Perils of Phonophobia

Sometimes I think I must be weird. It’s OK; it’s not a matter on which I’m asking you your opinion, so you have neither to confirm nor deny it. This is about phonophobia.

  It’s weird because I don’t have much of a problem when the phone rings and I have to pick it up and answer it. The onus is on the person at the other end of the line to state their business, and I have the power to cut them off at any time, I suppose.

  It’s OK if it’s good friends or family I’m phoning. After that initial establishment of contact, which even then can be a bit shaky, it’s fine.

  But... if I have to make a call where the onus is on me to do the talking, the equation changes. I have to find the right person at the other end of the phone, verbalise it all and make my request understood by the person at the other end.

  How hard is that? I have been known on many occasions to write down word for word what I want to say to the person, so that if the conversation gets stuck, I can simply read it off. Yes, my very own teleprompter. 

  That can be for the simplest of things. Or, if the person lived here in town, I would often drive down to see them face-to-face rather than phone.

  This was a bit awkward if they were not there. See what I mean about weird? I like email. You can sit and think what you want to say, rather than gasp words out and babble like a lunatic. Ask Tracey – she’s heard me on the phone sometimes. It must sound pathetic.

  Oddly enough, long ago and nearly every year, I used to do a week’s stint down in Sydney for my university, which involved sitting on the phone hour after hour ringing people or being rung by them. I had no difficulty with that, as I was usually phoning a third party on behalf of a student.

  That was the difference, you see. When it’s for me, I feel as if I’m going to be tongue-tied. If it’s for someone else, no problem, no matter how complicated the call. I'm on someone else's mission. Somehow that makes all the difference.

  I told you it was weird. But then, I’ve heard that quite a few other people suffer in the same way, or hate it when the phone rings and they have to answer that. They may not mind phoning someone else. From my point of view, that’s reverse phonophobia. 

  How many others out there have phonophobia of some sort? Please don’t ring me, just comment!

Postcard from Allingham St

Christian took this photo yesterday on a walk with Tracey.

I thought Aristotle might like it.

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The SFQ Box

In my earliest years of teaching at the university, I did a mean thing to my Distance Education students. The fact that I did it several years in a row, until it became impossible, just adds to the wilful sneakiness of it.

  Residential Schools were compulsory at that time, some 35 years ago. This meant that students had to trek to Armidale twice a year, sometimes from interstate or even from abroad, for four days each time, put up with being lectured at by me and share tutorial discussions.

  It was quite a commitment on their part in terms of time and money, and I wanted to know what made them tick. A first year course on the History of Asian Civilisations wasn’t like learning bookbinding, after all – it was a bit esoteric; at that time at least.

  As an undergraduate, I’d had experience of Residential Schools at the University of Queensland when studying as an External student. They weren’t compulsory and I didn’t find them all that satisfactory, so I expected the students who came to my first Residential School to be similarly unenthusiastic.

  What I used to do, as I was under thirty and looked even younger than my age, was to come ten or so minutes early to the very first session of a School, where we would meet for the first time. This was the mid 1970s, and the teaching material was all typed (on a typewriter!), printed and contained no photos.

  It was, after all, at least a decade before most people knew what cassette tapes containing recorded lectures, let alone a computer, could do for revolutionising university teaching, but that’s another story. Suffice it to say here that I was a Cassandra in that respect for the best part of a quarter-century.

  So... I’d put my thin file of lecture notes on the desk at the front before anyone else arrived, together with a large box, and go and sit at one of the desks just like any student. As they arrived for the introductory lecture, I’d say a cheery hello to the first, without introducing myself any further, and the student would respond according to how they were feeling at the time – usually relieved that they had actually found the lecture room that would be our home for the next four days.

  Others would drift in and join in the conversation. They would talk about anything, but their mutual interest was, of course, the unit they were enrolled in. They freely exchanged opinions on the lecture material and the interaction they had had with the lecturer (me!) through letters, and thus gave me the most truthful feedback I could hope for.

  I have to say that I was fairly confident no-one was going to say something too shocking about either the course materials or the lecturer. I had put my heart and soul into it all and I knew it was good. I was pretty cocksure that no-one would embarrass themselves or me in this sharing of information and opinion amongst themselves.

