Rickyralph visited Saturday a week ago. He looked fit and well, and our conversation revealed that he's comfortable with where he's at. I congratulated him on his recent 65th birthday. Born seven months before me, he was always going to beat me there if he stayed alive long enough, which I must admit I was not always confident about.
You see, as he reminded me on one of his visits not long ago, I once told him he wouldn't make it to thirty. I had forgotten saying this, perhaps we were about 20, but he said that at the time it gave him a jolt and made him think deeply. The reason I had said it to him was that he was such a risk taker, foolhardy if you like, and by that time he'd already had quite a few close shaves. In fact you could say at the time that he was lucky to have survived to that point.
Not that he was on his own in that, I shudder at the recollection of some of my dangerous activities, usually involving alcohol and driving, but also other stupid things that could have led to serious consequences, but didn't thankfully. Many of these incidents were in the company of Rickyralph, and in all truth we were a little crazy. As youngsters we had many irate male adults in our pursuit who left us in no doubt they would have killed us if they caught us.
I think we both got off a bit on the excitement, but it was usually me trying to bring some restraint and caution to a situation while Rickyralph was just full on bold as brass, and often laughing in the face of danger... all go go action.
We discussed some of this and he reminded me of many incidents that I had forgotten about, he has a better memory of our youth and early adulthood than I do. One thing he said was absolutely crazy was the stuntman acrobatic somersaults he used to do off water skiis at high speed, just for the thrill of it and for the amusement of those in the boat who reveled in the spectacular crashes back to the water. He only stopped this after one time nearly crushing his testicles and enduring considerable agony. He concedes now that he was so lucky he didn't break his neck or his spine.
So for two old blokes who are still mates after more than 50 years since meeting, it is of great satisfaction to us that we can meet and laugh and reminisce. We met in 1964 at Malvern Grammar School, Rick was 12, I turned 12 in April. He was a tennis champion at that young age, and became Victorian U14 hardcourt champion. I was into cricket and football, we were both competent at sport, and showed considerable promise academically, enough to be in Set One when we progressed to Caulfield Grammar School in 1966. There were Sets 1-6, each about a class of thirty, which were graded so that each set did maths and science in the same class.
Probably we became closer friends as a result of being in these same set with all the brainy students. We both struggled to keep up, and by 1968 we had become close friends and sought solace and comic relief from a system that did not suit us at all. Our academic performance fell away as did our interest in sport. Rickyralph was full of energy that couldn't be restrained by a classroom, he was always being punished for one reason or another, often much to the humour of both the students and the teachers. A likeable rogue.
He was a handy chess player and joined the school chess team. Odd that. I never have played chess, or tennis for that matter. The school was competing in chess with Korowa Girls Grammar and he fell in love with his opponent, a girl called Penny. Penny's family had a holiday house in Lorne, and as had become our habit to travel to Lorne or Torquay on school holidays, I met Penny's sister Jane and fell head over heels in love. During this time Rickyralph took up surfing and with an older friend from the tennis team who had left the school but had a car and licence we often went to Lorne on weekends in the hope of seeing Penny and Jane who often were there with their parents. Later when Rick got his licence we were down there all the time in his old man's Humber Hawk.
One time prior to that we were hitchhiking down there, we used to catch the train to Footscray I think and get onto the Geelong Road and stick our thumb out. This particular time we were in a car with an absolute loony driver who just went like hell on wheels. I think it was summer of '67 or '68, anyway we got to Lara and there was smoke blowing across the road in a gale and cars were stopped but our bloke kept going even when you could hardly see the road. He just gunned it through the smoke despite the danger of hitting a stopped vehicle. Being young and silly we didn't appreciate the danger we were in. On the way home that same day the whole area was blackened and there were countless dead sheep in the paddocks and a number of burnt cars. Some people were killed and many burnt severely as they tried to outrun the flames of the fast moving grass fire. We must have been one of the last cars that made it through earlier that day thanks to our loony driver.
Rickyralph and I courted Penny and Jane over a few years, sometimes going out as a foursome. We were besotted totally, unfortunately the girls didn't quite have the same feelings and we were rejected time and time again, persisting for a few years during which we thought of nothing much else than these two lovely young ladies, who were to us like goddesses from mythology. We followed them, we spied on them, we plotted, tried everything. Alas, we dipped out. The first cut is the deepest.
But this cemented our friendship. It also led us in a way to discover other adventure, like exploring the coastline and bush, finding waterfalls and cliffs. One day we descended the cliffs near the twelve apostles and went into the cave from the ocean side and into the blowhole. It must have been low tide and a calm day to enable this because I have been there other times when she was blowing hard and it would seem suicide to do that. Often when the girls were not there or we were spurned we'd head out and sit and drink at night listening to the radio, maybe with a campfire. We took up fishing. We both loved the outdoors.
