A Liberal Education

Strange day

On the way down to Kwinana this morning I drove through bushland speckled with powerlines. By the side of the road someone had strung a washing line of plastic bags between two trees, garish and synthetic against the lush grass. For a second I thought I must be home.

Around a corner I saw a wooden cross by the roadside decorated with plastic flowers. Not home, I thought, because Australians line their roads with shrines at the place a person has died. As if each place is a kind of life-force portal, now closed.

Later, Ryan and I went to have lunch at the Golden Girls Canteen. Two business consultants in black office garb sidling between blue-collar workers in steel-capped boots. As we drove away I almost waved at the people who were pretending not to look at us.

Venturing back up the freeway, as the smokestacks of Kwinana disappeared to the west and Perth rose up on the horizon, I sang loudly to myself in my car. Alone and strangely lonely along the river.

Dilemma

At 12 years old I was with Janet in a shop, on holiday in Mauritius. She told me I could either have a bikini (my first) or a complete set of Asterix books.

It was agonising, but eventually I chose the bikini.

Looking back now at a photo of myself, boyish and flat, self consciously posing for the camera by a sand castle; I wonder if my life would have been different had I chosen the books.