House call

Two weeks after we arrive I email my friend. ”We’ve looked and looked and there isn’t anything!”

Later I call my mother with the same news. ”We’ve looked and looked and there isn’t anything!”

“Don’t you think you need to give it more time?” she asks. “It’s a house.”

“No.”

A week later there is an update.

“We’ve found it!”

“Golly! That was quick!” writes my friend.

“Golly! That was quick!” says my mother.

“Really?” I ask.

When you have nothing to do, nothing else to do, it can happen like that.

Having nothing else to do, or only one thing to do if you are reading the other way, is focusing. Although it has its detractors and is unpopular because most people are busy, if at all possible I highly recommend it; three weeks with only one thing to do is like five years of normal time.

In this case, not having found a house after two weeks felt like twenty years; extra years added for regular boredom. That is the only part of the formula that is random. If you use the formula at home you may get a different result depending on your ability to do things like wait.

When we did find something after days and days, after many days,

nearly twenty -

it felt like the earth had changed its axis and ice was melting after 40,000 years. It was like turning a page on a calendar and arriving in the next millennium.

At last!!!! After all this time!!!! I thought.

To others I explained: “No, it was a whole three weeks.”

Unfortunately my description of it is longer than expected. Out of the whole experience I would say that is the only down side.

Clock strikes nine.

“Oh look at the time …”

Looks.

“Shall we go to bed?”

“Okay.”

Pete is usually first to get under the covers. I know because I always find him there. I did again this night.

I start the climb in; the bed we have erected is huge and seems to have no end. It is a double bed with a single bed on one side and they are pushed together, squeezed, inside a room just small enough. We are making do and this thing is part of it.

“Pete?”

“Yes?”

“I’ve looked and looked and there isn’t anything. I’ve looked everywhere. But I can’t find it. I can’t find our house.”

Pete is patient and believes that if we find our house in the next twelve months we will be doing well. But he loves me and trusts me so he makes it easy.

The days are flying by. ”I think we need to ask our house to call us.”

“Okay” he says.

Silence; faint sound of question floating upward, hovering over hill and valley, toward a path blazed by an old star.

The next morning our agent calls. She has made herself ours. Our agent is all things to us: aunt, mother, grandmother. Friend, bestie, bff. Forever companion, always correspondent, constant gardener.

“I’m just calling to see whether you’ve found anything ….” She sounds desperate. She often does. It’s why we can’t hang up on her.

“No, nothing since you called yesterday” but she can’t hear me very well nor I her because there is an electrician in the fuse box of our temporary home who is fixing the wiring and teaching me electronics.

She continues: “… because if you could just go up a little bit more (she means in budget) there’s something …”

Yet the line is so bad and there are too many things happening that we say goodbye with no new understanding of anything except that she will call again in a week which means tomorrow.

But I still have only one thing to do so after the electronics I am back on this looking at everything on her books. Anything that could fit the description she never gave me.

” … if you could just go up a little …”

I see one house I have noticed before but not considered. Now all I notice is a garden.

I schedule a drive by for that moment. With only one thing to do I am always ready.

It looks gorgeous from the street. But I am very bad at decisions so I just stare at it from the car and decide against it.

Luckily the next day I make an appointment.

It is lovely. After a few days Pete sees it too so it is just the three of us. Our agent is nearly always close.

It is so lovely I can only pick faults and decide firmly against it.

But for the next few days I can think of nothing else – even when I am not, I am thinking: the house, the house, like I am under a spell.

I view other properties but it is like walking through mud. My heart is gone. I am like ghost walking through mud viewing other properties.

One day, absolutely sure about not being sure, I go back and stand in the garden.

The sun is bright and peeping out in flashes from behind clouds but it lights the garden like a pro. I walk to the back and stop. In front of me dozens of bees are lazily swarming rosemary hedges the owners have kindly planted.

I sit on a bench the owners have kindly placed under a tree.

A little while later I make a call.

“I’m standing in the garden of our new house” I say and Pete laughs. He always laughs.

“Where are you?” he asks and I tell him.

“I will camp in the back garden. It’s’ beautiful here.”

Later I ask our agent if this was the house she was referring to when she called that day.

