Author

Anne Skyvington

An Amazing Story About Stuttering

Did you know that Australia is a world leader in Stuttering research and treatments? See: The Australian Stuttering Research Centre.

But first, let me tell you a story. Many years ago, when I was little, there were always one or two children in school who couldn’t get their words out. They sounded ‘bumpy’ when they did manage to speak. Other children laughed at them. In my uncle’s time, he was even caned for his stutter.

Enter a team of Australian speech pathologists) at Lidcombe Hospital and other locales in Sydney’s Western Suburbs, during the nineties. They devised a simple plan, based on the idea of a puppet who appeared and then magically disappeared from sight. The Lidcombe Program for treating preschool age children was born!

When refined, this program was conceptually very simple, and involved trained therapists in verbally rewarding stutter-free speech outputs and pointing out “bumpy words” in a neutral manner.

Therapy sessions, individually suited to each child, and occurring in fun and environmentally friendly settings, occur over a period of weeks. Although simple, it could ‘go wrong’ if certain protocols are not followed. In other words, it is a demanding operation, that requires a stable and subtle framework to put it into practice.

Fast forward to today. The Australian Stuttering Research Centre RC is now working on another ground-breaking piece of research. They have been researching the very deep question of WHY people stutter. The causes of stuttering have escaped researchers all around the world since thinkers first wondered about it eons ago. It is a very complex multifactorial matter and many possible starting points for scientists to work from.

Enter the Baby Solution! Researchers at the ASRC have courageously begun studying the brains of infants who are at risk of developing stuttering. Yes, it is proven to be a heritable condition, afflicting ten percent of those on the planet at some stage during their lives. At risk babies were placed in Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanners in special capsules. This is already showing amazing early suggestions of differences between ‘at risk’ and control groups.

This study is the first to investigate the brains of children before the onset of stuttering.

Professor Mark Onslow, the Australian Stuttering Research Centre founding director, says people who stutter live in a society that marginalises them with stereotypes that portray stuttering as a psychological problem. It is not caused by emotional issues, but made worse by stigma and bullying at school.

The researchers say their preliminary findings warrant replication incorporating longitudinal research. They say a better understanding about how different brain regions become disconnected will bring us closer to developing treatment that one day may completely alleviate stuttering.

How do I know this? Because I’m married to the director of the the Australian Stuttering Research Centre, Mark Onslow. And because I’m so proud of him and his colleagues for the work that they do in trying to manage this horrible affliction that ruins lives and prevents sufferers from reaching their full career potential as adults.

Read the article Does Stuttering Have Its Origins at Birth on the ASRC website at https://www.uts.edu.au/news/health-science/does-stuttering-have-its-origins-birth

[See the Research Paper published in the journal Neuroscience Letters: ‘White matter connectivity in neonates at risk of stuttering: Preliminary data’]

June 14, 2022 0 comment

Australia

From the Archives: Australian Story

I first saw the following video on a Facebook group that I belong to: Armidale Teachers College: The Class of 1961-1962

This was the year, 1963, that I started teaching primary school children in Granville, Western Sydney. The girls I taught were aged 8 and 9 and in 3rd and 4th classes. Some of my classmates at Armidale Teachers College chose to teach in small schools in the bush or even in outback places. The school children in the video below had to ride horseback part of the way, then catch a flying fox to get to their school.

1963: School children from a farm near Nowra had to catch a flying fox across the river, after leaving home on horseback.

My first education department posting was easy by comparison. After Teachers’ College I was posted to Granville Central School, teaching 3rd and 4th classes. I loved the girls I taught—it was parallel classes with high flyers and disadvantaged in together—but my first taste of work-based authority figures was a shock: ‘You’ll do what I say!’ Or some such from the woman in charge of first-year-out teachers, grey eyes steeling to add the final touch.

One of the other new teachers from Sydney ended up with a nervous breakdown. I decided to enjoy the pupils and to think of the future when I could escape from teaching for the Education Department. I tried to bring out the best in each pupil, building up confidence, not crushing it.

I must admit I loved teaching story writing, art and drama best. I even choreographed a play to the music of the Peer Gynt Suite: pretty mediocre stuff but fun. I took a day off to watch the cricket once with a pal from the Junior Secondary section of the school (I needed a break and so did he: his pupils were tough nuts to teach). You needed a break every now and again! It was probably part of my silent rebellion against the management.

Ironically, I got a shining Teaching Certificate report from the District Inspector (to the astonishment of guess who!) because the girls performed brilliantly for me—and it was a Maths class! I recently met up with some of these girls through a connection passed on to me from Daphne Ferguson, and they were still calling me ‘Miss Skyvington’!

3rd class at Granville Central School in 1963

My mother must have missed me when I left home for Armidale Teachers College in 1961. She used to run up on the Singer sewing machine lots of lovely dresses for me to wear to the regular dances at the College. Unlike my friends, I hadn’t met anyone I was intimate with, and my dresses were worn by my room-mates more than by me. Warren (Wazzah) found the following clip from a newsletter about the ‘scandolous’ front verandah at Smith House, with couples saying goodbye before doors closing time (11pm on Saturdays). I remember the gorgeous full-skirted dress in pale blue checks with the white fringes around the skirt. This time it was Marnie in it, saying a fond farewell to Mac, whom she married later on. It would take me a long time of growing up to find Mister Right! Honestly, it wasn’t me!

June 14, 2022 0 comment

Mythos Writing

Have You Ever Experienced The “Numen”?

The reason people choose atheism rather than belief or agnosticism, may simply be that professed atheists have not experienced, at least in this lifetime, the “numen” (adj. “numinous”). See meaning below.

Numinous ( /ˈnjuːmɪnəs/) is a concept derived from the Latin “numen” meaning “arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring”.
numinosum, numinous, numinosity (Wikipedia)

The terms were popularized by the German theologian Rudolf Otto in his influential 1917 German book Das Heilige, which appeared in English as The Idea of the Holy in 1923. (Wikipedia). For Otto, the numinous forms the universal, basis of all world religions: “From the very beginning religion is experienced as the Mysterium, of what breaks forth from the depths of our life, of the feeling of the “supersensual”.

He uses words like “shudder,” “stupor,” “astonishment,” and “blank wonder” to describe this sensation. This universal religious “moment” is primarily an experience of feeling, whereas theology is above all an exercise of thinking and reflection.

Jung had experienced the numinous many times in his life. Freud had, apparently, not. It isn’t a question of supremacy; it’s more just a fact of life. There are those that have and those who have not. Both Freud and Jung were esteemed in life and so they are, also, in death. Their paths and legacies were different, but linked, and equally grandiose.

Jung’s individuation project was to make the numinous content as conscious as possible, to sublimate and integrate it, and to bring it into relationship with other quite different aspects of the Self, thereby making it relative, not superior, to more worldly gifts and aspects of the self.

It seems to me, that experiencing the numinous, is a precursor to a belief or knowledge of “God” in the broadest sense, as distinct from religious practices, based on ritual and dogma. Those who possess artistic or imaginative temperaments are more likely to be drawn to an awareness of the numinous. The French Romantic writer, Stendhal, is renowned for having fainted before exceptional works of art, giving rise to the term “Stendhal Syndrome.”

Carl Jung had such gifts to an extraordinary degree. His accounts of firsthand numinous experiences appear in several of his writings — Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (1962) and above all in the famous Red Book (2009).

