When I were a lad, my sister and I walked to primary school with our friends — at least in the upper part of primary school; I don’t recall the first few years; I assume my mum walked with us, though she’s said a friend in the same block used to occasionally drive us. But by about grade 4 we were walking. We used to meet up with Stuart, Lisa and Tracy from the next street, and Merlin, and sometimes also Raoul and Jeremy from a few streets away, and all walk up to Ripponlea Primary. I’ve just checked a journey planner and it says this is 1.6 km; about a mile.

There were two main roads to cross, one with no convenient lights (but not really heavy traffic), and the other with a lollipop person. But it never snowed, and we didn’t have to wear old sacks.

A few times we tried catching the Hotham Street bus (then the 602; now the 216/219) instead. I recall one time my sister and I missed our stop, and I think it was her (or maybe it was me) that started crying until the bus driver stopped the bus and let us off. The bus trip was only three stops, so it probably wasn’t worth the fare, thus most of the time we walked.

Midway through grade 6 (1982) we moved to Elwood, close to the beach. The trip to school was longer, about double. While the New Street/Hotham Street bus would have been the logical way, instead we mostly caught the 600 to St Kilda, then caught the tram from there. I assume it was so we could leave the house with my mum, who also caught the bus to St Kilda Station then the train into work in the city.

High school at Ardoch (now defunct, it was in Dandenong Road, Windsor) the following year meant another change. Although once again the Hotham Street bus would have been the logical way, again it was the 600 bus to St Kilda. Then either the 79 tram or 246 bus, up to Dandenong Road, then another tram. It seems totally illogical now that I’d have wasted all that time changing from one service to another, but there must have been some logic behind it. Maybe the new Travelcards had made it so easy to make multi-modal trips that I was determined to do so. Maybe I just enjoyed riding on trams more than buses. Or maybe I just didn’t want to walk through Elsternwick Park. Probably I was going part of the way with my sister, who was in primary school for one year after me; that was probably it, as now I think about it, I sometimes went home the direct way.

If going via St Kilda, on the way home there was a place, a little cafe I think, on the corner of Barkly Street and Carlisle Street where I’d wait for the bus, that had a Galaga machine, into which my spare 20 cent coins would go. Often at the stop a blind man would wait too, always holding up to his ear a little device that may have been a radio, but also told him the time. He used to sway from side to side, a slightly manic grin on his face. Some of the other schoolkids travelling around used to mock him, which seemed a bit cruel to me.

While living in Elwood I’d also zoom around on my shiny new bicycle (the one finally stolen in 1995), visiting friends, going up and down beach bike path, and sometimes riding all the way up to the Commonwealth Bank in Elsternwick to take money out of the new-fangled ATM for my mum. At the time it was the only ATM for miles around.

We were still living in Elwood when I switched schools to Melbourne High. The trip became a walk to the 246 bus on Glenhuntly Road, a quick trip up to Elsternwick station (why didn’t I just walk to the station? Inherent laziness?) then the train from there to South Yarra. Sometimes I’d meet Konrad on the train at Ripponlea and we’d swap notes about the latest Commodore 64 games.

Coming home there’d be the occasional food fight between the platform 2 kids and those on platforms 1 and 4. I’d watch these from the far end of the platform, given I was wanting the back of the train for alighting at Elsternwick. On hot days we’d hope for an air-conditioned train; they were pretty scarce at the time.

Then we moved into Elsternwick itself, and the trip became much easier. I got a parttime job at Hattams, which was about a minute’s walk away from our front door. The flat we lived in was above a shop on Glenhuntly Road, which was great apart from the faulty shop burglar alarms that would periodically go off at night. There was also an elderly Irish brother and sister living next door. The sister would periodically get drunk and also go off at night.

From there my sister was going to school by tram, and used to talk of “tram hopping” — jumping ahead from tram to tram on the way home as they in a bunch at the traffic lights, to try and get on board the one you’d missed.

Then we moved to Murrumbeena, right next to the railway line. Gradually we got used to the noise of the trains (apart from freight trains which would drown out the TV), and it was just a short walk to the station to catch the train. By that point I was in year 11, and a few of us would congregate in the back of the 7:36 from Oakleigh every morning. The trip to my parttime job in Elsternwick took me onto the 67 tram. If I was lucky, finishing at 12:30 on a Saturday I could just make it home by 1pm to watch Doctor Who.

Uni in Caulfield made it a quick easy trip, using a Rail+2 if I wanted. It got harder and more expensive when we moved to Hampton (the final move of many). A walk up the hill or a bus ride to Moorabbin, then a two-zone train trip. Austudy funds had kicked in by then, which took the edge off it, but it still narks me a bit that that trip of six stations was so expensive.

There was actually a point to all this rambling when I started writing it.

As children grow up, there’s a point at which they start to roam around on their own. It seems to have got later with the current generation. It certainly seems these days that more parents drive their kids to school… because the traffic is worse these days because more parents drive their kids to school.

