The Full Catastrophe Read online

  When we arrived, there was a media scrum outside. It turns out that the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who had fled the KGB, was in the very same hospital dying of radiation poisoning after some Putin patsy popped some polonium in his cup of tea. Litvinenko was electrifying the world by giving regular deathbed interviews in which he denounced the Russian state. Audrey and I settled into our room, which – in this overcrowded hospital – was not a room at all, but a waiting area that had been curtained off into four tiny tent-like enclosures. We shared ours with a fifteen-year-old girl and her newborn. Once a day her parents would visit, with faces like thunder. On one occasion the baby’s father arrived. He looked, if anything, younger than her.

  We entered a strange tangle of hospital bureaucracy. Every morning, a paediatrician would visit and exclaim on Audrey’s good progress and express the opinion that we were just about ready to go home, and that tomorrow morning we could have our discharge form signed. But the next morning, it would be a new paediatrician who also felt that we were nearly good to go, and that tomorrow morning would be an ideal time to leave. Every day, a new paediatrician offering the same retreating horizon.

  On Day Five of our stay, Litvinenko died. The hospital was in uproar. Cameras everywhere, everyone checking their beverages for polonium. The matter had escalated into the most serious diplomatic scandal since the Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov was murdered while walking over the Waterloo Bridge in 1978 by secret police, who shot a ricin pellet into his leg by means of a sharpened umbrella.

  The chances of our receiving our discharge papers seemed slight. Jeremy and I felt as though we were trapped in our own Soviet bureaucratic tangle. Would we grow old in this tiny curtained room? We waited for night to fall, and then we just left. Packed up our things and our baby, strolled out of the hospital’s entrance, past the media throng, hopped aboard the N5 bus, and went home. Nobody noticed. We were free. Tired, useless, and probably technically on the run from a range of health and child protection services, but free.

  The Flaming Guitar

  Steve Lucas

  I NEVER ASPIRED TO be a musician. At age nineteen I didn’t have anything much by way of aspirations at all. I could play a handful of open chords on an old classic guitar my uncle had bought me, and that was about it. I had written one song, ‘Movin’ On’, about the loss of an imagined girlfriend, and co-written a turgid ballad with my school friend Ian Krahe, called ‘The A Minor Blues’. The rest of my repertoire was a bluff. It is amazing how many songs you can fumble your way through with three or four chords. I had committed to memory maybe forty-odd songs within a few months of toil and struggle. I owed the achievement to a photocopied handbook of songs for buskers that seemed able to boil down the most complex songs to three basic chords and, I confess, I had a gift for remembering lyrics and melody. I referred to it as my ‘phonogaphic’ memory.

  In 1977 I found myself the lead singer of a band called X. We were part of a growing punk scene in Sydney, kind of picking up where that hard-rocking, seminal punk powerhouse of a band Radio Birdman had left off. Our fans were fanatical, at times carving Xs into their flesh, at other times content to just smash everything in sight. We were banned from thirty-two pubs and venues in Sydney but still managed to get by. The Stagedoor Tavern, The Bondi Lifesaver and Civic Hotel didn’t mind the chaos. Our crowds were the hardest drinkers in town, and the pubs took more than enough over the bar to cover the damage done. It gave me a great deal of pleasure to get up and blow a gasket while barking out cynical and satirical lyrics and generally trying to make myself heard over the musical barrage of bass, thundering of drums and the screaming guitar.

  That first incarnation of X was, to me, the definitive X. It featured Ian Rilen on bass, Steve Cafiero on drums and my best friend, Ian Krahe, was the guitarist. We recorded a bunch of demo tapes in 1977 that ended up under someone’s bed. The ‘lost tapes’ were finally unearthed and released as X-Spurts in 2011. We did another session at the Australian Film and Television School as part of a contra deal, and this session in a ‘real’ 24-track studio. It was eventually released as a seven-inch vinyl EP called Hate City in 2000.

