Sneaking Suspicion

 

Nellie’s fine, nothing whatever wrong with Nellie. Nice, industrious St. P’burg lady working the two jobs, Jarik’s cafe & the bakery. Genuine Nellie, not a convenience following immigration. Only thing, sharp girl senses we are contemporaries, of an age, nothing between us in all likelihood. Yet her intuition tells her here was a guy still thinks he’s a lad, scoots around, still sexually active and likely omnivorous. That makes it hard. A little barrier. Some teeny hint of reservation. And it’s not like you’re trying to project; nothing especially flamboyant. Some more regular attire suiting the age would perhaps camouflage. A fix. Unfortunate. Nonetheless, we try the dual text Mikhail Dudin from the op shop this morning ($2) to blunt that little needle, perchance. After some more sampling trying to get a touch of the original. (She knew Alexievich & Tarkovsky.)

Daggers in the Heart

 

The  kitchen knives were a good find in a drawer of the back shed today, every bit as good as Rilke’s old mirrors that had reflected  those who had journeyed onward. How often they were chosen for the table, even after a series of upgradings. Forged Sheffield steel—there was no need to check. The other somehow fits in the group, the memory of its wielding, its added use for peeling, clearly retained. The grasp of the handle was different for spoon & fork. (The wearing of the right was from the flame of the stove, not the hand. A cook pot most likely.) Painters could reproduce something of the feeling of like objects in their work. 

The preparation for the selling of the old place proceeds slowly.

Santa in Singapore (updated Nov23)

Santa’s Reindeer 

(The first Christmas in Singapore)

 

Soon after the bend of the Kallang River on the bus a middle-aged Indian was caught at her orisons a moment too late. When the observation fell on her, her eyes were just re-opening, palms rising to her forehead. 

The look she showed on her face one could not any longer find on the city streets; its faking in the movies was the closest approximation. A particular moment of sexual abandon produced something of the kind, part release and part concentration. It was a remarkable, brief glimmer. 

Beyond the open grassy field after the river a temple sat marooned on a street corner. The plot of land and the building it held were about the size of a standard suburban subdivision. The tall, stuccoed front fence was painted a fawn colour and along the parapet on top lazy white cows, elephants and snake charmers were evenly spaced. 

Worshipers at Sri Manmatha came from a distance, there was little housing in the immediate vicinity. The woman on the bus must have been a newcomer, suddenly catching the sight while gazing out the window. 

Over a coffee at Starbucks shortly after the re-arranged big-number Christmas carols were being held over for the lunch crowd. For some reason this morning the blades of the larger windmill in the display beside the fountain had been removed. The resulting hole at the top of the tower didn't stop the photographers; with some care, at that height the hole would not be visible in any of the snaps. 

Across the way at McD’s there was an even larger crowd. At the busy thoroughfare at the main junction of the Bugis Complex, shoppers passed thick and fast. In that dead corner opposite the fountain one would have expected the Nativity scene perhaps; it was about the right scale and might have been tucked in place without hampering the foot traffic. Instead, this sketch of a kind of rural idyll from the Northern hemisphere. The windmills referenced the water spurting adjacent; that might have been the logic. 

From the perspective of Singapore, the Netherlands was not too far distant from the Pole. 

The windmill was covered in mirror shards, both the column and blades. A smaller windmill stood to the right and a kind of salt cellar on the other side were wrapped in aluminium, a couple of yellow stars topping. Three reindeer had come up to the forecourt of Santa's cubby, one down on its haunches, with arched back. 

It was the reindeer that gave the firmest clue. Two of the animals were black with white spots; the other larger one reversed the colouring, head back and finished with an upturned, red button-nose. Three little dark pines completed the setting, the whole sitting on a carpet of green that was more moss than grass. 

With all the captivation of the screens, it was a wonder the children gave the corner any mind at all. 

The final hint of the season came with the pair of ladders resting on the inside wall of the large windmill. Tall, tapered and silvered, these disappeared into the top of the black felt interior. Fairy lights were strung from one tower to another—in the evening illumination the whole glittering scene would produce a stronger effect. 

The 24 x 7 cycle might have begun already, or perhaps the Minister of Culture would visit at midnight for an official lighting. Twenty-five sleeps until Christmas. 

The wavery gold lettering over the arched doorway of Santa’s retreat needed some eyeing. Angled over the curved surface and following the boomerang line made the deciphering difficult from a little distance. 

One was always off-balance here too with the English usage, in the case of advertising and promotion in particular. 

GO GAGA 

this christmas 

Linear on the page robbed half the effect.

 

 

Singapore 2011-23

 

 

 

 

NB. Eastern Orthodox Christmases, at least a couple of generations past, were entirely different to the Western consumerist make-over. In the case of the first Christmas in Singapore, the transposition involved in that tropical production was something else again.

 

 

Matinees (Donnie) update X Eve

 

Donnie’s grave (internal) threat, vermin again reminded of the funtime afternoon cartoons. You return to the Hans-Barbera days on the floor before the TeeV, when Bab finally relented and bought the box (luckily only in early teens, when she became concerned over the children possibly being left behind at school 😭😭😭). Good guys & villains, sock it to ‘em, the dirty rotten rats!  And remembering, the champ was never without company in such cases. Wasn’t Idi keen on some kinda similar fare? Silvio a big fan of… spaghetti westerns, or something? In the White House’s home theatre Ronald must have returned to the old classics (B grade). Up on the Peninsular in Malaysia one of the Sultans was not long ago gifted by another of his regal counterparts a functional Fred Flint’s jalopy as a birthday present. A motoring enthusiast (like the Sultan of Brunei with his scores of red Ferraris) and great fan of the show and its cast, Fred, Barney, Wilma, Bambam; &etc. Caligula and the others were once assumed absurdities from humanity’s dark backward past.

