Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Small stones and crushed rock are folded into a wheel barrow and transported across a wooly unkept garden.  The barrow makes a hollow grinding sound as the stones tumble to freedom onto a large wooden board. He reaches a trowel into a bag of dried cement almost as tall as the 4 year old boy watching inquisitively. It’s a two to one ratio. As the cement powder comes out of the bag a fine swish of dust accompanies it and moves toward the boy who starts to cough as he inhales, a thump on the back sorts all that out. The stones and the powder are mixed with water. A wide angled shovel with a  flat tip scrapes the mixture across the board and the man chops down at it from all sorts of angles until it starts to take on a consistency like pancake mixture; smooth and free flowing. It’s looking ready.

With the help of the elder brother the board is transported along the path and the man begins shoveling the mixture onto the newly dug path. The liquidous cement licks at the outer dividing wall and is then captured by a timber runner on the other side – just over a body width apart, this will allow easy access to the garage at the back when the Grandfather brings his caravan to stay for good. It’ll make it easier for him to get inside and go to the toilet. The emptied board is returned near the back of the house near the coal scuttle for another sequence of  concrete making. The boy – curious- goes to the cement bag and examines it. His hand dips in and finds it tickles, so light, like cloudy imaginings, all this becomes that  hard solid stuff? He is lost in amazement at the transformation in an almost reverent trance. In later life he will come to dislike concrete jungles that city dwellers seem to be lost in and thanks Christ he never has to make it.

Why do I feel like Mr Darcy, banged up in this penguin suit prison, waddling around arms trapped/ pinned to my sides. In the rehearsals it had been all free flowing and easy , the steps chiseled into our unconscious by Rhodan ’s mistress, until like breathing they are now automatic, but doing it in this suit is gonna take some re-learning.  All around there’s a flurry of colour and perfection, manicured faces and trimmed nails long flowing dresses with plunging swan necks, a hot bed of youthful volcanic sexual desire simmering under the surface.

The drinks tray drifts past  I catch a feint tinge of gin and tonic along with a Johnny and coke, later- must focus on getting these steps down pat.  In the ante chamber to the toilets is some ancient wooden paneling from the turn of the 20th century and a swag of boys and girls waiting in a queue. The air is heavy with roughly applied doses of brut 33 and perfumes from Yves Saint Laurent/ Gucchi and too many other hard to pronounce names. All of the girls are stunning, their hair sitting like dreamy clouds on top of faces far in advance of their years – a wonder what make-up can do. Soon we’ll be wheeling around the dance floor in clock work precession, numbers counting off in our heads like sheep when you can’t sleep as we fall into the hypnotic memory of Mrs Wilkinson’s stern instruction. Then we’ll sneak outside for a swig or two from the mixer bottles we’ve brought full of vodka and coke – You can’t smell it but its a burning log fire- wonderful in the back of your throat.

In secreto, playing a game of cat and mouse, mouth permanently filled with a bitter taste of contempt for the ’system’; inform or else . Hands bound in barbed wire , eyes open with  toothpicks. On alert all the time, scanning scanning, ears radar for morsels of information, brain taking in everything, every moment, a little hint, a possibility something to add to the armoury, to report back, to  take another step closer to freedom. Dilemma – how to live with the filthy smell of self contempt, the reminiscence of overflowing week old garbage bins and unclean latrines in your mind, festering sores of guilt just under the skin, pustules of self-hatred. Dressed in a pall of gray the whole time , life drained and empty, a husk an automaton, living for the system. They promise a better tomorrow lays ahead, but they’re wreaths of opportunity, short cuts to desperation and disaster, because if you don’t you know your family may be arrested or shot, so you keep on doing it. Low profile, under the radar, heavyweight listener with your elephant ears flapping hard, trying to stay in flight above the reek of human carnage you have to sift though, the engine of your will fed by a stream of pure fear knowing at any moment you will run out and fall out of the air

