for 2 days , he changed the spark plugs, i could have done that. the problem was still there. next, i went to this other bloke . he put all this testing equipment on things, he reckoned the carby was sucking air or some bullshit, so i went and got a carby kit , gaskets and such, $30 something. i remember trying to get up this steep hill and the van clagged out halfway. i put the hand brake on and changed the carby gaskets there. the motor was under the front seat. i got up the hill okay, but the problem still returned. after talking to a no hoper, he reckoned i should change the fuel filter, a $6 part. that fixed the problem . since then i've known a least 4 people who have had that same problem. i've told them the fuel filter , most think what's he know, one guy said yes that fixed it.
27may2014
living like that was taking a toll. i had a cb radio in the van, which i used and made some new friends, that was okay. the so called girlfriend's father, suggested i put some of this coolant in my radiator, very good he said, being greek. i said no worries. driving round over the next couple of weeks, i noticed the temperature was high on the dash gauge. i went to one bloke at a garage, he said, you've blown a head gasket. i said how much, he said $1600, i thought , wtf. i decided to fix it myself. i worked it out at around $160. the gasket kit $90 and a head shave $70. i had the tools necessary. it took me two days to fix . parked outside the girlfriends parents house. after fixing it, the problem was still there. when i changed the gasket, i thought the old one wasn't that bad. i had to take out the radiator, water pump , hoses , tapids rockers a lot of shit. i got it going again , but the temperature problem was still there. a no hoper suggested thermostat. the thermostat is used for heating, when at a certain temperature it opens , the water is at a temperature and can be used to heat the interior , keep you warm like. i took it out and the high temperature problem was fixed. so what happened, the coolant had stopped the thermostat from opening, stopping the circulation of water. i thought fuck it. i never put the thermostat back, come winter not much of a heater. while i was fixing the head gasket i walked into town one night, a few miles, i was noticing change then.
28may2014
i could go on about life in a car, stuff like paying for petrol , then the cops trying to track me down for not paying, cause the jerk at the garage didn't like the look of me. or driving to canberra to see public image, or other ditties. i had had enough. i knew some people who had a small farm, they said i could stay there and help fix up the place. there was trouble there , they were on a methadone program. the trouble there is one day their okay, then when they got their done fix, their personality changed to up themselves. i had to get away. i think i stay there a few weeks or months. i was pushed into selling my motor bike and trailer to get bond for a flat in wollongong. i eventually did just that. things still weren't right though. it was like a game of how low can you go.
7june2014
once in the flat, i had to get rid of the van. i sold it for $300, i bought it for $3200. i was just glad to be done with that life in the van stuff. the van would have been handy for some moving things type of stuff. i was glad to let it go.the shithouse girl friend moved in also, i don't know if that was a good idea. i had friends all over at that time, but time at being down, didn't help me none. this is where fate had came in , very much so at this time. i got into playing the lotto, i had played before, but now i was putting all energies into these same numbers which i thought would pop up. i also had an nintendo addiction at this time, just playing and wasting time, i thought someone should have a song called no time for nintendo. actually, some of the money from the van sale went on nintendo games. i had a friend in sydney, who had a screen printing business. he was moving shop, i was asked if i could give a hand. i said i would. on the train up i meet an old unanderra friend, i had a couple of cans of beer for the journey, i said do you want one? he said he'd given up and was sober. i told him i was trying to win the lotto, and i was doing it tough.
8june2014
it was a strange time, this being between late 1990 and 1992. i've mention parts in former blogs, jester. with the fuckwit girlfriend , things were drifting. she was going out to these fucked out discoie type places, i was never into that shit. i liked live bands. i could go on about her, these short paras are too much for that speck. a nut from the start, no more said. so, i helped out with the moving the screen printing gear. i had a strange relationship with them artie type people. they helped me in life, but their politics was somewhat different. i think art has a connection between the top and the bottom. it's a ladder. the trouble is there's a lot of fakers. while sorting through some old bits of clothes , we came across the clash t shirt. so that's how i got it. i helped out a few weeks, staying over some nights, others times catching the early trains up. i was getting better with myself. then i felt i was being taken for granted , not used, cause i was happy helping out. we had a fall out over trivia , silly really. i was in a fragile state, sometimes you'd catch the early train up, and hang around til 10 or 11 from someone to turn up. i ended up parting from that with a few dollars. i bought nintendo games. not long after that the witch fucked off. with the key, things went missing. it was hard to trust people at that time.
9june2014
been thinking about that time lately, things you forget about. when i was fixing the head gasket, i thought about asking the girls mother if she'd like from me to put her lotto on. i didn't worry about it, i thought mind my own business. a couple of days later, she was spewing. she didn't put her ticket in with the same numbers. she would have won a million , no one won it that week. when i think about it now , i'm sort of lucky in a way, i didn't ask her. when the fuckwit left the flat she took most of the blankets and stuff. i tossed all the crappy bed in the van out. all i had was a woolen blanket i stole years ago, out of a car. it was freezing the middle of winter. i often see them type of blankets on tv shows, maybe it was karma . i thought that, i was just happy she was gone. it was hard, paying rent and living without work. i was slowly getting better. i was visiting a bloke, simon, and jester lived not far. simon reckoned she was fucking with my spirit. maybe there is some truth in that. her old man was having some medical problem , test after test they couldn't find nothing wrong. he even forked out a large sum of money to a greek witch doctor, he had to throw some things in the ocean. he took some pictures to the witch doctor , and they said there was trouble with that one, the girl friend. years later i was watching this tv program about the golden fleece, jason and the argonauts . they landed on this island , lemnos . there was no men on the island, apparently the men wouldn't have nothing to do with the women cause they had smelly feet. the fuckwit was from that island and she had smelly feet. around this time there was phonecards just coming out. i liked the pictures on them and started collecting them .
