(I realised I hadn't posted for some time but being as lazy as I am, I couldn't think of anything new. Here's an old Facebook word-squiggle that I posted a year or so ago...)
I burst through the door to the tiny flat. Since I only had visiting rights to see my Mum every third weekend, bursting through the door was both the meta- and the pre-language of those fear and laughter soaked years.
The view from the balcony took in the Friday night snarl of Devlin Street and the westering sun falling immense and slow beyond the ridge of the black and purple valley of West Ryde. Before the incurable virus of developers. Before the apartment blocks came.
Peter had run away from the Old Man two years earlier just prior to his fourteenth birthday.
With a deft manner, he stole up behind me and put me in a headlock - entirely devoid of malice - that only big brothers the world over seem to know how to achieve with any degree of mastery. Dragged me, wriggling and fumbling, into the room that had belonged to our eldest, John, for a time. But John was back in jail now or off roustabouting with a circus somewhere, dusty and far away.
And since one of our strongest family assizes was that of finders keepers, Peter had wasted no time in putting up Easy Rider and Willy and the Poor Boys posters and claiming the small bedroom for his own. I was still rubbing my neck with a drama and affected injured pride belying my full seven years when Peter clamped a large set of headphones over my ears, gently placed needle to vinyl and a heavily flanged voice informed me that I was the only censor. If i did not like what I heard, I had a choice. I could turn the voice off.
And
Alice Cooper proceeded to write home to mother.
That
afternoon sun set as countless others have done.
But
I remember that one clearest.
