Musings

May 22, 2009

In the last couple of days I have come across another Blog Site called Musical Notes: Taylor Square initiated by one of the girls/women who hung around there in the mid- late sixties. Many of the names popping up are very familiar to me - some just of people that I'd heard of, some of people that I knew and even a number who were/are old friends of my own from that era from the sixties through to the early seventies and beyond.

Names like Wheezing Walter T. Mudd, Mort Fist, Peter Anson, Alan Meadows, Mick Leiber, Shane Duckham, Terry Darmody, Barry McGloin, Chris Blanchflower, Graham Lowndes and the list just goes on.

From the time that I left High School at the beginning of 1969 through until around 1971 (granted not a long time) I used to knock off work on Fridays and head, much to the chagrin of my parents, into the city to knock around with the friends I'd made and usually not returning to the nest until around dinner time on Sunday night - the weekend usually a blur of folk & blues music and very large quantities of alcohol, plus the occasional pull on a joint. Usually very little food!

Fridays were usually at the 'Lime Juice Tub' Folk Club in the Day Street bar of the Maitland & Morpeth Hotel in Pyrmont, Saturdays usually at PACT Folk in the old Corn Exchange Building where, when it rained the water more often that not just came dribbling in through the roof and onto the audiences. Occasionally the Saturdays were spent at a party, the Elswick Pub in Leichhardt. or wherever.

Even after leaving all that behind, I didn't change that much and usually wound up somewhere listening to music, usually Balmain, getting pissed and listening to music. Then, in 1973, I decided that I could sing and finished up putting an acoustic trio together with a couple of mates singing around the so-called 'Christian Coffee House Circuit' for a couple of years.

The World is Full of Surprises

Last week I was tooling around on YouTube and found a link to the band Railroad Gin and their singer Carol Lloyd performing at the Warana Festival in Brisbane in 1993. This intrigued me because I had done two of those festivals with what was our (then) festival line-up of Tony Barnard's jazz band which we called Four Brothers Ahead as it consisted of both Tony (guitar), his younger brother Adam (drums), the two Qua brothers, Willy (reeds/percussion) and Chris (bass) and myself ('Beachhead') on vocals and I couldn't recall seeing Carol or Gin playing.
It wasn't until later that I realised my error to be that we had actually done it in 1991 and 1992.
Thanks to Brisbane-based Blues enthusiast and film-maker, Harry however I have discovered 17 years on that we were filmed during our final performance at the 1992 festival and these have now been uploaded to YouTube.
The performance took place on the Eagle Street Pier Stage on the Saturday afternoon - September 26, 1992.
This is great for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that we didn't know there was any footage of the band until now. However, in the front row can also be seen on various occasions my darling late wife, Shirley enjoying the music with friends Roy & Pat Theoharris.
It was a wonderful time for us (Shirley and I) - even though we had very little money by that stage, we were travelling together, enjoying the music and friendships we made and having a great time with the boys who were more like family to us than band members. They still are!
The last time this particular band got together was over the weekend of March 3rd and 4th, 1999 when we played in the open air at the 'TRAILS Bistro' at Caves House, Jenolan Caves on the Saturday afternoon (the PA we used was stolen immediately following the gig by junkies) and then (with a borrowed PA) we did the Sunday afternoon in the Royal Hotel at Oberon and, much to the surprise and delight of the publican, packed the room and the rest of the pub from when we started right up until closing time. I think we must have come close to drinking the joint dry!
I should add that there are several audio recordings of the band in my collection, including one of our performances at Montsalvat in 1993 and at least one form an evening at the Unity Hall Hotel in Balmain when Chris and Willy were both playing with us.

This was taken at the 'TRAILS' gig on the Saturday arvo - March 3, 1999.

This is from the Oberon gig on the Sunday - March 4, 1999.

This is the band playing my own composition 'Sunday Morning in Balmain' at the Powers Festival in September 1992.

