Paul J Penton – Songwriter

December is riding up to the pool on a 35 degree [Celsius] day on my bike wearing thongs. They flip about on the pedals that squeak with every revolution. The road pumps the shock from the forks straight into my arms as I cross the wide tongue of the main highway that licks it’s way through town. I pause for a semi trailer hauling a load of big eyed cattle just loaded up at the stockyards. The trailer smells of cow shit and a cow pisses all over the road as it passes.

As I’m sucked along the tar and I get closer to the pool I hear a ding dong of voices that seem to be bouncing along like words to a song on the TV- you know, the follow the bouncing ball thing. These voices are bouncing about twenty feet up in the air above the aquamarine glimmer of the pool. I pay my twenty cents to get in, the metal turnstile clicks me through and the first thing I smell is chlorine, it’s leaching up from the surface that’s a moving picture of colour and sound.

I buy a sunny boy to cool down, It’s a pyramid of iced water and this one’s strawberry flavour [or so they claim] its icy edges burn the sides of my mouth with cold and my temperature drops 5 degrees immediately. I plant myself on the hill beneath the shade of a tree and slurp away, steeling myself for the moment when I plunge into the water and it’s constrictive frozen arms wrap around me. Once in I’ll adapt within seconds. It’ll be great to get out of this heat for a time, it’s not just hot but humid. I feel as though some God is kneading me like a piece of dough it’s so oppressive. Right, no time like the present, …….

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How does something so squidgy, so mutable and pliant become a solid hard tough piece of pottery? Tough yet still brittle, fragile and beautiful. Day to day I guess we are numbed to the real wonders of it; plates, cups and bowls are all derived from the primordial sticky stuff we know as clay. It’s very strange between fingers. You can squeeze its wet face and it leaks out in the gaps between your fingers and then it can be all rolled back into a compact shape or ball , sort of Play -Doh for adults.

I remember high school classes where we had to make long faggoty snakes which were then joined into coils and we built a pot or a jug from the ground up. There’s a sort of earthy smell and sense about it as you do it, ’cause of course that’s where it’s come from. I remember the clay lying in the back of the pottery room in big bricks wrapped in plastic, the size of over sized housing bricks.

Once our projects were finished [ash trays were popular] they would be fired in the kiln. I have a vision of it in the rear yard of the school huffing and puffing, but it was probably gas fired. Did we first fire the pot to finish it and then apply the glaze or did it all happen at once? Now, that glaze has magical properties. A pudgy powder applied with paint brush that melts into glass dots. It was hard to imagine the pattern before it was fired. When it was finshed it came out like a boiled sweet, rock hard candy, ready to be licked, though I doubt it would taste of strawberry or anything similar, just, probably a dusty earthy taste like you get when you trip up and get a mouthful of dirt playing football…..

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I am handed an arrow head of cake on a flimsy piece of toweling to celebrate the departure of a colleague – is it a celebration this departure or should we mourn? As that slice of deep brown chocolate mud sluices through my mouth I don’t care. The fuzzy texture disintegrates in my mouth like a snow melt and rivers of chocolate sensation are freed to make the waterfall journey to my tummy.

I often just indulge, giving no thought to the process, but today I rise out of myself and follow a pathway back through time to the delivery of the box, to it’s sitting in a glassed cabinet at one of the major name department stores under bright lights neatly clothed in a brown suit of chocolate icing, small squiggles of artistic adornment snaking their way around it- I follow the time line back to an industrial bakery where chefs in blue lined aprons pour industrial strength ingredients into giant beaters that whirr away like portable generators at a road construction site, to the moment the aroma of fresh baked goodness slid out of an oven……

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I wrap my rocky arms around you and protect you like a mother duck, you never give me thanks though. You just bob away silently with your long noses pointing to the endless sky that I talk to on a moment by moment basis. I pray to the sky like it’s a God but it too doesn’t answer. On those fierce winter nights when the southern swell comes barrelling in carrying the arctic chill I just dig my toes in a little deeper, hunch my shoulders up a little higher and fight the onslaught and think of summer.

