Shaun's contribution to "I Believe This: 100 Eminent Australians Face Life's Biggest Question", edited by John Marsden

(transcribed by Jen)

Shaun Micallef is a TV comedy writer and performer. His credits include The Micallef Program, The Micallef Programme and The Micallef Pogram. His debits include Welcher and Welcher. Born in Adelaide in 1962 and abandoned shortly thereafter Shaun was raised by wolves and has only just learned to read and write. His heroin addiction, sex change operation and affiliation with the Black Panther movement are behind him now and today he dedicates his life to building and designing leper colonies in Perth. Unfortunately, because leprosy is hard to come by in this country, most of the inhabitants of the Micallef Leper Estates in Alkimos suffer from lesser skin ailments like eczema and seborrheic dermatitis. Pity. 

VOLO ERGO SUM 

People laugh when I tell them I was on the barricades in ’68. It’s probably the high squeaky voice I employ for such conversations – a fatal error if you wish to be taken seriously, and one of the myriad which litter my life as a political agitator, rebel thinker and Kerouakian ne’er-do-well. Few people realise I was on the barricades in ’69 and ’70 as well. It wasn’t as crowded by then and so a lot easier to perch on. And the view! Magnifique! Still, try impressing a girl with that on the rue Geoffroy-Marie at three in the morning and she’ll give you a stare cold enough to chill a cryogenics lab. Of course I should add that I’m not arguing such obvious rodomotande should be used to pull the birds – there must be some sort of firm ideology behind it as well or they’ll see through you quick smart.

            Most people hammer out a vague code of ethics by the time they’re thirty. With me it took longer. In fact I’m almost seventy now and I’m still working on it. But as I’ve gone a’promenading down the road less travelled over the years, my oar turning to a winnowing fan, I have jotted down some of my musings on life as they’ve occurred to me. True, my journals and notebooks taken together would fill the Queen Mary several times over (and not the boat either – I’m talking about the actual monarch), so I’ve tried to find a single entry which sort of sums up my philosophy of life, and cut it down a little so it’ll fit into the 600 word limit for this squib – for which the chisellers at Random are not paying me a cent by the way – and which I am told I must adhere to on pain of being edited down by that butcher Marsden.

            Anyhoo, here goes…

            I was in Helsinki in 1948 buying some cufflinks when someone in our group suggested we pay a visit to Sibelius who lived nearby. We were all drunk so this seemed like a good idea, and we hailed a passing pony-and-trap and hightailed it into the verdant countryside of Hammenlinna three hours away. Unfortunately not only was Sibelius not at home, he had never lived there. According to the bald and startled man who answered the door no-one at all famous had ever so much as set foot in his cottage in the sixty years he had been there (although he said something in fractured English about Noel Coward having popped in earlier that day and eating all his pound cake).

            On the way back to Helsinki, however, the pony-and-trap driver told us a little parable which I thought worth recording. We stopped by the nearby Finnvox Studios and laid one down:

            ‘There was an old man who lived atop a tall mountain for his whole life. His only contact with the outside world was to lower milk from his goats in a bucket on a rope to a small boy who lived in the valley, who would then sell the milk at the docks at the Port of Zeebrugge for six markka a tonne. The small boy would then dutifully return to the valley, put the days takings in the bucket and the old man would haul it up the mountain again – but not a word of thanks to the boy. He did this every year for ninety years. And when he died, you know what they found under his bed?

            We all shook our heads.

‘Four furniture coasters. Yep – that old guy sure knew how to look after his carpet.’

            From that day to this I have never been able to listen to Hjalmar Munsterhjelm’s Before the Thunderstorm in quite the same way again. Mind you, it is a painting.

            My message? The credo I live by? Don’t worry about face creams, plastic surgery, or looking slim. People get old, just face it. You want to be immortal, have some children…

            Also don’t watch television current affairs programs or read women’s magazines – they’re crap.