Extract 3

The Garden of Kinder and the Emergence of Sisyphus 
I remember very distinctly a conversation I had with my mum about whether I should stay at pre-school or move onto primary school. It took place in her and dad’s bedroom, on dad’s side of the bed, which is just in front of the huge mirror that slides open to reveal a wardrobe. I think this is probably one of the longest memories I have from the age of four, although it must be said it isn’t totally clear. I am fairly confident that the dialogue went something like this:

Mum: do you want to stay in pre-school for another year or go to primary school?

Me: I want to stay in pre-school.

Mum: Mrs Lawry thinks you should stay in pre-school and repeat, but I think you should move on. I think it would better for you.  I think you’d like it.

Me: But Dylan’s staying in pre-school.

Mum: But you can meet lots of other friends in primary school. And Dylan will be there the next year.

Me: [Pauses]. Ok, I wanna go to primary school then.

The room fades and the memory is gone. Anyway, the important information to take away is that my parents enrolled me in primary school in 2002, when I was still only four (though I would turn five in February).

The first day of primary school is oft mentioned as an important landmark in one’s life and it is no different in mine. Imagine if I had not gone to school. Naturally, I would not be writing this thing right now. Imagine if I had gone to a different primary school. Maybe I would not be writing this thing right now if that were the case. Who fucking knows?

I do know that there are some lovely pictures of me on the morning of my first day of school, posing in my school uniform on the driveway. I seem to be very happy and jocular. My stomach is puffed out and I am laughing and playing with my hat.  The world appears to be simple, and everything is right with it. It is a world without letters, a world without numbers, a world without English or Maths or Science – a world without any codification, unification or simplification. A world that is utterly enigmatic – yet also rather simple for that reason. A mysterious, wonderful world. A paradise.  

And now it is but a sterile promontory, a foul congregation of pestilent vapours.

Unlike most people, I actually do preserve some memory of my very first day of school. I certainly don’t remember much of the day – as far as I’m aware, only one moment – but it is a mildly interesting moment so it bears mentioning.

The moment I remember was perhaps the most significant moment of all: the departure of the parents. I think it might have been just my mum there with me, and I really can’t see in my mind too many other faces of children or parents, but I do know that, somewhere on the right side of my frame of vision, Alexandra Thompson, the girl with the droopy eye who remained throughout primary school the smallest person with the quietest voice and shyest manner, was crying and cleaving to her mother despite spirited attempts to draw her away. I also seem to remember that I, by contrast, was perfectly calm and happy and was looking down in disdain on this crybaby. I feel like this moment dragged on for rather a while, and Alexandra continued to cry for a very long time despite the continued efforts of both her mother and Mrs Sims to reassure her that it would all be ok, that she would see her mother at the end of the day and that no one was going to bite[1]. Eventually, Alexandra must have been consoled and calmed down and hence conquered the primal part of her brain telling her that, since she was without a doubt the runt of the pack, she was vulnerable and needed maternal protection. Actually, come to think of it, maybe Alexandra Thompson’s mum eventually resolved to spend the day at Warrawee. I don’t even know. That seems perfectly possible.

So I suppose now is as good a time as any to begin describing Warrawee Public School, and life within it in Kindergarten.