My kids haven’t yet done much getting around on their own, as unfortunately they live way too far to walk to school. And as I’ve mentioned before, it’s a long hard slog on PT. But with Isaac going into high school next year (it’ll be a 15 minute walk) it’s about time for them to start exploring.

All part of growing up, and becoming independent.

One of my favourite authors is Bill Bryson. I haven’t yet read The Thunderbolt Kid yet (I have a dislike of hardbacks, though I’m currently reading Michael Palin’s diaries in hardback — and loving it). Bryson is touring at the moment, and Jon Faine’s conversation with him last Friday on ABC 774 is available to be downloaded — MP3 download (Bill is on from about the 11 minute mark). Likewise an appearance on Radio National’s Book Show.

It’s interesting to hear Bill and the others in the programmes pondering the benefits from migration and multiculturalism, and the nostalgia we all feel for our childhood. Bill despairing about now finding Starbucks all over the world (we already had perfectly good coffee shops) and that the whole of the (western) world is starting to look identical reminds me a little of Paul Kelly’s Every F’in City.

• 2/3/2006: Here is my childhood home

I’ve mentioned before my exploits with video, a set of productions made predominantly when we were teenagers, with zero budget, on equipment borrowed from school.

The very last production was an episode of the Professionals-inspired “STRIKE”, about a secret crime-fighting organisation. Made in 1993, by which point all of us were either at uni or in the workforce, it brought the era of homemade productions to a neat close, and served as a great post-school reunion for those of us involved.

Undoubtedly it was the least worst best of all the productions we’d done: the scripts were a little less cliched, the camera-work was better and the props more realistic. It included location shooting in Manchester Lane (boy has that changed; it was chosen for its grimyness — now it’s anything but), at Parliament House, at my flat-of-the-time in Hawthorn, and around South Caulfield and Ripponlea.

Now thanks to Raoul (producer/director) digging out his master tape, here it is online.

For all the work done on the script, it still only panned out to about 20 minutes long. (The first minute or so is the trailer, if you don’t think you have the patience for the full thing.)

I suspect it’s not as fun for the casual viewer as the Doctor Who video made some years earlier — I’ll work on getting that one online.

(Click here to see the video if it doesn’t appear in your RSS reader.)

In the bookshop, an old bloke had bought something about WW2. For minute or two he reminisced about Churchill and Stalin and victory in Europe. The bookseller, a woman perhaps in her late 30s or 40s, nodded, being polite, fairly obviously not understanding the significance of the events he was describing.

When I was born it was 25 years after WW2 finished. Many veterans still lived among us. It was still there, prominent in people’s minds — you can see it today in episodes of Fawlty Towers made back then, or other writing of the time. My mother used to ponder what life would have been like if the Germans had won. The owner of the shop where I had a part time job in my teens had fought in WW2, on the Kokoda Trail.

This year it’ll be 62 years since WW2 finished. It’s further in the past than WW1 was when I was born. There are fewer veterans left, with them the memories of (almost) an entire planet at war are fading. Soon all will be left is SBS’s weekly Hitler documentary.

Of course there are those who have since fought in smaller conflicts, but it seems the firsthand experience of wartime is no longer part of the common collective consciousness.

Not that that’s entirely a bad thing, of course.

(All the posts from the Sydney trip are now online)

Read an article yesterday about new non-tuck school shirts to avoid the endless problems of students not tucking their shirts in. Seems to make sense, particularly in summer.

As far as I recall, during my school-uniformed years (years 9-12), while most didn’t, I did tuck my shirt in. But then, I was a geek. I also seem to recall I never wore shorts, which must have been bloody hot on the hottest days. What was I thinking? Some kind of phobia about displaying my knees in public?!

In year 12, there were special jumpers you could wear signifying your superior status over the other students. I think it was maroon instead of the usual green. Or was it green instead of the usual maroon? No, the former. With a special logo and VCE 1988 lettering. But a quirk in the school rules said you couldn’t wear the jumper without a jacket, unless you were wearing shorts. Some of us rebelled against that, keen to show off the status. And got told off for it. Seemed like a silly rule to me.

Though not as silly, I think, as the proposals from one SRC (School Representative Council) presidential candidate to introduce school cardigans. Cardigans?! We were teenagers, not retirees.

A survey says Australian children’s top fears are car accidents, bombs, burglars and terrorists.

Some of us were talking on Saturday night about our fears when we were growing up in the early 80s. For many it was the fear of nuclear war.

I remember lying awake at night thinking about it. Glad I was living close to a major city centre that was probably a target, so all I might see was a bright flash of light, then I’d be dead, vapourised, rather than having to live in the aftermath.

I recall I had particular resentment of Ronald Reagan and his confrontational approach to world affairs. Whether it was connected or not, I recall seeing a Herald headline about the 1986 US bombing of Libya and thinking “he’s going to destroy the world.”

These fears were reflected in popular culture at the time, too. Think Raymond Briggs When the Wind Blows (which scared the willies out of me) and The Young Ones episode “Bomb“, as well as WarGames.

As it happens, Tuesday was the 23rd anniversary of the day that Colonel Stanislav Yefgrafovich Petrov saved the world, by not firing Soviet missiles in response to an apparent US missile launch on his screen (which turned out to be a glitch).

