Brigadoon

Brigadoon

“Where I come from, people don’t prattle on about committing suicide.”

That’s me saying that. Listen and I’ll explain what I mean.

One only has to watch the news each evening on the idiot box. When I say that, I’m referring to the free-to-air news channels. Viewers dub their sets idiot boxes because the news editor of each commercial channel is an idiot.

They’d have to be a brick short of a load to approve the rubbish the channels spew. I’ll wager London to a brick (I love my bricks, eh?) that those little men get their rocks off by including at least one story in each bulletin) involving someone topping themselves.

While donning his/her most serious face, the presenter issues the obligatory warning that what they are to hear may upset some viewers. Next is the reader’s stammering-near-to-tears account of the life-destroying act of hara-kiri.

Then, to top it off (no pun intended!), the channel makes more mileage by issuing warnings, asking viewers to ring authorities if they fear someone might go out in a blaze of glory and emulate a Japanese kamikaze pilot.

For Christ’s sake! The hoo-ha surrounding the announcement, designed to catch the viewers' attention, does that all right, but the young, easily influenced members of society become the most affected. The graphic news stories paint pictures in their imaginative minds, and before you know it, the list of also-rans features a new name.

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As a young bloke, I never found time to wallow in self-pity. From the age of nine until fourteen, I ran a newspaper round to get pocket money for the Saturday night flicks, fishing gear, comics, and suchlike.

Did I ever consider topping myself? Not bloody likely. I might have looked sideways at someone and given serious consideration to neutralising that person, but never did I, in my wildest dreams, give thought to committing the suttee.

And do you know why?

My fourteenth birthday fell on the last day I attended school. Yep, kids never experienced the luxury of school lockers in those days. So, all I had to do was walk out of my classroom; no gear to cart home, nothing. The few textbooks I owned went into the rubbish bin beside the door.

I pulled the pin on school on a Wednesday and started a job my parents had teed up for me in the local sawmill the following Monday (the pay of a mill labourer exceeded that of a paper boy).

*

Where I come from, the number of kids, mill workers, farmers, townspeople and business merchants might, on a good day, have totalled 800 souls.

Every kid in the town played a sport of one description or another. Not to do so meant you were of the body shape; political correctness stops me from using, in case it offends poor little Johnny.

The rivers bordering where I come from teemed with freshwater lobsters and trout. Besides supplementing the family dinner table, the town's kids revelled in using many unique methods and ruses (to dodge the fisheries inspectors) to catch their fair share.

*

That said, I’ve wandered from the track and strayed from the subject of felo-de-se. I am aware I used the ‘Big S’ word in the opening line of this story, but the more I use it, the more I decry others using the term.

I’m old enough, and from a place so small, I never so much as laid eyes on the screen of a TV until reaching adulthood. As for mobile phones, the first one I ever used was the size of a house brick (I’ve got a thing with bricks). Don’t get me started on computers, smartphones, tablets and other geeky appliances.

Instead of having an electronic device glued to our hands, we had ‘gings’ (shanghai, sling with a prong handle) which were great for busting streetlight globes and landing pebbles on the tin roofs (or should that be rooves?) of houses.

*

Check out the bullying which goes on on social media these days. Not long ago, in the United States, law authorities convicted a young sheila in a criminal court for influencing her boyfriend to top himself via mobile phone calls.

One reads and hears of instances where, in the main, adolescent girls end their lives because of online bullying.

When I was a young bloke, we bullied the girls by pulling their plaits (plaits in those days, not pigtails) or throwing paper water bombs at those old enough to have boobs. We always aimed at their chests as their thin white blouses turned transparent when soaked—shades of a wet T-shirt competition.

The sissy boys at my school used to wear shoes and long socks. We teased them with the name ‘Socks up Sally.’ (I never learned who Sally was). Us other kids ran around barefooted.

As for the convent schoolkids, we bullied them with the chant, ‘Convent dogs, Stink like hogs, Sitting on logs, Eating maggots out of frogs.’       

Tormenting the Rat Catchers’ mob came with few risks. There were more of us state school kids than them.

We did our bullying the old-fashioned way: face-to-face and not sniping with electronic devices from a distance.

*

People threw out heaps of good stuff. On my ‘grid’ (push-bike), I fitted a set of wide motorbike handles scrounged from the rubbish tip. Prams were a prized tip find because they provided the best wheels for our hill trolleys. I think the less informed members of society call them toboggans (I never mastered the fitting of brakes to any of my trolleys and lost patches of skin from my knees and elbows as a result).

Our swimming pool may not have featured in Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but we thought it was wonderful and it was old. A dammed-up creek with a large karri tree standing in its centre. Built onto the dead tree were wooden platforms (ten feet) and one on top (thirty feet), accessed by wooden ladders.

I often dived (or should that be dove?) from the ten-footer, but only brave enough to jump from the thirty-footer. We delighted in jumping off the platforms, doing ‘bombies’ or ‘bananas’ and splashing unsuspecting tourists. We’d then follow up by nicking the coins they threw in the wishing well.

One dark and stormy night, a group of us went to the pool after a basketball game to cool off (we left the blind Billy goat behind). I jumped from the top, and on the way down, I nigh on crapped myself. Once in flight, I did not know when I’d hit the water. I couldn’t tell whether I’d land on my face or my back.

Earlier I mentioned the ‘Big S.’ In free flight; I thought my time had come.

*

To tell the truth, I cannot recall a single instance of the ’Big S’ during my time living, working, and playing in my hometown. I left there to travel to the Big Smoke to play football. A professional city team splashed out a bunch of cash. Along with the money, they got me a job and accommodation.

*

From the moment I drove through the city’s boundary line, my way of life changed.

I saw a movie once where Tommy Albright (Gene Kelly) and Jeff Douglas (Van Johnson) are on a hunting trip in Scotland and become lost in the woodlands. They happen upon Brigadoon, a miraculously blessed village that rises out of the mists every hundred years for only a day. (This was done so that the village would never be changed or destroyed by the outside world). 

Now that I am approaching my twilight years, even though I know the movie Brigadoon to be pure fantasy, I wile away precious moments envisaging me in my hometown, living under the same circumstances.

No electronic devices, no Big S.

Ever!

ooOoo