Remembrance

I arrived eleven minutes late to the shrine.

The guns already fired, with poppy wearing figures making a slow return across the Yarra.

When the first shot fired I was  half across a bridge. I'd stopped over a railway line and took off my cycle helmet in awkward reverence, ignoring the endless rattle of the city.

A man near by stopped and looked at his watch, to check his silent pause was on the dot.

I've had less than half an hour of minutes in my life to remember.

As a child it's explained, but now it's understood. Almost.

I arrive and sit on grass near by as a brass band plays 'Waltzing Matilda', somehow somberly.

A smile creeps across my face.

Fast jets shoot by, flaring smoky promises to founding future shrines.

As the jet trails fade, I queue to enter the inner sanctum.

At midday, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month the sun shines on the word 'love', to help us remember.

I hope I can remember this for more than an hour.

To the lighthouse, with a twist.

Today I visited somewhere I've wanted to visit my whole life. You might have already guessed it's a lighthouse. For Virginia Woolf fans [spoiler alert], the twist is that I finally made it.
_______

I have fond memories of growing up in Loughborough. As more distant memories do, they blur into one. When I think of being 6 or 7, my memory is of walking home from primary school. In my head it's usually autumn, and my pockets are full of conkers and other clichés . There was a certain part of the path walking home that always seemed to have a big puddle, and busses would always splash you.

So I'd get home, the central heating would be timed to be on already. A loving parent would be preparing dinner, and, if my sister permitted or was absent, I would get the spot by the radiator and hold my legs against it to dry them out.

My sister and I would sit there, hour after hour, year after year, watching children's television.

Growing up in England as a child your television was either home-grown or American. That was basically it.

However, in the early nineties a new show appeared where everyone had Australian ascents and it always seemed to be sunny. It was called 'Round the Twist'. The music was catchy, the story lines were hilarious, occasionally supernatural, and usually with a firm (but not patronising) moral message. And it was always good. And they lived in a lighthouse.

Ask anyone who grew up in the eighties/nineties if they watched this show and they will sing you the theme tune. It was repeated solidly for over ten years and I think it's probably the best children's' show that's ever been made.

My sister bought me the box set a few years ago and I've watched a few of them recently. They're genuinely still really good and often, much much stranger than I remembered.

This show was my first glimpse at life in Australia. Before it, I knew very few things about the place. For example, the only fact I knew about Australia from the age of four until 11 was that they had bum-biting spiders. From 11 onwards I genuinely thought 'Waltzing Matilda' was the national anthem until I was in my twenties.

I remember that 'Neighbours' was always on after kids TV, but the few times I did stray into it, it was just adults sitting around talking and schools girls in gingham uniforms gossiping. I never lasted more than five minutes.

But 'Round the Twist' was great, and it got me into Paul Jennings (it was based on his books). I devoured his books and also read 'Misery Guts' (by Morris Gleitzman) about an English family that run a chippy that burns down and they decide to move to Australia. It was also made into a great TV series and I guess it was at that age that the seed of the idea of moving to Australia as an escape was sowed.

It's a well trodden narrative and films as recent as the 'Inbetweeners 2' still peddle the idea of it being a sun-soaked heaven on earth for British people.

So today, Alicia and I were driving our car along the Great Ocean Road to the lighthouse from 'Round the Twist'.

As for Virginia Woolf [no one has used square brackets more effectively than her], her book 'To the lighthouse' popped up in my head today for a couple of reasons. It's set during the Great War and paints a painful picture of the good life, just out of reach, and interjects short and powerful reminders throughout [usually in square brackets] that men are being mown down just across the channel. Without meaning to spoil the book, they always talk of going to visit the local lighthouse, but never get round to it. For me, the lighthouse represented the promise of the good life.

On the way to the lighthouse today, we drove through the memorial arch of the Great Ocean Road and were reminded that the road we were driving on was built by returned veterans from the first world war [to give them work] and it is the world's largest war memorial.

Alicia and I took it in turns to drive, so we could both gawp freely at the amazing views and spectacular waves.

And then, in the distance, the lighthouse appeared. A familiar sight from my childhood that has come to represent Australia in my mind.

As I drove there, I decided that not only is the Great Ocean Road the biggest memorial, it's also the most effective. I can't think of a better way to honour those murdered by war than to build a road that doesn't need to exist, just so it can remind you how beautiful life is, and how bloody lucky we are [have you ever, ever felt like this?].

So in wet trousers [by a radiator in England] I set out on a journey and arrived at the lighthouse.