The Anniversary of Shirley's passing: August 11th, 2008

l-r: Shirley, Gillian and I at the benefit – June 2, 2007

At 4:15am this morning (Monday – August 11th, 2008) I awoke and raised a glass to my darling girl, Shirley who had passed away in Nepean Hospital at that particular time twelve months ago. I do hope that those of you who knew her and loved her will do the same at some time during today. If you don’t drink alcohol, then a coffee, tea, or whatever is your beverage of choice would be fine.
Our particular journey together started on December 25th, 1985 when we met up at a pre-Convention Party at the home of Peter & Jann Gallen in Balmain and spent much of our time there talking with each other after which I walked with Shirley to the coach awaiting the attendees in Darling Street to take them to Ballarat and the Jazz Convention, making plans on the way to connect again in the New Year after she’d arrived back home.
Our next meeting was on Saturday – January 4th, 1986 when she came to a gig that BEACHHEAD was doing at Dick’s Hotel in Balmain. It was raining and, as I recall, not many people were there – we were after all playing in the beer garden.
Maree Steinway was playing keyboards with us that particular afternoon and I was to drive her home to Paddington after which I would be heading off to the Vanity Fair in the city to see the Eclipse Alley 5 and offered Shirley a lift as well. She accepted.
During our journey, I mentioned to her that I was to be performing at the Midsummer Jazz Concert in the Domain the following afternoon and had been given a number of ‘backstage passes’ and asked if she would like to come along with me as my guest and that I would pick her up from West Ryde the following afternoon after which we’d drop the car back at Balmain and catch a cab, along with my other friends Terri & Brendan to the Domain.
That was the beginning of a love affair that (physically) lasted until her passing from pneumonia twelve months ago. I say physically because I am still very much in love with my darling girl, am still very much married to her and miss her more with each and every passing day.
Believe me when I tell you that time does not heal the pain of loss.
We were given the news on December 20th, 2006 (our twentieth wedding anniversary) that I have Advanced Prostate Cancer, that it could not be cured, nor was it operable, that the only treatment they had for me was hormone therapy.
The fortunate side, at that time, was that it hadn’t yet reached my bones (still hasn’t as far as we know) and that I had between two and five years left to me.
With this knowledge in hand, Shirley and I decided to approach it with an attitude of, “Let’s try and make our twenty-fifth then and see what happens after that!” Also, I had not long renewed my 5-year Gold Licence and my 5-year Disabled Parking Card and it would be a shame to see either go to waste.
With this in mind we decided to celebrate her 80th and my 55th birthdays with a trip to Sydney on the first weekend in June last year (2007) to go and do what we hadn’t for a very long time – hear some ‘live music’. Jazz & Blues in particular!
In the process of trying to find some reasonably cheap accommodation for the weekend we contacted old and dear friend, Gayle Kennedy to see if she knew of any close in to Balmain and she came through with a couple of places that were a fair possibility.
I also told her about the illness and she decided that she’d organise a ‘benefit’ for me. I was happy about this as it meant that not only would we get enough to pay for the weekend and a few bills when we got back home, but also that it would afford us the sort of 80th birthday party that my darling deserved.
We drove down on the Friday and after a number of trials and tribulations got ourselves set up in our accommodation before heading of to visit with Marc at his new unit in Rozelle then returned for a much needed drink and rest after the drive before heading off to hear the first of our music for the weekend at the Unity hall Hotel and to meet up with a couple of old friends who wouldn’t be able to make the Saturday night.
Friday night didn’t go without incident as during the night I was getting up to head for the bathroom and fell over a chair in the bedroom bruising my chest severely. This didn’t help when I was trying to sing at the benefit on the Saturday night.
We caught a cab from Balmain to Tempe on the Saturday afternoon to go and hear saxophonist Dave Jensen’s band playing before the evening session and also in the expectation that a couple of members of Shirley’s family would be there early with one of the children who is gravely ill and whom we hadn’t seen since he was a baby. However, they didn’t arrive until later in the evening and stayed for quite some time before heading off when it all became just a little too much for the boy to handle any longer.
The night was amazing and was, as someone commented later, almost like a ‘Blues Festival’ as such. Most of the performers had met Shirley over the years through her being with me and had a great deal of respect for her and were only too happy to perform not only for my benefit, but for her birthday as well.
After the proceedings were kicked of with a ‘jazz’ trio featuring Peter Locke (keyboards), Stan Valakos (bass) and Adam Barnard (drums) among those who turned up and played were the King Sisters (Sally & Bridie), Graham Griffith’s ‘Out of Nowhere’, Ron & Jeff King with Tony Pedrosa & Jill Tweedie (all of the Foreday Riders), Don Hopkins & Rob Grosser (Dr. Don’s Double Dose), Dave Wray who MC’d the whole night, many of the ‘original’ Layabouts and I would guess at there being at least two entire line-ups of BEACHHEAD/BEACHHEAD’S BLUES as well as Rob Luckey and his bassist (neither of whom sadly got to play).
Many old and dear friends from our lives together turned up to help out and wish us well.
A reunion version of BEACHHEAD’S BLUES featuring Matt Ross & Matt Dwyer (guitars), Dean Edgecombe (bass) and Frank Corby (drums), plus myself hit the stage and the magic that had been there twelve years prior took over. We also included sit-ins from Raoul Hawkins (alto saxophone), Dave Wray (tenor saxophone), Freddie Hill (trumpet), Bridie King and Don Hopkins (piano – at different times).
Much of the time that this particular band was touring during the nineties, Shirley was on the road with us and she and I became almost like surrogate parents to the younger members of the band. Matt Dwyer actually flew in from Auckland (New Zealand) just to do the gig.
Later that night my darling girl also had a mishap back at our digs when she slipped backwards on a damp floor in the shared bathroom and wound up spending much of the Sunday in bed with what I suspect to have been concussion. Then, on the Sunday evening, as we were heading out for dinner with friends, I missed the last three steps and crashed face first into the concrete retaining wall at the bottom of the stairwell which made us decide that we would be leaving as early as possible for home on the Monday morning.
Sadly, this was to be the last that our friends would see of my darling as she developed pleurisy, her asthma flared up, she also wound up with an embolism in her left arm and the pleurisy became pneumonia was driven by ambulance to Lithgow Hospital on Sunday – August 5th, then flown by air ambulance to Nepean Hospital at 10:30pm on Monday – August 6th where she died as I held her hand at 4:15am on Saturday – August 11th, 2007.I am, fall all that, the luckiest of men. I spent 21½ years of my life with the true love of my life. Something many never get to do!
We were never rich, but we knew how to have fun and we had it together – and we have had and made many dear friends along the way. Quite a few of whom have been helping me get by over the past twelve months. I thank you all for what you have done and only wish that I could return the favour – mayhap, someday I shall.
If I am glad for anything at this time, it is that it is me who is left behind to battle with the wolves at the door and not my girl. Thus far, I’ve managed to keep them at bay!
I am sad that she was not here to enjoy the beautiful covering of snow that was left behind by last night’s fall – it is now 11:00am and most has disappeared.

