Growing up in Bondi
On grass-clipping streets and median strips
and cracked concrete that baked in heat and
bitumen on roads that bubbled under feet,
you hurled water bombs at the kids
from around the street and
went to the beach 'cos that's
just what you did.
And there you sat in groups beside
North Bondi Surf Club
or near the barbeques
or down South on The Hill or in The Corner
or at First or Second or Third ramps.
And the milkbars were still standing
and at Valis's and Raffle's and Bill's
you drank thickshakes and played the pinnies
and you ventured to Homestead chicken
for special hot chips.
And school came and thankfully went
and the endless six weeks of Chrissie holidays
fanned out endlessly in front of you
and it was fish and chips in the sunset park
after a day in the water and into the 9pm dark
and into sandy feet station wagons and off home
to sleep behind salt-coated windows
and open fly-screen doors
and the whole neighbourhood wearing worn rubber thongs
and the cicadas noisy all the way into night.
Then February and on into the year,
Easter being marked exactly by the sideways blow
of the westerly wind like clockwork
and into the desolate antenna evening of June,
the grass-blade sunshine of July,
The flannelette days of August,
Then again the sudden jasmine days of September and
Into the salty October mornings,
Then the nor' easterly afternoons of November
and around again and again.
Then my life turned to high school
and the dumped couches on the footpath
and the boarded up shops of early '80s Campbell Parade
where you'd be crazy to loiter after dark,
the needle stick stabbing streets,
the heroin sand.
And the Maori kids who caused legendary trouble chaos down there
and the thrill of the stories of them
and those hot girls down there at night
who smoked ciggies and drunk cases and beer
and smashed bottles and fucked
and in one of those still-standing sheds
I kissed one of those smoke-tasting mouths
and I have never forgotten a single moment
nor the way I felt,
just as I have never forgotten
a single other moment
of growing up in Bondi
at all
either.
Adam, The Bard Of Bondi.
http://www.blindingsunlight.com/page20.htm
He gusted out from a different world; dank with despair. Already there were ghosts, entities, fleeing from the sunlight. He walked and he walked. Everything had been thrown up in the air. Cruel passage, but truly everything, his home, his children, his job. And so, when the initial bender subsided, he walked. The children splashed in the surf. The shapes of the board riders were imprinted against the sea and sky. They had come from a very different place. It could be a different city, his daughter said. I love Bondi. I don't ever want to leave. Can't you do something?
But all in all, as their life together passed into its final stage, he could feel the world tugging and yet was frozen; each day more stiller than the last. He couldn't make a single phone call. He couldn't maintain old friendships because they just washed away. He was so cruel; that utter indifference. And yet there was much that was good. He sheltered from the many storms. Dodged the bikini clad girls, the handsome boys. Made as if to wander. Was always politically correct. Never deviated from the mass. Thought of old love; as he passed so much youthful joy. The sun warmed the morning air for another day of revelry. Everything was closing. He didn't want to do anything anymore. The sea had finally taken over.
He had passed Marsha a couple of times since; it was hard to avoid her with the house perched so neatly at the end of the road, and studiously ignored her. She called out and he kept on walking. She became a byword for bad behaviour. He didn't go to the pub anymore. Instead he sat listening to people in the pavilion; and he grew at once calmer and more frightened. Everything became desolate for that old man hiding high in the apartment. Housing Commission had loomed over the suburb where he had worked. And he saw the desperate on the street as if they were old friends; if he only had time he could join them. It wasn't to be. Even that adventure passed him by.
His son mentioned the word retired. That's how he felt. It was time to do different things. He had been slave to Sydney rents for decades; and now was the time to break free. He was going to make it through the night. Laughter was going to populate this sadly exterminated view. The sweep was there for all to see; as if anyone was looking. He could see the wealthy houses perched along the mini-cliffs behind the beach; their stolidity, the sound of people talking, parties winding up, winding down. Every weekend there was a wild party next door. Are you going to write another book? He had asked Paul Bowles all those years ago. Only if I've got something to say, he had said. Sheltering Sky the movie was about to come out; and that elegant love in a foreign climb, the exotic rush, the beat of drums, the boys hanging on the street corners; he was going to see it all again.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/travel/travel-news/political-firebrands-arrest-shocks-opponents-20091229-lin4.html
Former political opponents of Robert Paul Mcjannett, who was arrested on drug charges in Bali on Monday night, have expressed shock at his arrest.
Mcjannett, 48, was arrested on Monday night after Indonesian customs officials allegedly found two grams of cannabis in his luggage.
He had just arrived on a Virgin Blue flight with his adult son from Perth when he was arrested.
Mcjannett was a regular candidate in Redcliffe City Council elections and most recently appeared on the ballot during the 2005 Redcliffe by-election for State Parliament.
Moreton Bay Regional Council Mayor Allan Sutherland, whose name appeared on several Redcliffe City Council ballot papers with Mcjannett, said he was surprised to hear of the arrest.
Cr Sutherland said Mcjannett was a "bloke of some notoriety" in Redcliffe political circles.
"He ran in numerous elections - he was a stayer, I'll give him that," Cr Sutherland said.
"If this (charge) is proven, I'd be surprised that someone who sought public life would be involved in that sort of activity," he said.
"It sets a really bad example and it shows a certain amount of naivety. There's enough publicity involving Indonesia and drugs, you'd have to be totally naive to do that sort of thing."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/29/akmal-shaikh-final-hours-china
Correctly applied, the lethal concoction injected into the veins of Akmal Shaikh, the convicted drug smuggler from Kentish Town, north London, would have taken less than a minute to stop his heart and seal his unfortunate place as the first European to be executed in China in more than half a century.
A video was recorded of the killing, but there were no family members or UK consular officials present to witness his final hours because they were refused permission by the Chinese authorities.
The only official confirmation of Shaikh's death was a brief fax from the press office in Urumqi, where the execution was carried out, and a story in the state-run Xinhua news agency that reported he was killed by lethal injection.
Yet it is possible to sketch a partial picture of what happened in his final 24 hours based on records of previous executions in China and reports from family members, lawyers and human rights organisations.
Shaikh had been incarcerated in Urumqi, the centre of the heroin trade in China owing to its proximity to Afghanistan and Pakistan, since September 2007, when he was caught at the local airport with 4kg of heroin in his suitcase, which he brought from Kyrgyzstan via Tajikistan. His family and supporters say he suffered from a bipolar disorder that diminished his criminal responsibility, but it has never been recognised by the authorities and the courts denied requests for a mental examination.
http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2009m12d28-Headline-to-come
The global warming movement has taken a decidedly sinister turn.
Not content with scaring moms and dads with tales of a coming global warming apocalypse, the true believers in human-caused climate change have taken their controversial doomsday message into the classroom and onto the Internet, polluting impressionable kids with green propaganda and creating youth legions of enviro-fanatics.
Fresh from their daily “greenwashing” sessions at school, these save-the-earth converts arrive home as little inspector generals, haranguing parents for exhibiting environmentally insensitive behavior and contributing to the planet’s looming CO2 overdose.
The young Greenites, already pre-conditioned by classroom propaganda, are subjected to the same man-is-destroying-the-earth homilies on the Internet. The eco-epistles consist of the usual heart-tugging climate scare stories (e.g. polar bears are dying and ice caps are melting), which conveniently fail to mention that the earth has warmed – and cooled – naturally for billions of years and that CO2 is a life-giving atmospheric gas. In the dark and depressing world of quasi-religious eco-fanatics, there is no room for the light of truth in their save-the-earth evangelism, and kids are easy targets.
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