When I was 22, my friend Katie and I saw a terrace house to rent in North Fitzroy, across the road from Edinburgh Gardens. It was the stuff of our dreams.
We were determined and strategic -- rather than wait for the inspection date, we decided to knock on the door and attempt to ingratiate ourselves with whoever was inside.
As we approached the front door, dressed to impress in our cobbled-together faux office-worker outfits (I seem to recall that I was wearing a white suit of all things!), we caught sight of someone familiar sitting on the internal stairs of the adjoining terrace. He was leaning against the wall, talking on the phone with his feet up on the banister.
I had met him once before, a few years earlier, at the Uni Bar in Canberra, where we had both grown up. At the time I had decided he was an arrogant prick and had been harbouring a rather too intent dislike for him ever since. Funny how strong feelings sometimes have to go one or the other.The tenant set to move out of the house Katie and I wanted to rent happened to be playwright Hannie Rayson. As a VCA graduate, she took pity on two entirely transparent young art students searching for a house to rent and recommended us to the landlord.
The rest, shall we say, is history...
(Left: The kids I ended up having with that not so arrogant after all and in fact rather delicious man living next door.)Yesterday that man on the staircase turned 40, and I was privileged to wake up next to him for the I-don't-know-how-many-hundreth time.
Not a bad way to spend a life.
(And many years later, just to come full circle, the darling Hannie Rayson launched The Divided Heart. If only I had a recording of her incredible speech! Does anyone remember it? I was too nervous to really take it in but I do remember that she was brilliant and hilarious.)