Warrawee, as the school was colloquially known, was, by the standards of most Sydney primary schools, probably a little below average size in terms of student population. It did, however, cover an above-average space for a primary school. This big ratio of space to population was one of its attractive features. The suburb of Warrawee, in which the school was located (obviously), is a rather small locality held snugly in between the larger and better known suburbs, Wahroonga and Turramurra. The school sat on the little stretch of Pacific Highway regarded as being within Warrawee, not too far away from Fox Valley Road (a very useful, semi-major conduit off which Strone Ave branched). It was a school separated into two halves. The Northern side (closer to Fox Valley road, and Wahroonga) contained one very big building, possibly the oldest one in the school, and a few other small ones scattered around its asphalt space. It also possessed a dismal brick toilet block and a little irregular field of grass set down from the rest of the playground, in front of which lay some weed-infested bush. This Northern side of the school was just for the senior students, the ones from 3-6 up. All the classes from year 3 to year 6, as well as the class for the older “special needs” students, lay on this side. I think, as a Kindergarten student, this side of the school was a place of wonder, full of the venerable, almost majestic ‘big kids’ I only saw when I was dropped off or picked up, or during the weekly assembly. The Southern (or junior) side of the school lay on the other side of Blytheswood Avenue and had far more playground space, and a far more interesting playground. Straight after crossing over Blytheswood Avenue, heading south, you would encounter Blytheswood Oval. Truth be told, this was not really an oval at all but a rather small field of imperfectly maintained grass big enough to fit a Netball court but not a huge amount more. Nevertheless, it was a pretty useful space (the Warrawee fete was always held there, I believe, as well as PE sessions and ‘League Tag’ practice), plus it had a cricket net over on the highway side that was invaluable for the PSSA team. If you walked past Blytheswood Oval, along the wide concrete path that snaked by its residential (non-highway) side, you would eventually come to a low metal fence with a gate, just in front of which lay a large rectangular asphalt space which extended about 100 metres to the right. On either side of this space lay a series of variously sized buildings. The first building whose face you would have seen, on the other side of the asphalt, was the old assembly hall. This was a fairly large white wooden structure, slightly raised above the ground with a series of brick supports, and fronted by a lovely little garden. Everyone would have to go up its wooden stairs and into its green-carpeted interior to attend assembly every Friday, as well as drama class and perhaps occasionally PE, too. A few metres to your right, as you stood there in front of the gate, would be a hopscotch indicator painted on the ground. This was used frequently. To the right of that would be a fairly large building which I think was the administrative hub of the Southern side of the school, containing the nurse’s office and possibly a staffroom. Either inside that building or in a building just adjacent, further along to the right, was a classroom always occupied by a year 2 class. When I was in year 2, the so-called “Independent class” filled the space. You would now have to begin to walk onto the asphalt and around to the right to see the other buildings with any clarity. Quite soon after beginning this walk you would encounter a big, deciduous (and therefore non-native) tree in a raised garden bed made with thick planks of wood. After passing that, you would see classroom-buildings on the left and the right. All of these classrooms were pretty unassuming brick structures and probably aren’t worth mentioning in any detail. It should be said, though, that behind the buildings on the right lay the Warrawee after-school-care, a place I spent a lot of time at and will mention later. If you kept walking through the middle of the asphalt space, past these buildings on your left and right, you would finally see in front of you a grassy square, at the end of which lay another classroom-building that always housed Kindergarten students and probably still does. Down to the right of this lay yet another classroom-building. Although similar-looking to the others, this one was unique for the reason that it was the perennial domain of the Warrawee Public School veteran Mr Terrason and his year 1 class (he always had a year 1 class, I think). If, when you were standing in front of the Kindergarten building, you turned left, you would be heading towards the huge playground of the Southern side of Warrawee, called Finlay Oval (like Blytheswood, this was named after the road just adjacent to it). This oval was basically a huge field of patchy, dirt-dappled, perpetually trampled grass, fringed on the Kindergarten side by a kind of forest. If you walked back along the grassy field back in the direction of the Assembly Hall, you would get to a really cool playing area with a sandpit, and a fairly large artificial-grass-and-wood jungle gym, with a slide, monkey bars, a tunnel, a sliding pole, a platform from which you could jump down onto some wood chips and thereby demonstrate your mettle – and all the other requisite features of such things. Of course, it would be most convenient to get to this side of the playground using the gate just to the left of the Assembly Hall, which I didn’t describe earlier in order to minimise confusion. Then again, this gate was always locked and therefore inaccessible to students.

Unless you really concentrated hard on all that, you probably don’t have a real sense of the specific geography of the place – but no matter. All you really need to know is that it was a very nice school.

The more important matter is what I remember of Kindergarten apart from that snippet from the first day. Well, the truth is not much, although I do have a few interesting memories.

I think one of these memories is a vague one of learning the alphabet. As I was not one of those really precocious kids who teach themselves to read before school and my parents were too busy to educate me on such things, I believe I was part of the majority who only learn the alphabet once they start attending school. Even if I don’t actually remember learning the alphabet, I do remember that there were a series of big plastic cards with each letter in big, bold coloured font and a picture representing each one (like a cartoonish picture of an apple for “A”) attached to the wall on one side of the classroom and that these were probably alluded to in the process of teaching by Mrs Sims. Speaking of Mrs Sims, perhaps I should expatiate on her for a while.

