Rode (pushbike), hitched, bussed, sometimes walked the 3-4 ks, Pat. Sorry, I'll take your word for the inversion of the sow's ear.
Bill
> On 30 Oct 2013, at 8:36 pm, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Yarra even people don't know dear old Melbourne -sounds like 'over there' still I'm not the one to ask who had a sister living there for decades-and a step daughterliving there nw cheers P
> Ps did you swim across?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bill Wootton
> Sent: 30 October 2013 09:19
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Slipping in (title tentative)
>
> Thanks, Pat. Thinking of changing title to Slipping into Belonging. What think you? Final line might escape meaning in your hemisphere. I schooled in Balwyn on the other side of the river from Ivanhoe where I lived.
>
> Bill
>
>> On 30 Oct 2013, at 6:48 pm, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Bill thanks lovely picture -memories P
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>> On Behalf Of Bill Wootton
>> Sent: 29 October 2013 20:21
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Slipping in (title tentative)
>>
>> Slipping in
>>
>> Aware of being on the edge of change;
>> The Moon landing being slipped into British History as an example of
>> modern colonisation.
>>
>> Doing Geography projects in small groups, presenting finished product
>> on coloured A3 paper; negotiating up from being responsible for The
>> Heading.
>>
>> Ribbed long socks and pale yellow cotton girls' sports tunics;
>> Annette's wiry red hair and freckled arms clashing with all that
>> paleness. We boys trimming the bottom isosceles of our tan ties.
>>
>> Rock Lunch Club: voluntarily opting to sit at desks after The Bell,
>> egg sangos and fruitcake splayed from brown bags; Cocker Happy
>> jaunting on the school's stereo, wall-mounted Wharfedale speakers.
>>
>> Double desking with Felicity in Pure,
>> while chalked formulae accumulated on the smooth blackboard.
>> Waiting for her thigh to shift; the times she allowed nestle.
>>
>> Frosty mornings, slinging my Malvern Star up, front wheel latching
>> between spokes on the high hook in the Bike Shelter.
>> Mouse's inert red 500cc Suzuki gleaming below its pedal cousins.
>>
>> Room 32, the dour Test Room, in its own isolated block, sometimes
>> doubling as a drama room; pretending to not care when my part in a
>> play was rotated to Jovan, who later died in a car accident.
>>
>> Noticing my hand being the only one up, responding to a question about
>> The Merchant of Venice, the penny
>> dropping: the maths/science elites really didn?t know.
>>
>> Mrs Sikh who wrote maths solutions with both hands on the board at the
>> same time, not to show off but because she found it efficient; Mr
>> Bodley, insisting post-PE shower doors remain propped open.
>>
>> Muffled laughter in the Breezeway, from behind cupped hands:
>> catching the word 'period', clearly not denoting subject session,
>> knowing there was stuff I didn't know and couldn't ask about.
>>
>> Tough Macca dropping dead after an inter-school footy game.
>> Guest speaker Danny Spooner singing 'The Famous Flower of Serving Men'
>> a cappella; the hush in the hall at the tale of portents and transformations.
>>
>> Collecting signatures on a petition for which I wrote the preamble,
>> proposing a Form Six student smoking room in the Physics lab; posting
>> it in the mail in a stamped envelope to squeaky-voiced Principal Perry.
>>
>> Summoned to 'Head' office as number one signatory, being treated
>> warily, respectfully, by someone in power for the first time.
>> Permission denied; a watch put on me.
>>
>> Ned Wilson Beatling his straight hair vertically over his forehead,
>> running the black comb teeth the full width of his head just above eye
>> level, never taking eyes off his image in the long mirror in the boys' toilet.
>>
>> Hearing instructions in French over the PA for a senior class;
>> ignoring other bulletins over the PA, not even knowing that The
>> Pirates of Penzance was a musical, for the whole of 1968.
>>
>> Failing woodwork in form two and my father a carpenter; Pop Quizzes in
>> Science trotted out by a rotund American; matching terms with precise
>> definitions his brainwave.
>>
>> Reversed polarities in steeply tiered Room 15, desks perched on
>> scaffolding-supported floorboards, designed for cooking
>> demonstrations, enabling looking down on vulnerable teacher.
>>
>> The rumbling of pulled down continuous cloth ?blackboards?
>> to expose virgin dark green - or remnants of an unscrubbed lesson.
>> Yardstick rulers resting on the wall, outsized wooden protractors.
>>
>> Feeling woozy in metalwork room; each boy at lesson's end, standing to
>> attention by his vice, silent, stared down by grey dust-coated Mr
>> Mir's chocolate eyes above wiry black-grey moustache.
>>
>> The wooden seat of my chair coming adrift, thwacking to the floor as
>> we inverted them in unison at day's end in Art, laughter; accepted for
>> the first time on the other side of the Yarra.
>>
>> bw
>> 30.10.13=
>
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