least, thats what the Old Londoner told me who didnt learn to relax till well past fifty, seated alongside his two mates: a Norwegian: Youre not the same person now as you were ten years ago. And the Irishman: I like the music its the noise I cant stand. Each one, orphaned & aphoristic, deep into his sixties. NZ born and much younger, I offered: Youre not the same person tomorrow as you were today. And then, To your arrival in Melbourne, they singly toasted. (Great-grandfather, MacCormack, arrived here in 1851 & 26 years later, in 1877, set sail for Dunedin aboard the Ringarooma). So our tale of the two cities unfolded: Sydney is get what you can. Melbourne, what have you got to offer & are we really interested. The afternoon floated by as did the trams with dry, asthmatic rush in this mellow town of bungalows & brass.
Graham Clifford
After THE DUKE HOTELs demolition, (opp. Perretts Corner) one last joke: one DB beer bottle ringed by ten green cabbages
as roseate or wreath for an empty lot. Close by, the mad bucketing fountain of Cuba Mall played on. Meanwhile, at his Manners street
studio above the music shop, Graham Clifford, renowned for his Figaro, ululated profoundly through the scales. A window framed
trolley-bus poles that, tacking, flared bluely along the wire. The maestros voice floated over harbour & city, capital & far-flung country,
far from Covent Garden. A 1930s London partied on amongst black & white photographs plastered to the wall above a battered Steinway.
On Brooklyn hills toi toi waved war plumes to the southerly gusts with unceasing applause. Through a hundred, sunblown wintry afternoons
he coached opera singers, actors, newsreaders, plucked notes off the yellow stained keys: he guided, rolled golden vowels, before them.
Bruno Lawrence