Sunday Mornings and they come down from the smoky cities to walk my lengths, faces peer over the creeking wooden balustrades looking at the latticed pots the plastic boxes the fisherman have brought in , alive with a tangle of Lobster legs and whiskers. The only thing that bothers me is the mixture of diesel and oil that slowly leaks out from the boats. It chokes me and coats my children, imperceptible really but we feel as if we’re being wrapped in cling film little by little. Still knowing each part of our defences is acting at its highest level is enough to make us keep the faith and do our duty and keep patrolling against those rogue waves from down South.

Summer is another pleasure entirely, when the waters have warmed significantly, even I join the tourists for a welcome break and lounge back, putting my long thin arms under my head and letting the warm piercing sun soak through me with a hot shower of sunlight. I wash my seaweed hair and barnacled skin with the soap of vitamin D…….

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St Kilda Road – the expressway for speeding ambulances and slug like trams to funnel their way to The Alfred Hospital. Sirens pulse in red and blue synchronicity with the lights and the pulse increases at intersections. Motors gun at high speed to get to emergency at the earliest convenience. The air ambulance sometimes passes by my house. When ever I hear its blades massacring the air a thought rises that some other poor bastard must be in a lot of trouble. There’s a landing pad set up over Commercial road that leads straight into the trauma section and the ICU – Intensive care. How could you work there day after day I wonder?

Inside the ambulance as it harries down St Kilda road, parcels of equipment monitor and assist the victim, ECG monitors display the health of the heart, blood pressure monitors tick over with the pulsing blood- does it pulse in time with the siren now? The patient tastes the inside of a clear plastic mask, panic and fear in his eyes. The bed rattles as the ambulance crosses over tram tracks on its last flurry up to the hospital. They’ve radioded ahead so things are in readiness but the patient starts to fade, vital signs plunge. The ambulance officer pinches him, “can you hear me mate, can you hear me”, he reaches for the shock paddles as the heart monitor flat lines into a wheeeeeing sound….

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This one was reel eel of a case. Every time he thought he’d gotten hold of one of those clues it just slipped away, leaving a greasy residue on his fingers, slimy , like afterbirth of a cow, hot and wet and sticky. He knows it’s not like television where the CSI labs in ultra fluro white discover clues in what seem to be nano seconds- try more like nano months. Inside him is a shifting tectonic plate of dissatisfaction with the slowness of progress on certain cases. They’re sitting in a compactus in his brain and eat away on his steely mind as if it were a rusting drainpipe. He flips over the mental files of current cases on the go and is transported back to crime scenes where cameras click and whirr and portable lights flood footpaths and houses with artificiality, just like this world he lives in. It’s relentless, taking a toll on his physical and mental health – even when he gets away the cases come with him.

He longs for it to be as simple as it was in the days of Columbo – his favorite TV detective. Back then forensics came down to a chalk outline around a body and a finger print or two. None of this alien landscape of today with people trapsing about in full body suits for fear of ‘crime scene contamination’. He still uses his nouse , his contacts and bites down hard on cigarettes while he waits for the next installment. Maybe it’s time to start sucking on lollipops like another famous TV detective from the Columbus era. Kojak’s domed shining head pops into his minds eye. Cool, suave, always one step ahead of the crooks, but as we’ve already mentioned reality doesn’t work that way; it’s fighting your way through layers of filth and underworld slime, through odourous crackhouses and dealing with drug infested liars and cheats.

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Sometimes when I’m coming in to land at Tullamarine, just before the spoilers arch from under the wings with that yawning sound, before the wheels clunk into place, we make a left turn over suburbia. After parched fields of faded yellow we hang on top of a series of roofs, the hat for each mini-mansion, most in resplendent dull orange or brown. From the air they all look so uniform and everyone is probably acting out their uniform roles in their uniform lives. If it’s a Saturday, they’ll be out the back pulling the starter yoke on the two stroke, letting it go letting it chug, filling the air with that mixture of petrol and oil, cutting unruly lawns down to size, leaving behind the wet mushy clippings that take me straight back to childhood.

