Opinion
Can I spring-clean my brain? I don’t need to know Australian explorers
Richard Glover
Broadcaster and columnistIt’s the season to clean your home, but right now – in the first week of spring – I’d rather spring-clean my brain. I’d like to throw out all the unused material up there in the attic and replace it with stuff that brings joy. It would be a Marie Kondo clean-up for my head.
First to go would be the Australian explorers. We spent most of primary school learning about them. Who knows why? Most of them were total failures. They “discovered things”, sure, but only after being shown the way by some Indigenous bloke. The rest died in the desert, after refusing help from some other Indigenous bloke.
So out they go, the lot of them.
I’d like to Marie Kondo my mind.Credit: AP
In school geography we spent our time studying the formation of oxbow lakes, a process described in three illustrations that we would dutifully copy again, and again, and again. We were told we had to understand the slow processes of geology, in which time stands still for endless millennia, and of which the geography lesson appeared a good example.
During all the decades since, I have awaited the moment when someone at a party expressed an interest in oxbow lakes, allowing me to shine, reproducing the three illustrations on a piece of paper kept in my pocket for just such an occasion.
Alas, it has never happened, so out they go.
I’d like to throw out all the unused material up there in the attic and replace it with stuff that brings joy.
Our teachers were in love with lists, so the attic is full of boxes marked “Kings and Queens of England” or “Coastal Rivers of NSW, North to South” or “Agricultural Zones of Europe”.
I consider throwing them all into the rubbish but my hand hesitates, just in case something comes up in the Good Weekend quiz. There’s nothing like barking “Charles the First!” to achieve a surprised glance of admiration from your adult children.
Just as the real attic is crowded with obsolete technology, so my mental attic is a jumble of information relating to that technology. For sentimental reasons I have hung on to my first typewriter, but do I need the mental paraphernalia that went with it? The method of getting a second go out of an exhausted typewriter ribbon by winding it backwards? Or the technique of using Tipp-Ex or Liquid Paper? Or the flick of the wrist that would send the carriage back, ready to tackle a new line?
Mate, who needs this stuff? Out it goes.
The skip is starting to fill. There’s so much stuff up here that’s surplus to requirements. I find I know the lyrics to all sorts of songs – from Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti to Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping. I can count down the bars on Neil Diamond’s Crunchy Granola Suite, knowing the exact point at which various instruments are introduced.
I also know the first 22 lines of T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, with the exception of the 17th line, and also the 20th, both of which I find are suddenly missing in action. It’s like a vase with a crack in it. You can admire what it once was, but is it worth keeping something that leaks?
I also know how to cook an excellent tuna mornay: a small amount of tuna and a can of tinned corn, stirred through a hillock of pasta, all bathed in a gloopy white sauce and cheese. It still tastes fantastic. Further servings, however, may kill me. Better to spring-clean the recipe from my brain and replace it with one for a light salad.
By now, the skip is almost overflowing. I’ve thrown in “How to Knot a Bow Tie”, “How to Tighten a Cassette Tape Using a Pencil” and the complete lyrics of ABBA. There’s a big cardboard box that I have to support from below as the bottom is falling out, filled with pre-decimal phrases such as “a penny for your thoughts”, “stops on a sixpence” or “not the full quid”.
Already I have to swap metric into imperial to work out the size of any criminal being sought by police: “Ah, he’s six foot”. Saying he then “ran a mile” won’t make me look any younger. Gingerly, I lift the whole slumping container into the skip.
It’s then that I start to worry. Last time I did a chuck-out of physical items, the old rule applied: the very next week I required an old piece of flywire, identical to the one I’d thrown into the bin.
Perhaps the same rule applies to this mental detritus. Throw out any single item and you’ll suddenly need it.
With growing conviction I unload the skip and carry all the items back into the mental attic. It’s hard work but I find myself glowing with pleasure, looking forward to the week ahead.
I’ll make tuna mornay and damn the consequences. I’ll sing Tutti Frutti as I stir, and then invite the kids for Saturday lunch. Once seated, we shall do the Good Weekend quiz.
All I need now is for the quiz compiler to do their bit. Surely Burke and Wills came across some sort of oxbow lake?
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