Doors

 April 20 Word of the Day: Doors

 

The door into the bathroom promises steam and perfume.

 

The door into the garden grows green as sun revisits.

 

The doors of the car are shields.

 

The door to the café bursts forth good gossip and old soul music.

 

The door to the club is boarded up with agonised graffiti.

 

The door without hinges opens with a light beam.

 

The door of good turns welcomes every stranger.

 

The door you meet you don’t read about in books.

 

The door piled halfway up with softening autumn leaves.

 

The door of the quaint news-stand half-open all day.

 

The door surrounded by a halo.

 

The door of the glass hothouse a massy swirl of hydrangeas.

 

The door improved by brass numbers screwed into place.

 

The doors bending inwards into old class trams.

 

The door where secrets go and snib the lock.

 

The door where one thought leads to another and another.

 

The door in the tireless street of daily occurrence.

Quatrain

 April 19 Word of the Day: Quatrain

 

Quantities of Quatrains

 

Reaching out he seized the world,

Sunrise, cities, passions, dreams,

But all his wild and wanton words

Finished up in little magazines.

 

Bastard

 April 18 Word of the Day: Bastard

 

Read today ‘Bastards and Buggers’, an article by Simon Musgrave and Kate Burridge (2014), leading with this epigraph: “Which one of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?” Their footnote reads: “Allegedly uttered by Australian cricket captain Bill Woodfull during the Bodyline series of 1932-3 in response to the English captain Douglas Jardine’s complaint that one of the Australian players had called him a bastard.” Jardine directed his bowlers to aim at the bodies of the batsmen in order to limit the Australians’ prodigious scoring. It was Woodfull who famously (not just allegedly) said, “There are two teams out there. One is playing cricket and the other is not.” The first use of ‘bastard’ in his interrogation calls his team mates to attention; it is an almost endearing if blokey way of treating the team as equal before the law. His second ‘bastard’ refers objectively to the haplessly pompous Jardine, for whom the epithet applies even if Woodfull is questioning the Englishman’s legitimacy as a sportsmanlike sportsman, not the legitimacy of his birth. The third ‘bastard’ has none of the foregoing tone of positive jocular bonhomie, its negative meaning being very precisely what got up Jardine’s nostril: he is a reprehensible bully. Gerald Murnane, the urbane Victorian novelist, has put in print that his sons are quote “bastards” unquote. While it might be possible to believe he uses this word simultaneously for all the meanings spelled out so far, the humour of this unpleasant but prideful accusation balances on the question of Murnane’s knowledge of the paternity of his own family. Elsewhere in his writing it is apparent the author has a finely tuned sense of irony and double entendre, a perverse wit when it comes to etymology. While no reader for a moment would conclude that Murnane’s sons are bastards, we have his word for it that they are. Don Chipp, the flinty Victorian politician, knew a bastard when he saw one, for example the well-born son of the squattocracy, Malcolm Fraser. Such was his dislike for Fraser and other former Liberal Party colleagues he formed a new party, with a primary objective that was not so much a policy as a moral imperative: Keep the bastards honest. Such was Fraser’s notoriety during the Dismissal (1975) and afterwards as Prime Minister that many Australians referred to him as the Big Bastard. Unlike Douglas Jardine, Fraser took some pride (allegedly) in this sobriquet, as it denoted respect for his legend as a ruthless operator, manipulative backstabber, and aloof leader. Depending on who was using the term, an insult could become an expression of admiration or grudging respect.