A belief in an afterlife is common. Many of us sense the existence of the numinous, without believing there’s a God up high on a cloud directing things down here on earth. One might even use the term “God” to describe the “great unknown”, or the mystery of it all. Words at our disposal are often limited. For Jung, the numinous and its relationship with an afterlife, was based on hints rather than facts or notions.

Life experiences had suggested to Carl Jung, the existence of mysteries unable to be explained by science, and hinted at in poetic or lyrical works of the imagination. However, he saw himself as a scientist first and foremost. He feared ridicule from other scientists at the time, if he professed a belief or knowledge of the afterlife. The Red Book, in which he spoke of his explorations into the unconscious mind, was published posthumously in the 1990s, because of this fear of ridicule.

More and more people today seem to be on the pathway of exploring this subject, and in bringing some sort of bridge between science and what Jung and others called the mysterium tremendum.

April 27, 2022 0 comment

Memoir Travel

I visit the Ukraine in 1968

My Travel Journal Continues: “From Paris to Russia and Back”

Because of the events in Ukraine today, I have re-published this post with sadness in my heart at the thought of these memorable days. May the sufferings of the Ukrainian people come to an end soon, and the Russian troops ordered into the country by President Putin back off before more people are hurt and killed. "Old men give orders and young men are killed." And men, women and children of all ages.

Saturday 24th August, 1968 (Day 55 of our journey)

I awoke feeling sick on our 5th day in Russia. So Liz drove us into the Intourist Centre where we asked for a guide, who was sent for immediately. Kiev was a very beautiful city with wide streets, huge buildings, many shops and more western-looking than Odessa. Our chubby, round-faced guide, who said he was not Ukrainian but of Tartar origin, attempted to amuse us with an American-style accent. He was an extremely good guide, and told us many interesting facts about each monument. As if in passing, he also announced the news that Russian troops were currently occupying Czechoslovakia, and said it was to stop Czechoslovakia from moving towards capitalism. We saw the statue of St Vladimir the Grand Duke, who brought Christianity to Kiev: it overlooked the River Dnieper and showed a fine view of the city.

Saint Sophia was next—a beautiful Byzantine cathedral, originally the replica of the one at Istanbul, but very much modified since. Built in the sixth century by Yaroslav the Wise, this church had been repainted since and gold added quite recently to the domes. It was full of beautiful mosaics and icons and there were metal tiles on the floor, with Jewish and Moslem patterns and designs, signifying, perhaps, that Christianity stood above these other religions. We attended a typical Russian wedding, in which the bride wore a short white gown and the guests were either joyful or tearful and carrying flowers. The ceremony was conducted by a female municipal official dressed in a formal and sophisticated manner, with a red band around her shoulder and waist. The ceremony was short, and the atmosphere formal and relaxed, at one and the same time. Afterwards, they would drink champagne with their guests and have a lunch together. There would be no honeymoon. This wedding took place in a building known as a Wedding Palace. We looked at the modern architecture, much finer than in Odessa, but stayed in the car, because it was raining. I noticed that the facades were in white stone over brick, shiny and easy to keep clean looking.

One very surprising monument, especially in the light of the recent events we had left behind in Paris—the Workers’ and Students’ strike, or mini revolution—was the Red University. The charming story behind this building—a little too stark for my liking—was that it was painted red on the orders of the Czar of Russia, whose presence in Kiev in 1842 had prompted student demonstrations against conscription: “YOU, STUDENTS, WHO HAVE NEVER BLUSHED WITH SHAME, SHALL FOREVER BE REMINDED OF YOUR DISGRACE BY THE COLOUR OF THIS BUILDING,” he announced in a speech to the student body at the time.

the-red-university-kiev — The Red University, Kiev

We discovered more recently that this was incorrect information, The legend does not reflect the historical fact, as the building was painted red before WWI, in 1842. Nicholas I of Russia (1825–1855) died long before World War I (1914–1918). Built at the top of a hill, this building has significantly influenced Kiev’s architectural layout in the 19th century (Wikipedia).

As before, we asked many probing questions of our guide, who wanted cigarettes and to drive the car in exchange. He said that there was propaganda against religion in Russia, but that you were free to worship as you wished, as long as you did not try to convert anyone.

“Patience is the motto for all of the people of our great land,” he explained. “The government tells us that in five, ten years, we will have all the things that we have waited so long for.”

I could see that this patience and waiting applied to many fields inside Russia, and that we, too, had been caught up in this in some small way, in the long queues in restaurants and shops. But for the people of Russia this would go on—waiting, waiting , for consumer goods to be produced more cheaply and better, waiting for the economy to improve and to take the people into the modern world, waiting for better clothes, books, houses to be built, waiting, waiting…

In the evening, on the guide’s advice, we decided to eat at a restaurant just before the camp. But when we sat down at a long empty table, we were advised by a waiter it was reserved, and were just walking out, when a man, dark, slant-eyed and sleazy-looking urged us back inside, and sat us down next to two young pleasant-looking men.

We tried to explain to one of the young men that we were unable to pay a lot of money, since we were on a tight budget. Suddenly, Edouard, the dark one, was plying us with dishes and wine, acting the over-attentive host, even cutting up my meat for me. We could do nothing but hope it was not going to cost us too dearly, and actually the meal was excellent, its only fault being that it was too much. By this time, perhaps as a result of the uninhibiting effect of the wine, we were managing to communicate—Liz in faltering Russian—with the other two, Slava and Nikola. I noted that Slava, dark and plump, showed very effeminate traits. Nikola, tall and handsome, made us laugh with his outrageous mimes, particularly when he made gurgling sounds in a rendition of the drowning of the former prime minister of Australia, Mr Harold Holt. I danced madly the jive with Edouard, who by this stage seemed less threatening to my floating spirit. The rather conservative-looking, middle/upper class guests watched us in amused silence. As the evening wore on, I became more and more convinced that Slava and Nikole were camp (the expression of the time, I think, unless you preferred “queer”). Still, we were enjoying ourselves, and liked them a lot, despite the uneasiness and surprise when they would not allow us to pay the bill.

Afterwards, they accompanied us to the bar of the motel to finish the evening off, where we sat outside on the dark terrace and continued, against our will, to be plied with wine by Edouard, who had a vodka too. But despite all this drinking, neither Liz nor I became the least bit intoxicated, and enjoyed the dancing with Slava and Nikola, and listening to Nikola sing.

Nikola told us he was an actor and we could easily believe this. Slava was supposed to work in a television studio, and Edouard said he had been a law student. I wondered if he meant into crime? He was scruffy-looking and not at all intellectual. As my cigarette lighter was finished, I handed it jokingly to Slava, and he took it gratefully, as a compliment, searching for gifts to give us. I was handed a small bottle of perfume and Liz a poetry book signed by Nikola.

We asked them for their address, so that we could send them a thank-you postcard, and the evening was closed. Or so we thought!

Sunday 25th August (Day 56)

We awoke very late and ate a good lunch at the restaurant. Then Liz discovered 100 francs and 9 rubles stolen. I’d had 100 francs taken too, but not the rubles. Immediately, we knew it must have been the three men! Or at least, Edouard, while the other two danced with us. Was it a plot, a conspiracy between the three?