What a delight, a slice of heaven, lighter than angels wings in the mouth, pockets of air transporting bubbles of taste sensation on see saw rides. I could smell it  from the moment we walked in the door , Mrs Prout had been baking. The back porch area leads into a muted corridor with the kitchen on the left. She stands surrounded by a halo of bright summer light pushing in through the window frame, Surely a choir of angels is about to start singing as she wheels around with that circular delight steaming fresh. The aroma of the slightly browned crust is almost indescribably addictive, but we have to wait for it too cool a bit. Surprise is she’s cooked two and she returns to the oven with the punching glove mits to free the other. The metal pan slides along the tines of the oven shelf making a small percussive metal sound. The sponge joins the other on a rack. Eyes bulge, mouths stream in anticipation – we’re told to wait 10 minutes – we go and occupy ourselves with a track or two from the scratchy Vinyl collection in the lounge and when we return she’s just applying the last Van Gogh swish of  lemon icing.  Like eager dogs skulking at the table leg we make big eyes and whimper. A quick dissection with the super sharp knife and we get our reward. The wait is worth it. The lemon icing has a zesty zing a slight weight that offsets the dreaminess of the melting sponge. Soaring dreams fill our aching stomachs and minds as our eyes beg for a further slice, but there’s another seven mouths to be fed yet before seconds.

Rohan had a real nice one, back in the day, before mp3, before i-pod, before digital download, when the only pirated music was a vinyl album you borrowed from a friend. Funny thing, part of a component system , a brushed black metal box with smoothly recessed switches and a single knob for volume, I can’t help but think of a junkie about to get a fix as I went through the play procedures. A finger push on the eject switch would lower a drawbridge for the army of sound that was about to invade. The cassette tape was a dried out husk that apparently had no life, but it sat sweet in the mouth of the mechanism and the door pushed shut with a muted click, being halfway through it required rewinding, for that ‘best’ song at the head, heart by this stage is showing signs of adrenalin influx, a heightened sense of giddiness, just like that junk being heated in the spoon, come on I want it NOW.

The tiny wheels inside are mesmerising. The rewinding motors are a drill on half speed screaming the tape back to pole position until I can hit the play button, the needle in the vein, the lance for the ear. Glorious sounds of a piano erupt from the keflar speakers, and then Freddy’s vocal sails over the top ” I’ve done my time”…. building into the guitar infected chorus. WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS MY FRIEND. My arms are a windmill playing the lead lines as the sound vibrates through the bare wooden floor, in this day perhaps trendy, then, the after effect of a min-flood, for which the insurance paid out for this neat new Denon deck. As the music pulses the bars on the L.E.D. meter are a duck egg blue then yellow and traffic light red, possible over load up ahead.

Lips curl at the edge as I read the word and think about all its implications- how to talk about just one, there’s been so many, memories spring back to school and the discovery of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy for a ‘Grand Farting Competition’. That’s just about the only really legible words on this smudgy facsimile, we manage to interpret the rules to discover that ‘blanket rippers’ and ‘thunderclaps’ are allowed but soggy wet ones may attract disqualification. We laugh ourselves silly in that sobbing, ‘please, no more, make it stop’ sort of laughter that ripples through us like writhing snakes, our eyes watering with delight.

 To get us in the mood It’s lips to the flabby bit of skin over the biceps and we let go a big watery fat one. Of course there’s that other method for developing a decent faux fart -cupping a  hand under your shoulder and working your arm like a hand pump, I find this is not as effective and certainly there’s less control  than the Bicep method. Thankfully there’s no gaseous indulgence also, which makes me think of standing in a pub recently where some bastard did let one go, I think most people in the immediate vicinity were choking in their beer – it was a meaty odour – but what can you do mate?- And was the person responsible really going to go outdoors especially to relieve him or herself? NO.  Just thinking about the relief that is to be found in a good fart, especially if its been gathering in there for a while. Those clouds of humid gas gathering in the pit of the bowel seem to have come all the way from Jupiter- or could I say Uranus…..the relief is like a cool change on a sweltering Melbourne day. 