May you all have a wonderful day and a wonderfully full life and remember my darling as having been your dear and loving friend,
Rod

This December (2007) and what it means to me

December was a great time for me during the past years since 1985.

In that year, on Christmas Day, I had met up with Shirley (purely by accident) at a party at 14 Hampton Street, Balmain in the afternoon and we had remained with each other for most of the time talking. Then, at party's end, I walked her to Darling Street where a whole group of those who'd been at the party were to board the coach that would take them to the Australian Jazz Convention in Ballarat, Victoria and I made my own way back to Alexander Street where I lived.

I had spent the day up to that point driving to various places around town visiting friends that I hadn't for years. I'd not had a car since around 1982 and had been pretty much trapped in that lonely existence of holidays being no different from any other apart from the fact that I didn't have to go to work since haqving moved from the friend's floor I'd been staying on in Northbridge to Balmain in December 1983.

My initial move had been to stay and take care of the home of friends in Phillip Street, Balmain while they had gone to visit family out west and then come back to the Convention in Forbes before returning home. On their return I moved in to share with an acquaintance directly opposite the London Hotel in a beautiful old tri-level home before being thrown out by the arsehole and winding up in a so-called 'bachelor unit' sometime around October 1984.

The unit was just wide enough to fit a single bed across with room for a cardbord box that I used to throw my rubbish in at the foot, about one-and-a-half times that in depth and with a toilet and shower just off the side near the foot of the bed. Into that space was also crammed a double-wardrobe, a refrigerator and kitchenette. Not much 'room-to-swing-a-cat' so to speak!

Whenever I'd had money it usually went through the poker machines at Gladstone Park Bowling Club trying in vain for a big win. I think that the only reason I was eating reasonably well was the cafeteria at Reader's Digest where I had morning tea and lunch and put it on my tab to be paid the following payday.

Then I met Shirley!

We got together for the first time when I took her, as one of my guests, to the 'Mid-Summer Jazz in the Domain' Concert on January 5, 1986 when I was singing with the Manly Jazz/Blues All-Stars Band, a number of whom are sadly, no longer with us. We also met another who remains a friend to us both that afternoon/evening after I had lost my cigarettes on-stage - Delilah, an African-American Jazz & Blues singer who just happens to be the 'sorta' daughter of the late Joe Williams (Joseph Goreed) who sang with the likes of Basie and many others. We got to see them singing together at the Sydney Town Hall on Saturday - March 28, 1992.

She (Shirley) came to visit me in hospital at Balmain, less than a week later, after I had taken suddenly ill and sat beside my sleeping form for what I was later told was an hour or more.

Once again she was away on a little 'jazz adventure' and was heading off to Taree for the weekend, but had taken the time out to visit me when very few others were.