Monday 26th August (Day 57)

The car was making a strange noise but we met two French boys who were able to fix the fan-guard easily enough. After writing in our diaries, we talked and had breakfast, meeting and chatting to some Italian men and a Swiss boy. Then we bought some food and set off: it was late by this time. The day was sunny and the driving good; we even stopped to take some photos and to eat by the side of the road. We drove until 9.30 pm, when we found a restaurant and then set off again. However, we took a wrong turn and were stopped by a drunken policeman who questioned us and flirted with us. By this time the remaining patience we had had with Russian officials deserted us completely and we lost our respective tempers. Liz insulted him about his drunkenness; others arrived to back him up. We were then led to the police station for questioning, taken out the back past long corridors, hearing the key turn heavily in the lock. Then followed more interrogations. Finally we were invited to put our tent up across the road from the station in the middle of the village square.

Tuesday 27th August (Day 58)

The police came and woke us up at 6 am. I noticed peasant workers trudging along the roads on their way to commence their daily grind. They must have been surprised at the sight of our tent pitched there. Perhaps that was why the police wanted us on our way. But the car would not start in the cold frosty morning air. We ate apples that were growing there. The men helped crank the car and tried to push-start us into action. After about two hours, when the sun had come up, the car finally relented, gave a splutter and, much to our relief, burst into life once again. It seemed to me at that moment that it knew the terrible predicament we were in, if it did not make one last effort. In reality, we would probably have had to have it freighted out at our expense if it had refused to start. Apparently, you could not dump a foreign car on Soviet territory.

It was a gorgeous sunny day as we set out once again. For mile upon mile we passed Russian military convoys en route for Czechoslovakia, going to prop up the rebellion there. At one stage we were caught up in heavy troop movement. I especially remember the old-fashioned stove-like contraptions being pulled along behind the vehicles, and the important-looking officer sitting in a side-car of a motor-bicycle. It was like stepping back into history, albeit an unpleasant one, being caught up like this. We arrived in Lvov in sunny weather, and the camp was a good one: we even found a pleasant private spot to pitch the tent. Liz slept but I couldn’t, so I had coffee and wrote in my diary. After lunch we visited the charming town of Lvov; by this time it was raining again. We saw many poor-looking Russians lining up for stodgy food in street self-service stalls. After visiting art galleries, we ate in a fine Intourist restaurant, meeting up with the French boys from the Kiev camp.

We only understood about the invasion of Prague, when we reached Vienna, and read about it in a newspaper there.

We were prevented by the military from continuing on to Prague … so back to Vienna it was. There we read about the true story of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the USSR.

In spite of all our troubles, the memories are forever and the people I met while travelling through the Ukraine stay in my heart.

February 25, 2022 0 comment

Memoir Writing

In Search of a Voice

My writing started out as therapy for a polarised — to be explained later on — childhood. My own background had been stamped indelibly by my not having had a voice within the extended family I was born into. Others in my family had gorged themselves on yackety-yak, thereby filling the void left by my poor little mute tongue….

I wasn’t born without a tongue, so why couldn’t I waggle it?

She’s just shy, they said. There was no ear to lambaste in retort; clever rhetoric evaded my still larynx.

As soon as adolescence got off to its self-loathing, sex obsessed start, I naturally turned to psychology for answers. My elder brother had claimed for himself the super intelligence niche; the second brother was our cowboy clown; my little sisters were clever and pretty. I continued to hide my light under a bushel, which I thought had something to do with native flora; I shared a love of nature with my funny brother Donny.

I’d begun to read Gothic novels about spooks and mysteries, like Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and others. Mum chided me for terrorising myself at night, but I persisted. My scorpionic temperament was pulling me into dark places. But it was the elder James brother, William, one of the early brand of modern psychologists, whom I would ultimately emulate in my search for a raison d’être. Freud, Carl Jung and Fritz Perl also became friendly mentors.

There were many circumferences, I learned, but only one centre. I needed to explore the netherlands of the psyche in my search for self.

Out of the blue, having escaped my family home, a miracle occurred: I started to talk. But friends in the outside world blocked their ears to the tales of woe that poured forth. They couldn’t empathise with my “Experiences of an Empath en Famille “. In any case, they all came from diametrically opposed, maybe just as difficult, perhaps even more so, backgrounds.

I was on my own, like a snail carrying a tightly curled shell of horrors on its back.

Eventually, I would seek professional help, find someone who would listen to me. At a price. The obvious answer was, for now, to write about it.

Starting out from this point of view, my writing naturally lent itself to autobiographical-type genres. I did courses on Life Story Writing, on Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction, all of which helped me a little with grammar, style and structure, if nothing else.

Another problem with writing about the past, is that it can turn out to be as boring as possum piss on a picnic. All those I’s, me’s and my’s can sound a tad narcissistic. Okay, I own up to possessing, like all around me, a dash of self-loving, but it boils down to a question of aesthetics and degree.

Like Sisyphus, I found myself on my own, once again. Researching creative non-fiction and memoir; practising writing it.

Full-time studies, teaching, getting married and having children, these put writing on the back-burner. Of course, all of that is excuses. If I’d really wanted to, and had faced my fears of failure early on, who knows….

I had been trying to get my novel ready for publication, on and off, for quite a while. The writing had improved greatly over time, but the goal of finding an agent or a publisher had remained elusive. Recently, I had come to the realisation that what I needed was a good editor. This was what my writers group buddies were doing. Another failed move on my part. In retrospect, how do you find that peculiar beast — a good editor?

My first attempts to create a readable structure that fitted in with the needs of publishing houses were a dismal failure. Later on I completed a degree in Professional Writing at university and I learnt about narrative structure and creative features, point of view, dialogue and voice. Through feedback sessions in student groups, my writing improved bit by bit. Some of my teachers and tutors were well established writers, and gave me invaluable insights into the craft.

However, I came to realise one day, just as I was about to send in my memoir to an agent, that I might not want my family and self exposed in this way.

So I set about turning the memoir into fiction. There were already some fictional elements, but I wanted to fictionalise the work even more. And to include, in line with creative non-fiction dictums, credible dialogue; this, I found, difficult to do within a memoir.

Turning the memoir into fiction meant that it became a different beast: a hybrid structure, retaining parts of the memoir, with more fictional pieces; these did not always fit in, unfortunately, with the events and actions of the storyline. I was on my own, once again.

According to one editor, the writing was good, but it lacked a consistent point of view and a solid plot line. So this is where I was at: going back to the drawing board to re-fashion the whole mess, and to recreate an authentic narrative out of the ashes. This meant changing setting, disguising characters, omitting the more obvious and sometimes boring ‘real bits’ behind the story, and creating natural sounding dialogue.

And finding an authentic voice.

What I discovered was that, in writing a fictional work based on my background, the story had been transformed into a very different narrative. In my case, it became a similar, yet polarised version of the real story. In psychological terms, this would have been viewed by, say Freud or by Carl Jung, as a sort of ‘sublimation’ of the author’s narrative.

What I didn’t know at the time, was that a ‘manuscript assessor’, who just looks at a few pages and a synopsis, and chats with you, would be much more valuable and less costly for me, than a full-blown editor. I was only just up to the second draft and still had no idea where I was going with this work. I was lucky enough to find a good one. I was on my way….

Now I’m back to exploring creative memoir writing, like the author of In Cold Blood. That was a doozy…

Where will I end up? Fiction? Memoir? Public speaking? Who knows?

February 19, 2022 0 comment

Andy, David (Ping) and Gordon at the Farewell Dance in 1963

Guest Post

Armidale: The Gang of Four

This is a guest post by Gordon Forth, a fellow student at Armidale Teachers College, who started there in 1962, a year after me. Gordon writes: Please find attached my somewhat scurrilous account of my time at ATC. I really had a lovely time at College, but was immature, a rather lazy student, who just managed to graduate. It may give some of my fellow students a chuckle.

