BOB

Bob Dylan has long been something of a mystery to me. I’ve found it a challenge to connect with the poet/troubadour’s records, particularly the early, earnest folk records. Those sparse canvases scrawled on by the whiny voice and caterwauling harmonica leave plenty of space to notice the imperfections. Yet when offered the chance to pick some books from my fiend Steven’s legacy, I found myself drawn to Clinton Heylin’s doorstopper biography, Behind The Shades. At 900 pages, it’s an epic; a teeming city of highways and alleyways, gardens and rubbish dumps, slums and high rise castles. I will never read this, I thought, but I took it anyway. Why not own the definitive tome about an artist whose career measures over a linear foot of shelf space in the Vinyl Connection collection? It seemed more than likely that I’d spend no more time with the book than with those albums, only a couple of which I’d claim to really ‘know’. That is the thing with a big collection; the larger it gets, the more thinly spread your knowledge, the sketchier your appreciation.

Steven had lots of Dylan too. Most of the records went to new homes as I worked my way through the redistribution of his collection. But some I kept. I was drawn to add vinyl versions of the first three Dylan LPs to upgrade CDs acquired cheaply over the years. Threadbare, discoloured vinyl LPs seemed more authentic than shiny discs in neat plastic boxes. More folky, more smokey. I remember Steven standing in the doorway while he lit a cigarette, one Friday night. It was his concession to not polluting the air for his guest, which was thoughtful but kind of pointless as the whole house stank of stale smoke. We were talking about what we’d recently bought, music-wise, chuckling as each disclosed the purchase of ‘even more Dylan’ from a local chain store’s mark-down bins. I don’t even like him that much, I said. No, agreed Steven, but you have to buy them, don’t you? I mean, it’s Dylan.

Maybe dipping into the Heylin book was a way to honour my friend, but the rediscovery of a pleasure I’ve enjoyed over the years: reading a rock bio while listening to the music being discussed on the page. Clinton Heylin writes well, and his research on Dylan is exemplary. I found myself drawn into the story, learning things I’d never known, like how Dylan loved early rock and roll, or his burning desire to become a successful singer/performer. Voracious in his consumption of folk music, sponge-like in his incorporation of others’ work, attentive to who was doing what and thus what he could appropriate, Dylan was a small lightning-flecked weather system that rolled into New York in January 1961 determined to succeed. That is all captured on the debut LP, which I heard through new ears, as if for the first time. Now I felt the intensity of the young man’s ambition, the rage that demanded movement, the gauntlet thrown down at the world. Listen to me! Infused with self-belief, bubbling with passion, entirely rough around the edges, frustrated with everything including his own limitations, Dylan’s first album is no musical triumph but an essential document in understanding his journey. It’s a photo, a snapshot, a glass container packed with acoustic explosives, a portrait of a young man full of piss and vinegar and demanding to be heard. A voice coming to life. A life demanding to be lived.

I’d love to talk about it all with Steven but that’s not an option. We all get remaindered eventually.

REVELATION

It was a time of change for McKinnon High School. No mere slaves to long-established convention they had taken the radical step, just in time for my enrolment, of abandoning caps for boys and gloves for girls. Girls still had to wear hats, of course. Who knows what passions might be inflamed in twelve year old cusp-of-adolescents if they encountered liberated hair? Experienced staff members shuddered at this collapse of values, while newer recruits to the ranks of late-60s educators quietly rolled their eyes.

The progressive teachers were, of course, the young ones. McKinnon was a big school, over twelve hundred students. The staff grew as the enrolments grew. Not that I recognised any of this as a clueless Form 1 student decked out in short pants, a brand new blazer, and a nervous grin. But I could tell that they were not all like Mr Cavanagh. For starters, the younger teachers didn’t wear ties and ill fitting suits dusted with years of chalk. Nor did they carry a three foot blackboard ruler like a rifle while prowling the rows of classroom desks. And not once did I see one of this new breed drag a boy out of his desk by the collar and pitch him bodily out of the room, bellowing that he would see the miscreant at the Assistant Principal’s office after the bell. The times were indeed a-changing.