We finally started to see each other regularly in late February 1986 when she came to see me performing at Soup Plus in Sydney and came back to stay the night at my (then) home on the top floor of a beautiful old harbourside home in Alexander Street, Balmain. From then on she would show up at my place each Saturday and we'd make love, then head off to see and hear our favourite music at some venue or other around the town and she would eventually leave on Sunday afternoon, usually by cab, to head back to West Ryde where she lived.

At some point in April, we decided that we'd live together. This followed, as I recall, one Sunday afternoon when I suggested that we call it quits and my darling girl burst into tears saying she didn't want that. I moved from Balmain to West Ryde within the week from memory after agreeing to continue paying my share of the rent at Balmain so that Brendan could stay on there and also so that Shirley and I would have a place to stay whenever we were in that way.

On May 10th along with Brendan (my Balmain housemate) and Terri McCormack, we set off on a rapid round trip to Queensland and back with the intention of both visiting my dad on the Gold Coast, attending the eightieth birthday of Terri's dad at Caloundra and seeing some great countryside into the bargain.

It was a great trip and we had a ball before arriving back home to Sydney on May 17 for the engagement party of Shirley's nephew Stephen and his wife-to-be, Nia at their home in Ermington. While we'd been away I asked Shirley to marry me and she said yes and i also used the occasion of the party to ask her father for his daughter's hand in marriage which brought tears to the eyes of the 85-year-old. It was also Shirley's 59th birthday!

The following Monday or Tuesday, I can't recall which anymore, I drove my darling to the airport and put her on the plane to send her to the U.S. and Canada for a holiday that she'd booked a long time previously and would have blown her money if she hadn't gone - she didn't want to it must be said. I have spoken with our dear Californian friend, Joanne Lindamood since Shirley's death and she tells me that Shirley was miserable the whole trip without me and only felt joy on those occasions when we spoke together on the phone. I was the same!

I was absolutely overjoyed when she arrived back home mere days before my own 34th which we celebrated at West Ryde on June 14, 1986 with many of our friends.

We were wed in the backyard at West Ryde on December 20, 1986 at what was the best party that either of us has ever attended before or since. From that day on we were very nearly inseparable except for those occasions when I was away on tour with my band - the worst of these all occurred in 1994 and 1995. I hated those times!

Over the years I had developed Type II Diabetes, osteo arthritis and a number of other ailments. Then in October of 2006 I started to have more health problems and went to see our GP who sent me for a PSA test which came back extremely high.

On December 1 I finally saw the urologist who said that he was concerned and wanted me to have a biopsy out at Orange on December 13 as he believed that I may have Prostate Cancer, so we drove out on December 12 and stayed with my family out there for the next two nights enjoying each others company and generally doing what families do. We were going to have to go out again the following week for me to have a bone scan and also to receive the prognosis - both to take place on December 20 - our twentieth Wedding Anniversary. We decided that whatever the prognosis I was going to be at home for what may well have been my last Christmas with my family and that any treatment would have to follow on after that.

As it transpired, it actually was my last Christmas with my family, because on August 11 this year at 4:15am my darling girl slipped away as I held her hand with son, Marc a mere few feet away. I'd been beside her since around 9:30 the previous morning with the exception of those odd times when I was called aside by doctors to discuss her condition, or much later in the evening when I went out for twenty minutes, while Marc stayed with her, to get some booze for us both for when the time came and we had gone back to his place at Rozelle.

It is now December 8, 2007 and I am in tears much of the time. Thursday week will be our twenty-first Wedding Aniversary and also twelve months since we received the news that I was terminal and given anywhere between two years and five to live. It is also the first that I have faced without the love of my life.

I am in the process of trying to think what to do for Christmas as Marc will arrive on Christmas Eve and stay until the day after Boxing Day and as has been the tradition since we three started spending our Christmases together, we'll watch the Boxing Day Cricket Test on television while he is here. I just hope that I have enough money to buy in what I have to and that I can get around to cleaning up the house and caravan for his stay and put up some of the Christmas decorations that Shirley would normally have done.

May we and all have as fine a Christmas as can be had.

Remembering Shirley

Yesterday (my time) was Melbourne Cup Day (first Tuesday in November) and the first time in nearly twenty years that I have spent that day without my darling girl.

In all the years since we had both (effectively) finished our working lives we would get together a little booze, some nibbles, contact our son to see what he thought was a good bet, make a few wagers at the TAB and settle in to watch the day's proceedings at Flemington Racecourse on the box. It was a generally happy day for us for those many years.

The only variation was in 1991 when we were in Melbourne itself because I had sung at the Homegrown Blues Festival on the previous Sunday. On that occasion we still bought a few nibbles, had a few wagers, etcetera but were watching the proceedings on a TV set in our motel room at the Carlisle in St. Kilda before I once again sang with my band, The Blues Whalers on cup night at a pub in South Melbourne.