“No” she says.

In a language we are not to understand only to respond to, we took a call one morning, bright and early, while the sun was out, a morning after a single question took an old star trail. It went something like this:

Get here before the bees have supped, before the pollen has been spilt, before the flowers have been impregnated to reproduce before your eyes come the spring!

One day I will show you the flowers.

Beautiful image: Spring garden house beautiful wallpaper

In and outta boredom

I hope you forgive me if this reads like watching paint dry. Maybe you have some washing to do, suddenly? If so, I forgive you.

But please stay with me because I have nothing else to do.

I am bored to death.

Completely,

wantonly

BORED to death.

My salvation is this ... tap tap tap …

Which could sound exploitative. I hope not.

It is why I ask your forgiveness. I am not a fan of power struggles. Let us just forgive and forget.

In my imagination, before we moved here, I was enrolled in about three or four painting classes right now. In my imagination I was covered in paint this very second, this moment.

In my mind, which is part home to my imagination, the rest of it belonging to a public domain where artists and others stop for tea, Pete would be hugged blue each night – or green, or yellow or pink – but probably rainbow because of my messy way with art.

His clothes would begin to resemble artists smocks. We would lose track of whose top was whose and next thing you know, we would be dressing like twins. To passers by, we’d be a kindergarten.

In my line of work, which is nothing, that would not be a problem but I don’t know how it would go down at Pete’s place of work. His new boss, who is so busy, Pete says, that he has little time for anything let alone implementing a dress code, may find the time to raise an eyebrow. If he did, it may be an indication that he wasn’t as busy as Pete thought. Or it could be that Pete is wearing my smock top inside out.

Anyway, all this is has so far come to nought.

It is not real because if it were real I would likely not even be here. I would likely be doing the laundry, washing paint from our clothes against the odds.

Even if there were a chance of it being real, I would be standing by the washing machine on alert.

It is a fantasy come from the public domain or my personal imagination, I do not know which. But it is unreality. It is a dream, one that I am talking you through.

Wake up, dear reader!

Put away your pyjamas!

The sun has not yet sunk, the moon is still transparent

It is not time for bed

It is only a dream!

One that I am talking you through.

Now I have lost my place. Remind me, if you will, what on earth I was talking about …

Ah yes … boredom! Dulls the brain.

I have no paint marks to testify to the manifestation of my dreams.

That is not to say that I do not enjoy talking with you but you may as well know that together we come second.

First are my painting dreams and the smocks and some funny attire for Pete.

We come next. It could be the novelty.

I wish it was different. I thought it would be. I even went so far as to know it but that shows how much I know.

I could say that what was once beautiful today feels like isolation. I could say that being surrounded by nature now feels like living in the sticks. I could, but didn’t because I don’t want to shock you. I don’t want to break your hearts, make you worry for me.

I miss pounding the streets of Edinburgh in search of nothing. It was a bit boring there too; I ran out of things to buy.

But I miss pounding the cobblestones, the faint smell of old cities, all that.

Things are much more different than I anticipated, even if you take away the cobblestones. Even if you subtract the shops with nothing to sell me and give me lukewarm dishwater which Britons believe to be coffee.

It is still very different and I haven’t found my place. I don’t know what to do.

Luckily we hardly know each other, especially by sight, so it is not too embarrassing to say that because we could walk past one another in the street, our secrets still in tact.

Here is a picture of me, trying to fit in. I could talk you through it but maybe its better if I just play the tape.

Here it is:

~~####¥¥*….+{++{ …¥¥¥

…¥¥¥¥##…£>>^

Sorry, that was a bit of static. Here it is:

At the community college, not five minutes drive from here. You can walk if you have nothing better to do.

I didn’t but I drove. It is much quicker and enrollemnts were closing (for the day) in five minutes.

So I sped – because I am always running late, which is ironic if you think about my timetable.

“Ah … that class … Is there another you want to do?” asked the man behind the counter.

“Yes” I said “as a matter of fact there is” and I offered the code for another.

“Okay! … ah … that one … that one might not happen either … Is there anything else?”

He was very encouraging so I gave him the code for another. I gave him all my codes.