  I’d give the remainder of the students a good ten minutes after the formal lecture start time to arrive and settle in. There were always stragglers who’d gone to the wrong building or had come to the university the day before and had imbibed more freely in the Refectory wine that evening than was good for them.

  Then, when I was pretty sure they were just about all present and had unburdened themselves to us all, I would stand up with the blue Attendance Register in hand, wave it at them and say, ‘Right then – let’s get started, shall we? Sign in and we’ll get under way.’

  There’d usually be an audible drawing in of breath at that point, every student trying frantically to recall what they said about the course and the lecturer and hoping they weren’t dead in the water before the first session. I guess they were a bit shocked that the elephant had been in the room the whole time and they didn’t have a clue.

  Of course, I wouldn’t have any idea who they were at that time, even if they had said something negative about me or the unit of study. The reality was that it was a real ice-breaker, and put us on casual terms from the very first minute, which is what I wanted. 

  Many of them were a good deal older than I was anyway. My indifferent undergraduate experience of Residential Schools was completely reversed. They were here to learn, they weren’t afraid to talk and debate and argue the toss with me, and they were determined to get every ounce of juice out of the four days. In fact, by the end of the 4th day, I would collapse on the lounge room floor when I got home, and sleep.

  I think some of them were Dementors. No, not really.... It was exhilarating to teach students so enthusiastic. I was simply completely whacked after a School, but found it intensely rewarding.

  While they were recovering from the shock of learning who this kid at the front was, I would apologise half-heartedly to them, and offer them a trade-off. This was called the SFQ Box. Its name was boldly inscribed on its side. It looked just like a ballot box.

  S stood for Silly, Q for Questions, and the F in between, I said, was for Flamin’, but many had their own substitute word for that, much more shocking in the 1970s than now. I played it safe. The Silly Flamin’ Questions Box. SFQ.

  ‘This box will remain here under the desk for the next four days. What you can do,’ I said, ‘is to write even the most ridiculous question concerning the unit on a slip of paper, and drop it surreptitiously if you like through the slot in the top.’

  ‘Each afternoon after we finish for the day, I’ll gather the questions and answer them the next day as best I can.’

  I made jokes about throwing the questions I didn’t like into the fire, but of course I never did that.

  The fact is that sometimes the ‘silliest’ questions are the ones many people want to know the answers to, but are afraid to look foolish in front of everyone else by asking them. Or afraid to look ignorant in front of the lecturer. And often, they are the best questions and deserve the best answers.

  Sometimes they are the questions that put the last piece of the jigsaw in place for the student. All the rest of it may be there for them. Maybe, to change the analogy, the answer to that question is the keystone that locks the arch of knowledge together on some subject, and turns knowledge into understanding.

  The SFQ Box was a very popular institution for the first couple of days of any Residential School. After that, students were confident enough to ask any SFQ, and we were all the better for it.

Seizing up again....

Last night, at about 7.30 pm, I wrote to family:

Everything seems to be going reasonably well with me. There are on and off times but my leg feels freer today. I've been working my arm and it's freer also. I can use a knife and fork nearly normally except the arm drops and I bang the knife on the plate, but it's good to feel that's improving. No more seizures since that first one for the cycle ten days ago. Fingers crossed that it remains that way.

It really does tempt fate, doesn’t it? Apparently, too much this time. I went to bed before 1 AM and settled quickly into a pre-sleep pattern. Now that I’ve built strength in the right shoulder, I have the luxury of choosing which side to sleep on, so I chose the right. I usually go to sleep within ten minutes, and this morning was starting out to be no different.

  Just as I was on the point of drifting off, I was snapped wide-awake very suddenly by the right hand fingers flexing hard, and the arm in spasm. Never before has a seizure struck as I was about to drop off to sleep. Because I was lying on that side, I couldn’t really turn to a prone position flat on my back, as the conscious brain doesn’t quite work normally when a seizure is happening.

  The seizure was about 2 mins at most, but it did travel down and back up the right side in the way I have described before. Its immediate effects were not very severe, though as always, the problem remains that I never know if and when another seizure is on its way. It would be nice to be able to say confidently to myself, ‘That’s over for now. Go to sleep.’ Then I could settle down and get back into sleep mode, but I’ve had aftershocks before over a three-hour period, so the thought of that isn’t conducive to sleep.

  Anyway, I composed my mind (thanks to years of yoga and meditative techniques), fell asleep and didn’t wake till about 6.30 AM.