I think Mrs Sims was a dark-haired, bespectacled, fairly plain-looking and kindly middle-aged woman (at least, that’s what she was like when she was teaching me in kindergarten). I don’t remember much of what she did but I think she was not really ever stern, because I assume I’d have more of a memory of that if that were the case. As is no doubt standard, I do remember that we spent a lot of class time sitting on the carpeted floor, perhaps being quizzed or playing instructional games, and a lot of it sitting at desks, mainly doing things with pencils, paint, scissors and glue. I think there was always a white container bearing a stockpile of drawing materials in the middle of each desk. I also remember that, in our classroom building, there were actually two classes which were, I think, perhaps only separated by a thick yellow curtain. Maybe I am remembering this wrong, but I seem to recall this curtain being drawn back and both classes being allowed to intermingle on at least one occasion.

I think the discipline and concentration that kindergarten demands is a bit of a shock to most little kids. I seem to recall that we were all constantly being told to cross our legs and pay attention, to stop picking our nose, to put our hand up before we spoke etc. Being absolutely still and concentrating on only one stimulus with one’s entire attention is certainly not a skill that comes naturally, and I imagine that being a Kindergarten teacher must involve a lot of frustrating repetition as you have to constantly try to pull in line a room full of kids mostly preoccupied with their interior worlds, the snot on their fingers, and that little strand of carpet fluff floating beautifully through the air.

‘Pretty fluff,’ the child thinks as it reaches for the little strand dancing in the air, and thereby uncrosses his legs.

“Pay attention, Tom!” commands Mrs Sims, “And cross your legs again.”

Fortunately for me, I have managed to preserve much of that childhood whimsy, interior-world preoccupation, inattentiveness, distractibility and wonder at all things big and small. Some people do manage to do this, but many do not and hence make a lot of money.[2]  

Funnily enough, I remember rather well this one very particular moment (probably mostly because I told people about it a fair few times when I was a child) when Mrs Sims asked the question, “Who knows what the tallest mountain in the world is?” I was sitting, presumably cross-leggèd, in, I think, the back left side of the room, and staring at Mrs Sims as she sat on a chair above us all. I don’t think I had any idea of the answer to the question, but this pale, black-haired boy called Matthew Heron, who was sitting with perfectly crossed-legs somewhere to the right of me, threw up his hand. I can still see his posture in my mind and it seems perfect: his arm is almost vertical and his back is beautifully arched; there is certainly no hint of the sort of slouching that kids do and are reproached for.  Mrs Sims pointed at him.

“Mt Everest,” he said confidently.

“That’s right,” Mrs Sims replied, “Very good, Matthew.”

All I know is that I was tremendously impressed by this, and I think it prompted me to think that he was very intelligent – perhaps a genius. Come to think of it, he might have answered multiple questions. Obviously knowing one fact is obviously not sufficient to merit the mantle of “genius”, or even “vaguely smart person”, but I am also not sure whether I realised this when I was (barely) five.

Speaking of my age, I suppose being four when I started school and then turning five on the 19^th of February was probably a pretty hefty disadvantage in Kindergarten, because neurons are being produced very rapidly in those years and thus being a few months younger can be a fairly significant disadvantage. But I do think I managed alright (and there were probably a few kids younger than me in my year in any case). Unfortunately, unless my memory deceives me, I was somewhat let down by my parents in Kindergarten on the matter of reading. As most people probably know, the system that primary schools generally use to teach kids to read is to set them the challenge of advancing through a series of “reading levels”, each of which represent a gradual increase in difficulty, with the parents constantly having to sign a sheet of paper to verify that certain books have been read in order for their child to progress. A major component of this system was the regular reading sessions at school, with stay-at-home mums coming in to get through a book, in turn, with all the kids in the class. Another detail I seem to remember[3] is that everyone had their own “reading folder”, which presumably contained the books you were currently reading and the piece or pieces of paper verifying which books you had read and how many levels you had progressed through.

Why I said I think I was “somewhat let down by my parents in Kindergarten” is that I am pretty sure that, due to their busy lives and full-time jobs, they neglected to pay much attention to their obligations to fill out the paperwork and follow the protocol. One reason I think this is that I seem to remember being quite unhappy with the lack of attention that my parents were giving to my reading levels in Kindergarten and felt I was at an unjustly low level because of this. But I also recall a couple of memories that seem to directly testify to this impression of mine. The only memory I have of one of those occasions when a stay-at-mum came into our Kindergarten class to read to all of us kids in turn is one of those testifying memories.

