Apart from the two obvious ones, the "Lawrence of Arabia" soundtrack and "Zorba the Greek", my memory of music is compartmentilised by the places I lived in when I first heard it. Marianne Faithfull and "As Tears Go By" take me back to South-West Africa; "Hot August Night" to me will be forever Bougainville; Lobo's "Don't Expect Me To Be Your Friend" will always remind me of Burma; "I Love a Rainy Night" by Eddie Rabbit is my time in Singapore; and "The Power of Love" takes me back to North Sydney and those miserable few months I lived there in mid- to late-1985.
Against my better judgement - which was turned off at the time - I had chucked in my last overseas job, the sort of job that other peeople might have killed for, and suddenly faced the reality of a mediocre Australian salary, and having to pay for everything that had been part of my employment package overseas: house, car, travel, entertainment.
Of course, I hated myself for it, and hating myself deprived me of the one companion I had always relied on, and so I cast around for someone else to regain my balance. Those were the days long before the internet when classified advertisements in the Sydney Morning Herald would still put you in touch with whoever was out there who wanted to spiv you.
I've forgotten the exact wording but in one of those classified adverts something called the "Northside Singles" invited you, after giving them your cheque for twenty dollars, to their next meeting in some hotel up the Pacific Highway, and so I found myself after work one late afternoon face to face and shoulder to shoulder in a no-longer-quite-so-young crowd of people who were all single by choice, just not their own.
I have never been one for small talk, and so I wasn't much of a success despite contributing to the bar takings, of which, I suspect, whoever was behind "Northside Singles" would get their fair cut. I even accepted their flyer and signed up for a subsequent function at a suburban church hall where I encountered for the first time Jennifer Rush's "Power of Love" blaring from a huge set of speakers at the front of the church.
After Jennifer Rush had worked her magic, the organiser, "Mr Northside Singles", as it turned out, then instructed us to face our neighbour and confide in them our innermost thoughts and what we would like to do most. "Getting out of here!" didn't seem like the appropriate response, and so I confided to my neighbour who happened to be female - we had all been seated male-female-male-female for obvious reasons - that what I would most like to do was to return to Townsville which I had left just a few weeks earlier in my desperate search for work. Each one of us was then asked to stand up and report on what our neighbour had only minutes earlier told us in presumably strictest confidence. My preference for living in Townsville barely raised an eyebrow compared to some of the other revelations. Then we were asked to join hands and Jennifer Rush sprang into action again while a large collection plate was passed and the power of money briefly trumped the power of love.
I think I made a mistake by also having completed a registration card because a few days later at work I received a phone call from a man who identified himself as the "Mr Northside Singles" and asked if I would like to join him for lunch at a nearby restaurant. It probably is a fair indication of my loneliness at the time that I actually accepted his "invitation", and so we met for lunch - which, incidentally, I paid for: "Oh no, you shouldn't!" "But I insist!" "Oh well, if you insist, and thank you ever so much!" - towards the end of which he proferred me his ballpoint pen as he pushed a folded piece of paper across the table.
The folded piece of paper turned out to be a standing bank order, and all I had to do was enter my bank account details, circle one of three suggested amounts, and sign on the bottom line. Somehow, my better judgement which had been turned off ever since I had chucked in that wonderful job in Greece, came back to life and I told him I would think about it. Needless to say, the lunch went all downhill from there.
There was, however, a sequel because, despite my lack of social skills during that initial get-together, I had met up with one particular dame whose attraction to me had been the fact that at one time and many years before she had been an air hostess with AIR NIUGINI, a fact which had given us plenty of stuff to talk about during subsequent meetings.
I happened to have some tradesmen inside my apartment to carry out some work in the kitchen while I was at work. An interstate telephone call still cost you the equivalent of dinner for two at a posh restaurant, and so I had disconnected the telephone to keep the tradies honest.
It must've been during those long hours while my phone was "off the hook" so to speak, that this particular dame tried to phone me, not once, not twice, but many times, because as soon as I plugged the phone back in again, almost immediately the very first call was from her, accusing me in a sobbing and quivering voice of avoiding her.
I hadn't but I did then, and I never returned that signed standing bank order either nor gave "Northside Singles" another thought - until now!
