Survival games

The first time I stayed at Uncle Charlie's house he said: ``Don't worry if you hear strange noises in the night. It will just be me.''

Uncle Charlie was a prisoner on the infamous Burma Railway during WWII and still had nightmares about his experiences, even many decades later.

We would sit in his kitchen late at night and play a game that could be called ``survival''.

He would say something like: ``If we were under attack, where would you escape to?''

I always chose to head for the hills, somewhere far from a city, somewhere like where Uncle Charlie lived at Nowa Nowa in Gippsland.

``And what would you take with you?'' he would ask.

I chose sheep and bees. Sheep because I could spin their fleece to make clothing (it gets cold in Gippsland in winter) and I could make cheese from their milk. So I needed a ram and a few ewes.

Bees would provide honey and pollinate flowers to provide fruit and vegetables.

That was probably cheating a bit because I hadn't taken seeds or seedlings with me but I figured if I found an old settlement in the bush something would have been planted in the past and allowed to go to seed. So I would use the fruits of someone's labour.

``And who would you take with you?'' he would ask. ``What skills would they have?''

I wanted someone who could cut wood.

My aunt used to cut the wood at my grandmother's house. She used to let me try to split the kindling when I was old enough to hold the axe. But I was never very good at splitting kindling.

So I would need an axeman, preferably one who could make furniture and build a shelter.

I didn't fancy spending the winter sheltering under wattle and daub.

Uncle Charlie said he would make an amphitheatre in the bush. He would need orators and singers and actors to appear in his amphitheatre.

He had picked out just the spot on his farm, a natural amphitheatre on a hillside beside the river. He showed me where to stand to make my voice echo out across the river.

And I sat high on the hill and heard his voice ring clear and pure as he recited a poem from his past. I don't remember what it was.

I wish I had kept a diary more often in my life. Most of my diaries have been lost when I moved house or threw away what I thought I did not need.

Needs change.

But the essence of people met remains.

From my friend Colleen I inherited two pieces of advice. To begin each day as if it's your first, and end it as if there will be no tomorrow. I count that as one.

The other piece of advice was about being a victim. When I was feeling hard done by she would ask ``How big is ...'', meaning the person giving me grief. ``How much power does he have?'' ``You set your own mood,'' she would say. ``No one can make you feel down unless you let them.''

She also said I had a choice. I could give in and be a victim all my life or stand up for what I believed in and face the consequences.

Colleen died more than 10 years ago but what she gave me still lives.

That's what immortality is really about.

Another friend, Lee, used to say ``The light at the end of the tunnel could be a freight train heading your way.'' And ``If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people he gave it to.''
But my favourite saying came from Sandi, who used to ask me to come for a drive around the block whenever she was ready to explode over some problem or other at the school where we taught.
We had many drives around the block.
``You'll win a high place in heaven,'' she used to say, whenever someone helped her out of one of her crises.

Most of my friends are spread far and wide. But when we get together it feels as if we have spent days, not years, apart.

Must go, the housework beckons.