 There was an incident in English class once, the scrabble of pens the shuffle of chairs and the padding feet of the teacher echoing off the wall all seemed to be frozen in a moment of time, just as I chose to let a quiet one one go, and of course it was on a wooden seat , and wouldn’t you know it WAS a f#^%#ing well blanket ripper, a real rip snorter and that chair vibrated like a jack hammer.  The whole class erupted in a storm of laughter, it rained down from the roof and the streamed from the corners. I think I got put outside for ten minutes for disrupting class. 

Get yourself a trade, a wise parent said, you can always ‘fall back on it’, if things don’t work out – don’t work out? Impossible, my teenage movie ideal of the future is impenetrable, unbreakable, I am superman flying high the world beneath me ready to be scooped up and devoured like chocolate ice cream, but, just in case, you suggest I sign my  life over for four years, learn the tricks, get the groundwork the frame that my life might need to rest on later- what’s best? Plumbing. Electrical, Fitting and Turning, wood work? But what about all those boring hours in school and the learning of repetitive manual skills, crossing, sawing, wrapping. Something to fall back on- like a well placed sword in a battle – I want to get on with my life NOW! Can’t wait, toe taps a rythm from the latest pirate mega-download to my i-pod, yeah mum and dad have got cash to splash , don’t need to worry ’bout that, I’m here at home ’til I’m thirty-something- don’t need to worry ’bout buyin’ a house, or renting or money spent on buying food or clothes- its my ideal world, self sufficient. Dinners on the table when I get in from wandering living in my world making my contribution, by doing nothing, saving the planet by walking. I don’t want to think about the shackles, the manacles that I might be bound with if I become an apprentice, having to get up so early, going back to school having my head full of new rules, I don’t want to know, some old guy trying to teach me all he knows, useless, won’t make a difference. I just want my 15 seconds of fame, on MTV or youtube or something, somebody notice me! Then my life will be complete, yep that’d be sweet, no long hard slog thinking of tomorrows, or houses or mortgages, pluggin’ myself into the power grid of human experience, no none of these things for me, just floating free, dwelling on the edges. No Donald Trump telling me what to do no proving myself, no passing no tests- just give me my rightful fifteen minutes- . I know everything I need to know so please let’s just go and let me get on with my life, don’t let this work ‘thing’ interfere, there’s so many parties to get too, so many affairs to run, I got no time for being an apprentice – how dumb! 

Fingers trace over the ring, it’s worn smooth on the outside, the lustre of the gold dulled, diamonds and rubies seem to be swallowed by time somewhere in its grooves.  I probe the surface, the metal still warm from her ring finger. What am I perceiving?  Eyes closed I see symbols and images in my mind, are they my invention or is this some sort of transmission from ‘the other side’.

The chair is sort of uncomfortable, I become aware of my bum resting on the solid cushioning and while I try to concentrate on the ‘messages’ being passed to me, I smell a vase of flowers somewhere nearby – a vase that needs the water changing, though the flowers still look ok.  She wants to know about her husband who has passed over. I am the conduit for him to speak from the beyond, but I don’t hear anything don’t see any floating apparitions, only these symbols and impressions, and nothing is clear enough for me to give anything I feel is worthwhile.

Should I strain harder to ’see’, to understand what the third eye  is scanning, or should I admit the fact that I have no ‘ability’ at all.  The expectation in me is huge, the seventh child of the seventh child whose grandmother was well known in those early days at the turn of the last century, why not me?- I’d love to know the lotto numbers or where my life should be going, but there’s nothing. I could lie to comfort her, take a stab, a guess, but conscience does not allow. I let her know I am getting nothing, her face becomes a landslide of disappointment , as they always are- sometimes……..