My dad was also in Melbourne that weekend, having driven down from his home on the Gold Coast in Queensland to visit with my long-lost sister and her family. He stayed for the better part of a month and visited with us at Katoomba on his way back home. He died the following May after an operation on his hip.

Yesterday was also the first, apart from the Melbourne sojourn in 1991, that we had not backed the winner. For our last Cup together in 2006 we had picked both first and second place getters.

This time around I spent most of the day in tears for not having my darling to share the day with. In fact, I almost forgot that it was Cup Day and, although I only outlaid $6.00 in the end, would have got nothing back at the end of the day had it not been for the fact that one of my horses was scratched not long before race time. In the end I only lost $2.00 because I received the full $3.00 for my trifecta and the $0.50 each way on the scratching.

It was also a cold and miserable day, as today is thus far.

I wanted to ring and talk with someone, but who?

In the end I spent the day (and the night) alone with myself and my animals who, on this occasion at least, were of little comfort for hurt I was feeling.

Annus Horriblis

This has, without a shadow of a doubt, been the worst twelve months of my life to date.

In mid-October 2006 I was having trouble urinating and decided to visit my GP who, in turn, sent me for a PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) Blood Test. This was returned with a figure of 130.

To place this in some sort of perspective, a normal reading is under 4. By the time it gets to 20 there is little to be done except treat it with whatever is required as it means that the cancer has been there long enough to have moved out of the Prostate and into surrounding tissue, possibly the bones.

When the reading came back, he also referred me to a urologist for further testing and treatment - the first appointment available was not until December 2, 2006. A full month-and-a-half later. Another PSA Test was also required and came back with the same reading as previously.

My old and dear friend Grant Watson who had been living and working in Paris for the past couple of years was home for a visit and drove up from Sydney specifically to take me to the appointment with the urologist.

Following the examination, an appointment was made for me to go and have a biopsy done at the day clinic in Orange on Wednesday - December 13, 2006 which was going to cost $200, an amount I would not have and which Grant very kindly handed to me immediately.

We went back home to Portland where the three of us (grant, Shirley and I) had dinner and a very pleasant evening listening to music and drinking the Scotch, wine and Gin that Grant had bought before we left Lithgow.

The next morning Grant drove back to Sydney as he had to return shortly thereafter to Paris to finish up his job before returning home to Australia permanently. He now works for Boeing in Brisbane.

On December 12 we drove out to Orange where we stayed overnight with my cousin, his wife and his mother and the following morning I was driven by another mate, John Boatswain to the clinic for the biopsy. Afterwards we caught a cab back to their home and spent the afternoon sitting and relaxing in the backyard. We drove home to Portland on the Friday morning.

The following Tuesday (December 19) we drove back out to Orange once more as I had an appointment at Central West Nuclear Medicine at 9:00am the following for a full bone scan to be followed up by an appointment with the urologist to receive the prognosis.

The address we were given for the scan was wrong and when we did find the right place I was given an injection and told to go away for two hours to wait for it to take effect before coming back to have the actual scan. This would have been areal 'pain-in-the-arse' had we not been staying with relatives who lived close by.

When we did return, and after laying on the bench for for what seemed like an hour, I was told that i would have to go and have another pee because my bladder was too full and blocking the image.

This I did and was told that the scan came back the same again they would have to get me to come in the following day for it to be done yet again. I explained that this would NOT be the case as I was driving home that afternoon and whatever they got would have to suffice.

In the end it was decided that what they had was good enough and I was asked to wait for the images to be processed so that I could take them with me to the urologist.

By the time I got there I was running around a quarter-hour late however, so was he!

The eventual prognosis given was that I do have inoperable and incurable Prostate Cancer.

The good news was that it had not yet reached my bones. and that I wasn't going to die immediately.

The bad news was that it is extremely advanced and that I have somewhere between two and perhaps as much as ten years left with treatment. This was a lot to take in on what was our twentieth Wedding Anniversary!

I commenced immediately with a course of Androcur tablets with regular quarterly implant injections of Zoladex 10.8mg that started on January 3, 2007.

Within three months the PSA levels had dropped to 4.4 placing the cancer in remission and making both Shirley and myself very happy. It meant we could at least something of a life together and we looked forward to going to Sydney on the first weekend in June to celebrate our combined birthdays - she was to turn eighty on May 17, 2007 and I was to turn fifty-five on June 14, 2007.