This memory starts with my being informed that it was “[my] turn” to go into the reading room (or whatever the fuck it was called) and thus having to move away from the drawing or painting that I was occupied with and nervously amble towards it. It definitely would have been with a certain nervousness and trepidation that I did amble towards the room because, as I offhandedly mentioned, I was fucking terrified at that age of meeting strangers, even if they were benevolent mothers with very active maternal instincts. I remember the room was quite dark and the woman was pretty nice, and I seem to recall the book she had for me was a “level 8” one[4], which (as I recall it) I knew immediately was way too low for me. As I was cripplingly shy, I know that I certainly did not voice any dissent or frustration, or even make clear that the book was below my standard. Instead, she opened up the book, which for some reason I still remember perfectly well was some Cookie Monster book featuring telephones, and I read it flawlessly in my quiet, meek voice, presumably evincing no sign of the burning rage and despair I felt at my parents’ inability to be like all the other parents and record what reading level I was actually at. I still feel a vicarious upset for my five year-old-self even as I write this. That may sound absurd but I think it really was very saddening, and I think such experiences probably laid the foundation for my quite rapidly formed view that if there was one thing I did not want to be it was a lawyer like my parents, who worked all day and always seemed to come home unhappy. This unhappiness seemed particularly evident in my dad, who always arrived to pick us up from after-school care angry stressed and upset, even though his work day would typically finish more than an hour before mum’s.

Anyhow. The second probative memory is a little more banal. I believe it was a conversation that occurred in year 1. I don’t know where it occurred but I think I remember the participants and roughly what was said. Matt Gore and Kimbrian Canavan were the former, and I believe both of them were not in my class, but that I was perhaps aware that both of them were among the leading intellectuals in the school. Anyway, what it basically amounted to was Matt, I think, boasting that he and Kimbrian were already past level 30 reading level (which was meant to be the maximum), and me thinking, because I was already developing a pretty strong ego at that time (whenever it actually was) that the fact that I was only just 30 (or whatever the fuck I was at that point, I think it was quite high and that I had caught up) was not because they were smarter than me, just because they had parents who cared more or got lucky or something. You see in year 1 I think I was beginning to see myself as pretty smart[5], however that’s another story that will be covered in good time.

I suppose another interesting thing to mention about my Kindergarten experience is who my friends were, and what they were like. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely clear on these facts, but I do have some idea. I think that a quiet, black-haired, pale boy called Oscar McKay was my first really good friend.  I certainly know that we were extremely good friends and basically inseparable in year 1, and I am fairly sure that the friendship began in Kindergarten. The most important thing to say about Oscar at this time was that he and I shared a mutual fascination and obsession with dinosaurs. I think I was already enamoured of dinosaurs from about the age of four but I know that watching the wonderful, unsurpassed, life-changing BBC documentary Walking with Dinosaurs on video, and then watching it about fifty more times, and then buying its follow-up, Walking with Beasts, as a birthday present for my dad when I was maybe five.^[6] Given this shared passion, I can only surmise that most of our conversations revolved around dinosaurs, in particular Walking with Dinosaurs (which I think he might also have watched) and interesting facts to do with dinosaurs. I imagine the words Brachiosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Pterodactyl, Iguanodon, Velociraptor would have been just a few of those very frequently bandied about in these conversations. I am also stunned as to what kept this relationship going for so long, because I am sure it was a deeply limited and one-dimensional one, and also as to what keeps any Kindergarten relationship going, considering Kindergarteners are all indescribably vapid, possess almost no topics of conversation and lack the faculties to express anything interesting even if they did. I suppose, though, at that age, you’re still at the stage where friendships don’t really consist of much conversation, mainly just collective activities, like playing in the sandpit together, or running around and giggling, or playing tip, or alternating going down the slide etc.

