Rehearsal

Many years ago, in the long ago times of dish-pan hands and iced-coffee banana shakes with three scoops of ice-cream, a time before gluten-and-dairy intol­er­ance, a time before it seemed I knew any­thing about weight loss. It was a time of Oak shakes — coffee and spear­mint — bought from the store in Chats­wood Chase. It was a time of glee­ful visits to eat cin­na­mon buns and drink coffee after school with my best friend, when stay­ing out until 4.30pm seemed like the world’s greatest indul­gence and so wicked.

Before drugs and 6am late night returns speed­ing around that end­less curve off the Har­bour Bridge back to the North Shore… but that’s get­ting ahead of the story here.

There’s some­thing glit­tery bright about Chats­wood nos­tal­gia. The idea of priv­ilege and of how unbe­liev­ably priv­ileged we were hadn’t really kicked in at all yet. Glass sky­scrapers and career­ing through the mall, hanging out in the record shops and pick­ing up the Aria chart to see what lyrics were prin­ted on it this week.

It was a time before the instant lookup, a time of mas­tery and trivia and cut­ting faces out of magazines and stick­ing them on to our folders. Where the awk­ward crush on Tim Freed­man (singing songs about Orange Chupa Chups long, long before he was famous) was com­plic­ated by the fact that the gui­tar­ist in his band was your friend’s brother and that someone might tell…

There’s no con­veni­ent round­ing up of sus­pects here. No one is kissed and swept off into the sunset. It’s just moments of free­dom, flashes of rehearsal for life before expect­a­tion descended.