If Life Gives You Lenins

This morning the Bondi sky looked like a wedding dress rolled tearfully in grey ash. Dramatic and interesting, but not something you’d want to contemplate for more than a few minutes. I remember having the same feeling when a friend turned up at my house one day with a badly bruised face. I was startled and impressed by his purplish skin but I didn’t want to dwell too much on the violence that had precipitated his chipped tooth and broken nose. If I was a different friend I might have offered to round up a vigilante posse, but he knew me far too well.

I’ve never punched or been punched, not even at school where every day without fail a thunderous Teen Wolf chant of fight, fight would erupt from an obscure pocket of the playground. I was once labelled a coward for not wanting to join a brawl that had something to do with someone’s lunch being insulted, but I didn’t care. What was more important was keeping my uniform free from unnecessary creases.

Which brings me to another unsurprising revelation: as a child I was inordinately fond of games that didn’t involve bloodshed or bad language.

At family celebrations I would always rush to take charge of my cousin’s toy ironing board and happily steam my way through an afternoon of crushed doll clothes. (‘Silk’ setting, if you must know.)

I had a special outfit that I wore for these occasions which involved a snow white apron and a Florence Nightingale cap, and I was always miffed when the festive lunch took so much time out of my thankless job.

During one interminable Christmas feast when I piped up about a blob of mint sauce that someone had managed to spill on my shirt sleeve, my grandmother turned to me gravely and said I was lucky to have any clothes at all. ‘Some of those African children have to survive barefoot and naked,’ she said.

I must have looked completely unmoved because she took a deep breath and loudly informed my mother that I needed to learn more about gratitude. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I did know that Africa was hot and if those kids wanted to run around in their birthday suits it was probably because they were working up a sweat playing hopscotch.

Okay, okay. So the idea of abject poverty had not yet penetrated my Enid Blyton existence, but that was all about to change.

Around the time I turned ten the underpaid headmistress of my leafy north shore primary school decided that we needed to learn more about the differences between the haves and the have-nots in this world.

Her brilliant Soviet idea was to kill off our cherished Easter Parade (where we were encouraged to garland ourselves with bespoke bonnets and fascinators) and replace it with Hobo Day, a secular celebration I’d never heard of but which apparently involved dressing up as moochers and itinerants.

Despite my advanced vocabulary I still had trouble comprehending what this theme was all about, but when I finally understood that my hobo costume would require frayed pants and a threadbare shirt I became inconsolable and consumed with prepubescent rage. (Think miniature Joan Crawford wielding a wire coat hanger, or a pint-sized Mel Gibson being pulled over again by the Zionist traffic police.)

I was only becalmed when my mother patiently explained that a denim patch (!!) on my corduroy slacks (!!!) could be easily and swiftly removed as soon as this travesty of a celebration was over.

Phew!

But our bleeding heart headmistress wasn't satisfied with a modest parade down Lenin Boulevard, she wanted a hobo feast as well. At recess she handed out cupfuls of pancake batter that we were supposed to cook using only a tin can and a tea candle. Are you fucking kidding me? Is this how the downtrodden do brunch?

At some point I think I must have slipped quietly away from the other Children of the Thunderdome because my lasting memory is of sitting alone in the classroom quietly enjoying a piece of iced orange cake that my mother had baked that very morning. I know what you're thinking, it all sounds very Marie Antoinette, but at least the peasants outside weren’t going hungry or throwing Bastille punches at my porcelain cheeks.