Though I didn’t learn much, the two years I spent in Armidale was the most influential time of my adolescence. I guess the move to this country location at seventeen was my first tentative step to explore the wider world. To an extent, it involved breaking ties with my family and friends and starting a new life. Choices opening up before me had a great deal to do with the fact that I’d be living in a student residence.

The northern regional city of Armidale with its churches, the University of New England, Armidale Teachers’ College and several private schools, promoted itself in my mind as the Athens of the North. Moving there at seventeen marked a turning point in my life. Though tame by today’s standards, my decision to go to college there seemed quite adventurous at the time.

After spending two years in Armidale and three teaching in a remote part of the Snowy Mountains, I spent the next seven years in Sydney. In 1975, my then wife Penny and I moved to Warrnambool in South West Victoria. Over the next thirty years, I taught and undertook research in Ireland, China and the United States. Since my retirement in 2001, Penny and I have undertaken regular overseas trips. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

In March 1963, I caught the overnight train from Hornsby to Armidale. My family, friends and, in tears, my girlfriend Vanessa, lined up on Hornsby station to see me off. On the train I met Paul Coghlan and Andy Miller, also commencing the primary teaching course at Armidale. Paul and I were to remain lifelong friends, while Andy was best man at my first wedding. Another dozen or so Sydney boys and girls on that train were also starting the teacher education course at Armidale. By the time the train arrived at Armidale the next morning, I was confident Paul, Andy and I would be friends. The three of us shared a taxi to Newling House, the men’s student residence. At the entrance we were met by second year students, who carried our suitcases to our rooms. My roommate Dick Clark hailed from the northern New England town of Glen Innes. Tall and well-built, Dick was a star swimmer. We got on as roommates but were never friends.

Another first year student, Dave Martin had been allocated the room next to mine. Tall, dark and good looking, Dave was from the north coast town of Murwillumbah, where his stepfather Stan owned a banana plantation. Supremely self-confident and personable, David was attractive to women and knew it. After Introducing himself, he enquired if I was any good at wrestling. I replied I most assuredly was. Smiling, he challenged me to do battle with him on the grass outside our rooms. Having boasted of my prowess, I could hardly refuse. After a preliminary skirmish, I applied my tried-and-trusted headlock, confident of bulldogging this cocky country bumpkin to the ground. However, Dave, who was extremely strong, bent low and used his hips to throw me over his head…twice!! Eventually, I learnt to lock one leg behind his knee to make this unsportsmanlike tactic less effective. It was an unusual way to begin what became a close friendship.

Most Armidale Teachers College students were from coastal northern NSW and knew each other through inter-school sporting events. There were established cliques most notably one consisting of former students from Woodlawn, a Catholic boarding school in Lismore. The majority of students had completed the Leaving Certificate at coeducational country high schools. Quite a few hoped to return to teach and settle in their home towns. For these students, it was this prospect as well as being awarded a teachers’ college scholarship that led to their decision to choose teaching as a career.

Students from Sydney were outsiders and tended to group together. We met up on the train travelling to and from Armidale. During the holidays several of us met at Sydney’s Tatts Hotel. One of these was Denis Field the youngest son of a working class Catholic family from the inner western suburb of Enfield. Socially inept, and something of an innocent, Denis was a good natured, likeable character. His two older brothers, Maurice and Lionel, were both high school teachers. Denis’s father was known as “Joe the Header” due to his love of Two Up. As an older teacher, Denis featured in the Sydney press, having regularly sued the NSW Education Department. Working with his solicitor, he sought compensation after being hit by a cricket ball while supervising school sport and later falling down on a school bus. After his wife Kathryn died, Denis posted photos of himself on Facebook with busty young women at the Sydney Crown Casino. Within weeks, Paul, Andy, Dave and I were a close knit “Gang of Four”. Clomping around in riding boots, I was now known as “Hoss” or “Horse”. A flashy table tennis player, Dave was “Ping Pong” or just “Ping”. Andy, with his thin bony face, was less than ecstatic at being referred to as “Skull”. Paul was “Cog”, though after a public performance, his own wild version of the American dance The Hucklebuck, he became “The Rocking Ostrich”.

A cynical hedonist, Ping rejected the conformist attitudes of most college students. Perpetually restless and randy, Ping didn’t appear to take himself or anyone seriously, including our primary teaching course lecturers. Night after night, he went out on the prowl, with mischief, drinking and sex on his mind. Ping convinced Paul, Andy and me that we didn’t need to join the plodders slaving away at their assignments after tea. Rather, he persuaded us to join him on his nocturnal rambles. On one regrettable occasion, this involved frightening old ladies walking through a local park. After one such adventure, Ping returned home in the small hours, knowing a major assignment was due the next day. He set his alarm clock for 5am in order to finish the assignment. However, when the alarm went off, Ping — suffering from a lack of sleep and a hangover — smashed the offending clock against the wall. Rather than turn up for breakfast in the dining hall, Dave’s preferred to start the day sitting up in bed, smoking and munching Maltesers. Too lazy to be bothered washing his clothes, he simply gave them a jolly good dusting with Johnson’s Baby Power.

One Saturday afternoon, after turning out for a College rugby team, I showered and pressed my best shirt, trousers and sports coat before setting off for the pub. I laid my clothes out on my bed, intending to change into them for the dance that evening. Alas, when I returned from discussing philosophy in the pub, my clothing had vanished. I managed to borrow a sports coat and an ill-fitting pair of strides, and just made the 9pm deadline for admittance to the dance. There, amongst the waltzing throng was a smirking Ping ,looking resplendent in my clothes lining up yet another conquest. When I remonstrated with him about his evil deed, hemerely laughed and said I should be grateful that he deemed to wear my crappy clothes.

Ping was careless about money, his own and other people’s which he had no hesitation in borrowing. His strategies for raising extra cash included auctioning his clothes and hustling in pubs. His chosen venue was Armidale’s down-market Club Hotel, which boasted a table tennis table in the main bar. With a half smoked cigarette and a glass of beer on the table, Ping and I played a set with several patrons looking on. As the straight guy, my role was to defeat him with ease. A seemingly drunk Ping then challenged any one of the onlookers to play him for a couple of quid. Once his challenge was accepted, he instantly sobered up and proceeded to demolish his opponent.

Another time, Ping placed money on the bar, then challenged anyone present to a “best of three” arm wrestling contest. Though lightly built, he had extremely strong forearms and won easily. On one occasion he defeated a surprised older opponent. It was obvious that the man’s tough-looking mates were intent on exacting retribution on this youthful conman and his accomplice (me). We fled the scene and thought it best to give the Club a miss in future. Ping was aware that his “opportunistic” ways were not always appreciated by his friends. In order to find out what they really thought of him, he hid amongst the college hockey equipment stored in the top of his wardrobe. My role was to gather his friends to his room and encourage them to air their grievances regarding his character flaws. They all, including his roommate Andy Miller, enthusiastically embraced this opportunity. To a man, they agreed that Ping was a dirty rotten scoundrel. This was too much for Ping, who jumped down from his hiding place and started semi-playfully strangling a shocked Skull. In fairness, Ping was loyal to his friends when it really counted. When an eighteen plus stone Goliath “Bill Constable” threatened Andy, Ping unhesitatingly confronted the Bull from Belligen. Twice he managed to throw Bill over his shoulder onto the floor, smashing a bed in the process. However, on his third attempt, Ping slipped and ended up with an enraged Constable choking him. I grabbed a hockey stick and threatened to rearrange Bill’s bovine head if he didn’t release his choke hold. He did.