  It’s only then, on getting up, can I really survey the ‘earthquake’ damage. Lying on that side during the seizure wasn’t the best of poses. I found it necessary to realign a few shoulder bones and stretch out some ligaments before getting up, they had been strained and were sore. Strength and coordination of the arm on that side has gone backwards but if I don’t get any more seizures for a while I’ll recover as much ground as possible.

  The same applies pretty much to the right leg. Walking and exercising it, I can work to get that back a bit, and to recover balance, which is a bit wonkier than it was.

  There you go, hey? Maybe it’s had its fun with me for the week. I’ll rest up and look forward rather than back. Day by day. The good news is that it could have been more severe or lasted longer, and I feel in my heart that I’ll win most of the ground back - till next time, anyway.

  The pattern over the last weeks and months says that next time will come. There’s no pretending it won’t.

  It’s a matter of when, and that’s clearly totally and absolutely unpredictable. Forget what I said in that other posting about brain and sleep. These seizures, like earthquakes, hit when the time is right for them, and there’s truly no discernable pattern.

  That doubly confirms the view that we just push on, and take it as it comes. The seizure itself is not that significant. Of course, what it means in the longer term is far more so.

Classical Indian Love Poetry

Something different for you, from the archives. Thirty years ago I wrote this. If you have romance in your soul, you may like it. Even if you just read some of the poems, I'm sure you'll enjoy them.

The existence of India's rich and ancient literary heritage is fairly well known in the west, mainly through the popularity of the Bhagavadgita, which is perhaps the most sublime expression of Indian religious and philosophical sentiment of all time.  A later interpolation into the Mahabharata epic, the Gita stands on its own as a superb example of Sanskrit composition. The early Vedic literature, together with the Mahabharata and the other great Indian epic, the Ramayana, highlight the religious and philosophical contribution which Sanskrit literature has given to the world, but they tend to overshadow contemporary accomplishments in the secular field.  Yet in their portrayal of the less esoteric aspects of human existence, the Sanskrit poets display just as much delight in beauty, wit and artistry as they do in more lofty literary pursuits.

The composition of classical Sanskrit poetry was very much a male occupation, and undoubtedly the most popular themes of secular verse were women and love.  In a society where sex roles were rigidly defined and reinforced by tradition, women were portrayed in the paradoxical terms that might be expected of a chauvinistic social climate.  They were beautiful, wilful, fascinating temptresses whom men are bound to love but can never hope to understand.

Just as classical Indian painting and sculpture use forms from nature to portray the beauty of women, so do such similes appear in verse - the moon, the lotus, the fawn and beautiful flowers:

The moon tries every month in vain

To paint a picture of your face;

And, having failed to catch its grace,

Destroys the work, and starts again.

(Dharmakirti)

Her red Ashokaflowers chid the ruby's brightness,

While Karnikaras stole the flamegod of morning;

Pearls paled beside her Sinduvara's whiteness:

Such flowers of spring she wore for her adorning.

(Kalidasa)

These lovely little verses are without the sensuosity or cynicism which appear in many other poems.  Much of the poetry of Bhatrhari and Amaru, for example, is subtly erotic, but with such exuberance, wit and grace that it is sheer delight to read:

Though she's the girl, I am the one who's shy;

And though she walks with heavy hips, it's I

Who cannot move for heaviness; and she

Who is the woman:  but the coward, me.

She is the one with high and swelling breast,

But I the one with weariness oppressed.

Clearly, in her the causal factors lie,

But the effects in me.  I wonder why!

(Amaru)

Here, the love relationship has been intellectualised in an amusing way, and there are many other equally charming verses which depend for their humour of this device.  The sensuality of the example below is more direct and unequivocal:

Her hand upon her hip she placed,

And swayed seductively her waist,

With chin upon her shoulder pressed,

She stretched herself to show her breast:

With sapphire pupils burning bright

Within pearly orbs of white,

Her eyes with eagerness did dance,

And threw me a comehither glance.

(Kalidasa)

This poem beautifully encapsulates the view of woman as the temptress, flaunting her charms to lure men into the lovetrap. Bhatrhari tries to warn them of the danger:

If the forest of her hair

Calls you to explore the land,

And her breasts, those mountains fair

Tempt that mountaineer, your hand

Stop! before it is too late:

Love, the brigand, lies in wait.