  What made X so popular? When you are in a band you never get to see or feel what the audience does. All you get to do is hear it. We had an ex-cop on drums, a former window dresser on bass and two rebellious high-school drop-outs as lead guitar and lead singer. Chemistry! Ian Rilen and Steve Cafiero had been in well-known bands for at least ten years before X came along. Ian Krahe and I were pretty green, relatively untried, but full of attitude.

  My early musical career had been limited to school choirs. But at age fifteen, under the most inauspicious circumstances, I became the lead singer for a band of no-name misfits from Granville Boys High. I’d been yanked out of one of the most prestigious schools in Sydney – Fort Street Boys High – and dumped into possibly the worst high school in New South Wales at that time. I was left there to fester for a year. It felt like ten. My mother had remarried and given birth to two sons, to add to my sister and me, and it was decided we needed a bigger house. The only place that we could afford was in Merrylands, a dull, flat suburb somewhere in Sydney’s outer west. I was uprooted, re-zoned and very angry.

  Granville Boys High was like an open detention centre for delinquent boys. Fights involving bike chains in the ‘playgrounds’ were not uncommon. Teachers fought a losing battle against our well-defended and predetermined ignorance. Classrooms were battle zones. Teachers were targets. Granville was the first high school to have its students go on strike: we collectively refused to cut our hair to the regulation one inch above the collar. Fail to comply and you would be caned. If that didn’t work, you were suspended. If you still refused to obey, expulsion was the end of it. Ironically, Fort Street got all the attention when the students there went on strike in sympathy.

  I fell in with a bunch of guys who were into music and studied it as an elective. I used to sit in class tapping out rhythms to songs that were on constant rotation in my head, and one of the guys heard me and asked hopefully if I played drums. I said no, but I liked to sing. This was a good thing because, even though they happened to need a drummer, they also needed someone who could really sing, as opposed to simply going through the motions. I was asked to audition, and I suddenly found myself in the school band. I was christened J.C. after John C. Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival, thanks to my similar profile, haircut and flannelette shirt. These guys were fourteen going on fifteen and were serious about music. Everyone had a nickname and symbol, though these days it would be considered a tag. Spuddy T. and Danny Hoot Freakly were real characters. They were studying sax, clarinet and piano but teaching themselves bass and guitar.

  It wasn’t long before a fellow named John Connelly offered me the chance to buy his guitar. He was trading up and was willing to sell his no-name semi-acoustic guitar for the princely sum of twelve dollars. It had a floating scratch plate, a single pick-up, and a volume knob and a tone knob. None of which mattered because I didn’t have an amp. But it was a guitar. First up, I needed some cash. My stepfather got me a gig working part-time sweeping the floors at a timber mill. That was fine, but he kept introducing me to everyone as his son, John. My name was Stephen. I was confused at first but then decided he probably did have a son called John, since he had been married before, and maybe he hadn’t got around to telling anyone at his work that he had divorced and remarried. Okay, I had an active imagination!

  I saved my dollars and bought the guitar one sunny day in 1973. Sometime around then my stepfather disappeared. He went to work one day and didn’t come back. We never saw him again. That left my mother to cope with two toddlers and two teenagers. They were tough times, and I found some comfort in my guitar. I’d sit on the roof of our home and play for hours on end. Sometimes I’d serenade my mother, trying to cheer her up. This was back in the time of no single mother’s pensions, in fact, no government support at all.

  One day, after seeing a photo
of John Lennon’s white piano, I decided I wanted my guitar to be pure white. I put some serious hours into planning how I might go about this transformation. I managed to acquire some thinners, turpentine and other highly flammable ingredients to strip the varnish. After some thought, I decided the laundry was the best place to perform the operation. It was a fibro box with a cement floor that was attached to the back end of the house, out in the backyard. It was fitted out with a door, one window, a double sink, a washing machine, and a gas hot-water system. It was perfect – private, relatively dust-free and conveniently childproof. Plus, there was running water to wash with. I laid a few old towels on the floor in preparation. I had thought of everything. Then with surgical precision, I selected the tools I would need: screwdrivers, scrapers and whatnot. Carefully, I removed anything that was attached to the guitar – screws, machine heads, the scratch plate, the pick-ups and other odd bits and pieces – and put them neatly into a box.

