In Memory of Harry Godolphin

*




Stop, Christian passer-by: Stop, child of God,
And read, with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he--
O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.--
That he who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life in death:
Mercy for praise--to be forgiven for fame--
He ask'd, and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor


Stay, Ahhh, Just a little bit longer.
Please, please, please, please, please tell me that you're gonna.
Now, Your Daddy don't mind,
And your Mommy don't mind
If we have another dance here: Just one more,

One, more time,
Oh, won't you stay just a little bit longer,
Please let me stay here, please say that you will.
Stay


Strange the odd consequences and echoes that spill down through the years; here in this time when we are returning to the dark ages, when the left is triumphant across the country and genuine debate and a genuine diversity of views has been totally stifled; here in these tragic, posturing times things that happened long ago play out in the shadows. We were cruel, wanton, dissolute, we threw everything away. But there were shreds of decency, of suburban orthodoxy, that clung to our bizarre behaviour. Just the other day Asa, a journalist friend, told me of her sadness at the relatively sudden death of a person she much admired, Peter Cullen, one of Australia's leading water experts.

She lamented not just his death but the fact that she could not go to the funeral, it was in Canberra, she didn't want to leave her dog, and there were numerous other reasons, it seemed, why she couldn't go, much as she would like to. Just go, I told her, just go, you have to, I haven't gone to various funerals over the years, work, whatever, got in the way and I felt at the time I just couldn't. I regret it to this day. My absence at those funerals keeps popping into my head, even now. Just go; it's the right thing to do. Pay your respects, for him, and for yourself.

And just the other day she thanked me for persuading her. It was the right thing to do, she said. It was very sad, but I'm glad I went. See, I told you, I said, I kenw from personal experience. And the personal experience I most thought of was the death and funeral of Harry Godolphin, who at the time when he died - 1987 or 1988 it would have been - was living up in Mullimbimby on the far north coast of NSW. It's the old hippy, dope, alternative paradise up there; and I was living in Sydney and working for the Sydney Morning Herald, a big pooh bah journalist.

He hadn't been well for a long time and then he was in hospital, and I heard it was serious. There was at the time a tour of the state organised by the Royal Agricultural Society and sponsored by Shell, the petrol company, so no expense was spared as we swanned around the country in a giant air conditioned bus examing upscale farms and the best hotels in the region. I knew he wasn't well and I thought about going up; but instead I opted for the tour. Work was work, I rationalised; and I had crawled out of all that bohemian mess and unlike most everybody else I knew, got a regular job; as a full time journalist for arguably the country's best newspaper, no less.

Instead I rang him from the bus and asked him how he was. "I'm dying," he said, not pulling any punches. I was hundreds, maybe seven or eight hundred miles away and I could imagine his pale white face and his long dark straight hair and those dark glasses he almost never ever took off; a strange looking person. "I've got lung cancer, I'm dying," he said again, and I didn't know what to say. Knowing, feeble though it was that I hadn't gone up there, that there might not be another chance, I said: "Thanks for all the help you gave me when I was young. You were the first person who ever encouraged me to write. I wouldn't have this job, for a start, if it wasn't for you."

"It's alright," he said, struggling with the pain, struggling to hold a conversation. I remained on the phone for a few more minutes, not knowing what to say, apologising for not being there, blaming work, trying to jolly him up, to do something, say something, and then he excused himself. He was in a lot of pain. He needed to rest. The nurse wanted to speak to me and he put her on. She wanted to know if he had any family, what his background was, who he was, why he was in this hopsital virtually alone. "He's a very strange person," I said, or she said, and we both agreed.

He had wanted to be a musician, a folk singer, and would strum away at his guitar, practising every day in the house we had taken over at the bottom of Victoria Street; or first at 49 Crown Street. He was always kind to us street kids, and the thing we appreciated the most, he never made a pass at us, not like the others. You could always go arond to Harry's for a smoke, listen to music, crash for the night. He was kind to us when everyone else just wanted sex. Maybe he wanted that, too, who knows, but part of his weirdnesss was that he seemed almost completely asexual.

And at a time when I had survived another suicide attempt but was bouncing from wall to wall, writing myself off on a daily basis on whatever I could find or afford, alternating between tragically unconscious or totally drug fucked, crazy crazy crazy, I could go round to Harry's and have a bong and a cup of tea and listen to records, and the shrieking fabric of the world outside would calm down; and I would come back into some semblance of sanity. Often homeless, for a while I would leave a change of clothes at his house, and come round for a shower whenever I couldn't bear to do what one had to do to get accommodation for the night.

I like to think that I wasn't hurt by what happened in those years, not like other people who talk movingly about the abuse and the evil which occupied those places where we went, the terrible compromises we wrought with our own souls, the terrible abuse those men metered out as they grabbed the flesh they had paid for. I like to think it all washed over me because I was so dammed pissed and stoned when it happeend that it really didn't matter. But somewhere out there we wanted to be ordinary kids, just ordinary teenagers hanging out, not the tragically desired figures we were amongst the scene queens, the wallet going back in the pocket, "I'm so horny I'd fuck a monkey".