(Bhatrhari)

Alas for Bhatrhari, he rarely heeds his own advice, judging by the number of poems inspired by broken romances which appear against his name.  These culminated in near desperation as he contemplates an ancient version of misdirected passion:

She who is always in my thought prefers

Another man, and does not think of me.

Yet he seeks for another's love, not hers;

And some poor girl is grieving for my sake.

Why then, the devil take

Both her and him; and love; and her; and me.

(Bhatrhari)

The Indian ideal of physical beauty in the female form was of ample, spherical breasts and broad, comfortable hips, separated by the narrowest of waists.  The appeal of this combination has evoked a great deal of enthusiasm in the inspired poet, laced with a touch of humour.  One such poem is actually addressed to a lady's slender waist:

To her waist 

This is sheer recklessness!  How can she make you

 Go for a walk?

Can she not see that the weight of her breasts

Is enough to break you?

Another uses an elaborate conceit based upon the traditional Indian notion of polity known as the mandala, whereby it is the right and duty of kings to seek to expand their territory.

Your breasts are like two kings at war, my dear:

Each striving to invade the other's sphere.

A society which sharply defines the separate roles of men and women tends to encourage certain conventions in behaviour between the sexes when they are together.  Sexual aggressiveness in the male brings the reaction of coquetry from the female, as society forbids her to reciprocate, in public at least, in like manner.  The refined Gupta society of the court reflected these tendencies, which in turn to misunderstandings and frustrations between men and women.  As a result there developed a genre of verse emanating from such sentiments.

No, but look here now, this is just absurd,

The way our famous poets talk of girls

As weak and winsome, Weak?  Is this a word

To use of those who, with the shake of curls

And with the triumph of a modest glance,

Can lead the very gods a merry dance?

(Bhatrhari)

Moon-light face

Flower-bud hand,

Nectar voice,

Rose-red lip:

Stone-hard heart.

Very chauvinistic!  But when the chauvinism is linked with cynicism, the combination is more than adequate to raise the hackles of the mildest feminist.

It may be hard enough to do,

But if you try, you'll find

A way to pin down quicksilver,

But not a woman's mind.

Nor gifts, nor honour, righteousness nor praise,

Learning nor force, can mend a woman's ways.

From this tiny fraction of examples, the male view of woman is abundantly clear, even if not all have been driven to the despair and cynicism of the worst afflicted by love.  'May women smile upon you,' goes the invocation, 'the most perverse, delightful creatures in God's universe.'

The love between wife and husband is the subject of some of the most beautiful poems.  Very often the theme is inspired by partings, just as it is in literature from all over the world.  How does a loving and dutiful wife impart to her husband her deepest feeling on his departure?

'Do not go', I could say; but this is inauspicious.

'All right, go' is a loveless thing to say.

'Stay with me' is imperious'.  'Do as you wish' suggests

Cold indifference.  And if I say 'I'll die

When you are gone', you might or might not believe me.

Teach me, my husband, what I ought to say

When you go away.

This is a delightful poem, but none has so movingly portrayed the theme as this brief quatrain.

She fainted when she heard him say

That he must go abroad; and then,

Reviving, said, 'You're back again!

My love, you've been so long away.'

The games of love are played our in verse by the Sanskrit poets, and reveal a healthy picture of joy, tenderness and humour between lovers.  If nothing else, the poems clearly show that amorous adventures have a timeless and international quality!

Fluttering her hands, she tries to find her clothes,

And throws her broken garland at the lamp,

Laughing in shy confusion, while she tries

To cover up my eyes.  How sweet she is

To look and look at, after we've made love!

(Amaru)

Lying together in the bed

They kept a sullen silence grim,

And not a word to her he said.

And she refused to speak to him.

But glances chance to interlace:

A moment's pause, and both thereafter

Forget resentment, and embrace

Dissolving in a gale of laughter.

(Amaru)

The tender words she spoke so sweet

Last night when in his arms she lay

She hears the parrot now repeat,

And blushes at the break of day.