  It was a fine summer’s day. A cloudless blue sky arched over suburbia, giving me a sense of quiet, reflective protection. I enclosed myself in the laundry and began work. I brushed the thinners, coat after coat, over the varnish of the guitar. It was hot work with the window jammed shut and the door closed to keep out dust and grit and anyone who might interfere with my work in process. Coat after coat after coat, I applied. The varnish began to turn into a jelly-like, glutinous, viscous, sticky goo. It seemed to be attaching itself to me and my clothing like the Blob. My head started spinning. I was getting high from the fumes. The fumes …

  I should have opened the door or window – just an inch would have helped. Instead, I fixed my focus on the task at hand. I was now liberally pouring thinners and turps all over the guitar to try to wash away the gooey scum that seemed to be covering everything.

  Of course, it was inevitable. The fumes had nowhere to go and the pilot light for the gas hot water was primed to ignite. I worried away at the guitar, oblivious to the danger, when suddenly, without warning, there was a silent explosion. Sort of an inverted whoomp! Almost a non-sound. The atmosphere in the laundry instantly converted into a ball of flame. It blew me through the door, knocking it off its hinges, and hurled me out and down the steps and onto the grass of the backyard.

  Panic is a private thing with me; I panic silently. My head cleared, and I ran back up the stairs to see everything in the laundry aflame. Black smoke hung in the air, covering the walls and fixtures. I was still panicking silently, but only just. I grabbed the garden hose. We had good water pressure, and for a moment I dared to hope. I turned the hose onto the laundry in a desperate effort to put out the fire. It was futile. That glutinous, viscous, sticky goo was like napalm. It floated on the streams of water and began to flow like lava down the laundry steps. I could see my guitar burning. I had to save it. I ran in, grabbed the head stock and flung it out into the yard. To my horror the flaming goopy goo shot off it in clumps like meteorites, hitting the back fence, and happily started burning like it was sitting down to the main course. I screamed, all notions of quiet panic gone, and gave my full attention to the fence, having decided the laundry was lost anyway. I got the fence under control with the hose, then turned my attention to the laundry and its contents. Water was not helping, what to do? Aha! Smother the flame!

  I turned off the hose and with a hop, skip and a jump over the flames, I grabbed some towels from the washing machine and used them to smother the fiery rivulets streaming down the steps. I stomped on the towels, turning them over and over, mopping up the water and thinners as well as blanketing the fire itself. I kept at it until I had the fire totally put out. I was exhausted but there was no time to rest. I knew if my mother saw this, she would freak. I surveyed the damage. It was then that I realised I could smell something funny. Other than the clinging fumes and turpentine. I looked down and saw that all the hairs on my arms had been burnt off. A trip to the bathroom and the mirror revealed that my eyebrows had shriveled and my hair was singed and smoking. I hosed myself down outside and stood there, immune to the beauty of the day. I could hear a pounding in my ears. Apart from the door, any harm done appeared to be mostly cosmetic. Smoke damage. I took heart and began scrubbing the blackened walls and ceiling. After I had soaped and scrubbed for what felt like forever, I used the hose to wash away the sad grey suds. I packed the screw holes in the door jamb and reattached the door. I’d have to repaint it, but that could wait. I cleaned and primed the water system, and then turned my attention to the washing machine. For a moment I felt like a hero. Then I remembered my guitar.

  It lay there on the grass, a mottled, smoldering ruin, in the middle of our sunny, green backyard. The charred neck and body were basking in the sun, catching some rays. My whole being centered on the carcass of my guitar. Fury and rage built up in me over all that had just happened. The fact my stepfather had disappeared, leaving me at age fifteen to be ‘the man of the house’. Again! I felt anger at my mother for marrying two losers. Anger at the violence that plagued the school I was forced to attend. Anger at the school rules! I was angry with the whole goddamn world! I picked up a mattock, strode purposely to the hapless instrument and hacked and pounded and smashed it into a thousand or more splinters. Then I hit it some more. When I finally exhausted myself, numbly I gathered them up, all the shards, bits and pieces, and dropped them, without ceremony, into the bin.