10june 2014
tonight i switched on the telly , and there was the blanket , big bang theory , on the lounge. i don't watch that show at all, it was just on when i switched on. i've seen them type of blankets on other shows, i can't explain them , it's like all coloured squares joined together. maybe i should throw it away and then i'll win lotto, probably had that blanket for about 35 years or more. i thought about the golden fleece and that blanket, there's no real connection excepting it's wool. anyways , getting back to this, when i said about fate in that time, it was like things were coming to a head, or some shit. maybe i should split this blog into parts, it might end up being long, compared to the earlier decades there was a lot more stay home . the phonecard thing caught on, all over the place. i started collecting the cards cause i liked the pictures. they were in phone boxes in like a little card disposable bin, you put your hand behind and grab the cards if there was any there. i didn't know it was happening at lots of places and they were worth money, i just wanted to have a small collection of the things for later on. at first i only kept the ones i didn't have. you know you'd go to the pub and check out the band and on the way home check for cards. them first ones were starting to be worth a bit of money . i thought i should have kept some of them first ones. then i found a shop that actually gave you 10% of the face value, so that helped support my tobacco habit . for a time it was getting crazy the prices of the things went up and up. people were actually keeping used phonecards in safe deposit boxes.
11june2014
i am sort of all over the place with this blog. with this, it's just a thought and build on it, it's not a boast. you can't really mention 1990 without the iraq build up, and eventual wars, talk about never ending story. still going on isn't it some 24 years later. we had an end of peace party back in 1991 just before the big secret invasion. it was a strange time, all glued to the t.v., seems like that 's all people do. gulf war til you're long sick of it, o.j til you're long sick of it... etc, etc. new world order. i tried to think where to go from here. i had a bit of time to do stuff i couldn't really do before when working the railway job. i started buying cds, that became cheaper . things i never really listen to before, chuck berry for instance . i never really heard much of his stuff til i bought this cheap cd. i knew things like johnny be goode, but the promise land, i thought was dave edmonds and rock and roll music was the beatles, and roll over beethoven. el cheapo cd had a lot a good songs, original studio . although you had to be careful of chuck and the different versions. another was leonard cohen . i had these unanderra friends around 1975, they said i should hear leonard cohen. i remember we went to town and the record shops and no leonard cohen. so i never really heard him. i bought the songs of leonard cohen on el cheapo cd , just to hear it, from back then. i played that a bit around 1992. i even started playing songs on guitar, i just wanted to play one song. a neighbour had a song book with leonard cohen song, suzanne. i played that song. it made me happy i could sort of play one song.
14june2014
with the guitar, maybe other instruments or anything really, it becomes work. and with that work comes uniformity. and once uniformity is achieved, what happens then? boredom .i couldn't just keep playing suzanne. i had a few song books with songs i liked as well as easy chord changes, that kept me occupied . it's not like i just picked up the guitar, i never really persisted with it. i had a few guys around me and they helped me a bit . with transposing and shit like that , sometimes it made it harder than the book. with the nintendo, i meet this art student through another art student i knew. he said he had 100 games on one cartridge, i didn't believe him . he showed me and lent me the thing , just early games. around this time, probably 92, seemed like a lot was happening. maybe 93, 94 as well. i found out bozo won the lotto . bozo, the guy on the train. apparently around the time of seeing him on the train, he played lotto and won a million . i thought the cunts stole me luck. my grandmother won a lottery in the 50's, 3000 pounds. my old man won the lottery in the early 60's. i thought i was destined to won the fucker. i caught up with boz . he was back on the piss, he drive me to his posh house in mt posho. he had a $7000 rolex watch he threw against the wall, indestructible he'd say . he told me he won not long after seeing me on the train. they had a big party everyone was getting pissed except him. then he busted and got back on the piss. he used to come and visit me around that time a lot, even just crash on my lounge. i used to think , here i am trying to win the fucking thing. a mate won it and was happy just crash on the paupers crappy old lounge. i thought about that.
15june2014
i got bitten by the lotto bug, around 88. i'd played before when it first started, but soon didn't bother after a while. so, i had this little note book , i had it for a couple of years. i decided to play the lotto and keep the results in the book. i'm looking at the book now. i drew up a nice chart, with boxes for the results , money in, money out. i had selected certain numbers, as i remember it was more of a coupon type of thing, with carbon paper sort of thing you kept that bit, not like todays type of ticket. it cost me $5.20 a week. i never won diddly squat until week 19. i won $8.50 , but money in was $98.80. by week 25 i'd had a couple of more drops, up to that point, in $129.80 out $36.30. then week 26 i got 5 numbers, $862.60. i had to wait 2 weeks for the check, then a week for the check to clear, in which time i had to think about what to spend it on. i ended up buying the first nintendo games machine. at week 52, in $271.20 ,out $950.60, so i made a profit, but take the 5 numbers win away and it's a different story. in 1991 i picked 6 numbers, thinking they would all come out. i've played them same numbers for 23 years and i'm still waiting, had a few drops . nothing to write about. with the nintendo i'm pretty much over, it's just a waste of time, as you get older time gets shorter, no time for nintendo
18june2014
i thought it should end there. i decided to have a part two. there wont be nintendo or lotto. if you wandering what happened to bozo, last i seen him, was about 3 years ago , he was living in a caravan park behind figgy pub. you know them things ain't cheap to live in anymore, i think they call them trailer trash in america. you know australia is a big country with not that large population and rents and property is bullshit. even if you own it's bullshit. during the nineties i seen a bit of an x file episode about this bloke , he saw peoples death but couldn't figure the lottery . i never watched that show much , i never liked that grizzly shit or fucking ads. the twilight zone was much better, in that it made you think. the x files and them type of show had a bit of that, but the grizzly shit seemed to overtake it and stick.
before i go on with this, it's happy birthday to b.d. it's also the birthday of an old kindy classmate, one of the pot thieves, reds mate. we used to celebrate cracker night on 24th of may , that guy was an orphan ,and he love that his birthday was on cracker night, that's all he had. then they moved it to june for the queens birthday weekend, which isn't her birthday anyway. then they banned crackers in favour of fireworks. now they let off fireworks every other day , except queens birthday, they might remember some years for a political purpose. that pretty much sums up the 1990's.