I think Matt Gore, that person who possibly made the boastful comment in year 1 and who will be mentioned in depth later, was also part of this group in Kindergarten (in other words, I think it might have been a trio), but that he was cast out by Oscar for some reason in year 1, and also never really invited me over like Oscar did, which is perhaps why I don’t remember so clearly being friends with him at this stage. I might have had other friends in Kindergarten but I’m really not sure. I certainly don’t think I was ever good friends with any girls. One of the weird quirks of our school was that the boys and girls remained almost perfectly segregated in the playground pretty much until the very end of year 6. Nobody had a boyfriend or girlfriend at Warrawee, even in year 6. Patrick Sweeney, the son of a very manly plumber and also a person who will be mentioned later, did hang out with the girls in Kindy and year 1, and Edward Poate, a boy who is now gay, hung out with them right up until some efforts were made to remedy the situation by the other boys in year 5 or 6. However, these were definitely the exceptions.

Only one more distinct memory that I can be sure came from Kindergarten is coming to me right now. It is a very simple one, and for some reason I have the impression it occurred quite early in the year, possibly even when I was still only four. I am fairly sure what it represents is the first time I ever had banana-flavoured milk. More importantly, this first time I had banana milk was probably the single best gustatory experience I’ve ever had in my life.

All the memory really consists of is me sitting on the stone steps in front of my classroom and slowly sipping the yellow carton of milk, which I had probably just bought from the canteen (it might have been my first ever solitary purchase), and savouring with immense pleasure the slow trickle of sweet, synthetic substance.

Ok, so yes, this was a joyous experience, but it is also completely banal and it could have been replaced by countless others. As always with childhood memories, the cognitive temptation is to think that the reason you remember them must be that they were, in some way, highly significant moments from your life, perhaps even formative ones, no matter how small or banal they are in their basic facts. The reality is, of course, that this is not the case: the banana-milk-sipping memory changed nothing of my life, and there were probably countless other more interesting moments that occurred on that very day, not to mention all the others in my year of Kindergarten – it’s just that my brain has simply not deigned to preserve them.

Only a few months ago, when I was still attending Sydney Grammar School, I bought some Oak banana-flavoured milk at the “tuckshop”^[7], and it was fucking awful – I decided immediately that it was far and away the worst Oak flavour. But I think, despite my revulsion, the sweet, synthetic taste did bring back some memories. Indeed, with that first sip through a black straw probably eerily similar to the one through which I would have sucked all those years ago, I did experience a kind of brief flicker of powerful spiritual feeling, something ineffable that probably just sounds to you like some kind of joke but was, for a transitory enchanted moment, real and true.

And then it was fucking gross and I was just waiting in the handball line like any other miserable cunt, thinking banal thoughts about History and English and homework and sadness.

Naturally, I do have other images and impressions from Kindy in my mind: I remember finger painting in this room with others and seeing sparkles on black pieces of cardboard, I remember feeling tiny compared to other kids in higher years[8], I remember it raining just after the school bell went one day and seeing everyone running around in their cool blue and yellow raincoats, and feeling disdainful of my own ugly, uncool yellow one. (I also remember asking my mum to buy one of those blue and yellow raincoats for me (perhaps my first acquiescence to peer pressure) and her eventually obliging, taking me to David Jones in Hornsby Westfield, the same place where we used to buy shoes.) I don’t remember much else from Kindergarten, so now I shall move on to my memories of another thing that I did in that same year (2002).

In February or March 2002, I joined an under-6 soccer team at Kissing Point. When I say, I “joined” an under-6 soccer team at Kissing Point Sports Club, I really mean to say my dad signed me up, of course. And the main reason he did this was that he had never been very good at sports himself when he was a child and teenager, and wanted to protect me from the sort of subtle playground bullying that he had experienced throughout his school life as a result of this, particularly on those occasions where playground teams had to be selected by two merciless captains – usually the most athletic kids in the school – in which, if you were unco, utter humiliation awaited. Another significant reason my dad chose to sign me up for soccer at such a young age was that, when he did start playing soccer and cricket for Sydney Grammar School, and then soccer for Sydney Uni, he really enjoyed it, and he wanted to expedite the arrival of that enjoyment in my life. I am happy that he did do that all those years ago, when I was just a small, stout, little blonde-haired boy who also wasn’t particularly co-ordinated and whose physique somewhat belied his strength, because I’m sure it did save me from some suffering (including possibly self-hatred), and did keep me fit and healthy. Moreover, playing team sport was a source of great enjoyment for me for many years. That said, my father’s protective instincts would eventually transmogrify, with tremendous irony, into something far beyond protection: the flagrant prioritisation of his feelings and desires – his vision of the person I should be – over mine. I’m tempted to say more about this now, but the elaboration shall come in good time. For the moment, suffice to say that I had almost total trust in my dad and, while a little leery of meeting new people and a little uncertain of the activity he was getting me into, I think I was mostly happy and excited to start this game called “soccer”, the same one that he had played for so many years and that my sister had played for two, and at the same club as them, too.