Though clever, Ping went out of his way to ensure that he failed. He was at least partly responsible for Paul and Andy having to repeat second year at their own expense. I’ve no doubt that, had they not been under Ping’s influence, both would have passed. Paul and Andy really wanted to graduate, while Ping didn’t care. At the start of one annual exam, Ping filled in the cover sheet, stood up and walked out smiling.

After leaving College, I caught up with Ping in the mid-sixties, when I was teaching at a rural school in the Snowy Mountains. I was playing rugby for Cooma, which meant travelling to Canberra every second weekend. At that time, Ping was employed at the Commonwealth Department of Statistics in Canberra. I was best man at his wedding, when Ping, recently voted “Mr. Statistics”, married Barbara, “Miss Statistics”. She was conventionally attractive, but boring and vain. Understandably, Barbara didn’t appreciate Ping and I mocking her. Their hasty marriage only lasted a few months. Over the next few years, I met several of Ping’s girlfriends. I remember one telling me that she knew the relationship with David wouldn’t last, but was happy to make the most of it while it did.

In the early 1970s, after I had moved in with Penny at Rose Bay, Ping turned up driving a new Datsun 240z sports car. It turned out he had won quite a large sum in the lottery. That evening, while having a beer with him at a Kings Cross pub, he pointed out two attractive mini-skirted women sitting across the room. He explained that he had paid for them to have a twosome with me. I thanked him, but politely declined. After I moved to Warrnambool, I lost contact with Ping, but often wondered what happened to this personable, flawed human being.

Like Ping, I did the minimum amount of work at College, preferring to spend my time playing billiards, table tennis at the pub and courting. Apart from Paul, I lost track of my college friends after we moved to Warrnambool in January 1975. I was surprised and a little hurt that Andy didn’t invite Paul, Ping or me to his wedding. Doubtless, he was concerned, and with good reason, that one of us, probably Ping, would get drunk and start calling out “Skull” or something worse at the reception. Andy had been an easy target for Ping’s cruel mockery. In our post college careers, Paul and I had much in common, having completed postgraduate degrees and moved onto secondary and tertiary teaching.

When Penny and I are in Sydney, we generally meet with Paul and his wife Nola for a meal and reminisce about our Armidale days.

Born July 1944, Gordon attended Beecroft Primary, St Andrews Cathedral Choir School and Epping Boys High. Having graduated from Armidale Teachers College, Gordon was a primary then secondary teacher, before taking up academic appointments at UNSW and then Deakin University. Gordon holds a B.A and M.Litt (UNE), M.Ed UNSW, and a Ph. D (Monash). He has been a visiting scholar at Trinity College, Dublin, Nanjing and Kansas State universities. Since retirement, Gordon has worked as a consultant, and authored a number of commissioned histories. He and wife Penny, with their two whippet dogs, live in Warrnambool.

Photo: Andy, David (Bing) and Gordon with an unnamed female student at the Farewell Dance in 1963. The 4th member of the gang, Paul Coghlan, is not in the photo.

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February 18, 2022 0 comment

Book Reviews

KARRANA: A Professional Review

From Amazon’s Online Book Club

I’d received lots of reviews from family and friends of my debut novel, Karrana. But I never quite believed the veracity of these reviews, being from close contacts. So I submitted the book before the eyes of a reviewer on The Online Book Club.

Most professional reviewers charge $300 or more to write a review for you. It takes time to read and appraise a novel. This book club charges slightly less, and the site is advertised on LinkedIn, which is where I found it.

I was pleasantly surprised by the standard of the review, and how it confirmed my other reviewers’ offerings. For this reason, I am posting a copy of the review on this platform where I found the link. This proves what I have been told, that marketing for visibility is the important missing link in a work’s acceptance. This is what I, as an Indie author, lacked, the ability to market my own book.

I did not engage a proof reader for the final copy, as I was able to re-edit the book while it was on my Amazon KDP bookshelf. For this reason, the reviewer found 10 typos, mainly punctuation: Another lesson learned! Always pay to get it proof read.

The Review

This is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of “Karrana” by Anne Skyvington.

3 out of 4 stars.

The Second World War had just ended, and celebration was in the air. It was in the spirit of victory that eighteen-year-old Bridie, chaperoned by her brothers, went to a ball where she met Will, a gentle giant of a man who she instantly fell in love with. Bridie O’Toole was just as sweet and beautiful as her name was unique, so catching Will’s attention, regardless of her hovering brothers, had not been a problem for her. “Million Dollar Baby” was what the “blokes” called her.

The O’Toole’s were poor dairy farmers, but they were happy. Will Featherstone, on the other hand, was a rich kid from the other side of the Karrana river. Will was everything Bridie desired; he was the knight in shining armor who would rescue her from her crude existence on the farm. And for Will, Bridie was the fiery princess of his dreams. Of course, both families tried to warn their children off each other, but the heart wants what it wants—the forbidden fruit. It wasn’t long before the fruit of romance started to grow inside Bridie. What follows this whirlwind spring romance?

This book certainly did not go as I imagined it would. Yes, there was the mushy, sweet romance, and there was the part where the rich family tried to separate the lovers, but that was where the predictability ended. What happened afterward was drama and life! This story was set in the fictional town of Karrana, Australia, and it followed Bridie and Will’s lives from an omniscient point of view. This interesting book spanned a little over three hundred pages, and it was absolutely worth the time. Karrana is an emotional story that centers on love, family, and responsibility.

My favorite thing about this book was its plot; I was constantly impressed (annoyed at one point) by the turn of events. The story was passionate and romantic without the untrue cliché of “happily ever after.” I’m afraid I’ll give spoilers if I explain further, but the point is that the storyline was just beautiful. Anne Skyvington is a remarkable storyteller; she never failed to paint a scene perfectly, and the characters she created were terrific and original, especially Bridie. This book is easily one of the best I’ve read in a while. In a nutshell, I liked everything about this book.

This book was clearly professionally edited. However, I noticed a little more than ten errors in the course of my reading—nothing distracting. Because of the number of errors I noticed, I am forced to deduct a star from the rating of this book. I’m rating Karrana 3 out of 4 stars . I would gladly rate this book 4 stars, but my hands are tied. In the main time, this book needs careful proofreading. This book is especially for historical romance lovers.

I was thrilled with this, as you can imagine!

The final cover and (slightly) re-edited book

I have since corrected the punctuation typos the editor found. So the score should be 4 out of 4 now.

February 11, 2022 0 comment

Short Story Writing

A Famous Couple

Carl and Emma: A Love Story

Dearest, I was telling our grandson, Andreas, just the other day, how he possesses the feeling function more strongly than I. He had just espied, while on our walk, a darling dead chaffinch on the ground, and was kneeling over its poor lifeless body.

The words, Nothing truly dies that escaped my mouth, seemed to come from another’s voice, perhaps that of the dead bird itself.

When we returned home, you were there waiting for us with your old man’s rheumy eyes, teary from nostalgic reveries, no doubt. I thought How wonderful this togetherness, this Liebe, after all this time.

You often told the story of seeing me on the stairs at Olberg, my second family house, when I was a mere teenager. My words, as I turned towards you, struck you as prophetic, and you knew at that moment that I would be your wife.

But it wasn’t always a bed of roses, as you well know, my dear one. During the early years, I rarely spoke to anyone, apart from my sister and my dear mama, about the state of my marriage. But in more mature years, it sometimes helped, if not myself, at least my analysands, if I talked openly about my own marital sufferings.

