On The Gold Coast: James Lobb
Judith Wallis recalls one of her school teachers, Mr Lobb, a middle-aged man with a kindly round face who wore tweed jackets which smelled of sunlight and grass.
There are some people who linger on in our memory, sometimes for decades. Long after our lives have taken different paths and we no longer hear news of them, we continue to recall incidents or words linking us to a certain person.
Some are old friends well known and others seen only for a flicker in time. Like a beautiful woman seen at the corner of the street as you drive by or an unknown child running, laughing, flying a kite. It may be that we remember kind or wise words that altered our lives for the better. Our memories may be happy or sad. Some strengthened by time and others lessened.
My mind is full of these people. One of them, a Mr James Lobb, was a school teacher and he taught me when I was ten years old. A middle-aged man of average height he wore silver rimmed spectacles that often slipped down his small nose and he would peer at us over the top of them with a quizzical expression on his kindly round face.
He wore tweed jackets that smelled of sunlight and grass. In the winter when rain fell for weeks on end, he wore a large oilskin coat and goloshes over his shoes. He dried his goloshes beside the pot-belly stove in the classroom and the smell of warm rubber filled the room.
The room darkened and became cosy as the rain drummed a steady rhythm and we children were lulled by the sound. If a child's interest in the lesson wandered, Mr Lobb would put a finger to his lips warning those watching him to be quiet then, picking up one of the goloshes he would lob it down the aisle to land with a resounding thump on the desk top of the inattentive child who sat bolt upright in fright making the rest of us laugh.
After lunch one sunny day in spring he asked us all to stand and file quietly out of the classroom. Filled with curiosity we did so following him out of the school grounds and a across the fields beyond the back fence. When asked where we were going he smiled and said it was a surprise.
As we neared a small rise he asked us to move up very quietly and lie down so we could see over the ridge. This we did. Before us the grass covered hill sloped down to a small stream. On the opposite side was a clay bank partly overhung by a weeping willow. There were small round holes in the bank and to our delight a kingfisher appeared at the entrance of one.
Hardly daring to breathe we lay watching as several more kingfishers arrived with nesting material each going in at their own front door, disappearing for a moment then with a brilliant flash of colour, flying off to collect more.
Several times one or more birds skimmed the surface of the water catching insects. One large bird sat for a long time alone on a branch of the willow. Suddenly he swooped. Into the water and out bearing a small fish in his beak. Wow! This was better than school work.