So what do I remember of my first season of soccer? Well, snippets – as has been the way of all things so far.

I’m pretty sure I was in the under-6 Cs in my first season… not that your team’s grade means anything when you’re 5 (or 6, as the case may be) when not only are you all still weak, tiny, doddering creatures, but also likely don’t even know the rules, let alone any of the game’s skills. Anyway, I remember that at least one training occurred on a field called Comenarra Oval, which is a fairly large patch of grass with a cricket net at one end and a little kid’s playground and changing room at the other sat at the bottom of a hill, bordered on one side by a big cliff and on the other by the winding road known (at least in that South Turramurra stretch of the road) as the “Comenarra Parkway”. One issue with this Comenarra Oval is that, despite being located at the bottom of a steep hill in the rainiest suburb of Sydney, it doesn’t have a special drainage system. The main consequence of this is that, after only a few hours of heavy rain, one can easily find the place a total swamp, and, after a few hours of studded-shoe playing, a veritable quagmire. Of course, none of this really has much bearing on my memories of my first soccer season. What I was going to say before is that, since I can remember one training session occurring there, I can only assume that all of them did: that that was our permanent home. If it wasn’t, it could only have been Aluba Oval, the administrative and spiritual centre of KPSC, on which its clubhouse sits. Again, this doesn’t really matter that much; I just have an unhealthy desire for thoroughness and an obsession with detail.

Kissing Point has, for as long as I’ve been aware of the club, been represented by the colours of the French Flag: red, blue and white. The club’s default soccer kit in 2002 was a lovely design which mediated wonderfully between understatement and gaudiness, and made good use of the congruence of the club’s colours. It consisted of a vertically striped shirt (alternating between stripes of red, white and blue), shiny blue shorts, and blue socks capped with two red stripes. I think I really liked putting that uniform on of a Saturday morning and feeling the pride associated with being part of the same big club that my dad played for. I should say that I just made that up but I imagine that’s probably how I felt.

It seems to me that I only really remember one game and one training session from that first season in any detail at all. The training session that I remember was at night, and I know at some point we were all trying to kick the ball into a cone-demarcated goal guarded by our team’s main goal-keeper (who was a girl). I remember that she kept diving onto all the balls screaming towards her with tremendous skill and bravery, and that she kind of resembled some sort of ground-dwelling mammal, maybe a mole, in the way she would jump onto the ball and then lie down, pressing it firmly under her, all coiled up.[9] I think the other training-session memory, also set at night, on Commenarra, probably comes from the same training session, but, to be honest, I’m really not sure. In any case, it marks the moment I learnt the term “nil” for the first time. I think what happened is that we were playing a little game on a cone-delineated field (and this was probably at the end of the training session because games characteristically only occur then), but I don’t really know what was going on in the game. I doubt I even knew what was going on in the game then. I mean, I don’t think I was a very useful member of the team, and this is a team where one kid would just spend the whole time picking daffodils and the rest would just follow the ball aimlessly around like a swarm of bees, each eagerly awaiting their turn to boot it forward, with scant regard for the goal, their team-mates or the earnest cries of their overinvested parents.^[10] Anyhow, the memory possibly takes place just following a goal, and all it consists of is the redheaded boy in my team whom I would later encounter in crosscountry circles and soccer matches many years later (and never speak to at all, stupidly), coming up to me on the pitch and exclaiming to me that the score was “two-nil”^[11]. I know I must have replied, “What does nil mean?” because I remember he then said something like “It means no goals”. So yeah. I found that datum tremendously interesting and I evidently never forgot it.

Apart from one brief memory of walking along a pavement with my dad and a taller boy from my team and his parents after a soccer game, I seem only to have one set of vivid game-day memories from my first season of soccer, and they all come from the same game.[12] There were good reasons why I remembered this game, as you shall soon see.