“Oh … well, again, nobody else has enrolled so far … But you can enroll if you want to. You can pay now, if you like, I mean, we will give you back the money if …”

“Would you like me to register my interest so then you won’t have to give me a refund when the classes don’t go ahead?”

“Yes” he said. “Okay …how about I call you in a week..?”

“Great” I said because it almost was. I mean, it was great because he was being very helpful. And he put a funny little spin on everything he said whcih was making me laugh; just a delicate, funny little spin.

But I don’t know how to apply paint. Or what to do next.

I have dreams stored up.

If nothing changes I may have to change the title of my blog and I am slightly concerned it might put some people off.

sing and write your way outta boredom

sing and write your way outta boredom (and other activities)

I’m not sure. I also like dancing.

May Day, Central Park, by Maurice Prendergast (America) 1903

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Andy Murray and me

As it happens we have things in common, Andy Murray and me.

We are both fighters. Okay not both of us. One of us. I am a lazy bones. But I don’t see the point in confessing things twice. I kind of wish I hadn’t.

Beacuse I am sure I wrote all about it before. If I didn’t, I am sorry but I have dropped enough clues. You could know by now. You could but maybe you havent been bothered. Maybe you havent been bothered to put in the mental energy. In that case, you are like Andy Murray and me, except you are more like me. Andy is stand alone. Good on him.

But it seems that I am like Andy in a way that makes he and I twins.

Because like Andy Murray, I think it might be obvious that I have cut my own hair. Once you know, that is. I mean, I didn’t know that Andy cuts his own hair until I read it somewhere. Now, it’s obvious. What a botch job! Luckily it is okay to say that because he is fantastic at tennis. And not lazy.

If someone said that about me, well, I would take it as a compliment because I can’t play tennis to save my life. I tried twice. I wasn’t even bad. In my mind, I was a natural, so maybe that is a bad example. But if my life depended on it, I think I would perish.

If someone told me: “You’re not lazy!!! You just don’t work!” I would also be flattered.

But if, on the other hand, I saw them mouth the words “botch job” while we were speaking or if I saw them point and sign “botch job” using hand signals or if I read it through morse code in an email, I would be deflated even though I would probably understand where they were coming from.

In my case, I left my hairdresser back in Edinburgh and have not found her replacement. In Andy’s case, well it could be so many things. He is not here to ask so we can only speculate but that is usually rude so you can speculate but please leave me out of it. His hair is terrible. Terrible. He should let someone else cut it, a hairdresser, for example. But I am not going to enter into speculation as to what is going on in his mind to bring him into such tragedy. A great man, reduced to that! One can only speculate.

Also in my case, I don’t trust anyone else to cut it. If my hairdresser chose to stay in Edinburgh while everybody else was moving back to Australia, that’s her business.

Yet she would be the only person who could make such comments and it not sound speculative because she has the backing of a whole profession behind her. If she mouthed the words “botch job” to me while we were talking, it would be a technical observation, I think. And if she said the same thing to Andy using hand signals, court-side, perhaps he would even agree with her, somewhere inside him.

As human observation I don’t think I would ever take it as well as Andy. Fair enough (to me.) He’s got tennis and a winning attitude to fall back on. He’s got spirit and a sense of fun, a sense of the unusual. He’s independent.

I have this and my lazy bones. I have a sense of fun, maybe but I see it here (just here in front of me) going nowhere, not racing off down a tennis court. How I wish I could make my lazy bones work. But I suspect it goes completely against the grain.

It’s a bit shorter than I expected, my hair. I mean, I’m not hopeless; I wasn’t trying to put in extensions. But it’s still a little shorter than I wanted. It’s a little bit shorter than that.

But it’s not bad. If there is a gene for hairdressing, and who knows, there might be, I think it all went my way when Andy and I were in-vitro.

Inch by inch I am trying to emulate some of Andy’s better qualities. If I had half his self belief, for example, I might achieve just a little bit of …, of … I am not sure if notoriety is the right word because then people would notice my hair more than my contribution to the world. That statment sounds fatuous in writing so perhaps I should humiliate my goals more, just be a bit more humble.

This path is treacherous! Words that I am not sure about or never mean to use are appearing thick and fast. Maybe my shadow is writing?

