Sharing thoughts and words is as good as fanning a great warming blaze. Wonderful. Looking back, thinking about ‘my’ blond haired boy in long shorts with seemingly permanently tanned skin brings fleeting thoughts of the Koala’s eucalyptus emblazoned outback, the witchety grub, Skippy and the wonders of virtual teaching; way back in the 60’s and way ahead of the super highway! Schooling across the airwaves seemed as mystical then as the dreamtime to all but the aboriginals who lived its reality. Lawrence had no connection with Oz though, he simply vanished into the upwardly mobile world opened up to so many as South Africa sought to bolstered itself against a future it couldn’t escape. In many ways like Oz, it was all about a sought after lifestyle in the sun. Away he went taking all his magic to a whole new world.
Belief and openness are quite magical concepts, as breath-catching as the magic pretty Lawrence performed during those almost too-good-to-be-true tarmac and plimsole melting summers of the late sixties. To behold his perfect frame and slight of hand was to love him and wonder at the world he was escaping to, taking with him as he did a pre-pubescent belief in love and all at once closing the openness of the heart just as the certainties of the sixties ‘closed’ and gave way to the the growth pangs of a post war generation facing the less optimistic world of the seventies. Belief and openness remain shiny and wet and much hoped for.
