April 5

A weekend in the mountains feeling manic with joy- the weather has turned to autumn and it was possible to ride all day in the coolness with the air so clear that Sydney was visible from the escarpment, clustered on the horizon like a dream city gone smoky grey with distance. The riding was a fantastic mixture of corrugated firetrail and boulder strewn single track and as I rode down to Bedford Creek, deafened by the sound of trembling and distressed metal, I had a flashback to my childhood and my days as Rattletrap Rosie. This name was given to me by Simeon McGovern, the Christadelphian boy down the road , and now I think of it he was named quite aptly as well since he used to ride hunched over his handlebars like a chimpanzee winning the Tour de France. I developed a crush on him as I did (in my rural pragmatism) on every boy in a ten kilometer radius and now that I try to quantify that I realise there were only three of them - Simeon, Ben DeVries and Hrothgar Brennan. Ben DeVries was the most enduring of these passions, and gave early indications of what would be an abiding interest in short brown men. He was lefthanded and mysterious and it ended in tears before it had begun when I asked my younger brother to request his hand on my behalf and he refused.