Elbow Grease

Back in 1978 my domestic arrangements were rather variable. Where I called home changed from week to week for a couple of months. Youthful restlessness combined with the optimism that only a 24 year old can summon.

For a short time I occupied a room in Marg's house. I'd met Marg at the end of 1974 at the music camp where my first symphony was performed. She was quite a bit older than I and it was a purely platonic friendship but we enjoyed each others company even if I was defiantly in the Romantic camp while she preferred Baroque.

I fear I was rather gauche but she tolerated that as part of the price of being a mentor.

After a couple of weeks Kate moved in. We'd met Kate at the music camp in January 1977. Kate was a bit younger than I was; late teens. She'd been a student at one of the more exclusive schools in Melbourne, and let me tell you, some of those schools can be *very* exclusive indeed. I'm told that it's necessary, even for former pupils of Scotch College, to enrol ones offspring at birth or even at the time of ones nuptials in order to ensure a place and even then it's a crap shoot.

Nice girl. I'm not sure what instrument she played; methinks it was the flute. Whatever. We got along pretty well together, the three of us and when Kate needed a place to stay in Melbourne what more natural than to ask Marg for a room for a few weeks while she got on her feet? From which long-winded sentence you might, correctly, surmise that she was a country lass albeit from a wealthy family.

One afternoon I came home to find Kate slaving over a frying pan. Wealthy family or not Kate wasn't afraid to jump in and do her share of the housework. There she was, steel wool in hand, scrubbing and scrubbing away at that frying pan, trying to remove the brown stains. She'd done quite a good job and had already removed three quarters of the teflon!