Shadow? Is that you?

Who knows.

Anyway, maybe it isn’t just me and Andy. We can all be our own hairdressers. There is nothing to stop us.

Maybe it is the most appropriate thing, I mean, in certain circumstances. I mean, if your hairdresser lives on the other side of the world, for example, and you have not progressed enough to find another.

In that case, perhaps it is even advised. What I mean is, if your hairdrsser hasn’t come with you and you have not developed the realisation that she probably never will, you could do it yourself, be your own hairdrsser, at least for a stint. And you might have to, if there isn’t one andy.

But my advice is, see if there is another hairdresser andy first. One near you, but not too close if you see what I mean.

Beautiful painting: “The Tennis Party” (1885) by John Laverty @ Aberdeen Libray, Scotland.

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Big Rock

Somewhere in the middle of Australia is a big rock. Not the rock that belongs to Pete’s mate, the one with the house on it. The one with the quarry. Well, so far there is no quarry, maybe there never will be. But it’s not that guy. This is a different somewhere.

Maybe you have heard of it. It’s gigantic. It used to be called Ayers Rock but it changed its name about twenty years ago, maybe more.

There it is in the middle, Uluru, pounding away. It pounds with gigantic love, a gigantic, red heart of stone, in this case sandstone because sandstone is everywhere here and one of the features of a hot, dry landscape. It’s not very British. It’s very un-British actually. My feet have freckles. I told you.

See Australia; see a heart on a sleeve. Pounding, pounding.

I know it is the heart of Australia because about the same time it came out – came out with its real name surprising everybody except all Aboriginal people who already knew it – I flew over the centre and heard it Om, a deep, resonant sound like a didgeridoo.

As we were flying high in the stratosphere it is hard to say where I heard the sound and the only thing I can say is that I heard it with a pair of ears inside me. Not the ones on the outside, next to my side burns. I heard it with a pair inside, if that makes sense, and I am absolutely sure it does not.

(I don’t have sideburns.)

(I do have freckles on my feet though. Tiny little ones. See?)

Anyway, it was a beautiful sound, seemed all around me although all around me was quiet except for the low hum of engines and mumbled chatter.

And my heart went Boom which is as close a sound to Om as it knew and hummed back as if hit by the same tuning fork.

(Someone once asked me if I had ever counted my freckles. More than one person. As if I was jobless and had nothing better to do for a decade. Turns out I have some time on my hands now. I will count my feet: two feet, a sprinkling of freckles.)

Through the peephole next to my peephole seat, through clouds and angels and traces of cigarette smoke high above the earth, somewhere between God and us

I could see outside,

and everything beyond the grey of the plane was three colours:

red, white, blue. Like a flag.

The sky was the type of chalky blue that artists use, the type that you don’t see in school, only when you leave school and go to a museum. The kind of arty artists chalky chalk that makes you wonder whatever you are doing at university just drop it and do art. Be art. Dive through the canvas and become part of the world before you.

But this has nothing to do with anything. And you probably have things to do and so do I (I think.) So all I will say is that it was beautiful; red earth, saltpools that were so white I thought they were snow, covered over with blue sky. 

But there is another rock.

Pete got a phone call at his new work the other day from a guy who wanted to know whether he should mine his own land.

Pete said the guy had been on the phone to the drillers and now he was calling Pete.

He said the guy had a suspicion that he had a quarry on his hands. His land was very rocky and high up and possibly a gold mine. Not actual gold, but valuable rock.

“Are there any other quarries around?” Pete asked.

“No.”

“What makes you think you have a quarry?”

“I’m on a really high ridge.”

“Well, okay. I’m coming through your area in a few days so I can drop by and have a look if you like.”

“Are you from the government?”

“No, we’re a water company (and rocks) …” said Pete.

” … Okay.”

Pete said he seemed a little sensitive. But he needed someone to asses his land before the drillers called back.

“”Senstive” like you we’re going to rip him off?” I ask.

“Yes” says Pete “which would have been tricky since I was doing it for free.”

But Pete never got there. The work he was doing for work took over and he couldn’t make it. So he looked up the property on geological map. Then called him.

“You’re on sandstone” he said.