I was in 1E, along with thirty-five others. Thirty-six kids in a classroom! No wonder some staff abandoned teaching in favour of crowd control. At recess we’d run about trying to brand each other with a hard-thrown tennis ball. Or the more dangerous British Bulldog, a more physical game that often involved sudden forceful contact with the turf. Some, like my new friend Trevor, would sneak out one of the unguarded gates to indulge in a furtive cigarette. John Laffy and I would see him when we walked to John’s house just behind the school. We’d sit on the twin beds in the room John shared with his brother and talk about… whatever twelve-year-olds talked about. Nasty teachers, boring subjects, adventures in trying to buy cigarettes, dreams of new bicycles… the lunch hour just flew by.

Sometimes I’d examine the 3DB Top 40 charts John’s brother collected. These sat in a neat pile on the bedhead cum bookshelf and were something of a mystery to me. My only media device was a crystal set, a tiny, tinny, weak little radio that tethered you between a long string-like aerial wire and the minuscule in-ear speaker on the end of its twisted lead. Seeing that each 7″ square sheet was dated, I worked out that 3DB compiled a new table of songs each week, a list of what was going up and what was sinking down. I recognised a few tunes, but mostly it was a mystery. Which is why, when we stopped to talk with Trevor one Spring lunchtime, he almost choked on his ciggie when I asked him about this tune I’d heard people singing around the lockers. Do you like that song Hey Jew? My gut still churns at the breathtaking naivety. Trevor didn’t sneer, he grinned and corrected my ignorant mondegreen. “Jude,” he said. “It’s Hey Jude. And no,” he continued, “I prefer the other side.” Oh, I said, not knowing what he was talking about but somehow recognising that one faux pas per lunchtime was probably enough.

A couple of days later, Trevor hailed me in the yard as I sat munching my sandwich. “When you’re done, let’s go to my place.”

Now strictly speaking it was against the rules to leave the school grounds, but the exit options were sufficiently numerous that duty teachers simply gave up and hoped no-one got run over or kidnapped during school hours. Or maybe hoped they did. Trevor and I used the gate near the Assembly Hall (also the gym) and tramped across the nearby football oval to a small house on a corner block. The garden was unkempt and there were old car parts and bits of rusty bicycle near the fence. Maybe Trevor didn’t have to mow the lawns, I thought.

Inside it smelt of boiled vegetables and dog. Trevor led me into the lounge. There was a two-seater couch, upholstered in cracked cream vinyl, and a battered armchair. A small HMV stereo sat on an occasional table in the corner. Trevor went across, flicked on the power, and put a 7” single onto the platter. He waved me towards the armchair. I couldn’t see his face, but I suspect he was grinning. There was a grating Krrr-THK! then room cracked as an unholy noise exploded out of the speakers. An dirty electric guitar slashed a rapid salvo, a wild scream, terrifying and utterly thrilling. “This,” bellowed Trevor over the racket, “Is the other side of “Hey Jude,” It’s called “Revolution”. I didn’t know whether to hide under the couch or run away but I knew for certain that crystal sets were sinking down the charts and that a new, noisier world had well-and-truly arrived. With a bullet.

AUTUMN

They flutter like red-gold confetti

A nuptial mass of hopes

well tempered by

PING

I put a load of washing on. Could you deal with it later? Ta.

by experience.

A nuanced word

for resignation

PONG

Medication reminder

Yes, yes, I took that before breakfast. 

Talking to a phone. 

Eye-roll emoji.

Enjoy every sunset in 

the season of goodbyes 

Yuck.

KNOCK

The flouro clad back of the postie. 

She rides an electric scooter.

Almost my age

but still working.

Book on the doormat.

“How To Look After Your Brain”. 

It won’t get read, of course. 

File with the others. 

Where was I?

Memories.

