He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.

Art is all around us. Home, Geilston Bay. September 2011.

Just the one book completed this week – Stalin Ate My Homework – Alexei Sayle's bittersweet memoir of a Communist Liverpudlian upbringing. Essentially a collection of vignettes comprising of events and memories loosely catalogued in chronological order.

In many respects, Stalin Ate My Homework is a tale of a boy and his parents. Joe – who worked on the railways and was a solid union man – and Molly – a foul mouthed red-haired firebrand who also spoke Yiddish. Although they were not the only Jewish atheist communist family in Liverpool, they were probably the most colourful.

The book is really an account of how comedian Alexi came to be. His childhood was one of ideological rigour coupled with a little bit of fun. This usually meant an outing to see Alexander Nevsky rather than the ideologically suspect Bambi, and regular visits across the iron curtain (often involving tours of factories or sites of Nazi atrocities).

As you might expect, every tale is accompanied by a joke and touch of surrealism. This is a good read. Recommended.

Comments

Roddy said…

My hopes wishes and desires for my children are coming true. My health hopes and desires for myself have bourne fruit. I believe I have everything I should ever want.

16 September 2011 at 17:10

Kris McCracken said…

BAH!

22 September 2011 at 09:41

Roddy said…

Now the ultimate, death to encompass all.
I am prepared to wait a little longer though. About fifty more years.

22 September 2011 at 16:57

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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