This is for spring and hail, that you may remember: for a boy long ago and a pony that could fly.
Les Murray Spring and Hail
http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/murray-les/spring-hail-0560007
I really liked this poem, I learnt it in 2 unit English at High School. So my horrible high school education at Port Hacking High School wasn’t a complete disaster after all.
Yowie Bay Primary and Infants.
A love of running came natural to me from an early age. After a day at Infants school I often ran all the way home. Sprinting along Kiora Road, the speed building, the sound of the wind rushing around my ears. It seemed like I was flying like the boy and pony in Les Murray’s poem.
I was always good at running without any training at all. At Yowie Bay Primary School we used to have running races at lunch time. Ten laps around the school. I always won those races and by a long way. I guess some of the other children got bored with this, so then we started having team races, which I didn’t like as much, because I didn’t win all the time.
At the end of a visit from my Aunty, Uncle and Cousins. I’d sprint off down Kiwong Street and try to race my uncle’s car: a white Holden Premiere with red bucket seats. I’d try to get as far as I could before it overtook me.
On holidays I can remember standing at Echo Point in the Blue Mountains and looking out over that endless bushland way below, and wondering what it would like to be able to run and explore forever. Same thing at Carrs Park bushland near Oatley. I wanted to explore, and the longer the better.
A year without running in it, is a wasted year.
At Port Hacking High School I lost interest in sport. Well to be honest I lost interest in everything at that place, and I lost trust in people altogether for a long while. I competed in the school cross country races, and I’d usually make the Zone or Area without any running training just natural fitness and by playing other sports such as touch football. I played cricket and soccer for a while, but I wasn’t any good at these sports, I was best at running. I wished I’d trained more, it is something I regret now, and I blame Port Hacking High School for this. I see the local kids around Coffs training and really enjoying their running, and I think it is wonderful that they are living in a such a positive environment.
Greg Hartley inspired running resurgance
I made my return to running in Year 12 of High School. I’d started supporting the Cronulla Sharks in their quest for a premiership. I went to every game 1978 and 1979. When the Sharks were robbed by questionable refereeing in the 1978 Grand Final and replay, I was angry and gave up on the Sharks. So I can thank “Hollywood” Greg Hartley the Grand final referee and his inability to count to 8 for my return to running.
When I got off the train at Miranda station, I’d take out the anger of the Sharks losing a rugby league match, by running hard all the way home to Kiwong Street about one mile. I decided that following a sporting team was frought with disappointment and uncertainty. You are reliant on your team performing well, the result is out of your control. Not so with running, you can control how you run.
I also remember some of the other kids in my year used to go Sutherland Cross Country races. They were beating me in the local school cross country races. I knew that if I trained I would probably beat them in races, and so I did in a year or two, but then I’d left high school. One night I lay awake, and I stared ay my ceiling and dreamed: I might be a really good at running if I trained for it. It was one of those thoughts that turned into a dream and turned into an enjoyable running career, that ended too soon with injury.
Turning the tables on the bullies.
Through running I began to rebuild some to the self esteem I’d lost during my years at Port Hacking High School. I was good at something running: the teasing and character assassination was not true, it didn’t define me when I ran. Running, I knew I was good at it, no bully could stop me believing that. Although I’ve never really recovered from that time at high school, and some of what I am going through now is a result of that time.
One night some of the local thugs tried to run after me. They used to torment the neighbours like poor Mrs Matthews. In one of the bravest or perhaps silliest moments of my life I turned and sprinted towards the head bully. I think all the anger of being teased and physically abused at high school just welled to the surface then and I was going to get the bastards. I was bigger, I was older, I was fit and fast and I would not be intimidated.
They looked at me, sprinting towards them and thought what is this crazy coot up to? One by one they turned and ran away from me, parting like the red sea, leaving only the ring leader. He stopped running looking to his left and right for support from his mates, but they were all gone. He took a look at me, and he must’ve sensed the rage and intent in my fast stride and clenched fists.
And then he turned and ran for his life. Not very quickly, because he was fat. I let him go, because I am not a violent person.
Other local groups of hoods chased after me at times, most commonly outside Carmen’s night club. I gave them the one fingered salute when they swore at me. A short pursuit would follow, until I hurdled the median strip, and put in a 3 minute kilometre. That freedom to run fast was so liberating.
Like Spring and hail
Running from Gymea to Miranda on President’s Avenue felt like flying, like that boy and pony, and spring and hail. It was slightly downhill, and I would just get up on my toes and go hard. I ran at night, my eyes half closed, feeling the exhilaration of speed and momentum. I was out running in the shadows, a ghostly form gliding on a mysterious journey, an adventurous spirit moving beyond the reach of conservative suburbia. I felt somehow set apart from the occupants of that suburban sprawl settling into couches glued to the tedium of the one-eyed TV god. Sometimes I’d bump into the webs of orb weaving spiders, and ocassionally I spotted a fox crossing the road near the old Quarry at Kirrawee.
I wish I was there now, and I could run along Kiwong Street, knock on the door, which would be opened by Mum and Dad and go inside. I wonder if they would forgive me for losing my way, of not living well, of becoming angry and directionless, of finding it difficult to express or reciprocate the unconditional love they had for me. I know that high school stuffed me when I was unable to even open up completely and even trust my parents. Of course they would forgive me, parents forgive their children for everything.
Postscript
I wrote this on Saturday morning before leaving for the country championships, and then I deleted it. Maybe I need only to write this sort of post for my own benefit. Sometimes I write these sort of posts when my anxiety is bad, when my thoughts go at a million miles an hour, and I can’t keep up with them. It’s always intense, sometimes creative, sometimes not, but honest.
