November the 11th, 2009, Remembrance Day.

It’s 3am
As Joelle and Alix sleep we leave quietly.
Remi drives.
A hug goodbye.
5.55am. The plane pushes off. 9½ hours later; in The Birth of Tragedy & The Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche, writes about pasts and futures.

With tragedy the Greeks had given up the belief in immortality: not only a belief in an ideal past, but also the belief in an ideal future. In The Will To Power Nietzsche had written about moments; If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with  happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event – and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good redeemed, justified, and affirmed.

The back of seat screen LCD jet crawls across;
The Indian Ocean.
The Arabian Sea.

Flying away from the sun the sky darkens only a few hours out from London. Dubai 1.17 pm. We’re late. The connecting flight leaves in less than an hour. The Dubai haze thicker than Beijing’s. This trip to London so unexpected. Whenever I’ve left London it has always been too soon.

6.30pm. The Piccadilly line moves in slow motion. Sounds muffled in the underground darkness recall Wim Wender’s movie Wings of Desire and the silent thoughts of commuters and apartment dwellers listened to by unseen angels’ ears. Baron’s Court; a family dressed in formal garb boards. Musicians on the way to a recital. They’ve been rushing. Polite English voices and flushed English faces chat. I’m invisible. South Kensington Underground Station’s Snax convenience store sells beer at £1.49 a can or 4 cans for 5 quid. Off

Exhibition Road, into the Mews, knock on Alistair’s door once, twice. No answer. By my feet an envelope. The key hangs in the Olive tree on the left. Sky News; the same stories repeat every 15 minutes. The news readers over act concern. 3 of the beers are drunk watching the news 3 times then time for bed. I’ll see Alistair in the morning perhaps before leaving for Fulham to photograph The Elephants’ Graveyard. Tarzan The Ape Man was produced in 1932. I saw the movie in the 1950s at the suburban Gaiety Cinema. We called movies flicks or films then. The secret location of The Elephant’s Graveyard revealed to Tarzan as an aged elephant, trailed by cagey treasure hunters, plods into a waterfall, splashes through the wall of water and enters the hidden, cavernous and ivory rich graveyard. A 1950s Alan Ginsberg photo pictures Neil Cassidy in front of a New York cinema showing The Wild One, Stranger Wore A Gun and Tarzan The Ape Man. Still showing since 1932 Tarzan The Ape Man had a long half-life. Stumbling into an elephants’ graveyard, a post war, post atomic bomb, 1950s‘ yearning.

Commuting from North London to SW6 Fulham on the District Line, I would arrive at Putney Bridge, then walk along Fulham Palace Road to Finlay Street. But if I’d travelled on the Victoria Line, I would walk home along Fulham Palace Road from the Hammersmith direction. After meeting Joelle; she lived in Richmond, I most commonly walked home down Fulham Palace Road from Hammersmith. That was in 1975. This 2009 November morning, two Hammersmith policeman suspect I’m al-Qaeda. “You can’t be too careful with photographs,” says a policeman. The number of crosses and churches along Fulham Palace Road are more than I remember. The phone rings, it’s working, it’s Joelle, there’s a delay. We talk over each over. I had left home without saying goodbye; she hears police and ambulance sirens, she wonders where I am. I’m a few street corners from where The Greyhound Pub used to be. Fulham Cemetery; a large bird with a tube like beak and striking blue feathers scattered amongst drab brown and grey feathers looks at me suspiciously. This is my first visit to Fulham cemetery. A young woman sits alone on a bench. She looks troubled. When visiting London with Joelle December, 2008, and walking down Finlay Street for the first time after so many years, I saw myself, a 25 year old; I saw the faded blue of the denim shirt and jeans, the favourite, warm jacket, the hands fumbling in pockets for the Underground pass and the boyish body hurrying to Putney Bridge Station. The 25 year old didn’t see me standing by the schoolyard fence. I was a ghost. At the charity store near the corner of Cowan Street, £1.50 buys a plastic angel to decorate our Commercial Road Christmas tree and 2 port glasses for a Christmas toast. A young mother pleased with the purchase of a new second hand coat thanks the shopkeeper. It’s still here. It must be the last greasy spoon restaurant in Fulham. It’s bright and cheerily painted in Monet kitchen yellow. A father and son serve breakfast all day. 2 eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, 2 toasts, tea or coffee for £3.90. In heavy metal, gothic vein blue, Brighton Rock pink lettering on the son’s ample forearm is tattooed Arsenal. Two women sit nearby, sisters, twins? They are so alike. The sister dressed in jeans, scarf, jacket, beanie and boots is leaving her husband. She would be in her 40s. She’s dressed for the cold. Is Fulham playing this weekend? No it’s all internationals this weekend. Extra salt and vinegar please.

