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Australia

Shelf Life

Charles Waterstreet

Thursday, 2nd October 2008

Two funerals and a birthday party lead me to wonder — is there life before death?

I thought my time was going to be short when I had a mid-life crisis at 12. It was the 1960s after all — although they didn’t really arrive in Australia until the early Seventies. More than likely it was caused by withdrawal from my mother’s twice weekly dosing — for my own good — of Waterbury’s Compound. I had gone to boarding school that year, and was removed from cod liver oil, junket tablets, nutmeg and two fingers of Waterbury’s. Only recently when waiting for prescriptions to be filled at the chemist, an increasing occurrence of late, did I pick up a dusty-shouldered bottle of Waterbury’s and notice that it was 16 per cent alcohol. My own and the family’s dysfunction came sharply into focus. I was liquored-up for most of my tweens. I dried out at rehab boarding school. Whatever the cause, with all the ignorance of youth I vowed in the chapel of Our Lady of the Mount to live the rest of my life drinking anything I could get my hands on. Incredibly, despite my best efforts, I survived my twenties, thirties and forties. Mind you, I had to set some standards. Excess, but no further, seemed appropriate. These days my excesses are strictly over-the-counter — having spent the first half of my life trying to kill myself, I find that I am endeavouring to live forever or die in the attempt.

Two funerals and a friend’s 60th birthday were more than enough to send me to bed for 24 hours. Unlike most talent agents John Cann developed the art of being underwhelming to the point where it was one of his most outstanding attributes. He never rained on his client’s parade. He was all about them. He was so unassuming that when he entered a room it became emptier. John may have acquired his humility through his nodding-off relationship with narcotics. Thankfully, he shrugged off his habit in time. I was fortunate enough to reintroduce him to an old friend after they had both been sober for 20 years. Luke Davies greeted John like a war veteran who had missed the Anzac Day march for decades but suddenly the horror, the horror came flooding back with the gratitude and guilt of survival. Now it was John’s turn to join the anti-war dead. Scores of paparazzi buzzed and flashed like fireflies around the perimeter Mona Vale Cemetery while friends and famous, infamous, and nearly anonymous clients watched his body return to the North Shore soil where he had grown up and upon which he starred as a runner at Pittwater High. His school rugby photo sums him up. It reads ‘J Cann — absent’. But John was always an outsider looking out. His anti-Vietnam conviction even led him to a conviction in court. If he could not help himself to life’s riches, he found redemption in helping others. Naomi Watts travelled from New York. Jack Thompson provided the graveside soundtrack with two deeply moving poems. The rest of Showcast cuddled each other. Light rain fell. The levies burst when Jeannie Lewis sang ‘Je ne regrette rien’. There wasn’t a dry set of Ray-Bans at Mona Vale.

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