26may2014
i'm not surprised no one as yet has viewed this blog ,excepting for the usual spy eyes, all 3 of them. what a fucked decade that was, maybe it was just my age at that time. i would not have liked to be born, or have grown up ,or done anything i had done before in that decade. thinking about the year 1990. firstly my lifestyle had changed dramatically. i was now living in a car, well a van actually , more than less in a state of depression. i still had a few possessions scattered about the place. it was drive here , crash out there, shower where. gypsy? not relating to many people. there's one incident that stands out, among a few, that year. i had driven halfway round australia, 3 states and a territory, the year before. the van was playing up. every time you'd get to a certain speed or a hill, it would die in the arse. i took it to one bloke, he reckoned i needed a tune up, so i paid $128 to get a tune up, ripped off. the fucking van was sitting there for 2 days , he changed the spark plugs, i could have done that. the problem was still there. next, i went to this other bloke . he put all this testing equipment on things, he reckoned the carby was sucking air or some bullshit, so i went and got a carby kit , gaskets and such, $30 something. i remember trying to get up this steep hill and the van clagged out halfway. i put the hand brake on and changed the carby gaskets there. the motor was under the front seat. i got up the hill okay, but the problem still returned. after talking to a no hoper, he reckoned i should change the fuel filter, a $6 part. that fixed the problem . since then i've known a least 4 people who have had that same problem. i've told them the fuel filter , most think what's he know, one guy said yes that fixed it.
27may2014
living like that was taking a toll. i had a cb radio in the van, which i used and made some new friends, that was okay. the so called girlfriend's father, suggested i put some of this coolant in my radiator, very good he said, being greek. i said no worries. driving round over the next couple of weeks, i noticed the temperature was high on the dash gauge. i went to one bloke at a garage, he said, you've blown a head gasket. i said how much, he said $1600, i thought , wtf. i decided to fix it myself. i worked it out at around $160. the gasket kit $90 and a head shave $70. i had the tools necessary. it took me two days to fix . parked outside the girlfriends parents house. after fixing it, the problem was still there. when i changed the gasket, i thought the old one wasn't that bad. i had to take out the radiator, water pump , hoses , tapids rockers a lot of shit. i got it going again , but the temperature problem was still there. a no hoper suggested thermostat. the thermostat is used for heating, when at a certain temperature it opens , the water is at a temperature and can be used to heat the interior , keep you warm like. i took it out and the high temperature problem was fixed. so what happened, the coolant had stopped the thermostat from opening, stopping the circulation of water. i thought fuck it. i never put the thermostat back, come winter not much of a heater. while i was fixing the head gasket i walked into town one night, a few miles, i was noticing change then.
28may2014
i could go on about life in a car, stuff like paying for petrol , then the cops trying to track me down for not paying, cause the jerk at the garage didn't like the look of me. or driving to canberra to see public image, or other ditties. i had had enough. i knew some people who had a small farm, they said i could stay there and help fix up the place. there was trouble there , they were on a methadone program. the trouble there is one day their okay, then when they got their done fix, their personality changed to up themselves. i had to get away. i think i stay there a few weeks or months. i was pushed into selling my motor bike and trailer to get bond for a flat in wollongong. i eventually did just that. things still weren't right though. it was like a game of how low can you go.
7june2014
once in the flat, i had to get rid of the van. i sold it for $300, i bought it for $3200. i was just glad to be done with that life in the van stuff. the van would have been handy for some moving things type of stuff. i was glad to let it go.the shithouse girl friend moved in also, i don't know if that was a good idea. i had friends all over at that time, but time at being down, didn't help me none. this is where fate had came in , very much so at this time. i got into playing the lotto, i had played before, but now i was putting all energies into these same numbers which i thought would pop up. i also had an nintendo addiction at this time, just playing and wasting time, i thought someone should have a song called no time for nintendo. actually, some of the money from the van sale went on nintendo games. i had a friend in sydney, who had a screen printing business. he was moving shop, i was asked if i could give a hand. i said i would. on the train up i meet an old unanderra friend, i had a couple of cans of beer for the journey, i said do you want one? he said he'd given up and was sober. i told him i was trying to win the lotto, and i was doing it tough.
8june2014
it was a strange time, this being between late 1990 and 1992. i've mention parts in former blogs, jester. with the fuckwit girlfriend , things were drifting. she was going out to these fucked out discoie type places, i was never into that shit. i liked live bands. i could go on about her, these short paras are too much for that speck. a nut from the start, no more said. so, i helped out with the moving the screen printing gear. i had a strange relationship with them artie type people. they helped me in life, but their politics was somewhat different. i think art has a connection between the top and the bottom. it's a ladder. the trouble is there's a lot of fakers. while sorting through some old bits of clothes , we came across the clash t shirt. so that's how i got it. i helped out a few weeks, staying over some nights, others times catching the early trains up. i was getting better with myself. then i felt i was being taken for granted , not used, cause i was happy helping out. we had a fall out over trivia , silly really. i was in a fragile state, sometimes you'd catch the early train up, and hang around til 10 or 11 from someone to turn up. i ended up parting from that with a few dollars. i bought nintendo games. not long after that the witch fucked off. with the key, things went missing. it was hard to trust people at that time.
9june2014
been thinking about that time lately, things you forget about. when i was fixing the head gasket, i thought about asking the girls mother if she'd like from me to put her lotto on. i didn't worry about it, i thought mind my own business. a couple of days later, she was spewing. she didn't put her ticket in with the same numbers. she would have won a million , no one won it that week. when i think about it now , i'm sort of lucky in a way, i didn't ask her. when the fuckwit left the flat she took most of the blankets and stuff. i tossed all the crappy bed in the van out. all i had was a woolen blanket i stole years ago, out of a car. it was freezing the middle of winter. i often see them type of blankets on tv shows, maybe it was karma . i thought that, i was just happy she was gone. it was hard, paying rent and living without work. i was slowly getting better. i was visiting a bloke, simon, and jester lived not far. simon reckoned she was fucking with my spirit. maybe there is some truth in that. her old man was having some medical problem , test after test they couldn't find nothing wrong. he even forked out a large sum of money to a greek witch doctor, he had to throw some things in the ocean. he took some pictures to the witch doctor , and they said there was trouble with that one, the girl friend. years later i was watching this tv program about the golden fleece, jason and the argonauts . they landed on this island , lemnos . there was no men on the island, apparently the men wouldn't have nothing to do with the women cause they had smelly feet. the fuckwit was from that island and she had smelly feet. around this time there was phonecards just coming out. i liked the pictures on them and started collecting them .