My comments, usually triggered by passionate exchanges, always arrived at the same point: There were three occasions when I tried to divorce my husband.

Sometimes the remarks had a ricochet effect, being passed on one time with delight to that great founder himself, Herr Professor Freud. He used to call me “the solver of riddles”.

I was cognisant of the split looming on the horizon between you two; well before either of you were willing to acknowledge it.

Oh, how I would come to miss our intimacies, his fatherly attentions, my transferences. Our exchange of letters, if you care once more to read them, says it all. My sense of solitude was complete after the final break. We regretted it, all three, and mourned in our own unique ways. So geht das Destin.

Those words I spoke concerning my marriage, were often followed by a shocked silence.

Nothing much matters now, in any case. As you yourself never fail to suggest, we might even say that I won out in the end, by clutching onto the string, like Ariadne in the labyrinth, finding my way to this haven of peace.

§§§

Divorce was never an option. Was it, therefore, by a dark Fate that I was placed in such a cruel predicament by the one I loved? The intervention of what you called your “second personality” deemed it so. Whenever I mentioned the possibility of a separation, your reaction was to fall ill or have a near-death accident.

I always gave in and administered therapeutic assistance until you recovered. How could I do otherwise? I loved you, you loved me, and there were five more of us before very long.

Having grown up in the Haus zum Rosengarten, in a mansion with a rose garden, on the banks of the Rhine River in Schaffhausen, my childhood, unlike yours, had been idyllic. I was ever cognisant of this fact and never lorded it over you. In 1903, after the grand spectacle of our wedding, you took me to a small flat in the Burgholzli Lunatic Asylum, where catatonic schizophrenics and hysteric patients wandered freely in the grounds. I was never bored, you made me laugh and learn. It was the early years of psychoanalysis. I found it fascinating.

The first three years of our marriage were idyllic. The births of our first two daughters, Agathe and Gretli, only added to the bliss.

Signs of angst arose during the days, nay weeks, leading up to that prophetic meeting between the two of you.

Waves of dread stirred within my breast, then and recently, a knowingness that I might have to leave you soon.

I had been growling about the time you spent on your work. Why did you need so many patients when I was supporting you with my inheritance? Actually, it was one particular patient, the Russian Spielrein, whose attachment to you would come to worry me most; as it turned out, Herr Freud, too, calling it “transference”. Yes, I acknowledge I was jealous; of the attentions women poured on you, and annoyed at your endless flirtations. Shocked, too, at my own dark emotions, about which I had been ignorant up until that time.

My outpourings of jealous rage frightened me, as well as you; but you were able to absent yourself, faithful always to your beloved body of work.

§§§

It is 1911 and I am seated, in my imagination, among all the luminaries, male and female. I feel blessed indeed, especially being here with you, my dearest Carl, as part of The Weimar Congress. I feel you leaning towards me, your breath on my hair, as if protecting me from reservations about my own self worth.

Later on you proclaim: ‘You have proven yourself as successful a psychoanalyst as I myself, and you will be known by future generations, to have been part of the establishment of this new field of psychoanalysis.’

‘It is all due to your efforts, my dear man,’ I reply, ‘by initiating me into this field of study and practice from the beginning of our relationship. For this I will be eternally grateful.’

Nor do I feel less worthy than any of the other women, neither those youthful ones to my right, the prudish looking Antonia Woolf, nor the more mature women, seated here alongside me. Herr Professor Freud, that elegant man, has spoken kindly of my accomplishments. For this photo shoot, he takes centre stage, standing tall with the aid of a stool, and rightly so: A giant among men, on whose shoulders future generations of great men will stand.

And then I wake up and you are no longer here. Or is it I who have died and this is all a dream?

§§§

Many will ask how I could go on living with a man who left me with the full responsibility for rearing the family, while he spent time with another woman, invited her into the household. I will tell them of my small victories, like the one during your earliest transgressions with the Russian Spielrein, whom I have long ago forgiven. She was, after all, just one of the many female psychiatrists and analysands who threw themselves unwittingly, perhaps, at my husband. After the fourth child, Marianne, I’d had enough. That is when I at last gained the upper hand in our disputes over my rights as a wife, and you heard my pleas. I was ready to leave, you begged me to stay. You promptly fell into bed with a dreadful migraine and a high temperature that left you shaking and out of control.

Like a dutiful wife, I then cared for you and nursed you back to health. Do you still remember all of this, my dearest one?

You were, yes, I avow it, handsome and charismatic, with your Teutonic good looks and vibrant personality. You are that, still, for me. How could I not forgive them all, seeing that I could not stop myself from succumbing to your charms.

Mind you, it was not love at first sight on my part. You told me that you knew, on catching a first glimpse of me as a teenager on the staircase of our house in Olberg, that I would be your wife. ‘I am Emma Rauschenberg,’ I said, in reply to your timorous query, and then the maid had come and ushered you into the salon where Mama awaited you.

And so it was that I, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a wealthy industrialist, in 1899 fell in love with a penniless Irrenarzt, doctor of the insane. It was the talk of the town at the time: an attractive young woman engaged to this lowly man without finances, and lacking professional or social status. In the beginning, I saw only your arrogant side, your bulldozer personality and peasant-like manners. I rebuffed your first endeavors, which only made you more persuasive in your courtship of me.

The more I became acquainted with the gargantuan man that you were, and your equally giant personality, the more I delighted in your attentions and was enthralled by your vast intelligence. Mama, it would seem, had found me an harmonious match. I was soon betrothed. You shared your learning freely with me, satisfying that side of me that aspired to greater knowledge, denied me by my gender and by convention.

If Father had had his way, I would now be the wife of that truly conventional man he had chosen for me, son of his business colleague. My future pathway would have been laid out before me, one of bourgeoisie and of boredom. How fortunate was I to have been chosen, instead, by an unconventional suitor, who cared not for rigid rules of behaviour and comportment, and who encouraged me to learn and to better myself. How I adored that in you. I was only seventeen, and you, several years my senior. Was it Fate that had deemed it so? I was besotted and surrendered to my destiny.

It wasn’t long before you, Carl, good-looking and famous, and a virgin like myself when we married, fell under the spell of female admiration. It took me years to realise that your personality masked a dark interior, fostered by an isolated childhood and sexual abuse you’d suffered as a boy. It would take me even longer to appreciate your personal depths and transformations, yea, that some would say were merely psychotic manifestations.

§§§

My sister, urged on by her husband, took it upon herself to rebuke me: ‘How can you allow yourself,’ she said, ‘to be dishonoured in this way by your husband?’ I was always mute, with nothing to say, in my defence. This was typical of my introverted sensation type. You always said that “still waters run deep” in reference to my personality. Pressed further by Marguerite, who charged me with bringing shame upon my family, I became more and more reserved and unwilling to associate with anyone outside the family.

Around the time of the birth of our first child, Agathe, I asked you to consider a move. You stood there glowering, peasant feet planted firmly apart on the ground: ‘No, no and no,’ you shouted, ‘my work at the Bulgholzli must take precedence.’

I was only just beginning to see this hidden side of you.

Papa died and I gave birth to Gretli. It was now my turn to shout and scream.

‘I want out of this marriage, I will not live here with a growing family. You keep me pregnant like a peasant woman, and you like it thus.’

‘Darling,’ you said, stunned into obeissance by my unlikely tirade, ‘just give me a little time, and we shall move. I’ll build a castle fit for a queen, you will see.’