As the time drew closer we contacted our dear friend, Gayle Kennedy to see if she could arrange some accommodation for us in the Balmain area as that was where we planned to spend most of the weekend. Gayle, in turn, decided that it would be a great idea to organise a benefit for myself which could also act as a combined party for the pair of us and we said, "OK!"

She contacted many old friends and musicians and the weekend was well under way with Grant (now living in Brisbane) deciding to fly down for the occasion (he'd been the bass player in BEACHHEAD back in 1980 after Raoul Hawkins had left for New York to study), Matt Dwyer who'd been a mainstay of BEACHHEAD'S BLUES throughout the mid-1990s was flying back from New Zealand and on it went! A great party was brewing!

After being told about them by Gayle, we booked our room for the weekend at Balmain Lodge at $80.00/night and gave them credit card details - more about this as we go on.

Shirley had not been much, if anything, for sometime and as her birthday approached our GP suggested that she start taking multi-vitamins to aid her. Unfortunately, the very first Myadec capsule she took got caught in her throat and scratched it causing irritation and an asthma attack. She was immediately placed on Prednisone for the short term and told to increase her use of Ventolin.

She seemed to come good and we continued on with our plans to go to Sydney.

Friday, June 1 finally arrived and we dropped our dog, 'Mouse' at our mate, Paul Rowe's home here in Portland and continued on down to Sydney arriving in Balmain around 1:30pm.

I told Shirley to wait in the vehicle while I went and booked us in, expecting everything to be OK. It wasn't!

The manager was nowhere to be found and I was led to the top of the building, some five-plus flights of stairs by an idiot who lived there and who kept asking me if I had anybody with me to which I kept replying yes that my wife was in the car. We eventually arrived at an abysmal 'twin-share' room instead of the 'double' I had requested and (effectively) paid for some weeks earlier. The stupid prick then asked me if I wanted the room and I told him that we obviously had to take it because we had just driven more than a hundred miles to get there.

I eventually managed to speak to the manager and he sorted the room by putting us into another on the first floor (a 'double') when he discovered that the people who booked into that room hadn't yet arrived. Not the way to run a business and I would advise anybody reading this not to have anything to do with Balmain Lodge at anytime in the future.

We were completely buggered by the time we finally got everything into the room and settled down. But we still had to go and visit our son, Marc before we could properly relax. Another six flights of stairs awaited us as his new unit is on the top floor of the block he lives in at Rozelle.

When we eventually did get back to our lodgings, I poured a scotch big enough to drown a full-sized rat and it didn't even touch the sides on the way down.

After resting up and eating we made our way steadily down Darling Street to the Unity Hall Hotel where we meeting up with friend, Cyn Allen and later (when he arrived from Melbourne) Walker Blashka.

It was great to catch up with many of the boys that I used to sit-in with at the Unity back in the days when I lived in Balmain in the early 1980s who still played in the Friday night band and we also enjoyed a few drinks with both Cyn & Walker when he arrived.

Cyn drove us back to the Lodge afterwards and we both went straight to bed. At sometime in the wee small hours I was getting out of bed to visit the toilet and the chair I was using to help myself up flipped and I fell landing on my chest on the edge of the seat badly bruising myself right across the breast just under my tits.

On the Saturday morning I strolled down Darling Street and bought the Sydney Morning Herald for Shirley to read and also bought myself a hamburger which, while tasting wonderful, cost the earth.

Initially, we were going to go to the Strawberry Hills Hotel in Surry Hills and catch the Eclipse Alley Five however, we decided that we'd just go straight to the Cooks River Motor Boat Club at Tempe where the benefit was to be because we'd been knocked back for the half-fare Taxi Subsidy and it would have cost too much to go to Surry Hills first up, plus Dave Jensen and his band were playing at the club in the afternoon.

As it was, the cab fare came to around thirty bucks - pretty fair whack.

We settled in at the club and enjoyed the music, if not the whisky which tasted very much like iodine. We switched to beer until the bar manageress arrived and all was sorted.

The night was a pretty fair success and we pocketed enough cash at the end to both pay for our weekend and a few bills when we got back home to Portland but more was to happen.

In the wee smalls of Sunday morning, Shirley had got out of bed and gone to the bathroom/toilet and not noticing that the floor was wet had slipped backwards on her way out - slamming her head into the wall of the shower cubicle, very nearly knocking herself out and gashing her shin on the rise between the cubicle and the main floor area. She had called out to me, but I was fast asleep and hadn't heard her and only found out when she made it back to the room and woke me to tell me.

Originally we'd been going to drive down to Albion Park on the Monday to visit with Heather & Kevin Casey for a couple of nights before coming home but had decided against it and rang them to explain the bad luck we'd been having.

Sunday night wasn't much better.

