Coffee House Conversation: An Interview With George Middleton

Coffee House Conversation:
An Interview with George Middleton

The coffee house was bustling. I glanced the room for my victim. Aha! He watched as I approached, one eye lifted from the front page of the Herald. I took note of the plate before him; crumbs, dirty plastic cutlery and a cardboard coffee cup sporting only residue. “Great, he has finished…”

“Hi my name is Caroline.”
“George Middleton.”

We shook hands. My palms were sweating and George noticed. I think.

“Umm, I need to conduct an interview with a stranger for my assignment, so do you have some time to spare?”
“Yeah sure I am just relaxing”

He was seated upright, obviously anxious.

“Do I need to sign anything? What is it about? How long will it take?”
“Yes I have a form for you to sign, it can be about anything and it won’t take more than 10 minutes.”

I did not have a copy of the form. Luckily, he never asked for it.

“Okay sure”
“Look I don’t have any questions prepared because I didn’t know who I would be interviewing. I guess that I am kind of an amateur.”

I attempted to be funny. He attempted to laugh.

“So what would you like me to tell you?”
“Anything”
“Okay, I will start with my time in Australia”
“I knew that you weren’t from here, you are English aren’t you?”

I had no idea what I wanted to or would achieve through conducting this interview, so I just listened sharply, armed with an even sharper pencil and a notepad made from 100% recycled paper.

“I was born in the south of Dublin in 1939.”

Ah, so it was an Irish accent.

“I moved to Australia in 1963 with nothing but ten pounds in my pocket. Jobs were easy to obtain though, after all I had a good education and had been a banker for seven-and-a-half years.”

I tried my best to make questions out of every detail.

“Yeah I would guess for Anglo Europeans it would have been easy, with the backing of the White Australia Policy.”

“Uhhh anyway, my first job in Australia was in a fibreglass filter company. It was a small factory in Mortdale.”

“Oh Mortdale, where did you live?”

“Bexley”

Suddenly he leant back into his chair, looking as though he was enjoying himself.

I calculated his age in my head, coming to the conclusion that he would have been too young to serve in World War II…

“Did you fight in Vietnam?”
“No I was too old, I was about twenty nine or thirty. I guess I missed out.”

He smiled.

“So you mean in a humorous way, like a pun, like you did not really want to go and you didn’t have to because of your age.”

“Yeah that’s right.”

Silence, but still the bustling of the coffee house…

“My next job was delivering orange juice in and around the city for six months. Then I worked at ANZ bank for two years. I started off as a teller then I became involved more complex stuff’.”

He prided himself on the word “complex”. I questioned it.

“Mortgaging. You know, stuff at the back”

He did not have much more to tell.

.

Change the subject, Caroline!

“Are you married?”

There was that smile again.

“Yes, in fact I met my wife while working at the bank, she was a client.My youngest [daughter] was born in 1973. She has two kids. My eldest was born in 1971. She is not married but she is a medical researcher for UNSW.”

Sometimes I did not completely hear what George was saying. I did not know whether it was because his tone was low, or whether the bustling of the coffee house muffled it.

“I went to Macquarie University to get a degree in accounting. I didn’t work for those three years. The kids had just started school and my wife had just finished uni. She actually worked at Macquarie, specialising in…umm…you know with kids…”

“Kids with special needs?”

“Yeah that’s it. She specialised in children with learning disabilities.”

George did not work during the time he studied. His wife was the breadwinner. I found myself becoming inspired as it was the 70’s, feminism was rife, and here was a young mother with two children working and supporting her family.

“It was really difficult working as an accountant once I had my degree. I worked as a manager but I had no practical experience, as they never taught management roles at uni. They [the workers] never listened to me. You needed to be extra hard headed if you wanted to get your point across.”

George’s story went back and forth. I just listened as the memories flooded his brain and expelled through his mouth.

Suddenly we were back in 1968, before his daughters were born. George and his wife had just bought their home in Epping. During this time they established and ran their own business, “but it was a disaster.”

“Oh, what business was it? Was it an accounting business?”

“No, it was a boarding house in Bondi.”

Interesting.

“How many people could the boarding house capacitate?”

“Twenty.”

A mental image of 20 young hippies smoking inordinate amounts of marijuana within George’s boarding house inundated my brain.

His mind seemed to be ambling too, as he took brief pauses in between each sentence to think about the next.

“…the sheets were changed once a week. We had one common room with a TV, kind of like an old fashioned drawing room… we didn’t do our homework. In order to make a profit we needed to be 70% full –we were never reached over 50.”

I thanked George for his time, stood up, smiled and walked away.

Silence, but still the bustling of the coffee house.

I thought he was heading out but rather he stopped right before me, his palm placed against the strap of his backpack:

“Caroline, could I ask you a question now?”

“Yes of course”

What could he possibly want?

“Why did you approach me out of everyone here?”

“Um, well, because umm, you seemed the most approachable. Also, I personally think older people have a richer story to tell, you know? They have lived longer.”

“So what, I look old and soft?”

Laughter. Awkward Laughter.

“No, no, not at all”`

He smiled, nodded and headed towards the door.

I fixed my eyes on him as he walked. I do not know why he asked that last question, but it made me feel like he wanted to gain revenge for something that I had done to him.

I had my interview, though.

__________________________________________________________________________________________


Reflection: Why did you chose your subject and where would you like to have your article published?

I had no expectations regarding my interview. It is the first time that I had conducted one with somebody I did not know so it was more of an ‘experiment’ for me than a planned project.

I chose George Middleton as he seemed the most communicative. He was merely seated in the corner of the coffee house by himself, reading his paper. Everybody else looked guarded, either studying or chatting with a group of friends. Others seemed unapproachable, dressed in business suits and looking as though they were scurrying.

George seemed rather put off/surprised when I first approached him, making me feel unsure if I made the right choice. I explained the project; even letting him read the question. He agreed to do it, but he was still very presumptuous towards my ‘assessment.’ I did not know what I wanted to ask him and he did not know what to say, so I thought it would be best I become myself, rather than an interviewer, and explained that I had never done anything like this before. At that point he put down his paper and suggested a few things he could talk to me about.

After a few minutes of question/answer I saw that he felt far more comfortable. He was leaning back into his chair, smiling at me and telling me things before I even asked.

As he was walking out he asked why I had chosen him (as I reported in the article). I did not know how to answer I did not want to place judgement on him, nor did I want to offend him. So I told him what I felt and I laughed, hoping to make it appear funny. He laughed too, but I still do not what his intentions were regarding the question.

A few days after interview I remembered that George needed to sign the slip. I mailed it to his home along with an explanation. He mailed it back promptly. I have attached the slip, along with the enevelope to my assignment. If this were to be published, I would have the envelope attached, to give the piece a authenticity as interviews are meant to be personal and real.

While writing this article I had ‘society and culture/young adult’ magazines in mind, something like fankie or Nylon. I believe that my piece suits this type of publications perfectly as I have read similar pieces within both of these magazines.