In the beginning

This isn't the beginning. The next bit is.

In the beginning, Substack created a newsletter platform with no drop caps function, which dissuaded me from ever using ‘in the beginning’ at the start of one of these posts. But now that there is one, thanks to a vocal lobby group who fought and won their noble text design battle, so the ‘I’ you see above should be big and colourful and have taken on a godly significance, and if it hasn’t, I’m sorry — this paragraph won’t be making much sense.

I wasn’t part of the drop caps lobby group, although I quietly supported their work. Indeed my own view is that this new functionality doesn’t go far enough. I’ve long fancied the idea that Substack would include a Book of Kells Plugin, to enable elaborate multicoloured sentence starters which will really top off my next article about footy sirens, or carsales.com, or spotting Baker Boy at an Ocean Grove cafe.

I hope nobody finds an ‘In the beginning’ start to a post announcing exciting new font functionality blasphemous. My understanding is if you stop short of picturing yourself as Christ laying healing hands — actually I’m hearing that’s okay too, so long as you you appoint the right Supreme Court justices. I’m not a Christian myself, although I did attend Catholic Church between the ages of 4 and 8, which was long enough to learn ‘The lord be with you / And also with you / Lift up your heart / We lift them up to the lord / It is right to give him thanks and praise’ which I can still recite although not in Italian, which left me high and dry when I went to mass in Palermo last year.

The reason my sister and I stopped going to our Deepdene church (Our Lady of Good Counsel) when I was eight is that my father, Ray, who’d converted to Catholicism during his time at Newman College (or was it just before?), called us over in our Balwyn backyard and said, ‘do you want to go to church any more?’

We said, ‘No’. I don’t remember it being a difficult decision.

He said, ‘Me neither’, which is a fascinating exchange to have with a father whose Catholicism had been a sticking point at the time of his marriage to my mother, thirteen years earlier. Her Methodist parents hadn’t approved, especially with the sacramental requirement for the wedding to be in a Catholic Church and it had all been quite messy. Dad had endured all that, pushed his case and his faith, and yet at some moment in 1981, he just went, nup, I’m done. But I better check the kids don’t want to go …

I remember the conversation, clear as day. I heard the question as — Is there anything you’d prefer to do on a Sunday morning than sit on a hard piece of wood while a boring man mumbles interminably into a microphone and says weird things like ‘trespasses’, which is a very whistlely word when you hear it said en masse in mass; or would you prefer another activity, like playing footy, or footy cards, or footy soccer, or trampoline footy, or marble footy, or hovers, or watching World of Sport?’

That’s how I heard the question. I’m unsure how sister Samantha, then 10, heard the question, but she answered ‘no’ even quicker than I did.

I’ve been interviewing Dad on camera this year (I have real regrets about not recording Mum before we lost her) and asked him whether he remembered the conversation in the backyard. He didn’t, but said he did remember a creeping dissatisfaction with the Church around that time — ‘mostly on political things like contraception’. ‘I probably found the priest annoying,’ he said.

He probably did. I know I did.

None of this is very relevant. The truth is, I haven’t written a post for a while, and one of the things you have to do when you’re struggling a bit, is just write anything. I need this tatooed on my arm at the moment. You can do it, Tony. You can do it. Write about the Book of Kells plugin. They’ll love it. If they don’t, they’ll just stop reading. Who cares? Sometimes you write really good things and they stop reading anyway. It’s the attention economy, stupid. See? That’s why you have to write bullshit sometimes. ‘It’s the attention economy, stupid’ actually isn’t too bad. It’s a shame I’m wasting it here, instead of in an essay on, say, the attention economy.

I did see the Book of Kells with Tamsin at Trinity College, Dublin, twenty years after I stopped going to church and 1200 years after Columban monks transcribed the gospels using their best colouring-in.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John …

Acts.

Romans.

Did I tell you that I won a Spearmint Choc Wedge in RE at Camberwell Grammar for reciting the books of the New Testament in order, no mistakes? Mr Murray was the teacher promising the ice cream. He had a bushranger beard. It’s not that easy, learning The Books. My fifty-three year old brain wouldn’t want to be sorting its Corinthian Ones from its Timothy Twos, but back then it was pink and supple, and would do anything for a Spearmint Choc Wedge.

In case you’re wanting to have a crack yourself:

Timothy 2 never makes the news, does it? This Substack hardly counts, Timothy 2. If you’re counting Good one, Wilson in your press clippings — well just don’t. You’re not even in the Book of Kells, Timothy 2.

In case you want to know what a Spearmint Choc Wedge was:

Mr Murray also taught science — RE and science. Did we do the Big Bang? Did I ask him where God was in the universe? Did he tell us what existed in that nanosecond before The Big Bang? Did he leave room for God’s hand?

Probably. I can’t actually remember.

But I do remember I won another Spearmint Choc Wedge from Mr Murray for memorising the chemical elements in order. Hhelibebcnofnenamgalsipsclarkca. I can still do that one. And if I close my eyes, I can still taste the thin, icy, greenish, ice-creamish glory of the Spearmint Choc Wedge. Thirty-five cents. The only thing better than a thirty-five cent Choc Wedge was a free Choc Wedge from Mr Murray.

Here endeth the recollection. I need a photo of Mr Murray to round this out so I can put it through my beta testing Book of Kells plugin.

I do have this one of him announcing the House Sports results:

If you love science I can recommend Adam Spencer’s NerdNews to you. There is a puzzle every Friday, and he’s currently doing a series on the first twenty elements. He’s already done Beryllium if you’re pumped for that, but you can catch up.

Elemental 5/100: Nothin' borin' about Boron