I wonder if today’s fears of terrorism have quite reached the levels of fear we had of nuclear apocalypse.

Marita was reminding me on Saturday of Dragon’s song Young Years (a discussion of various music lyrics that culminated in my car gaining the nickname Black Betty).

Secret meetings at the river’s bend
Simple days when I called you friend
Came a time, we went separate ways — Dragon, Young Years

As it happens last week I had a sudden rush of nostalgia while listening to the radio and they got onto a discussion of “things we miss from our childhood”.

I quite frankly never believed it back then when I was told those days were the best of my life. But since I’ve seen my kids growing up and enjoying their school years, I have been looking back much more fondly on my own time at school. If I had to put my finger on it, it might be the memory of the innocence and the lack of responsibility that I miss the most.

Some of the people I knew back then, I’ve kept in touch with. Others I’ve encountered from time to time on my travels. At least one, tragically, didn’t make it this far.

So I know more-or-less what Raoul M, Mark B, Merlin T, Justine H, Konrad K and Sam V are up to, even if I don’t have time to catch up with some of them very often. I’ve even heard of or from Olivia F (née D), Mark S, Josh H, Conrad L, Stuart/Lisa/Tracy M and Andrew V in the last few years. I know some of them lurk on my blog.

But what ever happened Andrew K, Daniel I, Stephen T, Michael W, David H, Craig B, Matthew S, Ingrid H, Gar S, Josh B, Leon M and all those others who are only a brief entry on the FriendsUnited web site (if that)?

What happened to all those Greek kids that used to be my neighbours? What happened to that other Matthew, the prick who used to pick on me? What about Darren D — did he end up on a farm like he thought, or is he the same guy of that name who is the fire brigade spokesman?

Okay, they’ve FU’d up the FU web site a bit. What’s with having to click through twice to get to the profiles? But some of the people I remember are in here. OMG, this says Undine S has two kids. And Andrew K’s profile shows he’s still the same joker he always was. Stephen P became a pilot just like he wanted. A few people show up in Google, too.

I suppose we’ve all gone off in different directions, scattered across the country and across the planet.

Let’s have that quote from Ben Elton’s Blast from the Past again:

Every golden generation, every fresh-faced group of friends, must statistically contain those who will fall prey to the sad clichés of life. The things they never thought would or could happen to them. Divorce, alcoholism, illness, failure. Those were things that happened to one’s parents’ generation. To adults who no longer had their whole lives before them. It comes as a shock when the truth dawns that every young person is just an older person waiting to happen, and it happens a lot sooner than anyone ever thinks.

Yikes, what a nostalgia overload. I hope I’m not heading to an early mid-life crisis or something.

In each generation, most kids show boundless enthusiasm for creative pursuits. Whether it be drawing, building things, play-acting, whatever.

When I was a kid, there was a lot of Lego building going on. My sister and I constructed whole cities. Sometimes we’d stick to the official designs of the sets, sometimes we’d go out on a limb with our own creations.

Later I moved onto computers, and writing. And at one stage, I was helping with some of my friends to make videos. Video cameras and editing equipment had reached the price point where high schools could afford them, and so over a number of years, we churned out a Blakes Seven tribute, a Doctor Who tribute called “The Battle for Mecros”, and a whole series inspired by The Professionals.

The tapes of all these still exist. I must talk to Raoul (who wrote and produced most of them) about putting the best of them onto YouTube or Google Video. I’m not going to pretend they’re Oscar-winners, but we had a lot of fun doing them, and they do serve as a permanent reminder of our teenage years.

My kids have seen the Doctor Who tribute. They really enjoyed it. They noted my contribution in the title graphics (which alas didn’t meet my expectations, and led me to do a much better later version in preparation for a re-edit that never happened) and my credited appearance hidden inside a Cyberman suit. They watched the blooper clips, which included numerous fluffed lines and footage of putting out a burning Dalek with a fire extinguisher.

Combined with the presence in our house of a digital camera (that shoots movie clips) and Windows Movie Maker, it has inspired a flurry of short film-making. Not just in my house, of course — Chris Anderson mentions the proliferation of free movie editors in The Long Tail book, which I’m reading at the moment. This and other advances in technology are leading more and more people from being just consumers, to also being producers of content.

In fact both kids are embarking on separate Doctor Who tributes, with Isaac and his friend Adrian having been in pre-production for some months now. I’m not sure what the state of the script is in, but I did note with some amusement that at one point Adrian was declaring just about anything that would involve more than a smidgeon of effort to film be deferred to post-production. If they continued down that route, there’d be not a lot actually filmed, and an awful lot of post-production work involved. They have started work on getting props and sets and so on ready, but it seems there’s a way to go before the main shoot commences.

Thankfully some other films have made it to completion. Between them Isaac and Jeremy have completed about 10 short films, varying from live action (the “Two Guys” series… guess who have the starring roles?) to animation (starring a Lego Jack Stone figure).

Anyway my point is that kids’ creative outlets move with the times. And it’s great to see their minds at work.