10june 2014
tonight i switched on the telly , and there was the blanket , big bang theory , on the lounge. i don't watch that show at all, it was just on when i switched on. i've seen them type of blankets on other shows, i can't explain them , it's like all coloured squares joined together. maybe i should throw it away and then i'll win lotto, probably had that blanket for about 35 years or more. i thought about the golden fleece and that blanket, there's no real connection excepting it's wool. anyways , getting back to this, when i said about fate in that time, it was like things were coming to a head, or some shit. maybe i should split this blog into parts, it might end up being long, compared to the earlier decades there was a lot more stay home . the phonecard thing caught on, all over the place. i started collecting the cards cause i liked the pictures. they were in phone boxes in like a little card disposable bin, you put your hand behind and grab the cards if there was any there. i didn't know it was happening at lots of places and they were worth money, i just wanted to have a small collection of the things for later on. at first i only kept the ones i didn't have. you know you'd go to the pub and check out the band and on the way home check for cards. them first ones were starting to be worth a bit of money . i thought i should have kept some of them first ones. then i found a shop that actually gave you 10% of the face value, so that helped support my tobacco habit . for a time it was getting crazy the prices of the things went up and up. people were actually keeping used phonecards in safe deposit boxes.
11june2014
i am sort of all over the place with this blog. with this, it's just a thought and build on it, it's not a boast. you can't really mention 1990 without the iraq build up, and eventual wars, talk about never ending story. still going on isn't it some 24 years later. we had an end of peace party back in 1991 just before the big secret invasion. it was a strange time, all glued to the t.v., seems like that 's all people do. gulf war til you're long sick of it, o.j til you're long sick of it... etc, etc. new world order. i tried to think where to go from here. i had a bit of time to do stuff i couldn't really do before when working the railway job. i started buying cds, that became cheaper . things i never really listen to before, chuck berry for instance . i never really heard much of his stuff til i bought this cheap cd. i knew things like johnny be goode, but the promise land, i thought was dave edmonds and rock and roll music was the beatles, and roll over beethoven. el cheapo cd had a lot a good songs, original studio . although you had to be careful of chuck and the different versions. another was leonard cohen . i had these unanderra friends around 1975, they said i should hear leonard cohen. i remember we went to town and the record shops and no leonard cohen. so i never really heard him. i bought the songs of leonard cohen on el cheapo cd , just to hear it, from back then. i played that a bit around 1992. i even started playing songs on guitar, i just wanted to play one song. a neighbour had a song book with leonard cohen song, suzanne. i played that song. it made me happy i could sort of play one song.
14june2014
with the guitar, maybe other instruments or anything really, it becomes work. and with that work comes uniformity. and once uniformity is achieved, what happens then? boredom .i couldn't just keep playing suzanne. i had a few song books with songs i liked as well as easy chord changes, that kept me occupied . it's not like i just picked up the guitar, i never really persisted with it. i had a few guys around me and they helped me a bit . with transposing and shit like that , sometimes it made it harder than the book. with the nintendo, i meet this art student through another art student i knew. he said he had 100 games on one cartridge, i didn't believe him . he showed me and lent me the thing , just early games. around this time, probably 92, seemed like a lot was happening. maybe 93, 94 as well. i found out bozo won the lotto . bozo, the guy on the train. apparently around the time of seeing him on the train, he played lotto and won a million . i thought the cunts stole me luck. my grandmother won a lottery in the 50's, 3000 pounds. my old man won the lottery in the early 60's. i thought i was destined to won the fucker. i caught up with boz . he was back on the piss, he drive me to his posh house in mt posho. he had a $7000 rolex watch he threw against the wall, indestructible he'd say . he told me he won not long after seeing me on the train. they had a big party everyone was getting pissed except him. then he busted and got back on the piss. he used to come and visit me around that time a lot, even just crash on my lounge. i used to think , here i am trying to win the fucking thing. a mate won it and was happy just crash on the paupers crappy old lounge. i thought about that.
15june2014
i got bitten by the lotto bug, around 88. i'd played before when it first started, but soon didn't bother after a while. so, i had this little note book , i had it for a couple of years. i decided to play the lotto and keep the results in the book. i'm looking at the book now. i drew up a nice chart, with boxes for the results , money in, money out. i had selected certain numbers, as i remember it was more of a coupon type of thing, with carbon paper sort of thing you kept that bit, not like todays type of ticket. it cost me $5.20 a week. i never won diddly squat until week 19. i won $8.50 , but money in was $98.80. by week 25 i'd had a couple of more drops, up to that point, in $129.80 out $36.30. then week 26 i got 5 numbers, $862.60. i had to wait 2 weeks for the check, then a week for the check to clear, in which time i had to think about what to spend it on. i ended up buying the first nintendo games machine. at week 52, in $271.20 ,out $950.60, so i made a profit, but take the 5 numbers win away and it's a different story. in 1991 i picked 6 numbers, thinking they would all come out. i've played them same numbers for 23 years and i'm still waiting, had a few drops . nothing to write about. with the nintendo i'm pretty much over, it's just a waste of time, as you get older time gets shorter, no time for nintendo
18june2014
i thought it should end there. i decided to have a part two. there wont be nintendo or lotto. if you wandering what happened to bozo, last i seen him, was about 3 years ago , he was living in a caravan park behind figgy pub. you know them things ain't cheap to live in anymore, i think they call them trailer trash in america. you know australia is a big country with not that large population and rents and property is bullshit. even if you own it's bullshit. during the nineties i seen a bit of an x file episode about this bloke , he saw peoples death but couldn't figure the lottery . i never watched that show much , i never liked that grizzly shit or fucking ads. the twilight zone was much better, in that it made you think. the x files and them type of show had a bit of that, but the grizzly shit seemed to overtake it and stick.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
ironworkers club
14may2014
in my life i haven't been a member of many clubs, i think most are louse. i was a member of the ironworkers club, now defunct. i use to take photos in the mid 80's this blog will be some of them photos from then at the ironworkers club.
in my life i haven't been a member of many clubs, i think most are louse. i was a member of the ironworkers club, now defunct. i use to take photos in the mid 80's this blog will be some of them photos from then at the ironworkers club.
