Privelege

Dear Cat and kell

Gahh! I wake from dreams of divorce and abandonment to find I’ve slept dry mouthed through the football after a lush long lunch with Hugh. Don’t you find dreams so irrational? In a wakeful state you’ll fantasise your chances with that girl, in dreams you’ve melded with her mother’s mirror eyes to create a mythological Moravian monster. Thank (Its too easy to thank god or the lord here, but makes little sense to you pagans so I’ll just thank Nigel and explain later) for waking me from these illusions. I’d think that dreams were sent only to torment if it weren’t for those rare times when Nigel allows me to fly. The sensation of launch whether from cliff top, steep downgrade or skate board is worth any number of swampy fruitless searches in pant-less embarrassment. Gliding Google Earth like over Google Maps comes close but can’t yet compare to the free flight sensation experienced by birds and dreamers.

Anyway now as I’m awake it’s a pleasure to see you all through your recent blogs and emails. Gosh it’s jolly to hear from Cat who, if she’s not telling whoppers, is having some bonzer ballyhoo time in Old Blighty. Evening song at York Minster sounds super, check it out Kell I bet they have a lovely bar and I’ll wager Betty’s do scones with lashings of cream and jam. I know you two don’t mind my snide digs for if you did you would lash out at me, oh wouldn’t it be wonderful (thank you JB Shaw), but instead you ignore, clever girls that you are, starving me of oxygen. I should warn you though that age only enhances cynicism and sarcasm so any relief you might hope for can only come with dementia and then you’ll be sorry.

As is its nature on this side, OK the bottom, of the world the weather changed straight from winter to summer this weekend with a transitional night of rain on Saturday. My after lunch sun bathe in Camperdown park reached the unbearable hot stage today forcing me to abandon the troubadour practising Bob Dylan folk songs for his next unwired gig at some festival.

Took my walk down through Camperdown this morning and wound up at Sydney Uni where entering through Sancta Sophia college I found myself on an impromptu tour of privilege. Sophia itself in century old sandstone looks out across a delightfully informal oval with a small rather neglected formal hedged garden to the side. A drive around the building provides privileged parking for twenty odd cars all of modern make all small design all sporting P plates. Next to Sophia another sandstone three story monolith with dormer windows in the roof provides those on its eastern face with share of this oval view but I missed its title which is presumably on the western Missenden road side. Safe to say it shall include the word Saint I wager.

Wesley College requires no Saints and whilst grand in setting it leans away from the Edwardian stone to a combination of brick and stone. Equally impressive it puts me in mind of New York banking about Rockefeller, Morgan vintage. Nearby is St Pauls where the paths and lawns look much smoother than the Road to Damascus and a C of E college whose name I missed the main feature of which was a very strange modern chapel without an entrance. All these residences set me wondering was there any space left for education. Eventually I did stumble onto a lab in a very late twentieth century cheap industrial type building wherein was evidence that here they taught the all important skills of brewing.

All these magnificent edifices dedicated to education, many well over a century old, got me wondering why no one ever pointed out to me as a young man that such grandeur was possible and that maybe girls and image weren’t the most important pursuits of youth. I’m a bit disappointed that the inhabitants of these colleges don’t live up to my expectations and fop around in caps and gowns as their ancestors surely did. Bicycle pants and trackies don’t do it I’m afraid. I don’t think it’s such a big ask to jog in gown and a tennis match in full regalia would be excellent spectator sport. But there I go with image again, will I never learn?

Love you both

Auntie