Recollections more colourful 

than today’s drab prospect, 

another medical con

PONG

Thank you for choosing the LubDub heart monitor. 

Follow the link to complete the registration process. 

PING

If you go down to the village, could you see if they have any fresh passionfruit?

Sure. 

It’s for the cream sponge, a ritual almost as old 

as the young man whose birthday it will mark. 

I recall passion 

fruit. 

More vivid, him riding his little 

push car around the house

plastic wheels rumbling

over red-gold polished boards 

bare feet pattering

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

What the hell is that. Not the washing 

machine, it’s five beeps and out. 

Not the recliner couch 

I can’t hear that anymore. 

One of the blinds? 

Ah, the dishwasher. F11. 

Blockage. 

Fortunately I know the drill and it

KNOCK

For fuck’s sake. 

Wash hands dry hands open door pick up new kettle. The greedy Big A bastards aren’t even putting boxed items in shipping boxes any more. Just a sticker with name and address straight on the packaging. Suppose that’s not a bad idea. The new vacuum cleaner came the same way. They had even slit the carton open to insert the spare dust bags. Sixteen hundred bucks for a barrel vacuum cleaner. Should’ve gone with the robot model, but couldn’t quite trust it. Like driverless cars, except indoors. He grinned like crazy has he zoomed down the hall to get the chequered tea-towel.

.

.

.

SMALLS

I need to buy some new undies. Several pairs reveal a parting of ways between the elastic and the cotton fabric and, as my mother used to say, what if you were taken to hospital and were wearing those? As a child I had no real idea what she meant. Like when I had my appendix out? Is there special hospital underwear? But like a puppy I picked up on the tone of voice. Shame. It would be shameful to have decrepit underpants viewed by… well, by anyone. I remember her repairing her own nylon undergarments, sitting by the window where the light was best, bending over the needle and thread. It was a necessity;  she had no income of her own and the only way to purchase personal items was by putting a few pence aside from the weekly housekeeping. That scrimping and saving was preferable to the stressful, yet ultimately inevitable, conversation with my father about increasing the housekeeping money. Though conversation isn’t the right word. Inquisition. Interrogation. Ritual humiliation. Any and all of those. 

Last week I threw a pair in the bin. It felt odd, uncomfortable, profligate. A kind of betrayal. There was even some annoyance that I couldn’t think of an alternative. Who, nowadays, has a bag of cleaning cloths behind the laundry door? No way I’d be offering my discarded underwear to the cleaning lady who visits once a fortnight. Mum, I wish you could see the look of distaste, repugnance even, as I reveal we have a cleaner. Once a fortnight, I plead in explanation of this bourgeois indulgence. But back to the smalls. (British vernacular, commonly referring to undergarments, in case you were wondering.) They are easily purchased at the supermarket, and are periodically on special just like sausages or cucumbers. It feels odd creating a new item on the shopping app I use each week. Undies—male, large. I like to group the list into sections that match my route through the supermarket but where does underwear sit? Is it near the food containers? Or next to the batteries? Maybe I’ll put it at the end, so searching for them will be like a victory lap before heading to the finish line of the checkout. 

They probably have socks as well, and I need those too. That’s much more annoying because not long ago I bought half a dozen pairs in two packs of three, or a six sock bundle if you are following the arithmetic. Twelve new items of sockery just a few months old. But already several have developed holes in the vicinity of the big toe. How can that be? Didn’t socks used to last until you grew out of them? Clearly not any more. Already a couple of pairs have been binned, with all the furtive guilt that entails. In a faded snapshot I see my mother sitting in the lounge room, next to the standard lamp. On an occasional table sits her battered sewing basket, in her lap a ball of wool. She holds a pock-marked wooden darning tool. Just this pair, Allan? she asks. My father’s head appears briefly from behind the newspaper. Yes, he nods, but also one of my business shirts. The top pocket seam has torn. She mumbles assent, and inserts the darning mushroom into the sock. I’ll do the shirt tomorrow, she says, when the light is better.