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| not sure if this upstairs or down. they moved it down. maybe they renovated after, they did. this band is a concoction of guys from other working type bands, mainly covers, doing clubs and things, this band was called president gas, after the psychedelic furs song. i knew the guitarist from other earlier bands. i don't remember much of this band. |
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| an early version of the unheard band, i'm surprised this band lasted as long as it has. |
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| every now again you get surprises coming from somewhere. that's rednicks hand on the chair and tobacco, don't know that other joker. i think he's never been amongst weirdos before, that's about 1986 or later. i hadn't seen red for some years before, he'd just pop in |
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| that's my leather jacket that fucking shit is wearing, the thing on the front right. i was really tempted to blank the face, but it proves looks are deceiving. what a trouble maker |
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| me and this geezer go back to high school and after, we probably hate each other |
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| not a good look on my behalf, that's a wink by the way. i love the expression on that sheilas face, that's the reason i put this one up, i can see the scar in my eyebrow from the bike crash, otherwise i healed okay. |
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| proton energy pills band |
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| sydney dregs had a so called punk night , i say this was the end of anything. i'd say this was the grunge, when the night was over they broken 17 trays of glasses, just shitheads, whatever gains had come of anything soon went |
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| more sydney dregs, the only band i remember was mass appeal, which i found uninteresting. as you can see this lot ain't really into their bands, couple of wollongong goths back yonder to the left sitting down |
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| i'm sort of embarrassed by that winking look i did there. this is taken in the upstairs bar. these guys were from up north , thirroul way. you could say to them the ruts, exploited. they didn't know what you're on about. they were into american skate punk at that time they made me feel old, probably right i was getting there.. |
17may2014
i took an mount of photos from about 84 to 89, these are just some that made it, either by negative transfer or whatever. personally i couldn't give a rats arse about these or that time or place or more than half the people.
18may2014
these photos might mean something to someone sometime , but they don't mean much to me . i would rather move on. i'd been meaning to put these on the blog for quite a while. the photos that would have been more interesting to me are around 1980 81. these are just the end of that really, last grasp
19may2014
just when i thought, that's it, time to think about the next, there's more. like most things when i walk away they tend to finish. i was getting bored with the not saying anything around me all the time. i think i stopped going to the club or it closed. i headed away for a time. when i came back, the club had been turned into a sort of under 18's venue. i went there once, there was some bands , like members of some detroit bands there. can't remember much.that was a one off type of thing, a kickstart. basically, it was a venue for the youth centre bands to play, no alcohol, it was called tsunami . it never heard that before, someone said it was japanese for tidal wave. i just thought whatever. i didn't think it would last, but it stayed open for some time. i thought it was okay for them youth. it was a hard time 90, 91 92 or so, a lot of shops closed and still. the trouble with all them young bands, they were all uniformed and under control. what i mean is they all learnt the same. so, it was all the same racket with nothing much to say lyrics. i shouldn't really say much about it, they probably enjoyed it, but nothing came out of it, so that's where it failed. with these blogs of mine there tends to be a quirk, spun out , x filey thingy . there's a strange one here as well. when i heard ironworkers built the trade towers i thought of the club how it was wrecked by them cunts. then 4 years later they had that big tsunami happen, i thought thats weird , even when they were reporting it not many people could say it, let alone know what one was, i knew from that venue. probably nothing anyway just weird.
Friday, April 11, 2014
branch ave
12april2014
in your life there's a street or a place that pops up for strange reasons. i've been thinking lately, where's this blog thing going to next. when you get into that situation , it's sometimes better to have a spell or do other things. get your mind off the last thing, which i could have kept going on , but it was getting long. then out of some place way back yonder came branch ave.
16april2014
branch ave, figtree, new south wales to be precise. a street at which before 10th of october 1971, i had never been on or had ever heard of, to my knowledge at that time. that was all about to change, even the date, became a curse. as i try and remember that day, i was 12 years old , 13 in a few days, i always wanted to be a teenager. in the 50's and 60's, teenagers were the in crowd, all the fun stuff , like rock 'n rock, fads and all that type of shit, was centred all at teenagers, so 13 was a very big time for young people. if you've read about some early life stuff in other blogs, i might even have mentioned the episode earlier, i don't look back much, even if i am now. the story of branch ave is not one i reflect on much. a bit like feet on seat.
20april2014
the difference here is it's more deeper and painful than the seat on feet thing. for me to go back there it's pretty heavy. remembering stuff , you know, just want to move on, but it's all part of what makes one. as i remember , my home life had been pretty much shit to say the least , it had been for a long time, since about 1966. when i say home life, i mean a safe home. i don't really wanna get into the home stuff all so much, but that day i wasn't in no hurry to get home or so called. it was a sunday , i was at some new friends place. new meaning a new school , not the primary school but 1st form . 10 months into it. you know them days were somewhat different, i know it's cliche. anyways, a few classmates meet at one place as we said we would, something came up , and the guy had to go out with his parents somewhere, swimming or something. he said i should visit this other guy who lived in branch ave.
21april2014
he said i should ride his bike up , i thought that was a good idea. i never had my own bike, i used to ride my sisters girls bike everywhere and get hassled, she never rode it. he had one of those mustang type bikes, which i always wanted. the bike was in neglected condition, no brakes and loose handle bars that went forwards and were hard to pull back . i used my thong on the wheel as a brake, thong being a japanese safety boot, you know flipperty flop, flip flop. you know they call them jandles in new zealand. it worked okay if you going not that fast. my sisters bike had the back pedal brake. from where the guy whose bike it was, it was flat down figtree way, to the other guys place was figtree heights, pretty hilly. i didn't know up there that well. i made it to the guys place, i went the long way round. it all seems a bit silly, now. i don't know what made young guys think like they do, i still see it nowadays. it's all a bit corny, lonely, sad really. then i think does it change or you, just something. i think them computer type games fuck their heads, i know guys now 30 somethings, just played games all through their 20s, fuck that. anyways, he had a rumpus room and a mini golf setup in the back yard, a couple of baked bean tins in the ground for holes. we just played a few games and things as i remember.