First Tuesday in November (Melb Cup)

 

Yesterday at the port a large P&O Cruiser was coming in to dock. This morning another sitting alongside, labelled for the day presumably, Carnival Splendour. The big three minute race was now listed on the itinerary of cashed up retirees able to afford $60-90K whatever jaunts on the high seas. The beer festival in Munich, running of the bulls in Pamplona, Carnivals in Venice & now here. 

In Carlisle Street a closer look at the intermediate St Kilda end found numerous stores vacant, perhaps a dozen or more. Landlords were offering affordable pop-up options for some cash to tide over this tricky patch. Trainers against the glass in one shop, bites of various sorts in a couple and bespoke tees & accessories in another, where an imperious manikin stood in the window luring passers-by with white caps on a forest background—

BIG

PUSSY 

ENERGY

Publication news: The ML Archipelago In Short – NWWQ

Hello everyone

Another piece of mine has just been published by Frederick Barthelme at New World Writing Quarterly.

Three points across the ML world here, featuring some of my usual street characters.

Hope you like it, 2.1k words

https://newworldwriting.net/pavle-radonic-the-malay-archipelago-in-short/

All best all round

Pavle

Schoolboy Files - Fish Sept23

 

Lad turned into a Fish in the intermediate years of high school, while no one was watching. Thin, negligible boy, turned king of the pool suddenly. Like the tennis court, the swimming-pool was an unknown early years. There was in fact a tennis court partly visible behind a high screened fence at the corner Anglican Church down from the primary school. A pool though was unimaginable. (Big Kum Miso later declared he would build a swimming-pool at the new place he was raising out in Kingsbury. An unlikely claim among our group, unsurprisingly never fulfilled.)  

         Had there been a single excursion to a swimming pool during primary? In high school swimming outings began toward the end of first form and set off a hysterical reaction at home.  

         Notes to the Sports teacher, written by the young bank-teller who lived in the back bungalow with her newly-wed husband.  

         — Oh Vera! My dear Vera!...  

         The young new wife respectfully obliged her landlady.  

         Dear Sir, Could you please excuse.... Sign here, Auntie.  

         A year or two prior in the old country, mother's father had thrown himself in his winter great-coat off a pier in front of the second eldest's house on the water's edge. (Properly detailed forty years later.) 

         Howling when the red-blue fringed PAR AVION landed in the post-box. It brought back other, earlier howling. 

         This had to stop. No more!  

         — Stop! Now! Sada! Odma! (Mimicking her own fierce insistence at whimpering.) 

         Wayne had a State ranking in breast-stroke. Of all things; and no joke.  

         Remarkable luck for an average, fringe boy. Completely unchallengeable. 

         In primary school, Wayne had stood somewhere in the third or fourth rung of harmless, inconsequential boys. No football prowess, nor even cricket. Athletics zero. (Later in high school Wayne began to develop some accomplishment even in the latter. Was it hop-step-and-jump? Threatening the Junior and Intermediate Boy Champion. Basketball became a forte too—Centre dribbler.)  

         Kind of fish-watery eyes even in junior school. In order to overcome some childhood malady, swimming might have been suggested by the doctor. Young Wayne was much in need. Wayne Finlayson. Fish, inevitably. 

         Twelve years of joint schooling; the first definite appearance in his own right at some indeterminate point in the second, higher level. Early days the name itself presented a problem.  

         “Way” was in order. But Nnn?... (Spelling the new language presented serious problems.)  

         Another irregular moniker. Wayne was the only one bearing that name in junior years.  

         A father with a car was exceptional, when early on most of the dads rode bicycles. Older father and mother. When the revelation, the delicate secret emerged, that one of the other boys, Bill Gledhill, was adopted—his parents not his real parents at all—a certain private suspicion fell on Wayne. 

         Mother was a dreadful liability in her widow's weeds, scarf and mangled English; there was however no doubt about her authenticity.  

         With the window of the car down Wayne's father’s avuncular smile beamed unparent-like soft indulgence. None of the kids’ parents smiled like that.  

         Years later again, when it emerged that Wayne lived in the same street as Viddy, directly opposite Vid's house, the news seemed incredible. There was absolutely no truck of any kind between the pair—as there could not have been between the outstanding school cricket star—accomplished footballer to boot—and such a one as Wayne. (A sook and unpopular, among both teachers and classmates, Viddy was in a class of his own.) 

         Later again—there were numerous stages and developments—the last years of high school brought a mysterious attraction centred on Wayne, by one of the teachers. A male intermediate Science teacher became perfectly frank in his admiration. 

         What was that all about, Wayne? A boy groomed right under the noses of his unsuspecting parents, the school administrators & councillors?  

         Even in the last year of high school, the idea of poofters seemed highly doubtful to a jock. Couldn’t be for real? The flower-power hippies were beginning to upturn all the settled categories. A couple of years higher up in school, Paul Perov was alarming his Russian émigré parents, getting around dressed as a girl. 

 

 

NB. News from Morrie this morning of Wayne’s passing overnight

Sept 28 2023