After her fall, Shirley wasn't feeling at all well and spent most of Sunday in bed while I wandered down to the Riverview Hotel for a couple of beers and a pie for lunch. We also made arrangements to meet up with both Terri McCormack and Dave Stevens there for a drink around 5:30am and then go onto the Unity to catch the Sunday night band and then have some dinner.

On our way out I missed the bottom two steps and fell face first into the concrete retaining wall at the bottom, very nearly breaking my glasses and we decided that we would leave for home first thing on the Monday morning.

Sadly, this was to be our last trip to Sydney together as, after arriving home to Portland, Shirley developed pleurisy and we were both on antibiotics from then on.

Our final visit to our GP was on Thursday - August 2, 2007 and Shirley was given a prescription for a fairly strong antibiotic called Rulide (she was allergic to penicillin) and I was given a course of Augmentin.

She didn't improve and grew steadily worse, I was unable to sleep in the bed and had to try sleeping in a sitting position on our settee. On Saturday night, I finally tried to asleep in the bed and succeeded until around 5:30am.

When I climbed out of bed, I discovered that my darling girl hadn't slept at all and had been sitting up in bed all night just trying to breathe. I called the ambulance to her at around 6:30am and she was driven into Lithgow Hospital where she spent most of the day in the Emergency Department with myself at her bedside. I had driven in immediately after the ambulance had gone.

They were getting wildly different blood pressure readings from one arm to the other and decided to settle on using the right arm in the end. She was also on oxygen to try and bring her blood gases up. Eventually, she was moved from Emergency up to the Wards at around 3:00pm and I stayed wit her for a short time before deciding to head home and try to get a few things done. She requested that I bring the Herald and a book that she had been reading in for her on the Monday morning when I returned.

When I arrived back on the Monday morning they still had not found the ECG that had been done on her back in June - it transpired that it was because the silly bastards kept misspelling our family name. Eventually they found it.

By mid-morning a decision had been made to move her from where she was into the High Dependency Ward because they were worried about a reading the got and thought that perhaps she'd had a mild heart attack overnight.

Just as I was about to leave for home in the afternoon, I saw her attending doctor in the coffee shop and asked him how she was going. He told me to follow him back to the bed as he wanted to speak with both of us.

He said that he wanted her to be moved to the cardiac Care Unit in the Nepean Hospital at Penrith as he thought the problem was more serious than at first thought and that they (Lithgow Hospital) didn't have the facilities to care for her in the event. She was to be driven down by road ambulance that evening and I would follow in our truck.

I made a dash back to Portland after ringing Barry & Beverley Smythe and asking them to look after 'Mouse' for me and tracked down Mike Moore (my next-door neighbour) to ask him to both feed the cats and water Shirley's plants while we were away because i had no idea how long I'd be. The other thing I did was ring Grant in Brisbane to see if he thought that his sister, or mother might be able to put me up while my sweetheart was in Nepean. He rang back with details of who, where and when within five minutes and I drove back into Lithgow to wait for the ambulance.

I had grabbed all my meagre clothing possessions (both clean and dirty) and thrown them into a couple of bags along with all my pills and whatever prescriptions I had.

As it turned out, the doctor had wanted her to have at least a paramedic and a nurse to be in the ambulance with her for the trip and this was not achievable that particular night. She was in for a ride in the air ambulance - her first trip (sadly, also her last) in a helicopter and she was excited at the prospect.

It never arrived 'til after 10:00pm and I was unable to follow down that night, so I quickly made arrangements with Barry & Beverley that I stay overnight at their home and drive down first thing on the Tuesday morning (August 7).

After a cold night, I left Lithgow at around 7:00am and arrived at Nepean around 9:15am - the traffic hadn't been too bad and I had a good run through.

When I arrived at the hospital, drove all over the parking areas trying to find a 'Disability' spot - all 100-odd were taken and apparently had been so since 7:30am according to a security guard I spoke with. I finished up parking in what turned out be a boom-gated area that cost $5.00/day.

After being directed to the unit where Shirley was, I went in to see her and discovered yet again that her name had been misspelled - eventually leading me to discover also that they had booked her in as a 'private' patient instead of as a 'public' and that I had to go to Admissions to get everything sorted before I could sit down and talk with her properly. She was still in very high spirits after her 'helicopter ride' of the previous evening and we spoke at length about it.

Eventually I met her attending doctor, V. Shenoy who informed me that the difference in blood pressure reading had been because of her having an embolism in her left arm which was also causing her erratic heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) for which she was being given heparin via intravenous drip in order to thin the blood and dissolve the clot. She was also being given antibiotics (intravenously) and Ventolin nebulisers on a very regular basis for her breathing problems. She was continuously on oxygen as well.

