David Swain’s Lyric Life?

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I was lucky. I had a good variety of Dad.

A Lifelong Process
from One Thing and Another
David Swain

It’s Father’s Day this weekend in Oz. We are being encouraged to buy buy buy. Wearing our Covid-safe masks, we queue at acceptable distance out the door of the post office.

If we have a Dad, that is. If we have a Dad who is still alive and craving a pair of socks or a power tool, who resides far away.

That was not my Dad.

If there were any commodities he was into, it was musty secondhand books. He was more into creativity, kindness, humour and people. Lucky for me, he  made all the time in the world for his family of women. My Mum, my sister and myself. Oh and Isabel and Soxy the cats when they were alive.

Dad died ten years ago. I sometimes share bits and bobs of his creations. Here’s a link to some of those previous David Swain mentions.

And what a legacy of inspiration!

Here’s a glimpse of one of his books I haven’t shared much before…

One Thing and Another
David Swain
my Dad

One Thing and Another. A selection of ten years of cartoon and verse from his weekly column in the Canberra Times.

The prophecy game
from One Thing and Another
David Swain

I know my Dad was rare for his times. Rare at any time. So I think of you with compassion if you had a less than lovely father.

I send

some David Swain delight

your way.

One of my all-time favourites of Dad’s cartoons
from One Thing and Another

And here’s a poem that my Dad gave to a neighbour years ago. The ex-neighbour found the poem on a scrunched-up, nearly thrown-out scrap of fax paper. Fax paper! Faded but not forgotten. She photographed it and PM’d me. Aww.

Bondi Sonnet
David Swain
gifted to a neighbour, which was the sort of kindly creative gesture my Dad would make

In case you can’t read the Faded-but-not-Forgotten Fax:

BONDI SONNET

IF GOD EXISTS

I CANNOT SAY

BUT DO KNOW WHAT

I HEAR TODAY

FROM BONDI BIRDS

CALLING ‘O-K-A-A-Y’

IN DRAWN-OUT NOTES

OF NEAT DESIGN

PLUS SOUND LIKE ‘BOMP’

TO END EACH LINE

OF LYRIC LIFE

TILL MOST AGREE

THAT KNOCK-OFF TIME’S

AT HALF-PAST THREE 

David Swain and his Lyric Life?
He started out as a cheeky Cockney barrow boy. When he was sixteen, a headline in a local paper pronounced him London’s youngest greengrocer. (That’s what you do to keep the family afloat when your own father dies).

In the early 1970s, he initiated Australia’s first professional writing degree.

And there he was late in life, sitting at his desk in the flat with the view of Bondi Beach, wondering at squawky rainbow lorikeets and modern fax machines, slowly heading towards dementia and decline, still writing.

What a journey. What a Dad.

with love, art and soul
from Sally

9 thoughts on “David Swain’s Lyric Life?”

  3. The Prophecy Game, as apt then as now. I think he would have considered your post the best Father’s Day gift of all. This year will be my 3rd Father’s Day without Dad. When we were little, he managed to convince us that the best present to bring him on Father’s Day was a cup of tea in bed.

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      • I expect it will be okay this Father’s Day. It’s the ordinary days which sometimes trip me up, like the other day when I looked at the knives in my drawer and remembered how he always sharpened them for me. He was a butcher once and he simply couldn’t tolerate a blunt knife. The cuppa for Dad always went very well. I don’t think I spilled a drop, and he didn’t ever complain the tea wasn’t to his liking. Mind you, before he let me do it, he gave me lessons on how to make his tea.

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