It’s really interesting how many details I seem to be to recall from this game, given how few I recall from the others. I remember that we played it at the St Ives Showground, against St Ives, who had a green and white kit that I really liked (I think). I can even see in my mind’s eye what side of the showground we were on. Most importantly, I remember that I was chosen as goalie, perhaps for the first time in my life. I remember that the first few times I wore a goalie jersey, I was amused by the appearance of muscularity it gave one, and so I probably made a demonstration of that in this game, doing the classic muscle poses and laughing and so forth. When we were shaking hands with the other team, I know that I must have noticed Matthew Heron was playing for them for the first time, and I seem to recall that we exchanged a knowing glance with each other, and possibly uttered a few words. When the game began, I remember that Matthew Heron was extremely good – so much better than anyone else on the field. He was fast, he was skilful, and he dribbled with a superhuman facility – he carved through our team like a knife through butter. And every time he broke through, he scored. Again and again and again.

Perhaps it was only 4 goals he scored against me, but it certainly felt like a hell of a lot. Nothing I could do could stop him. I dived left and right, hurled my body across the mud, prostrated myself before his feet – nothing could halt his infernal charge. The ball just kept hitting the back of the net. He was, truly, a demon.

I can still see him running down the field towards me – his jet black hair flapping in the wind; his pale, diabolical face emblazoned with a manic grin – everything about him radiating determination and certitude. He approaches the goal now, alone in an empty space. Suddenly, everything slows down. We are the only two people in the world now. All in existence has been reduced to this space in front of my eyes; it is just me and him now, a single battle to decide it all. He draws back his foot, I ready myself. He strikes –

within an instant, it is done. I look behind me and the ball is in the back of the net. The whistle howls, the crowd yells. I am lying there on the muddy ground, filthy and destitute, like an amoeba wallowing in its slime. I know that I could have done nothing to stop the shot.

He is just too good.

I believe that to be a superb allegory for my life.

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[1] Incidentally, is “[Pronoun] won’t bite” a peculiar Australian idiom or is it an expression common to basically all English speaking nations? I suddenly realised just now that I heard that phrase very often when I was a child. My dad was always telling me other adults weren’t going to bite (and thus that I shouldn’t be afraid of them). This always pissed me off, of course, because I knew they weren’t going to bite, but that, instead, they were going to try to talk to me – something equally as terrifying.

[2] Good joke.

[3] To be honest, a lot of these details come more directly from later experience, I think. A lot of my description is inference.

[4] You might think it’s freaky that I remember the level, and so that I dispel that thought two things should be clarified: 1.) I’m not absolutely sure it was level 8.

                 2.) I also think it’s freaky.

[5] Although I sort of feel like that more happened in year 2 which is making me think the memory might be from there – but I’m also fairly sure that the reading level scheme didn’t last into year 2 so I’m doubly confused.

[6] A present which, once opened in bed on May the 1^st, actually seemed to anger my dad, prompting him to moralise about how when it is not your birthday but someone else’s you are meant to think about them, and that it was thus a very selfish and immature thing to do. This lecture really made me upset, and I think straight after it I admitted I wanted the present I had chosen but that I also thought he might. I mean, in hindsight, I reckon it was pretty rude of him to not even pretend to appreciate the present I had chosen.

[7] Note: not canteen. With its whole traditional, old-fashioned, antique Great British Public School vibe, SGS always uses fusty jargon like that.

[8] Actually that’s probably inference again.

[9] In fact, I think she reminded me of the mole protagonist of one of my all-time favourite childhood books, The Story of the Little Mole who knew it was none of his business. In this book, a mole wakes up with poo on his head and asks a succession of animals if they did it, resulting in a series of pedagogical insights about the varying texture and shape of different species’ scats, until he eventually discovers the culprit.

I think this book, in combination with the mole in The Gogs, might have sparked a small obsession with, or perhaps affection for moles. Evidence of this investment in moles is the fact that I always acted as a mole when I played the Saturday and Sunday morning game of burrowing among the sheets with my parents in their Kingsize bed and trying to imprison them in a cocoon of sheets, an enterprise I baptised “Mole Security”.

[10] Admittedly, this is typical of Under-6 soccer teams.

[11] Or some score close to that. It might have been one-nil.

[12] I’m 90% sure this game is from that first season, but I suppose it is possible that it is not. Again, be apprised of my patchy memory.