At the entrance to Putney Bridge Underground Station; reloading the Rolleiflex, an unlikely couple sit nearby. A talkative man with stylish grey hair, a smart black overcoat; and the looks of a used car salesman, and a bit like Rod Stewart is accompanied by a beefy, saying nothing, shaved head looking like a night club bouncer man. The talkative one had a camera just like the Rolleiflex. A Box Brownie? They stand for the incoming bus. Now they purchase underground tickets. Now they approach me on the footbridge over the Thames. The stranger wore a gun. I leave Fulham for the Strand. The Courtauld Museum has a Fra Angelica predella.

It’s early, still dark and raining heavily on the South Kensington cobblestones. The sound of a fast train or a conga line of supermarket shopping trolleys being pushed across a car park. Letters slide from the soft lead pencil and words take shape, like a drawing. Writing, like photographing, makes strange, delightful, unsettling, mysterious moments last. The pencil is blunt, the lead is too soft. This morning a return to Fulham to photograph Bishop’s Park, there wasn’t time yesterday. Bishop’s Park where the first roll of film was shot in the new Pentax. Bishop’s Park Remembrance Day flowers dress up the International Brigade’s Memorial with out of season roses. Two crows drink from a puddle. There’s something about crows. Do two crows make a murder? Wednesday a fast train to Paris to catch up with Max. In 1976 it took all day to travel to Paris from London.
Elephants!

The last time Joelle and I visited London together was thirty years ago, January 1978 after our French family, Christmas Day French wedding. We had already been married in Fremantle in June for Australian Immigration. I had travelled alone since to London in 1984; leaving Joelle and Remi with her

parents in Lay St Christophe. On that 1984 visit, I purchased a Yashica Mat twin lens reflex. It was a camera styled on the Rolleiflex, the medium format camera that made square pictures. Square pictures became my favourites. There is something about a square. Perhaps it’s a square being so sure of itself. Perhaps it’s because it’s the same shape as the vinyl LP record covers that window dressed the 60s. The Rolling Stones’ 12×5. The Beatles’ A Hard Days Night. The Kinks’ red album. The sound tracks of our raggedy lives were all perfect circles packaged in perfect squares. Bauhaus master and mystic, Johannes Itten, wrote; “Square: calm, death, black, dark, red.” Imagine being an art student at the Bauhaus! I began a sculpture in London just after settling in Fulham. Its face took on the appearance of Keith Richard then Donatello’s Mary Magdalene. It was never finished. Unfinished so many happiness and sadnesses ago. Forming hands in Plaster of Paris proved too difficult. I named the sculpture Superman.

Hammersmith is 4 Piccadilly Line tube stops from Alistair’s South Kensington home. We’re spending our first morning revisiting Fulham. The Hammersmith Odeon must be nearby, but I can’t see where. It’s now called the Hammersmith Apollo. Bruce Springsteen played there; Born to Run posters dotted along Fulham Palace Road. Joelle invited me to the Odeon for A Hairy Ape concert. It was a Uriah Heap concert. They were awful. When we met, Joelle’s English was limited and I spoke no French. Misunderstandings were frequent. When I invited Joelle over for tea, I should have said dinner. She arrived having already eaten.

There’s the Fulham Palace Road exit. We begin the walk to Putney Bridge. On the way we shall find the Greyhound Pub, where we met, and later Finlay Street. Fulham Palace Road curves easy with the Thames like an inviting, beckoning finger. Suddenly, a biting wind whips at us, and a fierce sun scorches our eyes. It’s surreal. As if the sun and the wind are conspiring to turn us back to Hammersmith. Our arrival provokes forces better not disturbed. Identities transform. Howling from the south, the wind is not Notus, but devouring, kidnapping, snakes for feet, the cold of winter, North Wind, Boreus. The four winged horses drawing Helios’ chariot; Pyrios, Aeos, Aethon and Phlegon, spit blazing darts of fire. We’re walking into the midst of a cosmic battle. Blindfolded Fortuna rolls her ball and wheel that spin in any direction. Clotho appears, the Fate, the weaver of destinies, with her two sisters, she is a daughter of Night. Zeus, still brooding over the Fates allowing Sarpedon’s life taken by the spear of Patroclus, hurls a lightning bolt at Clotho. The Battle of SW6 is swift and decisive. The night that Joelle and I met at the Greyhound Pub would not be undone. The departure of a daughter and sister from family and home and France, would not be undone. Jacqueline waving goodbye, from the kitchen window, would not be undone. The vanquished sun and wind abate. Zeus, the storm gatherer, taking the form of an eagle, launches into the air, and flaps sulkily northeast towards Chelsea. Fortuna and Clotho, indifferent to their victory, make no carry on.