We talked about our impending visit to meet the illustrious Freud in Vienna, and how I would be feted and welcomed into this new field of psychoanalysis by one and all.

§§§

Remember, dear one, you and I, seated on plush velvet underneath chandeliers, as we waited for your Herr Professor Freud, in the bar of the Grand Hotel near the famous Ringstrasse. You two had organized everything, so that nothing would interfere with this coming-together of two great minds, both intent on furthering the new science of psychoanalysis. We may have looked, to the outsider, like any young couple in love. Yes, we may have seemed happy together. Oh, how appearances can be mistaken!

You, my dear husband, had insisted on bringing along your assistant, Ludwig, from the Burgholzli Asylum, to act as chaperone and to guide me around the city. How I’d growled about that, too…. but I could not blame the impressive man I’d married, for taking control of every aspect of the event, so well equipped were to pursue your ambitions in the exciting field opening up before you.

As we walked along cobbled stones towards the apartment, you towering over your shorter yet dapper Dear Sigmund Freud, you talked loudly as you were wont to do.

We joined his family of nine around the luncheon table. You dominated, once again, while the family listened with interest and admiration, Sigmund, sucking on his pipe. You, only interested in discussing psychoanalysis, was unaware of your lack of etiquette in not bringing the children and women into the conversation.

I left with my chaperone soon after the meal. Museums, especially the natural history one, beckoned me. How I would have loved to share these trips to the opera and to the theatre, or even to relax in the opulence of the Grand Hotel, with my beloved consort by my side.\

That first night, you did not return to the hotel until late in the morning, having talked non-stop for thirteen hours straight with your newfound colleague in his rooms.

It was well known among the cohort that the unconscious was the key to everything, and the key to the unconscious was the dream.

But when Doktor Freud talked about ideas on sexual abuse being the cause of neuroses in later life, you, Carl, begged to differ. Working closely with the insane, you had discovered for yourself that sexuality and abuse were not the only variances at play in mental illness.

Despite this, you realised soon enough, that he, the wiser and older man, saw in you his legitimate heir. And you pulled back. For a time…

§§§

It was around the birth of our last child in 1914, that Toni Woolf inserted herself into our lives. If it was humiliating for me, this ménage à trois was hardly fulfilling for her. You claimed it was foretold by a luminous dream of a white dove that turned into a golden-haired girl who put her arms around your neck. You set off with Toni for a “vacation” in Ravenna shortly after Helene’s birth. Of course, I was unhappy when you invited her into the household; I excluded her from all meal times with the family. Yet she became your “other wife”, and “the other woman”, in relation to me, your legal wife.

Yes, I tolerated it; I could no longer risk another pregnancy; like all mistresses, she tried to persuade you to divorce me; but nothing could come between us in the end.

Her sudden death after the relationship had waned, left the two of us in total shock, and as close as ever a couple could be thereafter.

I see her now as your beacon of light during those dangerous voyages along the River Styx. Yes, she served as a source of insight for you, while delving into the underworld. And I nurtured our brood of five, relieved that childbirth years were behind me now. Was this a great sacrifice on my part, or an example of what you call

Why did I not succeed in divorcing you? one well may ask. I begged God and prayed for delivery from my shame.

Yet you enabled me, it must be remembered, to eventually grow and become an analyst in my own right. It was quite something for the time.

§§§

None of it matters now that I am old. I have fulfilled the journey that I began with you, my husband, by my side. I have said this many times to you, my dearest love: We have arrived at this companionable state together. Love changed us both, as you never fail to point out, and Ours was a different kind of love.

Although our children refused to do so, I forgave the other who tried to come between us. Toni Woolf and I became friends in the end. It was I who attended her funeral, yourself being poorly at the time. She provided something that I could not offer you, n’est-ce pas? We can talk freely, and without rancour, about these subjects now. That is one of the benefits of growing old, my darling companion. The need for lust, for giving birth, for travel, even for your beloved active imagination, all is dead and gone, leaving only peace and serenity in its wake.

Still, last words are a thing of note, and those final ones from your dear mouth have brought me great pleasure, as they did so at the time of their being spoken.

Now I hear you tell Andreas to ask me not to visit him again. He’s having nightmares. I say to the child, I must return no more, though I shall mourn the times we spend together on our walks. I am, as my Lord has said, without a body, and you are of flesh and blood.

Nor can you join us, dear my Lord. You have unfinished work to do, but we are dead. How blessed I am to have paved the way for you.

I sense that I am talking directly to you, my darling Carl. Or are these words the ramblings to herself of an old woman, the one that I had become? I felt then that my time was nigh, yet I am young again. Ignore my words if they unsettle you, my dearest love.

Last words are indeed to be remembered, and I am eternally grateful for the ones you spake that day.

You said she’d been your perfume but that I was your Queen.

When you are ready, good my liege, you shall find your way home.

I await you here, meine Liebe, my dearest love.

February 10, 2022 0 comment

Memoir Short Story

A First Day in Paris

A story about a naïve traveller in a strange land

I open my eyes wide onto a strange world into which I’ve stumbled as if by accident. All is new and filled with an alien glow, muted colours, greys yet beautiful. Hippies are twanging their guitars along the Seine. Flower sellers and precious bookstall owners hawk their wares along the promenades above. The ancient cobblestones conceal the holographs of those trapped forever in bloodstained revolutions. Seduced at every turn. I think that this must be my spiritual home, on the opposite side of the earth to my birth place.

The Frenchman I met while travelling across the Channel offered me the use of his apartment for two weeks. Why not? I thought. My tourist’s trip through the Mediterranean countries can wait. Generous and eccentric to a fault, these French — opposite story to what I’d been told! I find his street in a Michelin Guide book I bought at the Gare du Nord: rue Servandoni, in the sixth arrondissement. One change and out at the metro station near the Seine.

It’s a steep climb up a creaking staircase to the small flat overlooking a courtyard at the back of the building.

Once in the flat, I’m a child released in a magic castle, running to each window and feasting on the Mary Poppins-like scene of rooftop spires and quaint street-scapes at all cardinal points. I’m inside a foreign country in miniature: its smells and furnishings reflect an exotic old-world charm.

Alain has said to use what I want from the kitchen. The cans of food in the pantry, all are new to me. Chestnut jam, a thick, sweet, strange-tasting substance. Something called cassoulet in a tin. Brands that I’ve never heard of nor seen in the shops back home. I’m touching, prodding at everything. I’m swooning from the newness of it all. I’m a child in a toy shop, like the children in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory.

Jam has coated my mouth that feels like the bottom of a bird cage. I want to brush my teeth, but discover too late that the white-tubed stuff is shaving cream. Yuck!

I can’t wait to get downstairs once again and wander around the maze of streets and districts, as I once did around the farm as a small child. On the southern side of the street is the immense Luxembourg Gardens. Walking through them I’m still marvelling at the feeling of being in a dream from which I might awake at any moment. Further on I come to the Boulevard Saint Michel. Crowds of fine-featured French walk or sit in bars and in cafés; African and Arabic-looking student types mingle, laughing and talking gaily. Moroccan restaurants are everywhere.

I’m in the bustle of the Latin Quarter. This place of learning in the classical style. Now taken over by students. I sit in a Moroccan restaurant and order a couscous dish. Sumptuous, unlike anything I’ve ever tasted before. I’m free as a bird and wash the food down with cheap red wine. I look out at the sophisticated, fashionably dressed women. I compare their slight frames and neat coiffures to my ample curves and unschooled locks of long brown hair.