“Sandstone” said the man. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t think you’ve got a quarry” said Pete.

“Why not?” asked the man.

“It’s sandstone.”

This is the third time Pete has told me this story. Maybe fourth. And its only three weeks old.

I just can’t get enough of it.

Each time he tells it he remembers something else. For example:

“What did he say after you told him?” I ask another time.

Pete thinks back.

“He said: “Yeah? … Well, we’ll see about that…”"

“You didn’t tell me that before … 

 … as in … ?”

” … “You’re probably ripping me off.”" says Pete rolling his eyes but only barely because that is his nature.

But I can’t stop laughing and I beg him to tell the whole thing again.

I almost know it by heart. It’s one of those stories that gets better with the telling. I might write it out again one day.

Here, you have it. Tell it loud and long.

As often as your pounding heart wants to hear.

For my stepfather getting better, to make him laugh loud and long.

Beautiful image: Landscape, by Sidney Nolan (Australia) 1942 - dive in!

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The fairy of chocolate buttons

After lunch we move from the table to about two feet behind it. My fathers chair is there. It is one of those chairs that opens and closes to allow the sitter in. One of those chairs that stands up and sits down. It is a remarkable chair. It is one of those chairs that is remarkable.

“Do you want to sit in your chair and put your feet up?” asks my fathers wife.

It is a very comfortable chair, one those chairs that is soft and padded and comfortable.

“Yes please” says my father and up we all go, my fathers wife commanding my fathers chair first to stand and with my father inside, to sit and finally, to lie down. It is a very intelligent chair. It is one of those chairs that is like a dog.

It is one of those reclining, standing, chairs with arms (an armchair) … oh never mind.

(They call it Rover.)

(Actually they don’t but they could.)

(Easily.)

(There is a small chance they will call it Rover in the future, after they have read this. It is a strange name for a chair, as any name would be, but in this case, it is a case of if the chair fits …)

One of the joys of writing is all the nonsense you can commit to the page. All of the above, for example.

But there is a pleasure in nonsense that I think is underrated. We are all so rational. The only time we let our hair down is in intense theatre class when we behave as though we took LSD for breakfast.

… One lump or two?

Oh, just the one thanks. I have to do a maths test this afternoon …

Or if our rationale is on holiday because we are ill,

or in old age.

I am missing out on tonnes of circumstances but you see what I mean. If you don’t and I have misread you, well … well …

Well maybe try reading between the lines. That always works.

My father lowers himself into the chair, backwards, gently and with care. He does everything carefully these days. He must be afraid of falling. And we are for him.

Rover stands on his hind legs to receive him and my father lets himself fall back until he is sitting down, lying down and his legs are up like he wants. It is a different kind of falling, falling backwards into a comfortable chair that is standing up to meet you. It doesn’t frighten my father.

“I bought some things from the cake shop for dessert” says my fathers wife and she produces an assortment of sweet things that look exactly the same in Paris as they do stacked up on my fathers lap. She puts them all there. She wants him to eat up.

“I’ve just worked out that meringues are protein” she says because more than anything, she wants my father to eat protein. Protein and calories.

I don’t notice because I have turned this on, this tablet, and am being devoured by it. There is problem with settings and I can only fix it here, in my fathers house.

“Hey!” says my father, “Sheilagh!” he calls because that is her name and she has gone into the kitchen to make tea.

“Sheilagh!” he says. “What’s this chocolate thing on the top?”

“Pardon?” she asks.

“What’s this chocolate on the top? Is it meant to be there?”

I see the chocolate. It is a little chocolate button on the top of the meringue. My father has bitten around it, slightly. And now it has come to his attention.

“Did you put it there?” he asks her.

There is a space so I jump in.

“No” I answer for her, for him. “A fairy put it there, when you weren’t looking, just for you!”

And my father relaxes.

My father – giant, towering, beloved, all my life – eats a meringue with a chocolate button that he has come to terms with.

I don’t think he believes the story about the fairy. I don’t even know if he hears me properly because even though his ears are big they don’t work very well.

But his agitation has gone and he looks relaxed and so are we.

Whatever his confusion, it is the least striking thing about him, dwarfed, as it is, by how easy it is to love him.