My darling had not been eating very well, or much, for a very long time and her weight had dropped drastically to less than 30kg from her previous normal of around 65kg and I could not get her to eat. She was putting it down to not being able to wear her lower dentures and being unable to chew anything and therefore not enjoying much of what she was eating.

The hospital placed her on a purée diet and trying to get her to drink high-protein milk drinks they were giving her, but the little bugger was not eating what she did get, saying that it tasted like shit.

She faithfully promised me that she would start to eat and attempt to get better and come home to me so that we could go and see our friends in Melbourne and elsewhere, but she never made it.

The last couple of days it was almost as if she was giving up and, between when I saw her on the Thursday afternoon (August 9) and getting back to her the following morning, her breathing went to the shit can I truly do not know if we exchanged any words on the Friday morning because when I got there she was surrounded by nurses hunting for a vein to feed in antibiotics and a portable chest X-Ray machine. That was at around 9:30am.

I rang Marc at 11:15am and told him to get to the hospital as quickly a he could because I thought we'd lose her. At around 11:30am, Dr. Shenoy confirmed my suspicions and I rang Marc back to tell him to hurry.

I was given the option of her possibly being placed on a 'life-support' machine indefintely to which I answered an emphatic, NO! It was neither what she, nor I wanted for either of us.

Shortly thereafter I was told that she wasn't a candidate anyway and that they would make her as comfortable as possible until she passed and that it was likely to happen within the hour. That was at midday on Friday (August 10th). Marc arrived by around 3:00pm and she fought on until she gave her last tiny little breat at 4:15am on Saturday- August 11, 2007 as we both sat at her bedside.

Her funeral service was held at Hopkins Memorial Uniting Church in Lithgow on Wednesday - August 22, 2007 and presided over by Church Elder, Norm MacFarlane - Funeral Service.

Had it not been for the oft-mentioned Grant Watson, I would not have had anything to wear to my own wife's funeral. He is/was a true gem.

After Shirley's death on the Saturday morning I drove Marc back to Rozelle, stayed there all day and slept in his bed that night while he stayed up and watched the football on TV. I then left and drove home early on the Sunday morning, picking 'Mouse' up from Barry & Beverley's on the way through. Grant flew down from Brisbane that night and drove up to Portland on the Monday morning, took me into Lithgow and bought me lunch, clothes and assorted other bits and pieces and took me to see the funeral director.

The following day he drove me out to Bathurst where he bought me the clothes that I actually wore to the funeral and a pair of leather shoes that haven't seen any use since.

Sadly, because of work commitments he was unable to come back down for the funeral, although many did get there. Including my two nephews from Goulburn who drove up, for the day, old friend Kevin Casey who came up from Albion Park to attend and also read the eulogy, several of my cousins and their families, Matthew Ross, Max Farrell, Frank Corby, Adam Barnard, Adam Sivell, Nick Hazzard (all former members of BEACHHEAD), Stefan Sernek (from PSYCHO ZYDECO) and Stan Little (a friend we'd made through the music some years previous).

Apart from all these there were our many friends and neighbours from around the area.

The many friends have all said to me to come and visit with them when I get the chance, or to ring them if and when I feel the need to talk and I may yet get around to doing some of that. However, for the time being I am holding back on the phone calls, or my bill would be far higher than it already is. I can't travel for a couple of reasons at this stage either;

1. On August 30, while climbing onto a chair to change a light globe, I slipped and put a huge hole in my right foreleg that is still a long way from healing.
2. Even were I able to travel, at present I am broke and having difficulty getting the few bills paid that I have without even thinking about driving anywhere.

Everyday passes and everyday I miss my darling more. I am totally lost without the only thing that I ever truly had in my life for the past 21-plus years. I don't feel like eating much, I'm drinking far too much booze, I can't have a shower, or wash my hair properly because of the leg and I don't even feel much like watching television or sitting here at the computer.

I've made the decision that I am going to file for bankruptcy to clear what debt I do have, a situation brought on by GE CreditLine cancelling my account after I'd paid them $300-plus to try and get a little ahead with the account and informed them of Shirley's death. The reason given was that the account had been opened in both names and could no longer continue because Shirley would be responsible for any debt incurred and was no longer alive.

The fact that I had been paying the money since her death was of no consequence to those arseholes. So now they will get none of it and with my own impending demise in the next few years I am not in the slightest bit worried about a bankruptcy hanging over my head.

Here it is, very nearly twelve months on (to the day) since I started having the problems with my health and everything that can go wrong in my life seems to be doing just that. I am just wondering what the morrow will bring my way!