Following the rim of the Jardin back the way I’ve come, I’m able to make my way home to the flat without too much trouble.

For many days I wander, love-struck by difference and by beauty along the streets with their ancient, graceful buildings and perfectly manicured gardens in the classic style. As if in a dream I float up and down the escaliers, past the concierge, and out

To improve my French I recount over and over the story of my life, where I come from, where I’ve lived, and about my family. They always ask what my father does. How to translate ‘grazier’? Fermier? Propriétaire de ranche? Nothing works.

Through a chance encounter, I find a cheap room that once was servants’ quarters at the back of a doctor’s gracious residence. I live here for a while and sense the ghosts from a thousand years around me as I lie in the dark before sleep overtakes me each night. There’s a shared ‘water cabinet’ that I squat over as I used to do when nature called while mustering cattle in the bush. My savings begin to dwindle, I grow tense with anxiety and find a part-time job cleaning rooms in a hotel not far from my lodgings. I wonder about the lives of the single men whose rooms I clean, but whom I never see; only their musk-like scents I inhale.

One night I feel a dark presence invading my tiny room at the top of the fire escape stairs. It’s time, once again, to move on.

Walking back from Irma La Douce early one evening, as twilight caresses me in its dreamlike tones, I find myself taking on the character from the film. Swaying hips, I become Irma and sway along the boulevard, green stockings highlighting shapely legs underneath a tight-fitting woollen dress. Then I am being followed, and feel a rush of fear mixed with elation that makes me quicken my pace.

He starts to quicken his pace too. The man will catch up with me and know where I live. I imagine allowing him to follow me upstairs to my tiny room. He kisses me on the lips. Undresses me. ‘Vous-êtes la vedette américaine, Shirley Maclaine?’ he asks. An Anglo-Saxon body attracts attention here if you allow it to, contrasting with the delicate, petite lines of the French women all around me.

Fate intervenes and takes the decision out of my hands. There’s a fracas going on up ahead on the boulevard Saint Michel that throws me into history, like Stendhal’s Fabrice caught up in the Battle of Waterloo: La Chartreuse de Parme. Not so romantic sounding in English as The Charterhouse of Parma. I read it at uni.

I find myself in the midst of a revolution, young people, students, tearing up paving stones and setting cars alight.

Tear gas is thick in the air and some of the students are crying uncontrollably. There’s talk of the military being brought in by De Gaulle and blood in the streets.

The police move towards the Sorbonne, on the opposite side of the street. Pictures of Marx, Lenin, and Mao decorate the old pillars surrounding the front square. Red and black flags hang alongside the Vietcong flag. Trotsky, Castro and Che Guevara pictures are plastered on walls alongside slogans such as ‘Everything is Possible’ and ‘It is Forbidden to Forbid.’

I’m afraid I’ll be arrested and deported. I slink back towards the apartment blocks and stand inside a doorway. Residents are hanging out of windows. They shower debris on the police and spray soothing water over the students to minimise the effect of the chlorine gas grenades.

A young man with scraggy red hair jumps up on a wall in front of the Sorbonne and cried out to the students to carry on.

‘Qui est-ce?’ I ask a young woman standing smoking Gitanes next to me. ‘Who is it?’

‘On l’appelle Danny le Rouge; c’est l’un des leaders.’ (It’s Danny the Red, one of the leaders.)

I understand immediately, even with my school-girl French—the leader of the student rebellion. And this is how I met Ellie, who’s unafraid of being sent back to Germany. She’s handing out lemon-soaked handkerchiefs smeared with bicarbonate of soda for around the eyes, as well as leaflets on how to protect oneself against tear gas. Ellie is the antithesis of every stereotype I’ve heard about Germans: short with thick dark hair, cerulean blue eyes and pure white skin. She’s a student at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and works part-time as an artist’s model.

At that moment the police move into the Sorbonne and arrest the red-haired man. Students start pulling up paving stones from the streets and hurling them at the police. Then others join in. The police are flailing their batons, demonstrators fall to the ground, police clubbing them, blood streaming from their faces as they lie on the pavement. The youths throw stones, and kick gas grenades at the police, who protect their faces with masks that look like fencing ones.

‘What we are afraid of: le Géneral de Gaulle will set the army on to us,’ whispers Ellie who is pale yet determined.

The students have made bonfires like the cracker night ones back home on Empire Day, only from cars and anything they can lay their hands on, and set them alight. I start to join in, already in too deep, terror and elation mixing in equal measure. I’ve met a sort of soul mate in Ellie, and a potential flat mate. ‘Meet me tomorrow in the Père Lachaise Cemetery,’ she says in between her revolutionary duties. ‘We will talk then.’

I feel like I’ve come home. The strangeness embraces me, and the oddity and aptness of it will follow me and my life in Paris for many days, weeks and months to come. It’s as if I’ve stepped through a veil into a parallel universe of contrasts that has opened my eyes on a reality that was shielded by distance from me before.

But for now…it’s the night of the barricades.

Republished from 2015, written then as fiction in the 3rd person: The Night of the Barricades.

February 9, 2022 0 comment

$golden-ratio-math$

Mythos

The Golden Ratio and How it Works in Nature

Just look around you…on the ground and in trees, in the sky…

The Fibonacci Sequence is everywhere!

In Plants

In Pine cones the spiral pattern of the seed pods tend to develop in steps, upward and in opposite directions, numerically matching the Fibonacci sequence.

Sunflower seeds also follow this pattern, radiating outwards from the center to fill in spaces. And the number of Petals on some flowers, such as the rose, follows the Fibonacci sequence.

In accordance with Darwinian theory, each petal is placed to allow for the optimal exposure to sunlight.

This patterning also appears in some surprising places:

Hurricanes: Much like shells, hurricanes often display the Golden spiral.

Spiral galaxies have a number of spiral arms, with an overall shape identical to the Golden rectangle of the Fibonacci Sequence.

The Golden Ratio in the animal kingdom:

Dolphins, starfish, sand dollars, sea urchins, ants and honeybees also exhibit the proportion.

A DNA molecule measures 34 angstroms by 21 angstroms at each full cycle of the double helix spiral. In the Fibonacci series, 34 and 21 are successive numbers.

According to Stephen Skinner, the study of sacred geometry has its roots in the study of nature, and the math principles at work therein. Many forms observed in nature can be related to geometry; for example, the chambered nautilus grows at a constant rate and so its shell forms a logarithmic spiral to accommodate that growth without changing shape. Also, honeybees construct hexagonal cells to hold their honey. These and other correspondences are sometimes interpreted in terms of sacred geometry and considered to be further proof of the natural significance of geometric forms.

beehive

In Art and in Architecture

Geometric ratios, and geometric figures were often employed in the design of Egyptian, ancient Indian, Greek and Roman architecture. Medieval European cathedrals also incorporated symbolic geometry. Indian and Himalayan spiritual communities often constructed temples and fortifications on design plans of mandala and yantra.

The golden ratio, which is equal to approximately 1.618, can be found in various aspects of our life, including biology, architecture, and the arts. But only recently was it discovered that this special ratio is also reflected in nanoscale, thanks to researchers from the U.K.’s Oxford University. Their research, published in the journal Science on Jan. 8, examined chains of linked magnetic cobalt niobate (CoNb2O6) particles only one particle wide to investigate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. They applied a magnetic field at right angles to an aligned spin of the magnetic chains to introduce more quantum uncertainty. Following the changes in field direction, these small magnets started to magnetically resonate.

February 2, 2022 0 comment