  I got teased when I went back to school. But my hair grew out and my eyebrows grew back. I still sang with the band. I started playing truant. Never one for doing homework, I now ceased altogether. Something had changed. There was a new defiance in my walk, a new attitude in my vocal delivery. A threatening bitterness that kind of scared and thrilled my band mates. Days faded in and out. We rehearsed and chased girls. We broadened our taste in music. As the year moved towards its inevitable end, word got out that we really did sound okay. Good enough, in fact, to be asked to perform at school for the sixth form’s (year 12) farewell dinner. We accepted. It felt good. We lulled the teachers into a false sense of security with songs like ‘Father and Son’ by Cat Stevens and other gentle acoustic numbers. Then as the sixth form guys started to get restless, we launched into ‘Aqualung’ by Jethro Tull. Taking great satisfaction in sneering out lyrics about a dirty old man sitting on a park bench dressed in shabby clothes. Revelling in the description of his greasy fingers and snot running down his nose as he watched the little girls run. Before we could be stopped, we chugged into ‘Locomotive Breath’ from the same album. Ah, the pleasure to be found singing to your headmaster and teachers about winners and losers and just who has who by the balls. The headmaster was red in the face. Teachers were up in arms. The prefects and sixth formers were as one, laughing maniacally. We ploughed on, hastening to the end of the set before they shut us down completely. The last song of the night was Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke On the Water’. I could see myself with a flare gun burning down the school. I swear my eyes were blazing as we burned through that song. We took and held the night. Fuck the guitar! You can do so much more with a voice.

  That year saw the end of the suburban dream. Things had all gone to hell at home. My mother had a breakdown. My father had disowned my sister and me. It fell to my grandfather to bail us out. He found a place for us in Ashfield, a comfortable kind of suburb in Sydney’s inner west.

  My uncle, in a very generous act of kindness and understanding, bought me a beautiful classic guitar. It wasn’t the same, but I appreciated the thought. How do you play rock’n’roll on a nylon-string guitar? I was reinstalled at Fort Street Boys, but I was a year behind and had no interest in catching up. The damage was done. I got kicked out of high school by year 10 and was advised not to enroll in any other secondary school in the state of New South Wales. I got a job in a car yard detailing and washing the new and used vehicles. I lost contact with the gang from Granville but stayed in touch with my friends, the few I had, at Fort Street. Eventually most of them dropped out too. Was it my fault or influence? I can’t say.

  I le
ft the city. Went up north to a town called Armidale. A sleepy little town with ten churches and ten pubs. It was home to a teachers college and university. The youth of the town by far outnumbered the old. It was relaxed and easy going. Kind of like the last stand of the hippy generation it had just missed out on being a part of. I carved bowls out of soapstone to use in bongs. I dropped acid, smoked pot and listened to records. I played my nylon-string guitar around campfires. I hitchhiked around, picking fruit and doing nothing much in particular. Life was a dream. No matter how sweet the dream, sooner or later you got to wake up – or be woken up.

  What can I say? My wake-up call came in the form of a telegram. Destiny intervened and had chosen my closest friend, Ian Krahe, to deliver it.

  ‘New band. Bring voice. Love Nia.’

  I thought I was ready for anything. Little did I know …

  Boo

  Juanita Phillips

  DO YOU BELIEVE in ghosts?

  I never used to. Until I lived in a house on the northern beaches that was teeming with them.

  Now, even if you don’t believe in ghosts, please note this was in Sydney, so I know you’re going to like or at least be scared of the real estate side of it. Let me tell you about this house.

  It was built by a famous architect called Keith Cottier, in the 1960s. It was typical of what was known as the Sydney School of architecture. Imagine three big modern cubes, running down the side of a steep hill, overlooking the water and surrounded by towering spotted gum trees. The three cubes were connected by a central staircase, with rooms running off each side, and the kitchen and living areas were down the bottom. Remember the staircase – it’s important.