A D V E N T U R E S   in   C Y B E R S O U N D

Today, our kitchen radio crackles and I remember your crystal set, its antenna running around jarrah fences, under the grapevine's twisty tendrils, behind the flapping banana leaves ...

And in that backyard, by the circular barbecue of coloured stones, your yacht collected rain where weeping willow leaves and leeches created their own environment.

We hadn't heard the word then. We hadn't heard the Poms were exploding bombs at Maralinga, we only heard Bob Menzies speaking more British than Royalty: reds under beds, the yellow peril.

Memory is like an old marbles bag found in an attic: Long Point, Mr Rushton's Perfume Factory, the running boards of Dad's Pilot V8, Mum's Agatha Austin, your first Vespa ...

Now the information superhighway Internet has replaced your crackling crystal set, and we are the fathers who complain of power and phone bills.

We have come through an age, and await our medals, looking to the daily mail or the next phone-call to praise us, but hear nothing.

So I praise us as brothers, as sons, as fathers, I praise the daily male in us that we have come through these harrowing decades of change with our humour and wonder intact.

Buddha said "All things must pass": we are still in the passageway, laughing.

Source: Andrew Burke

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