What, though, when love goes wrong?  Ancient Indian society did not impose the absolute moral strictures upon infidelity, which are evident in Judaeo-Christian-based societies, although adultery was frowned upon in practice, particularly on the part of women.  Women were expected to be chaste, largely because of the affront that her infidelity imposed upon the dignity of her husband.  Polygamy was not unknown, but it was probably fairly rare even then.  Adultery was a forgivable sin for men, but women were expected to show sufficient jealousy towards their errant partners to indicate their love for their spouses.  'In the event of any misconduct on the part of her husband,' says the Kama Sutra, 'she should not blame him excessively, though she be a little displeased.'  Most of these poems were written at about the same time that the Kama Sutra assumed the recension in which it appears in translation today.  Like this treatise on the art of love, much of the love poetry is written by and about the men and women of the upper classes of Gupta society, and because of this, constitutes a useful source for morals and manners of the period.  The most poignant of poems on this theme concern the loss of love between husband and wife, as this example, tinged with overwhelming sadness, demonstrates:

Today adds yet another day

And still your father is unkind.

The darkness closes up the path.

Come, little son, let us go to bed.

How to cover indiscretion in love is a favourite topic for humour, as these poems reveal.

While describing to her best friend

Her adventures with her lover,

She realised she was talking to her husband,

And added, 'And then I woke up.'

'Yes, you are fawning at my feet,' said she,

'A wretched trick,' she said, 'to hide your chest

Smeared with the evidence, in case I see

Cosmetics from another woman's breast.'

'Where is it, then?' I said, and with a kiss

Pressed close to her, to blur the telltale trace,

Holding her firm, arousing her to bliss

And she forgot it in our fierce embrace.

(Amaru)

Not all escape so easily.  One wayward lover has to put up with the heavy sarcasm of a jealous spouse:

'Did you sleep in the garden, dear,

On a bed of magnolia flowers?

I suppose you know that your breast

Is smeared with the pollen dust?'

'O, why will you try to be clever,

And scold me with hints like this?

Let me tell you I got these scratches

From cruel magnolia thorns.'

The classical poets wrote on an unlimited variety of themes, of which love, with all its joys and tribulations, is but one. Undoubtedly their world was steeped in luxury, ease and, above all, constantly stimulated aesthetic sensitivity.  Though not averse to other secular themes such as poverty, death and everyday life, the ancient Indian poets seem to have tapped a special source of inspiration derived from the subject of love.  The result is a freshness and vitality in verse and sentiment which easily transcend the millennia.  Perhaps Dharmakirti comes closest to explaining this source in this moving poem:

A hundred times I learnt from my philosophy

To think no more of love, this vanity,

This dream, this source of all regret,

This emptiness.

But no philosophy can make my heart forget

Her loveliness.

The source for all poems is John Brough, Poems From the Sanskrit (Penguin, 1968).

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Just before I do anything else....

I have a heap of things I want to do today. My waking life is, as my dear old Uncle Vic used to say, 'as full as a state school'. So for the moment I will just post six thoughts from others that have come my way in the past week or so, and resonated with me.

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.' M. Radmacher

Solitude is the place of purification. Martin Buber

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with. Mark Twain

A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their magistrate.” Thomas Jefferson

Courage is knowing what not to fear. Plato

But for mine, this is the best one of all:

The most important question in the world is, 'Why is the child crying?' Alice Walker

What’s a seizure feel like?

I’ve been asked this a few times, and it’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer. I don’t mind talking about it, or anything to do with this condition. I guess it’s a bit like the old story about how eagerly people want to tell you about their operation; only they ply you with way too much information. I want to avoid that.

  The thing is, each case is different, so this doesn’t apply to every instance of seizure in different peope. The location of the tumour and its type make a huge difference. Some people with brain tumours don’t get focal seizures as I do.

  I must have had nearly a hundred seizures since that first one. They’ve changed in how they feel over the twenty months in my case. You can see what happened on the first time from this description, but I’ve never experienced anything quite like that again, I’m pleased to say. I don’t want to.

  So this is just about what happens to me, in recent experiences, now that I know what to expect. How it feels from the inside.

Early warnings

There aren’t many. Maybe Tracey can detect moods changes, as I think I get quieter and more irritable (something I try my best to avoid showing, but don’t always manage!) I do occasionally get little twitches in the fleshy part of my right hand. These may happen a couple of hours before the full onset. 