We continue to Putney Bridge and Finlay Street. The Greyhound Pub is now The Southern Belle. We had walked this road many times, yet there are buildings we can’t recall, even the cemetery. Those London, autumn and winter months of 1975 were such an intense time. They were the days of the end of everything. Leaving Fulham by New Kings Road; it’s a long way to Sloane Square. We catch a bus. The number 22 for Piccadilly Circus stops frequently on congested Kings Road. By a bus stop behind a high wall is The Pheasantry. Eric Clapton and Oz Magazine illustrator and designer of Cream album covers Martin Sharp, had a studio there in the 1960s. Perched high on the Pheasantry’s wall, are two large eagles, and two, larger than life statues of woman in classical Greek dress. Which of the eagles is sulky Zeus? Fortuna is not wearing her blindfold? I first glimpsed Fortuna on The Pheasantry wall in 1975.

Monday, April the 7th, 1975.

Monday, April the 7^th was when I first arrived in London. I loved London. After travelling around England and Europe in a Kombi van for 5 months, I settled in Fulham in September and enrolled in a Media Studies course in North London at the Page Green annex of Middlesex Polytechnic; near the Seven Sisters tube station. I was looking for something to do and wanted to meet people. I was interested in film and video and they also taught photography. I soon stopped attending the Media classes, finally spending all my time in the darkroom and a workshop that became a sculpture studio. The school advised I would need a camera and I purchased my first camera from the Fox Talbot store in Tottenham Court Road; a Pentax single lens reflex, Spotmatic. I had the camera for about 10 months, then a friend fresh out of prison borrowed it. I didn’t see him again. The Spotmatic’s home a squat somewhere in Bristol Gardens. It’s replacement was another Pentax, the new K series purchased from a store in Staines but it would never had the feel of that first Spotmatic.

Saturday night, October, 24th 1975.

I met Joelle at the Greyhound Pub. She was from France, working in

Richmond and researching Pre-Raphaelite artist, Edward Burne-Jones. I knew of a Burne-Jones stained glassed angel in a church in the village of Shoreham in Kent.

Joelle was going home to spend Christmas with her family, but I had no plans. On TV, The Old Grey Whistle Test featured John Lennon, live from New York performing Stand By Me, and I thought, I’ll go to New York for Christmas. I arrived in New York with very little money, thinking that I would get by somehow, meet people, never anticipating how cold it would be. My denim jeans and street market leather jacket would afford little protection from those icy winds. The airport bus dropped me off on Manhattan Island somewhere. Only a few of the streets had names, all the rest just had numbers and it was getting dark. I stopped a couple and asked if they knew of any cheap places where I could stay. I was hoping they would take me home. The guy looked straight through me. He didn’t know of any cheap places and said … but if you don’t find somewhere soon you sure as hell will freeze your arse off.

I spent the night at the YMCA; the hotel where Mark Chapman would spend the day before shooting John Lennon in front of the Dakota Building. My money went fast. I pulled out my address book. Donna! I met her in Greece. She lived in Boston. I arrived during a blizzard, it was wild, I had never seen snow before. After days of eating Donna’s family’s food it was time to return to New York and Kennedy Airport. The Hell’s Angels packed Amtrak carriage was homely enough after the cold of Massachusetts. Arriving after midnight I walked through the frozen and empty streets to the East Side Bus Terminal. It was closed. I spent my last dollars on a taxi to Kennedy. At 3am Kennedy was deserted except for a couple of cleaners and in the Piccadilly Bar a beautiful French woman, a small child and Donald Sutherland. At last it was 11am and time to board. After begging the $4 embarkation tax, I was so relieved to get on the Heathrow bound 707, I forgot to remove the film from my bag; it was fogged by the X-ray machine. Off the tube at Hammersmith, the air felt warm. I took off my jacket and strolled down Fulham Palace Road to home, 59 Finlay Street. Joelle was there.

