I like it Max: you do have your real memories. Didn’t quite get the final lines, but especially liked the comparison of monologues, what works, what doesn’t…
Doug
> On Sep 14, 2016, at 8:52 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Carole-Ann, My Neighbour’s Wife
>
> I did not covet, but others had.
> She chose actor Terry Gill, traded
> West End showbiz for the new
> life, Melbourne showbiz.
>
> They kept going doing
> December shows in malls -
> whatever held kids still,
> amused while parents shopped.
>
> TV gave them bit parts -
> when one worked, the other
> minded the son and daughter
> growing up into showbiz.
>
> They were good neighbours.
> Our homes above the Yarra
> in a bush suburb, each summer
> might have burned to ash,
>
> had fire come our way.
> Keep the vegetation down!
> Terry bought a goat - any green
> plant it munched. Me, its holiday
>
> minder, when I shifted its tether
> and peg and replenished its water,
> it tried to butt. That hot summer,
> goat and us - we weren’t roasted.
>
> We’d warn each other: ‘neighbour,
> watch for snakes in that border.’
> My dog startled the Gill daughter
> off her pony. Her arm fractured,
>
> threatening her dance career.
> Watched close by father and mother,
> it healed, but Erin rode no more.
> The December show had its star.
>
> TV personalities
> thronged their loud weekend parties.
> Their big cars blocked my driveway.
> Deathly silence all next day.
>
> The former show-girl, Carole-Ann,
> admired by many in the West End,
> promised she would introduce,
> when he visited from England,
>
> her writer friend - ever since her
> fan letter to him on his first book,
> The Outsider. Did I know it?
> Everyone knew it, I knew of it.
>
> The tale I knew: slim bookish lad
> sleeps rough, writes best-seller
> both wide and deep, surveying
> genius, on his way to being one.
>
> He came, stout stolid stupefying
> in his certainties, bestowing
> on his hosts and Melbourne
> England’s - Europe’s - bounty.
>
> One of his biographers,
> a Melbourne man, consulted;
> corrected, corroborated,
> enhanced his manuscript.
>
> We shook hands - he resumed
> his monologue. I lacked words
> to make it dialogue. Home
> beckoned. Too late for fandom.
>
> But first I sat with Carole-Ann’s
> Dad, retired London law clerk.
> Such a nuisance - living his last days
> on top of them, and useless.
>
> Another monologuist! - but fun.
> Tales of judges, barristers,
> crims, molls and con-men. None
> genius outsiders. But real.
>
> I missed all their funerals.*
> Carole-Ann survives - on film,
> a toaster brings electric death
> while she enjoys a showbiz bath.
>
>
> *I may yet predecease C-A, whose happy 80th
> is on Youtube, I now find.
Douglas Barbour
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https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
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