24april2014
you know that bike is really similar, take away the brakes , loosen the handle bars, leave in the weather for 3 months and you're close. i suppose you figured out, i crashed the bike. on the 11th of october , i woke up stuck to the bed sheets, wanting to have a piss. i laid there thinking where was i. i remembered nothing, when i say nothing i really mean nothing. now , bits come back. a nurse came and said, your awake, she had to put drops in my eyes. she helped me get loose from the sheets, my wounds had wept and dried and stuck to the sheets. it's amazing how i remember that shit after all them years. i can remember going for a leak, and seeing some poor dude in the mirror. then realizing it was me. half my face was gravel rash, you couldn't see my eye. after that i just went back to bed and crashed out.
27april2014
a couple of nurses came in ,told me how i ended up there, they said i might be in the news, thank fuck it wasn't. i'm a private person even then. they done the sheet change, eye ball drops and whatever else. i couldn't remember jack shit, but i learnt a skill of remembering out of that. that's how i can remember it now. i was in intensive care with all these very sick and or dying people around me, it was a modern hospital, low tech though, it seemed to be more caring than these days. i just crashed out. they said the head nurse and doctor would visit and determine my situation.
28april2014
i can't say how long i was in intensive care . but i was moved to the children's part or ward whatever. as i remember there was 4 beds and 3 pountces , one i remember had tonsillitis removal, can't remember the others. they had nothing on me, i think they just looked at me. even then i was from a different place. the thing that hurts me most, was waking up on my birthday, a couple of nurses came and gave birthday kisses and things, that was ok. but i was now thirteen , the teenager. i looked for some presents, beside the bed was some kmart el cheapo slippers, that was it. i never wore slippers for a long time, i never even wore pajamas . but there was no one. when i look back now at that time, that was low, maybe better dead. i think i was pretty brave then.
29april2014
this is turning into more of me than branch ave. it's all relative. them other guys had visits from family and friends, they'd pull the curtain across , poor old rob, that's me by the way. just when i was feeling real down, a familiar head pops in and looks around. it was grandad, then he turned and walked away. i jumped out of bed and shouted out, grandad. he turned around and walked back, he didn't know it was me. he just thought, look at that poor bastard. i read recently about keith richards saying something about grand fathers beening important, i would agree with that. after that i got a few visits from classmates and a few rellys, no parents though, they reckon i didn't want to see them, maybe yes and no, that was always what they say. lying in bed was boring. i found a new activity, tying knots in the pyjama chord. i must of tyed twenty or so knots. the nurses had been giving me these pills, all sorts ,even these red things. all of a sudden i had to go. i went to the toilet , bloody kiddies things all over the place, tiles and such. there was a nurse giving a kid a bath next to the loo, i had to go, then the bloody knots became an obstacle, trying to undo. i was swearing , saying things like fucking shit, the nurse got offended . i didn't manage to untie the knots.
30april2014
your right , i'd rather fuck some bird then write this shit. but , i'd forget the fuck and want another. this shit is planted firmly in thy dna and is the source of dust. i've had a few wines tonight , even so, this shit don't go away. i'm glad some fuckers interested in my shit. i know who you are. germany and usa, but like everything that changes there there's an error of judgement . at least i've got some kind of audience.
"30july 2016"
i think i was pissed on wine there, i half know what i was on about. i know i was pretty upset going through remembering that time. even now it still upsets me. i was gonna delete or fix it , but i don't know what to fix. the usa and germany bit is about people always reading my blog and that's it, just snoops, suppose it's part of it. i think what i meant there, was from dust we are made and from dust we return. as for fuck it is not, but then maybe it is.
4may2014
as days went on i became rowdy . i'd been there for a bit , they called for the old boy to pick me up, that was it for the hospital. now i had to deal with all the other shit. stuff like people in general , my face was still half a scab, my eye was getting better. i forgot to say it was very blood shot in there. i found out later i had concussion, a fractured skull and stitches in my eyebrow, not to mention gravel rash on the arms. i had good mending skin , so i got better fairly quick. i had to see the doctor to take the stitches out of my eyebrow. he said he thought there was 4 but could only see 3. he was right there was 4 , i got the other one out some weeks later. so i was on the mend , but what happened.
5may2014
time is a great healer, like they say. after months of trying to figure out what happened, things start coming back. before i go on with this, while i was away ,motor bikes were the in thing. the guy who owned the push bike i crashed got a motor bike, something like a honda 100cc, sort of trail bike thing. there was a track near the school. so it was decided to go there. this other guy, a bit older than us would double me there. i was not long back to normality . the prick rode like a fuckwit down this hill, dirt track, about 120kmph . i just freaked out with a flashback, i handled it, though. if something would of happened i would have been fucked. after that i wasn't real interested in that shit, i'd just hang and watch. i think i just got sick of them ,ie, i got this ,ie, i can do this fucking shit. on remembering what happened. after awhile the guy who lived in branch ave, his family were all going out, so i had to go. they suggested i go the other way , it was quicker. i remember when i rode down their driveway , i nearly got bowled by a car.
6may2014
there's a small hill and sort of bend, i can't remember riding up there. after the bend it's all downhill. i can remember trying to slow down with the thong and flying past this dead end street, which i should of just crashed there. the thong wasn't happening , the handle bars went forward , couldn't pull them back. i just thought , i'd been in hairier situations. this wasn't to be . doing about 50mph head first onto the rough blue metal road near the bottom. i can just remember getting up and walking to the side of the road and collapsing. not long after, i was drifting in and out. i remember peoples feet and voices talking shit, like ambulance and, is he type stuff, that's about it. the branch ave guy's family weren't long on the scene apparently, he said he thought i was dead. the ambulance arrived . his mother traveled in the ambulance with me. i remember this, for some reason maybe pain or delirium, i grabbed her hair and wouldn't let go. the ambulance bloke just punched me out, i can't remember anything after that.
