Gone but not forgotten

Have you read the opening paragraph of Charlie Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities'? It's a pearler! From memory is goes something like this, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was an age of wisdom, it was an age of foolishness............" And it goes on like that for a page or two. You get the drift though eh? Its all about contrast. How you can love your kids above anything else one minute & want to throttle them the next. How your business 'phone can ring too much & not enough all in the same week. How your life can be crap and funny at the same time. How a trip away in a helicopter can be fear & favour all rolled into one.

I've seen it before. The day I turned forty was interesting. It became obvious to me that my very excellent 15 year career as a TAFE physics teacher was about to go belly up. The writing was on the wall, I figured on maybe a year or two at most to find something else to do with a working life. I had a mortgage, a five year old about to start school, and a wife off work with a new baby. There was this little part time bit of entrepreneurial activity I was involved with, horsing around with radio controls, but it was just bringing in petrol money.

We decided to go out for my birthday, that is after I reminded the wife it WAS my birthday. Nothing fancy, just the four of us. I remember thinking hard on the drive to the restaurant about what my next move income wise would be. I recall that by the time we parked I still had not thought of anything. As we walked to the eatery I spotted my brother-in-laws car parked opposite. I pointed the coincidence out to my lady, she just smiled. Then I spotted another set of rego plates I knew, then another. It was surreal, like I was walking through this dream populated entirely by the vehicles of acquaintances. When we got to our destination the lobby was full of friends & family. A sea of familiar, happy faces (well almost, I did not recognise the stripper). I drifted through them mesmerised, a real out-of-body experience. It's a type of sensory overload, where you get hit between the eyes with the unexpected and the brain lapses into a type of aloof 'observer only' mode in an attempt to get a handle on the situation.............

Captains log, star date Port Douglas-point-gearbox-point-wheels. I was having the time of my life. I was so far north of my business telephone that I could not hear the dam thing ring, even in my dreams. We had just finished tearing around the Daintree in helicopters, roaring across virgin rainforest like scout craft from a mother ship checking out a brave new world. "Your mission Juliet November Mike is to gobble up as much tree canopy as possible at the lowest altitude imaginable, taking as much time as you like." The perfect brief, carte blanche fun in spades. It was on the run back to Port Douglas that the little alarm bell in that lives in the back of my head started tinkling. "This", the bell told me, "is when things happen, when everything is going SOooo swimmingly". "Don't let your guard down", it tinkled, " 'cause that is when shit happens. How long has it been since that gearbox light came on last & what's going on back there behind your head anyway? Is it just harmless fluff or is the main drive train about to grind itself to scrap"!

So it was with a head full of what might & might not be that we put down, tired but happy, on a little strip amidst a sugar crop in far north Queensland. I was musing on the incongruity of the bunch of hangared ultralights there, hidden from view, tucked in amongst the cane, when a chauffeur driven stretched limo glided effortlessly & silently into the clearing. Unannounced, unexpected, long, white & gleaming the machine purred silently in amongst our weary group & stopped. It just sat there, enigmatic with its tinted windows, big motor ticking over, like a conveyance for the after life. Earlier in the trip we had crossed the river Styx south of Mackay, and for a moment I pondered whether this might not be my ride into the next world. I pinched myself. This car in this place was just so unreal I got that weird far away feeling again, that I was there in spirit only, simply to bear witness to these off beat events. Borrowing a line from young Lennon, "most peculiar mumma" I thought to myself, "strange days indeed"!

I got jolted back to reality when Bruce, Val & a few others started piling into the car. I stood there in the afternoon twilight, watching the camera flashes fire as they took photographs of themselves in the sumptuous interior. Then, with darkened windows still radiating intermittent iridescent white flashes, the ride cruised out of sight through the tall bamboo like sugar plants, leaving me standing there with my thoughts in the encroaching darkness. Thirty seconds of Alice-in-wonderland activity and it was gone. Suddenly the distant feeling washed over me again. That I was somehow a spectator to these events but not part of them. I shivered, grabbed my bags and the waiting taxi that had pulled in. And in the twinkling of an eye I was gone too!