In back yards harried mothers dip hands into plastic clothes baskets and withdraw damp nappies in muted flannel that hang like traitors from the line. They come alive as the sun dries there misery. Later in the afternoon and into the evening it’s a family barbcue, where the relos [relatives] come from their nestling of suburbia to indulge in yours and where smoky sausages are squeezed between pliant slices of white bread and lumpy steaks turn until they are crispy brown on the outside. Dowsed with tomato sauce it doesn’t matter how bad they’re cooked – they taste beaut mate. I can still taste the underlying charred meat though, in my frazzled sausage, there’s no fooling me.

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To me it always seems to be like wading through quick drying lead, this driving long distances- usually on a highway. Once up to the limit my hands become heavy magnets, attracted to the steering wheel, they lightly manouver the car round corners and up and down hills and dales. The road talks to the car in lumps and bumps. The car speaks back to the road in a whisper of tyres that also murder cats eyes. The highway licks just a little more life out of the tyres mile by mile. The highway does it’s best to mesmerise and hypnotise through those flashing white lines, they seem to caChinka caChunka past like crash barriers on the side of the road.

Stopping for petrol, the motor groans, ticks and creeks with relief as another barrel of best Arabian is syphoned into the tank and out of the wallet. The hot motor sweats its body odour of hot oil and ozonic electronic ignition. On the road, the CD player sings through a rotation of fast paced action songs trying to keep my head level and alert as the heavy white lines sink in the back of my brain. Green rectangles loom and grow large giving signs of hope that you are now another twenty kilometers closer to your target- but sometimes it seems hopeless- what! another 50 to the next town! At the next convenient place, it’s burgers dripping with oily juice in flattened white rolls flame grilled to a crisp with smudges of tomato sauce, that drip into rustling virgin white paper bags…..

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By the end of the night I felt as if a bowling ball had been inserted into my innards. Not that I’m complaining at all, it was all nicely done at that swanky awards dinner. The penguin suit pinched a bit on my shoulders- it hadn’t been worn in a while and I must have expanded in that area – but once we were sat and comfortably surrounded by a galaxy of shining knives and forks and well polished wine glasses it began.

Waiters performed circus juggling acts with entrees that hovered in the air at the end of snaking arms . It was a prawn and pumpin salad – interesting- jellied yellow squares of pumpkin, that melted like butter on a hot day in my mouth. The prawns, fatter than a thumb exploded with the taste of the sea and the special herb or spice they’d been served in made my tongue sit up. The wine waiter kept appearing at my right shoulder at frequent intervals and the yellow fluid in the glass always seemed to remain at a constant level- making it hard to judge how much I’d drunk and whether I was too drunk to drive home…hmmmmm.

The main speaker was glued to the podium as if it was a life raft and his words seemed to float up on balloons above him – hanging there just long enough for us to gradually understand he was not who he was purported to be- rather, a comedian – funny for about five minutes before his charade started to wear and weigh on us like a cloudy Newcastle afternoon. Thankfully the medium rare steak arrived to add more flavour to the moment, floating on a cloud of mashed potato with islands of broiled spinach supporting its rear. The knife should have been a steak knife by rights – instead it was a bog standard kitchen job which was only just efffectual……

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A church grave yard, haunting headstones in crumbling granite, a black smudge sitting on a parapet surveying its dominion, sending out a warning signal, “Faaaaark, faaaark”. The gentle ding dong sing song of other birds interupted by its knife edge sound blaring against tender ears. Taking to the air great mouthfuls of wing flash up and down against a sun that filters through stubborn clouds. It Caws as it swings and settles on a tree branch up closer now. Its feathers all merge into one shiny oily black surface and a yellow eye follows you around the graveyard, as if it knows something, it burns into you, the knowing that it’s observing you.

Bored the bird dissolves off down the street hunting for a bin. It gathers a couple of friends in the air and they gabble away to each other, maybe relaying information about the best place to have lunch today. Intelligent they are, sizing things up, making attacks on overflowing bin tops, ripping out left over morsels with razor beaks, all the while surveillance team eyes scan for threats and possibilities.

“Fark””Fark” and another whoosh of wings rise to the cross bar of a telegraph pole, taking in the territory chasing away ward invaders like magpies and mudlarks; a clash of David and Goliath at forty feet. Back at the churchyard the door swings open where I haltingly move toward making an apology to the priest and I’ll soon be eating crow – how will it taste I wonder.

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