8may2014
on reflecting and thinking about that last bit. i think i just gave up and cried. and can sort of remember being on some kind of xray machine table , and people going he's a mess. that's about it for that episode. this whole thing wouldn't have even been written about, if not for, in 1993 , i got this job , getting bands for this newly opened club. in order to get the bands , i had to get a phone. i don't think the mobile thing was that happening then. anyways, every now and again i'd get these calls , saying james, james gauge. i 'd just go wrong number.
9may2014
this used to happen every once and a while. i must have got his old number. i don't know if this sort of thing means anything. when i first got a phone in 1983, i got this woman's old number, this familiar voice asks is la la there. i thought i know that voice . i knew the womans daughter. the bloke was rooting her mother. bazaar. getting back to this james gauge thing. it went on for years , right up until i got the phone disconnected . different people would ring asking for james. then one day someone said james , james gauge , 6 branch ave figtree. at first i didn't think nothing, just this bloody james gauge fellow should tell his friends his new phone number. then i thought branch ave, that's where i had that crash that time. if it happened once for a short period of time, i 'd put it off as coincidence , but these calls went on for years. i was nearly tempted to ask who was this james. it was always the same just james nothing else, i'd say sorry wrong number. it wasn't every day. i reckon i had that phone number for 12 or so years , and i'd get them calls right up till the end. one day i decided to walk to branch ave, and see where this number 6 was. it was right where i hit the road. i just thought that's sort of weird. as for the people involved in 1971, i seen the guy whose bike it was about a year or so, he had a hip replacement at 54, that blew me out. he was the surfie sking type, very ,not sporty but, outdoory . the guys whose mother was in the ambulance with me, she died about a year ago, R.i.P. he was also a surfy and good at sport, he got trapped in the heroin thing in the 80s, thats the last i saw of him. i thought he might of died, but it didn't say deceased in the paper for his mothers obituary thingy, so he must still be alive somewhere, probably all fucked up.
in your life there's a street or a place that pops up for strange reasons. i've been thinking lately, where's this blog thing going to next. when you get into that situation , it's sometimes better to have a spell or do other things. get your mind off the last thing, which i could have kept going on , but it was getting long. then out of some place way back yonder came branch ave.
16april2014
branch ave, figtree, new south wales to be precise. a street at which before 10th of october 1971, i had never been on or had ever heard of, to my knowledge at that time. that was all about to change, even the date, became a curse. as i try and remember that day, i was 12 years old , 13 in a few days, i always wanted to be a teenager. in the 50's and 60's, teenagers were the in crowd, all the fun stuff , like rock 'n rock, fads and all that type of shit, was centred all at teenagers, so 13 was a very big time for young people. if you've read about some early life stuff in other blogs, i might even have mentioned the episode earlier, i don't look back much, even if i am now. the story of branch ave is not one i reflect on much. a bit like feet on seat.
20april2014
the difference here is it's more deeper and painful than the seat on feet thing. for me to go back there it's pretty heavy. remembering stuff , you know, just want to move on, but it's all part of what makes one. as i remember , my home life had been pretty much shit to say the least , it had been for a long time, since about 1966. when i say home life, i mean a safe home. i don't really wanna get into the home stuff all so much, but that day i wasn't in no hurry to get home or so called. it was a sunday , i was at some new friends place. new meaning a new school , not the primary school but 1st form . 10 months into it. you know them days were somewhat different, i know it's cliche. anyways, a few classmates meet at one place as we said we would, something came up , and the guy had to go out with his parents somewhere, swimming or something. he said i should visit this other guy who lived in branch ave.
21april2014
he said i should ride his bike up , i thought that was a good idea. i never had my own bike, i used to ride my sisters girls bike everywhere and get hassled, she never rode it. he had one of those mustang type bikes, which i always wanted. the bike was in neglected condition, no brakes and loose handle bars that went forwards and were hard to pull back . i used my thong on the wheel as a brake, thong being a japanese safety boot, you know flipperty flop, flip flop. you know they call them jandles in new zealand. it worked okay if you going not that fast. my sisters bike had the back pedal brake. from where the guy whose bike it was, it was flat down figtree way, to the other guys place was figtree heights, pretty hilly. i didn't know up there that well. i made it to the guys place, i went the long way round. it all seems a bit silly, now. i don't know what made young guys think like they do, i still see it nowadays. it's all a bit corny, lonely, sad really. then i think does it change or you, just something. i think them computer type games fuck their heads, i know guys now 30 somethings, just played games all through their 20s, fuck that. anyways, he had a rumpus room and a mini golf setup in the back yard, a couple of baked bean tins in the ground for holes. we just played a few games and things as i remember.
this bike is similar to his bike
24april2014
you know that bike is really similar, take away the brakes , loosen the handle bars, leave in the weather for 3 months and you're close. i suppose you figured out, i crashed the bike. on the 11th of october , i woke up stuck to the bed sheets, wanting to have a piss. i laid there thinking where was i. i remembered nothing, when i say nothing i really mean nothing. now , bits come back. a nurse came and said, your awake, she had to put drops in my eyes. she helped me get loose from the sheets, my wounds had wept and dried and stuck to the sheets. it's amazing how i remember that shit after all them years. i can remember going for a leak, and seeing some poor dude in the mirror. then realizing it was me. half my face was gravel rash, you couldn't see my eye. after that i just went back to bed and crashed out.
27april2014
a couple of nurses came in ,told me how i ended up there, they said i might be in the news, thank fuck it wasn't. i'm a private person even then. they done the sheet change, eye ball drops and whatever else. i couldn't remember jack shit, but i learnt a skill of remembering out of that. that's how i can remember it now. i was in intensive care with all these very sick and or dying people around me, it was a modern hospital, low tech though, it seemed to be more caring than these days. i just crashed out. they said the head nurse and doctor would visit and determine my situation.
28april2014
i can't say how long i was in intensive care . but i was moved to the children's part or ward whatever. as i remember there was 4 beds and 3 pountces , one i remember had tonsillitis removal, can't remember the others. they had nothing on me, i think they just looked at me. even then i was from a different place. the thing that hurts me most, was waking up on my birthday, a couple of nurses came and gave birthday kisses and things, that was ok. but i was now thirteen , the teenager. i looked for some presents, beside the bed was some kmart el cheapo slippers, that was it. i never wore slippers for a long time, i never even wore pajamas . but there was no one. when i look back now at that time, that was low, maybe better dead. i think i was pretty brave then.