  Apart from that, and maybe a few flutters in the arm or leg itself, there’s very little warning and often none at all. Within seconds of feeling as normal as I do, I usually become aware of one of two things that let me know I’m under attack. Either my right hand fingers start to twitch and flex sharply, or the whole arm feels as if its suddenly been clamped in a leaden sheath that keeps tightening, and then it spasms. I may start to feel a pulsing in the leg before other things happen, but that’s rare. It’s more likely to be my hand or arm where it starts.

  If any of these happen, then I try to get to my bed. Lying down, I cope with seizures better. I have always been fully conscious through every seizure.

While the seizure is on

At that time, something takes over the action of the hand or arm. Yes, the part of my brain that usually controls ‘normal’ motor functions loses it to this other controller. If it starts in the fingers, the spasming and clenching of the fingers are usually very powerful in strength and quite painful. The knuckles feel they might explode. The fingers may start to curl up, then straighten, and close again so tightly that I’m glad we’ve kept the nails cut, or they can tear into the palm of my hand.

  After some time, the seizure travels up the arm and it spasms. It’s not like nothing is controlling it; it’s that something out of my control is telling the muscles and tendons what to do, in a rhythmic fashion, but with all the power in them that they have.

  Typically, the seizure will either stop at one point and move on to the next, or add a new part of the body to the seizure in progress. It will go to the shoulder, then through it to the right side of the neck, then downwards through the right side of the body to the thigh and knee joints, and to the foot. All muscles, ligaments, tendons etc are involved.

  These may be more exhausting rather than painful. There is no STOP command operating and it’s not like you can lie back and just let it roll on as if it’s simply some device moving the body all from the outside. You’re doing all the work and it feels like it. There’s nothing the ‘normal’ brain can do to stop or lessen the hard work it’s doing.

  It may retrace its path from foot right back slowly to hand, if it has stopped elsewhere. It’s like it is seeking out everything it can control and testing it.

When will it stop?

This is always the big question when it’s happening. Seizures have gone from as little as half a minute on rare occasions up to eight minutes. If the latter doesn’t sound like much, get a tomahawk and find a big dead tree, and chop into it as hard and fast as you can without stopping even for a second - for eight minutes.

  Even boxers stop for one minute after three minutes! And they know the bell is going to ring. I can’t be sure. There’s no bell. Those two hours non-stop on the first day are etched deeply into my being.

  We are supposed to call an ambulance after five minutes max. But there’s no point, at least so far. It has always stopped of its own accord. An ambulance would take at least 10-15 minutes to get here and the seizure would have stopped. If necessary, we would get me into the car here somehow, drive to Casualty and be there much sooner than any ambulance.

  The average seizure would be 3-4 minutes. When it stops, I feel very tired.

Afterwards?

Pre the Avastin days, paralysis of the arm and leg was very heavy, and it would take up to half and hour to be able to move safely under my own steam. In the first months of taking Avastin, I very rarely got a seizure. It was usually short, not very violent, and I recovered use of arm and leg very quickly and fully.

  Now, two things are different. One is that seizures usually occur in the early hours of the morning after some hours asleep, and wake me from sleep. Pre-Avastin, they were invariably in the daytime. I don’t understand why this change but we think it is something to do with brainwave rhythms affected by different sleep patterns.

  The other is that in the most recent seizures, usually about four minutes in length, the paralysis has returned post-seizure. This is unfortunate because with paralysis always comes more permanent loss of strength of the arm and leg, which means less mobility, more balance issues and less hard-won manual dexterity. Much of the exercise I have been doing seems to be undermined by a seizure, which is dispiriting.

  But - there is nothing very different about the arm and the leg from what they were ten minutes before the seizure. This is all about commands travelling to and from the brain and the body, not the limbs themselves. The one positive thing about these latest seizures is that the exercise has allowed other parts of my brain to take over part of damaged motor functions, so recovery is still quicker than it was this time last year and damage per seizure seems to be less.

  All this can change in a flash, with one unexpected or sudden occurrence or ‘irregular’ seizure. We wait, and watch, and try to learn what we can from each.

Revenge on the bottom-pincher (final)

pt 1 | pt 2 <<you are here | home | stories from my past

  

Mr Curtis moved Bimbo Brown a few places along the seat after that incident, presumably free to pinch someone else’s backside, but what I didn't bargain on was that Brian Koplick would replace him in the spot immediately behind me.

  We called him Koppo, though in other quarters, mostly amongst the adults in Calliope, he was referred to as 'Spider' Koplick. This gives you some indication of the way he was regarded in my ancestral village.