So for some years we were nearly always in each other's company when we could be. I went to a different school halfway through 1968 after being expelled. Our friendship continued after we left school and started working. For the next decade or so we had separate lives employment wise but often coordinated our holidays and we had many memorable trips away.
Our 30's saw us married and raising families and not seeing as much of each other but the bond of friendship is there, even though we don't need each other for support like we did in our earlier days.
Rickyralph has done well. He's still working but is eyeing retirement. After a varied working career he has spent the last 7 or 8 years as a lineman. He drives a crane truck and operates the crane to replace electricity poles and equipment. He works casual for a contracting firm and is paid a very high hourly rate. His parents died quite young. He was particularly close to his father, who would be very proud of him I'm sure.
May my good friend Rickyralph have many more happy and healthy years ahead of him. I'm glad I was wrong about him not making 30.
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Two Torrid Weeks
It's blowing a gale outside, not unexpectedly as the warnings have been coming for 3 days on news reports of severe windstorms. The warnings include the likelihood that many trees will uprooted as the high rainfall of recent weeks will have weakened root systems. Something like that. Enough to spook me when we have numerous large eucalypts in the proximity of our house.
Trees down in the district means we'll almost certainly lose power. I may not get to finish this post today. The weather for most of the last fortnight has been deplorable with many days wet and cold. I remember last October after we returned from Europe it was dry and warm to hot with some days 30C+. This year it has been rain and more rain, difficult to get work done, and to keep the firewood up. It has only been the last few days that it has warmed sufficiently to not light the fire of an evening. It's set and ready to go in expectation of the next cold snap which may be as soon as today with no power to boot.
I have been afflicted with the flu for the last fortnight. I have not been as sick as that for a long time. It started with the nose thing moved into the throat and gradually worked deeper into the lungs. I have hacked uncontrollably day in day out. The fever consumed me, being freezing cold so going early to bed only to be overtaken by raging night sweat leaving my pillow and singlet and pyjama collar wet with sweat. I have slept this past two weeks in the spare room so as not to destroy Lib's sleep.
As if part of a bigger picture curse on me, many other things have gone wrong during this period. At the height of my fevers there was a Puffing Billy information night, which I was encouraged to attend by PB after my protestations by email at their shifting to Gembrook as their Event Hub, meaning 18 event days (traffic jams and mayhem) clogging the town, 12 before Christmas, and 6 in March. I sat watching the power point show of all the boxes ticked...money for the scouts helping car parking, money for the school committee for parking on the school oval, money for the CFA by their sausage sizzle, more pizza sales for the pizza shop, more beer sales for the pub, more milk sales for the supermarket, 12000 tickets already sold... I listened for half an hour before standing to interject and tell them they were bringing the rat race to our quiet little town and destroying the quiet rural atmosphere and our peaceful lifestyle which is the very reason we live there.
Last Tuesday I had scheduled a Park advisory Group meeting before our NHP committee meeting and the president asked me could I chair the COM meeting as she had a funeral to attend, and another meeting on Wednesday was organised to discuss our brochure with the graphic designer. Feeling totally ill I managed to get through the meetings on Tuesday and got home to find the power was out and when I checked my mobile phone it was nearly out of charge but there was a message from Rob's housemate saying that Rob was in hospital.
AT THIS POINT let me say that I'm resuming this post after some 44 hours. Yes, as I predicted last Sunday the power went off while I was posting, at about 11am. It was out till 3.30am this morning about 40 hours. I had unplugged our two freezers before I went to bed as I didn't want to have them come on while we were asleep and refreeze what may have thawed. Fortunately I heard the power come on at 3.30am, I had trouble getting to sleep and must have been dozing lightly and there's a sort of little beeping noise as the power comes on, enough to alert me. The big stuff eg chicken, lamb leg beef piece and casseroles were still frozen hard but small stuff like little bacon packets were soft so I took them out and put them in the fridge, and plugged the freezers in again. There's a lot things in there like bread loaves and packets of berries and lunch packs which we'll discard when we get to defrost but I wanted to get the freezers on again quickly with as little disturbance as possible but I needed to know what was what in there, was any of it retrievable?
I'll cut this post short as I have much to do now. To fill you in on Rob, he had a kidney infection and was in hospital a couple of days. Lib went down on Wednesday as she was off work and took him home to where he lives in Wantirna. I spoke to him yesterday and he's feeling quite well, the antibiotics seem to have worked. He has an ultrasound booked for this Thursday as they investigate why the infection started. With the power outage we communication problems as our cordless phone and answering machine does not work with no power. The mobiles were not working, towers down. My bacon was saved yesterday because I had an old phone that plugs straight into the wall which Gord and I bought at cash converters for $10. This has auxilary back up from standard triple A batteries if the power is out, and we searched high and low years ago after being caught out one time. As it happened it allowed Gord and I both to complete some important business that otherwise would have caused great inconvenience in Gord's case and some financial loss in my case had we not been able to make a couple of simple calls early in the day.
