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Chronicle of a Burnley Boy

Ray Watson

出版	Raymond K Watson, 2021-03-17
主題	Biography & Autobiography / General
ISBN	09875984309780987598431
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=KuEdzgEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋

This is a tale of growing up in the Burnley precinct of working-class Richmond during the 1940s and 1950s. It offers a personal bottom-up view of that community with comments and insights into specific events like the World War and the hotly contested industrial and political struggles of the time. But mostly it is a story of how history's lesser happenings play out in each individual's development; the everyday world of family, friends and locality, the games played by children. As a new-born baby we see the author swept through Mena House in East Melbourne on the arm of a German nun. After surviving various adventures with his family and playmates over the next few years, he moves to St James primary school where he comes under the outside world's realpolitik for the first time and continues his observation of his parents' involvement in his parish's social scene. As his "stranger" brother launches him into secondary school at Malvern, he enters the culture of the professional world riding the independent schools' trunk route tram along Glenferrie Rd. But his part-time job and home improvement work show the continuing imprint of his Richmond upbringing. As Louis Armstrong's song about getting ideas puzzles him he discovers girls. Bumbling into a teaching career, he enters university, expanding his cultural horizons and starting to search for a life partner. As he becomes more aware of the gulf between his present lifestyle and his Richmond origins, National Service obligations begin requiring an annual pilgrimage to Puckapunyal and Seymour. Political immersion then offers a possible integrating bridge between his dual lives. An abhorrent first teaching appointment to Seymour then cuts through his problem while creating a different one before a surprising final resolution in a joyous romance sprung from St Kilda and Prahran nightspots.