Sunnybank74

Valentine’s Day in Sunnybank. Two weeks into high school, and with all these pubescents thrust together, i’m sure that there were some hormones flowing. Relationships were being forged.

But were there any declarations of love being made? I’ll take a punt and say no. We might have been looking, but we weren’t playing. Not just yet, anyway.

Sneaker love – photo by Piotr Bizior - www.bizior.com

You know that classic novel and film The Princess Bride? In the first chapter of the William Goldman book, Buttercup is rated on beauty, steadily climbing the charts as those above her succumb to chocolate or age or accidents, working her way through the top twenty until by the end of the first chapter she is Number One: the most beautiful women in the world.

I think that we Grade Eight students who walked to school, got off the buses, or were dropped off by their parents were much like Buttercup. Working our way up the charts. And our own personal bests. Growing into fresh, healthy handsome boys and beautiful girls.

Not that I personally would ever have made anyone’s top list for anything but gawky and geeky. With the emotional intelligence and social grace of a half-brick. I might like to think that I have made my way up to the full brick in my later years, but my children would say different.

And my wife has just told me that the beard I’ve grown since New Years Day is not a good look. My daughter flat out hates it. And my son, who is generally supportive, helpfully said, “It makes you look older.”

So I’m no oil painting, and never was. But my fellow students, I remember different. The boys I had no eyes for, but the girls were beautiful to begin with and just got better as they filled out into their curves and hips and things.

Something about young women. They mature a lot faster than young men. In their bodies, in their brains, in everything. They are generally real adults a long way before their male schoolmates are anything like reasonable company.

I remember one day early February 1970. There were a group of us sitting on the edge of the oval. Maybe it was during one of the many bomb threats, maybe it was while everyone else was playing rounders or something, maybe it was lunchtime. I forget the occasion, but it was I, Noel Davis and Allan Madelaine. Not sure of the girls, but the conversation turned to sex, and they named a price.

And then added to it with all sorts of extras, culminating in the obstetrician’s bill. And food and clothing for the infant.

It all worked out to more than any schoolboy could afford.

It was pretty much flirting, to begin with. Crushes came later. Hands held and kisses stolen away from the gaze of the teaching staff. And real romance, well, I had no direct knowledge of this, except to note that Sandra Young and Peter Caldwell were sweethearts for a long time, and later married. Still are, according to Donna Dancer’s list of contacts.

I’m looking forward to seeing some of my schoolmates at the reunion. I am sure that the beautiful girls will be even more beautiful women.

Maybe with figures more matronly than maidenly, but if there is one thing that life has taught me, it is that real beauty isn’t found in fashion magazines. Nor in adolescent fantasies. It’s found deep inside, somewhere in the region of the heart.

Will hearts soaked in twenty or thirty years of parental or marital affection be lovelier than before? I think so. I think that there will be smiles and embraces, laughter …and love.

– Peter Mac

Australian Top Ten – 14 February 1970

	this week	last .week			weeks in
	1.	(1)	Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head	Johnny Farnham	10
	2.	(4)	SMILEY	Ronnie Burns	9
	3.	(2)	Down On The Corner/Fortunate Son	Creedence Clearwater Revival	9
	4.	(13)	I Thank You	Lionel Rose	6
	5.	(10)	Jam up and jelly tight	Tommy Roe	6
	6.	(3)	Holly Holy	Neil Diamond	8
	7.	(8)	Arkansas Grass	Axiom	11
	8.	(6)	Suspicious Minds	Elvis Presley	13
	9.	(21)	Venus	Shocking Blue	3
	10.	(11)	Penny Arcade	Roy Orbison	17

–Go-Set

Pete’s Jukebox

Only one possible choice in this list for a Valentine’s Day post. Venus by Dutch band Shocking Blue. Not to be confused with the 1986 Bananarama hit cover. Nor the 1990 remix of the same song, which likewise hit the Australian Top Ten.

Nor the 1959 Frankie Avalon hit of the same title, nor Jamie Redfern’s 1973 hit cover. (“Venus if you will, please send a little girl for me to thrill…”) All very confusing, really.

A goddess on a mountain top
Was burning like a silver flame.
The summit of beauty and love
And Venus was her name.

I’m going to disregard the various hit rankings. This song is crap. Crapper than most pop songs of the era, anyway. Various bits of it are stolen from other songs, most notably the opening guitar riff, lifted straight out of The Who’s Pinball Wizard of the previous year. A 1963 Mama Cass song is also heavily mined.

Two words into the song, and the Dutch vocalist mispronounces goddess as “godness”. It might make some sort of sense, but Venus is the goddess of love, okay? It’s a song about Venus, if you will.

Only two verses. Most of the song is chorus, and looking at the clip, I think that the group is kind of embarrassed about it all. A few wry smiles at the camera, boredom creeping in here and there.

Her weapons were her crystal eyes
Making every man mad.
Black as the dark night she was
Got what no-one else had.

Aaaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh!

Well, I’m your Venus
I’m your fire
At your desire.

Yeah, I know that I can mangle syntax with the best of them and my spelling can be archaeic, but honestly, this song is just painful to listen to. That bit of screaming just then, that was me, venting.

But I’m sure it was just fine for dancing. And screaming.

And any jet-black crystal-eyed chick of the Seventies, well, she had it made.

–Peter Mac