The speed was cheap as chips and readily available, virtually legal, although of course we were all under age, and out of all this mess, barely able to speak I was so dammed out of it on appalling amounts of alcohol and whatever other pills or crap I could find, I'd stumble round to Harry's. I'd first met him at the city's only youth oriented drug rehab service; he was there as some sort of odd counselling type person or something; and he'd invited me back to his place. Ever the sky pilot, he'd given me a sliver of acid and taken me to see the musical Hair, which was playing at the time, and that was the first whack whack whack of the crystal light, as he tried to show me a different world and a different way of being than just deliberately drinking myself into unconsciousness every day.

And that was how the friendship began. And it was around at that rundown now long demolished house he had with the views across Woolloomoolloo, in the days when it was a slum and a view of Sydney wasn't worth the millions it is today, that I tried to keep up my childhood enthusiasm for writing things, bits of poetry, little stories. And whatever his faults, whatever his motives, he was the very first adult who ever encouraged me, who said he liked what I wrote, who kept the bits of paper I scribbled away on, as if one day they would be worth something, as if my destiny was more than a bar boy doomed to die young, as if I really could be a writer.

The RAS - Royal Agricultural Society - bus was in the Riverina, somewhere around Leeton, when I heard the news that Harry had died. I stared out the window of the giant tour bus, lost in the dry Australian landscape. The drought was affecting everybody, and the ground was burnt off, the isolated gum tree, kept by the farmes as shade for the stock, dotted across the fields. I stared out the window from my new life, a journalist with what was then one of the country's most admired newspapers, and knew full well I hadn't been a very good friend; not to be there in his dying days. He never had family. There weren't many people who even understood who he was. I should have been there.

And caught up in the extended ten day tour, going from town to town, filing story after story for the next day's paper, I didn't even go to the funeral. I imagined the few stragglers that would have gone, the sad little network of misfits he would have known from his dope smoking, in those days sharing a bong being the ultimate communion, but it was all too far, too costly, I had too much to do. And to this day I regret not going; how hard would it have been to take a few days out from my busy, now successful life. How hard would it have been to say thank you for acting, in your own unusual, unorthodox way, as a counsellor for a very very troubled, suicidal adolescent, for saving my life.

And that's why I said to Asa: go to the funeral, pay your respects, otherwise you'll regret it for as long as you live.


THE BIGGER STORY:

BBC:

A wave of violence has continued for a fourth day in Iraq, as government and coalition forces crack down on Shia militias in Basra and other cities.
More than 130 people have been killed and 350 injured in the clashes, which have also affected the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

NY TIMES:

BAGHDAD — American warplanes shelled targets in the southern port city of Basra late Thursday, joining for the first time an onslaught by Iraqi security forces intended to oust Shiite militias there, according to British and American military officials.

Shiite militiamen cover an area during a gun battle with government forces in Basra on Friday.

In Baghdad, the capital, American aircraft and Mahdi Army fighters exchanged fire in the Sadr City neighborhood, the capital’s largest Shiite militia stronghold. The Iraqi police said an American helicopter opened fire early Friday in Sadr City, killing five people.

The American military confirmed the strike, saying the helicopter was called in after troops on the ground were shot at and requested air support. The Iraqi police also reported a second, later strike by a fixed-wing American aircraft that they said killed four people.

Amid the violence in Baghdad, rocket or mortar fire struck the office of one of Iraq’s two vice presidents, Tariq al-Hashimi, in the Green Zone, killing a security guard. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Hashimi was in his office at the time, or whether he was hurt in the attack.

SMH:

FIERCE battles have erupted between Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias in Basra, Baghdad and other cities as the Government, backed by US and British reconnaissance planes, launched an offensive aimed at draining the power of politically backed gunmen.

The fiercest fighting in an operation codenamed Saulat al-Fursan (Charge of the knights) on Tuesday took place in Basra neighbourhoods, where Iraqi forces targeted members of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, further risking the collapse of a ceasefire that Sadr declared in late August. His fighters' stand-down has been widely credited with helping curb violence throughout the country during the American troop build up known as the surge.

As evening fell on Tuesday, Mahdi Army fighters clashed with Iraqi and US forces in their Sadr City bastion in eastern Baghdad. Fighting was also reported in the cities of Kut and Hilla. As of 5pm AEST yesterday, the Basra death toll from two days' fighting stood at 40, with 200 wounded. The Sadr City toll was 14 dead and more than 140 wounded.

ABC:

Just when the US thought the violence in Iraq might be easing, a critical ceasefire organised with a powerful militant group six months ago looks like collapsing.

Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is now warning that the ceasefire with his group may not hold after more than 50 people were killed in recent fighting between Iraqi security forces and Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Basra.

The Iraqi Government says it is not targeting Sadr's Mehdi Army, but that is not the way he sees it.

Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki has taken personal control of the operation in Basra, dubbed 'Charge of the Knights', after promising yesterday to reimpose law and order.

There are no Coalition forces fighting this battle; the British handed the crucial seaport over to Iraqi Government control in December.

Now the Government is worried that since British forces left, the city has become a series of fiefdoms for criminal gangs and warring Shiite factions.