  Ah, the stories I could tell about him. Seriously, he was a spider, in appearance and temperament, and that’s being generous. He was the only kid I fought at primary school, except for a short skirmish with Johnny Wilson, who put up unexpectedly strong resistance and I didn’t fight him again.

  These fights with Koppo extended over several lunch hours and we were so evenly matched that a declaration of a draw at any time would have been an honourable result. But there was no-one there to make such a declaration, so the fight dragged on, and kids would bring their lunch and watch.

  For a while, that is. Eventually they got bored and went away to play marbles, which was rather humiliating given that we both regarded our battle as life-and-death. Maybe in the Coliseum they would just have sent in the lions and settled the matter that way.

  What were we fighting over? I have no idea. Boys never need a real reason to fight, as history proves over and over again and still does, if you think about world politics. But Koppo, I felt, was pure evil on tough, wiry legs. He fought with everyone at one stage or another in his school career.

  He busted Eddie Roberts' bottom lip the first day he came to our school. I was so sorry for Eddie I let him drink from the school tank from my tin cup, though I wasn’t too keen on the thought of his blood mixing with his spit on the lip of my pannikin. Everyone had a tin cup, or even one of those new model plastic ones, turned upside-down on the tankstand.

  Eddie, new to protocol at our school, had no cup. He had made the mistake on that first day of turning around and pretending to break wind in Koppo's general direction. Koppo had called him out to see where Eddie might end up in the schoolyard pecking order.

  You never turned your back on Koppo. As soon as Eddie faced him again, a sharp punch to the mouth ensured a gushing flow of blood from Eddie's lip, which must have pleased Koppo immensely. It was the first and only time I ever saw Eddie Roberts cry.

  Koppo had also fought Dennis Sharpe near the overgrown tennis court. Sharpie was starting to get the best of him when the enraged Koppo picked up a sheet of galvanised iron, held it high above his head, charged at him and hurled the sheet at close range straight at his navel. Sharpie turned and ran, which was just as well, because if Koppo had done what he intended - and if you'd seen his eyes, you'd know he surely did intend to do serious damage - he would have cut Dennis Sharpe in half.

  This is not to say the schoolyard was usually a battleground. Far from it. Most of the time, peace reigned and a normal happy existence for all, including Koppo, was the order of things at playtime.

  Oh, I didn't tell you how that particular fight I had with Koppo ended. After three consecutive lunch hours, it simply fizzled out due to exhaustion and sheer lack of enthusiasm on all sides. Perhaps the hundred years war in Europe ended for the same reason. I don't know. I’d have to look it up. I’m a historian of Asia, not Europe, and I can’t stop for such details as I’m on a bit of a roll here, talking about everything but what I’m supposed to.

  Indeed, I have strayed so far from where I intended that I fear you, like our spectators for the longest fight of my school career, might wander off for a cup of tea. That’s not a bad idea, actually.

  What I was saying was that Koppo took Bimbo's place behind me in class. Bimbo must have warned him not to try the toe-pinching-bum trick as he suspected I had some sort of weapon.

  Of course, that challenge was irresistible to Koppo, and he was now in the position to find out what that weapon was. So, the bum-pinching started again, and Koppo had the toes of a rhesus monkey. His big toe worked just like an opposable thumb, but I’m not sure if this counted an evolutionary advance or regression. I’m pretty certain he had a tail hidden in his boxer shorts. Whether the tail as well was prehensile or not, I imagined it was red and had a devilish arrowhead thing at the end of it.

  But I still had the pin in my pencil case, so I armed my weapon, and when the time was right, jabbed the offending big toe as hard as I could.

  Koppo rapidly withdrew the foot with no more than a grunt, but it was a grunt with which I would later become all too familiar, as I fought him sporadically all the way up from Grade 3 to Grade 8. The grunt signalled an attack from any quarter was about to occur, though I didn’t realise it then. In this case, it was from behind. He punched me as hard as he could to the back of my neck. I thought my head was about to part company with the rest of me, but as you no doubt gather, it didn’t. Not quite.

  Old Jim saw it. Koppo got six of the best with the cane, and was made to move permanently to the desk at a spot right in front of me, from which a surprise attack was not so likely – or at least, I had a chance of anticipating it.

  As it turned out, this was unfortunate for me also.