29april2014
this is turning into more of me than branch ave. it's all relative. them other guys had visits from family and friends, they'd pull the curtain across , poor old rob, that's me by the way. just when i was feeling real down, a familiar head pops in and looks around. it was grandad, then he turned and walked away. i jumped out of bed and shouted out, grandad. he turned around and walked back, he didn't know it was me. he just thought, look at that poor bastard. i read recently about keith richards saying something about grand fathers beening important, i would agree with that. after that i got a few visits from classmates and a few rellys, no parents though, they reckon i didn't want to see them, maybe yes and no, that was always what they say. lying in bed was boring. i found a new activity, tying knots in the pyjama chord. i must of tyed twenty or so knots. the nurses had been giving me these pills, all sorts ,even these red things. all of a sudden i had to go. i went to the toilet , bloody kiddies things all over the place, tiles and such. there was a nurse giving a kid a bath next to the loo, i had to go, then the bloody knots became an obstacle, trying to undo. i was swearing , saying things like fucking shit, the nurse got offended . i didn't manage to untie the knots.
30april2014
your right , i'd rather fuck some bird then write this shit. but , i'd forget the fuck and want another. this shit is planted firmly in thy dna and is the source of dust. i've had a few wines tonight , even so, this shit don't go away. i'm glad some fuckers interested in my shit. i know who you are. germany and usa, but like everything that changes there there's an error of judgement . at least i've got some kind of audience.
"30july 2016"
i think i was pissed on wine there, i half know what i was on about. i know i was pretty upset going through remembering that time. even now it still upsets me. i was gonna delete or fix it , but i don't know what to fix. the usa and germany bit is about people always reading my blog and that's it, just snoops, suppose it's part of it. i think what i meant there, was from dust we are made and from dust we return. as for fuck it is not, but then maybe it is.
4may2014
as days went on i became rowdy . i'd been there for a bit , they called for the old boy to pick me up, that was it for the hospital. now i had to deal with all the other shit. stuff like people in general , my face was still half a scab, my eye was getting better. i forgot to say it was very blood shot in there. i found out later i had concussion, a fractured skull and stitches in my eyebrow, not to mention gravel rash on the arms. i had good mending skin , so i got better fairly quick. i had to see the doctor to take the stitches out of my eyebrow. he said he thought there was 4 but could only see 3. he was right there was 4 , i got the other one out some weeks later. so i was on the mend , but what happened.
5may2014
time is a great healer, like they say. after months of trying to figure out what happened, things start coming back. before i go on with this, while i was away ,motor bikes were the in thing. the guy who owned the push bike i crashed got a motor bike, something like a honda 100cc, sort of trail bike thing. there was a track near the school. so it was decided to go there. this other guy, a bit older than us would double me there. i was not long back to normality . the prick rode like a fuckwit down this hill, dirt track, about 120kmph . i just freaked out with a flashback, i handled it, though. if something would of happened i would have been fucked. after that i wasn't real interested in that shit, i'd just hang and watch. i think i just got sick of them ,ie, i got this ,ie, i can do this fucking shit. on remembering what happened. after awhile the guy who lived in branch ave, his family were all going out, so i had to go. they suggested i go the other way , it was quicker. i remember when i rode down their driveway , i nearly got bowled by a car.
6may2014
there's a small hill and sort of bend, i can't remember riding up there. after the bend it's all downhill. i can remember trying to slow down with the thong and flying past this dead end street, which i should of just crashed there. the thong wasn't happening , the handle bars went forward , couldn't pull them back. i just thought , i'd been in hairier situations. this wasn't to be . doing about 50mph head first onto the rough blue metal road near the bottom. i can just remember getting up and walking to the side of the road and collapsing. not long after, i was drifting in and out. i remember peoples feet and voices talking shit, like ambulance and, is he type stuff, that's about it. the branch ave guy's family weren't long on the scene apparently, he said he thought i was dead. the ambulance arrived . his mother traveled in the ambulance with me. i remember this, for some reason maybe pain or delirium, i grabbed her hair and wouldn't let go. the ambulance bloke just punched me out, i can't remember anything after that.
8may2014
on reflecting and thinking about that last bit. i think i just gave up and cried. and can sort of remember being on some kind of xray machine table , and people going he's a mess. that's about it for that episode. this whole thing wouldn't have even been written about, if not for, in 1993 , i got this job , getting bands for this newly opened club. in order to get the bands , i had to get a phone. i don't think the mobile thing was that happening then. anyways, every now and again i'd get these calls , saying james, james gauge. i 'd just go wrong number.
9may2014
this used to happen every once and a while. i must have got his old number. i don't know if this sort of thing means anything. when i first got a phone in 1983, i got this woman's old number, this familiar voice asks is la la there. i thought i know that voice . i knew the womans daughter. the bloke was rooting her mother. bazaar. getting back to this james gauge thing. it went on for years , right up until i got the phone disconnected . different people would ring asking for james. then one day someone said james , james gauge , 6 branch ave figtree. at first i didn't think nothing, just this bloody james gauge fellow should tell his friends his new phone number. then i thought branch ave, that's where i had that crash that time. if it happened once for a short period of time, i 'd put it off as coincidence , but these calls went on for years. i was nearly tempted to ask who was this james. it was always the same just james nothing else, i'd say sorry wrong number. it wasn't every day. i reckon i had that phone number for 12 or so years , and i'd get them calls right up till the end. one day i decided to walk to branch ave, and see where this number 6 was. it was right where i hit the road. i just thought that's sort of weird. as for the people involved in 1971, i seen the guy whose bike it was about a year or so, he had a hip replacement at 54, that blew me out. he was the surfie sking type, very ,not sporty but, outdoory . the guys whose mother was in the ambulance with me, she died about a year ago, R.i.P. he was also a surfy and good at sport, he got trapped in the heroin thing in the 80s, thats the last i saw of him. i thought he might of died, but it didn't say deceased in the paper for his mothers obituary thingy, so he must still be alive somewhere, probably all fucked up.
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