I started this post to tell you about my horrible couple of weeks, but then I was going on to talk about some good things, namely the fact that Rickyralph made it to 65 years old in that period, and that all the beautiful rain has made the soil in my garden so soft to dig, even near the euc trees, and I have had great joy planting some things into it. And the Bulldog premiership.
So I'll post again soon.
Trees down in the district means we'll almost certainly lose power. I may not get to finish this post today. The weather for most of the last fortnight has been deplorable with many days wet and cold. I remember last October after we returned from Europe it was dry and warm to hot with some days 30C+. This year it has been rain and more rain, difficult to get work done, and to keep the firewood up. It has only been the last few days that it has warmed sufficiently to not light the fire of an evening. It's set and ready to go in expectation of the next cold snap which may be as soon as today with no power to boot.
I have been afflicted with the flu for the last fortnight. I have not been as sick as that for a long time. It started with the nose thing moved into the throat and gradually worked deeper into the lungs. I have hacked uncontrollably day in day out. The fever consumed me, being freezing cold so going early to bed only to be overtaken by raging night sweat leaving my pillow and singlet and pyjama collar wet with sweat. I have slept this past two weeks in the spare room so as not to destroy Lib's sleep.
As if part of a bigger picture curse on me, many other things have gone wrong during this period. At the height of my fevers there was a Puffing Billy information night, which I was encouraged to attend by PB after my protestations by email at their shifting to Gembrook as their Event Hub, meaning 18 event days (traffic jams and mayhem) clogging the town, 12 before Christmas, and 6 in March. I sat watching the power point show of all the boxes ticked...money for the scouts helping car parking, money for the school committee for parking on the school oval, money for the CFA by their sausage sizzle, more pizza sales for the pizza shop, more beer sales for the pub, more milk sales for the supermarket, 12000 tickets already sold... I listened for half an hour before standing to interject and tell them they were bringing the rat race to our quiet little town and destroying the quiet rural atmosphere and our peaceful lifestyle which is the very reason we live there.
Last Tuesday I had scheduled a Park advisory Group meeting before our NHP committee meeting and the president asked me could I chair the COM meeting as she had a funeral to attend, and another meeting on Wednesday was organised to discuss our brochure with the graphic designer. Feeling totally ill I managed to get through the meetings on Tuesday and got home to find the power was out and when I checked my mobile phone it was nearly out of charge but there was a message from Rob's housemate saying that Rob was in hospital.
AT THIS POINT let me say that I'm resuming this post after some 44 hours. Yes, as I predicted last Sunday the power went off while I was posting, at about 11am. It was out till 3.30am this morning about 40 hours. I had unplugged our two freezers before I went to bed as I didn't want to have them come on while we were asleep and refreeze what may have thawed. Fortunately I heard the power come on at 3.30am, I had trouble getting to sleep and must have been dozing lightly and there's a sort of little beeping noise as the power comes on, enough to alert me. The big stuff eg chicken, lamb leg beef piece and casseroles were still frozen hard but small stuff like little bacon packets were soft so I took them out and put them in the fridge, and plugged the freezers in again. There's a lot things in there like bread loaves and packets of berries and lunch packs which we'll discard when we get to defrost but I wanted to get the freezers on again quickly with as little disturbance as possible but I needed to know what was what in there, was any of it retrievable?
I'll cut this post short as I have much to do now. To fill you in on Rob, he had a kidney infection and was in hospital a couple of days. Lib went down on Wednesday as she was off work and took him home to where he lives in Wantirna. I spoke to him yesterday and he's feeling quite well, the antibiotics seem to have worked. He has an ultrasound booked for this Thursday as they investigate why the infection started. With the power outage we communication problems as our cordless phone and answering machine does not work with no power. The mobiles were not working, towers down. My bacon was saved yesterday because I had an old phone that plugs straight into the wall which Gord and I bought at cash converters for $10. This has auxilary back up from standard triple A batteries if the power is out, and we searched high and low years ago after being caught out one time. As it happened it allowed Gord and I both to complete some important business that otherwise would have caused great inconvenience in Gord's case and some financial loss in my case had we not been able to make a couple of simple calls early in the day.
I started this post to tell you about my horrible couple of weeks, but then I was going on to talk about some good things, namely the fact that Rickyralph made it to 65 years old in that period, and that all the beautiful rain has made the soil in my garden so soft to dig, even near the euc trees, and I have had great joy planting some things into it. And the Bulldog premiership.
So I'll post again soon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)