Good on Ya Mum, Tip Tops the One!

 

Right van, wrong person!
(Funny how I could find only ONE matching GOOGLE image when
searching for what was then such a ubiquitous image in the 1960s)

 

Remember when bread was delivered to your door in a bright-red TIP TOP delivery van? Those cute-looking vans were as much part of the Canberra streetscape in the 1960s as were the milk floats and the posties on their red bikes, blowing a whistle as they delivered their mail.

I even sat in one of those bright-red TIP TOP vans by invitation of its driver who was at the time living at Barton House, the same boarding house that has had such a huge influence on me during my formative first two years in Australia and about which I have written more here.

How we ran into each other and what his name was is lost in the mist of time, but I must've looked as forlorn to him then as he now in retrospect looks to me, because he was then already something of a middle-aged bloke with a weather-beaten face who would have looked far less out of place driving a bulldozer than a little van delivering bread door to door.

While I was just starting to claw my way up in life, he may have already been on the way down, and holding on to what he had left by driving that little van. I worked only five days a week with the ANZ Bank, but his deliveries included Saturdays, and so, rather than sitting idly on the front steps of Barton House, I'd hop into the passenger seat and keep him company, as he made his rounds through the suburbs of Canberra.

I remember one particular Saturday morning when he didn't show up. I roughly knew the whereabouts of his room and, after knocking on a couple of doors, opened his and saw him sprawled rather listlessly on his bed. He didn't seem to be in the mood to do his rounds after what might've been a heavy night out before, but I soon disabused him of the notion that staying in bed was the right decision - in rather more basic English than I am using now - and it wasn't long before we were on the way to pick up his deliveries and do the rounds of the suburbs again.

Maybe my intervention in still broken English on that Saturday morning stopped him from getting the sack from a job that held the last vestiges of his former life, and that his future life took a turn for the better. None of us ever know what worse luck our bad luck did save us from.

People in boarding houses are like ships passing in the night: they are all on their way through to somewhere better, and so it was with me not long afterwards. I don't even think I said my good-byes, not to him and not to the many others I ever so briefly befriended in that sad place.

I still think of him sometimes - nameless as he forever shall remain - whenever I hear that old TV jingle "Good on Ya Mum, Tip Tops the One!"

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

The Haunted Bookshop

 

 

When you sell a man a book", says Roger Mifflin, protagonist of these classic bookselling novels by Christopher Morley, "you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue you sell him a whole new life."

With "The Haunted Bookshop", Christopher Morley continues the story of the bookseller from "Parnassus on Wheels", Roger Mifflin, whose character underlines the wisdom and knowledge to be gained from literature and makes allusions and references to many famous works.

With a deep respect for the art of bookselling, and as much flair for drama as romance, he crafted another lively, humorous tale for book lovers everywhere. If you are a booklover, both "Parnassus on Wheels" and "The Haunted Bookshop" are a must to read.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Alan Smith was right

 

 

When I set up the Bougainville Copper Project website way back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I had in mind the four-thousand-plus expat workers who built the mine, the mine access road, the port and power-house, and the Arawa township, and who cooked the meals, ran the camps, bashed away on typewriters or, as I did, ticked and flicked the hundreds of progress claims by contractors working for the construction managers Bechtel Corporation.

Given that all that happened in the early 1970s when the workers' average age was under 30, those who haven't succumbed to the booze and other occupational hazards would now be octogenarians like me whose failing memory or lack of computer skills prevents them from responding to my website. All the more reason, therefore, to welcome the odd email that still does come in, or the even rarer phone call, or the rarest of all, an unexpected turn-up at the gates of "Riverbend".

When that happens, we talk and talk and talk, about Loloho, Camp 1, the early days of the mine access road, the then seemingly metropolitan delights of Kieta, and fifty years disappear in a cloud of memories. We feel we are again in our twenties when it was always morning, when time was endless, and we and the world were young and full of hope.

We agree that those years on what was then the world's largest construction project to become the world's largest open-cut mine have been the best years of our lives when we gained experiences and formed friendships that would last us for the rest of our lives.

Alan Smith, who worked in BCL's IT Department in the "civilised" later years of 1986 and 1987, and also authored the BCL Blues (no contender for "Hot August Night"), was right when he wrote, "... that special place in my heart grows with the time that passes since we were there."

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Regrettable regrets

 

 

Remember the scene at the end of the film Casablanca in which Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergmann are standing on the tarmac as she tries to decide whether to stay in Casablanca with the man she loves or board the plane and leave with her husband?

Bogey turns to Bergmann and says: "Inside we both know you belong with Victor. You're part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon and for the rest of your life."

Regret is an emotion we feel when we blame ourselves for unfortunate outcomes that might have been prevented had we only acted differently in the past, and yet studies show that people regret inactions more than actions. Why is this so?

Well, one reason is that our psychological immune system has a more difficult time manufacturing positive and credible views of inactions than of actions. When our past action caused an unfortunate outcome, we can console ourselves by thinking of all the things we learned from the experience. But with inaction we can't console ourselves by thinking of all the things we learned from the experience because ... well, there wasn't one. The irony is all too clear: because our psychological immune system can rationalise an excess of courage more easily than an excess of cowardice, we ought to just blunder ahead.

Which is exactly what I have always done. And, yes, I have plenty of regrets but they are all regrets of actions, not inactions. So perhaps I am ahead of all those who hedged their bets, who never left their hometowns, who never left their safe jobs, and who never took any chances.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Hier war ich Stammkunde

 

 

Dieses Foto der Braunschweiger Stadtbücherei ist vielleicht sogar älter als ich, aber so sah sie dennoch aus als ich sie damals als Junge in den späten 50er und frühen 60er Jahren immer sehr regelmäßig besucht hatte.

An die Bücher durfte man gar nicht selbst ran. Man mußte sich durch Schubladen voll mit Karteikarten durchwühlen um die Titel und Autoren der Bücher aufzuschreiben die man leihen wollte. Dann ging man mit der Liste zur Dame am Tresen die diese Bücher von den Regalen holte.

 

 

Manchmal waren die gewünschten Bücher schon verliehen oder sie waren für Jugendliche 'verboten'. Außerdem durfte man nur drei Büchern leihen und alle mußten von verschiedenen Sachgruppen sein. Also nicht gleich alle drei von Karl Mays "Winnetou I", "Winnetou II" und "Winnetou III".

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. Meine damaligen Bücher waren Erich Maria Remarque "Im Westen Nichts Neues"; Heinz Helfgen "Ich Radle Um Die Welt"; "Albert Schweitzer Baut Lambarene"; Heinrich Böll "Wanderer, Kommst Du Nach Spa ..." Und beim Groschenverleih an der Okerbrücke gab es noch die endlosen "G-Man Jerry Cotton" Schmöker. Wer erinnert sich noch an die? Vor einigen Jahren entdeckte ich einen ganzen Stapel von diesen billigen Schmökern in einem Altwarengeschäft in Cairns im Norden von Australien und hätte sie aus Heimweh fast gekauft aber meine Frau die kein Deutsch spricht sagte ab.