  If you are not into reading stories about gaseous emissions from little boys, you can give this part a miss, but if you allow your mind to wallow in flatulence for a moment – not an attractive thought, I admit - you still might get a laugh out of this all too true story. You’ll know it’s true because as I said before, there’s some stuff you just can’t make up.

 I have no idea what Koppo ate at home, but the quantity of gas brewed in his gut is probably the reason for the current climate change debate. Sometimes he brought for his lunch sliced up cow-cane.

Cow-cane harvesting

  Cow-cane is a smaller, somewhat insipid version of sugar-cane. It has less sugar content per stick than sugar-cane, which needs very rich soil and plenty of water. Calliope just didn’t have soil that good, unlike Gin Gin and Bundaberg and North Queensland. We sometimes grew cow-cane for the cattle, and they loved it.

  But their four stomachs are geared to process cellulose, and human bodies aren’t.

  Koppo would steal cow-cane growing at a neighbour’s, strip the shiny outside covering off with a bowie knife, and eat the sugary segments between the joints. Others of us might chew on this stuff until all the sugar was gone, and then spit out the fibre. Not Koppo. He chewed and swallowed every bit, sometimes with quite a bit of effort at swallowing. How he processed it I am not sure. All I know for a fact were the consequences.

  He was quite proud of his abilities in gas production. The fruits of academia being largely denied to him, his fighting and farting prowess were what were left for him in which to excel. I maintain that I am best represented by the cliché about being a lover rather than a fighter, but as he couldn’t beat me at fighting, to fart was definitely his forte.

  After eating cow-cane, he would entertain us on wet days by putting on and buttoning up his grey raincoat (all boys’ raincoats were made of a thin, light, grey plastic in those days). Then he’d concentrate for a while, and explode, as described in the Collins Little Dictionary.

  Carol Boys had discovered ‘fart’ in this dictionary one afternoon on the way home from school while looking for another taboo word, and read out the description to us. ‘Fart: (n, or v.t.) A small explosion between the legs.’

  Yes, that was it, full description. Kenny Wright, son of Jimmy Wright, son of Aunty Annie-Jim-Wright and the late Jim Wright who must have been my grandfather’s brother, asked on hearing this whether, if he lit and dropped a Tom Thumb firecracker between Billy Boys’s ankles and it went off, that would mean that Billy had ....? You get the idea. We all took that question as rhetorical and laughed hugely. Little boys, it seems, are not always alone in their fascination with the scatological.

  ‘A small explosion’ in Koppo’s case was not a fair description. What was spectacular for the playground audience was not the sound, as there was little of it, but the way he could flare out the entire back portion of his raincoat with this procedure, even wearing boxer shorts under the raincoat. It was like a magic trick, except we knew how it was done, but it was none the less impressive for that. On the contrary.

  None could hold a candle to Koppo in this regard. Indeed, had they done so, I can’t imagine the consequences. They would have been grim. ‘Small explosion’ could not have described it. Immolation in a burst of flame would. And grim it would have been.

  But for me, I must say, the consequences of his not disappearing in a fiery self-immolation were grimmer.

  As I said, he now sat in front of me at school. Revenge for the pin jab and the caning were thus his. What his emissions lacked in audibility, they over-compensated for olifactorally. In the schoolroom, I was subjected to a constant barrage of gas that, if well-directed, would have won the trench warfare on the Somme in thirty minutes.

  The composition of that gas... let me imagine what produced it. Sugar is C12H22O11. Stomach acid? Mainly hydrochloric. HCl. What does that produce in a chemical reaction? Carbon tetrachloride? CCl4. That’s a poisonous cleaning fluid. Eggs? He was big on boiled eggs. Hydrogen Sulphide. H2S. Methane? CH4.

  Holy smoke. It doesn’t bear thinking about and the smell was appalling, but it did elicit a comment from me one day when I got home from school, tongue hanging out of one side of my mouth and half-poisoned. This observation of mine entered the folklore of our household and was oft repeated, somewhat embarrassingly for me, to friends and relations for years afterwards.

  ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘I have to tell you something about Brian Koplick.’

  ‘Yes?’

  It was a delicate matter given my mother’s gentility about such things, and I struggled with the right description.

  ‘It’s his exhaust.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Brian Koplick’s exhaust pipe. It smells TERRIBLE!’

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