The end of January I was back in Western Australia, renting a room in a house in Fremantle leased by a musician and a poet. With a view of the river the house was named Tranquil Waters. February and March passed and on Easter Sunday, when my family visited, I announced in a borrowed suit, I was leaving. The month of May found me with Joelle. She was living outside London in a small bed-sit in Staines. She kept her milk and butter cold outside on the window sill. I found work in a computer leasing company. I knew nothing about computers, they just needed someone to keep the warehouse tidy. Once I had untangled cables and sorted out space type junk, there wasn’t much to do. Computers were the size of industrial sized refrigerators in 1976. We rarely visited London from Staines. Life was quiet in Staines. After dinner in the evenings we played Chicken Checkers and on weekends went for walks and made drawings. The summer of 76 was hot. So hot I swam in the Thames.

Towards the end of summer we left England for France and lived with Joelle’s parents Guy and Jacqueline and brother Benoit in Nancy; then with sister Nanou in rue des Couples in Strasbourg. Mao Tse Toung died. Mum had sold my motor bike and guitar and Jacqueline bought the blue boots for Benoit but with nothing else to sell, early November I returned to London. Crossing the Channel I heard on the ferry that Jimmy Carter had been elected President. A few days later I left London for Perth.

I moved into Claremont’s Bay View Mansions by the river; a one bedroom flat for $30 a week and Dad had found a job for me, $90 a week working in the factory that made the aluminium windows he sold. The factory was the other side of the river miles away in Kewdale and I had a dodgy car. Leaving for work at 6.30 in the morning, the leafy beach side, western suburbs’ roads were empty; while on the other side of the river; the eastern suburbs, the roads were packed. In December, 1976 Joelle arrived. A borrowed push started car used to fetch her from the airport.

With Joelle’s visa about to expire; a wedding was planned for after work on Friday, June the 10th, 1977, in Tim and Diane’s Solomon Street, Fremantle lounge room. Singer Kathy, sang the McGarrigle Sisters’ melancholy, Heart Like a Wheel; photographer Leon’s roll of film, not properly loading inside the Nikkormat produced no photos and not realising the preacher expected to be paid he wasn’t paid, nevertheless we were married. On the chilly long weekend Monday we celebrated with a picnic at The Combe, under a luminous, overcast gray, that covered the entire winter sky.

July, 12th, 1982, blue eyed Remi was born and July, 13th 1985, green eyed Alix. Four more eyes to watch the world with. Remi and Alix are yet to visit Fulham Palace Road. This story is for them.

Towards the end of summer we left England for France and lived with Joelle’s parents Guy and Jacqueline and brother Benoit in Nancy; then with sister Nanou in rue des Couples in Strasbourg. Mao Tse Toung died. Mum had sold my motor bike and guitar and Jacqueline bought the blue boots for Benoit but with nothing else to sell, early November I returned to London. Crossing the Channel I heard on the ferry that Jimmy Carter had been elected President. A few days later I left London for Perth.

I moved into Claremont’s Bay View Mansions by the river; a one bedroom flat for $30 a week and Dad had found a job for me, $90 a week working in the factory that made the aluminium windows he sold. The factory was the other side of the river miles away in Kewdale and I had a dodgy car. Leaving for work at 6.30 in the morning, the leafy beach side, western suburbs’ roads were empty; while on the other side of the river; the eastern suburbs, the roads were packed. In

December, 1976 Joelle arrived. A borrowed push started car used to fetch her from the airport.

With Joelle’s visa about to expire; a wedding was planned for after work on Friday, June the 10th, 1977, in Tim and Diane’s Solomon Street, Fremantle lounge room. Singer Kathy, sang the McGarrigle Sisters’ melancholy, Heart Like a Wheel; photographer Leon’s roll of film, not properly loading inside the Nikkormat produced no photos and not realising the preacher expected to be paid he wasn’t paid, nevertheless we were married. On the chilly long weekend Monday we celebrated with a picnic at The Combe, under a luminous, overcast gray, that covered the entire winter sky.

July, 12th, 1982, blue eyed Remi was born and July, 13th 1985, green eyed Alix. Four more eyes to watch the world with. Remi and Alix are yet to visit Fulham Palace Road. This story is for them.