You can kiss him and love him and tell him funny things and he lets you.

There is a cost to being unwell. He used up nearly everything he had last year to stay with us. In the end, he only had will to use and he used most of that up too. He has drained himself just getting to here. He has thought himself out of danger. Now he is exhausted – not of life – but of fighting so it is lucky that he won.

He looks sleepy. He is wide awake but it looks as though a small part of him has gone to bed and is never getting up. He needs to sleep. There is nothing to do anyway, so he may as well. He has been wide awake for eighty-five years.

I like him sleepy. Big, soft, snoozy. My father, a giant with giants ears (a little bit hairy) is adorable.

We move outside to the car, all four of us, my father supported by his new, silver walking frame, making us four.

“Are you going skiing?” my father asks noticing the roof racks on the car. He is wisecracking.

“Windsurfing” I reply and he laughs, that funny, half-smothered, half-revealed laugh of his that masks both his shyness and his amusment.

I turn the car around and wave through opening windows. The kind of windows that open automatically. Intelligent windows. The type of windows …

My father waves back. And Sheilagh waves back too. And to my complete surprise, so does my fathers walking frame.

Yummy image: Such Pretty Things

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Beautiful

Four days before we left Edinburgh my hairdresser and her little family came to see us. They used to live next door so for them it was a bit like coming home, bar one door.

We huddled inside the doorway. It was sort of cramped, four adults and a small one in the making, but it felt safer. Later, we moved into the kitchen, the smallest of us sitting on the floor, sometimes lying on it, stretching herself out and sliding around. It must have been nice.

The rest of us leaned against kitchen benches or sat on table tops. Sometimes we looked at the kid on the floor.

“Are you excited?” asked my hairdresser.

“No.” There was a pause. Everyone was looking at me. That was when we were huddled in the doorway, for safety.

“I don’t want to go” I blurted out and my heart welled up like a water balloon, I could feel it heavy inside my chest, bursting, and poured instant tears all over my face.

“Ohhh!!! … don’t cry! You’ll start me …” Said my hairdresser and even though it was quite dark, especially in my corner, I could see little pools in her eyes, so I think it was too late.

Later, “do you really not want to go?” asked my hairdresser’s partner, father to the whirling child on our kitchen floor.

“Not really” I said and listed some evidence. Not exactly evidence, more hypotheses. For example: regarding distance between countries, if Australia were less twelve flying hours from Europe, we would not need to move because we could easily manage one trip per year as well any improvised runs. Fly-by-night midnight fancies – except we would never need to include a midnight ever again because twelve hours can easily span a day. So they would be daylight runs which would be an immediate improvement.

He looked convinced. But I can have that effect. I can make a chair sound like table and vice versa. Its a dubious talent. It all sounds so reasonable. Just as easily, I will turn the whole thing around and debate the other side, the one initially despised. I can do it on a dime and in every other currency, in denominations of decimal ten.

Two nights later Pete and I lay motionless on our hotel bed watching television like fretful, exhausted television addicts. We were still in Edinburgh, homeless, having just vacated our flat. The first steps away from life as we knew it.

While we were both exhausted I was the only fretful one. I lay there like a wounded animal. There was a pain in my psyche that I couldn’t identify but it felt like I had a bag of dead frogs under my diaphragm. So I just lay there, keeping still. I didn’t know what else to do.

Luckily, my latest favourite movie of all time was on so occasionally I was able to divert my attention away from my diaphragm and the bag of deceased amphibians to the film and it did make me feel better.

I took the fact that my very latest favourite film was on as a sign. I thought the gods were being nice to us. If you haven’t seen it and you ever have frogs in your diaphragm that have since ceased to live, you could do yourself a favour and watch Big Fish. And even if Albert Finney, Ewan MacGregor and Helena Bonham Carter in a film directed by Edward Scissorhands are not your thing, you will probably still feel one of the happiest you have ever felt in your life. The kind of happiness that eludes you most days. The kind that eludes you most of your life, such is the film.

But I have already told you about the chair and the table, so I could be doing it again. If you watched the film, maybe you could decide for yourself which is highly recommended in life anyway.

I was lying in Pete’s crooked arm which somehow he had managed to twist so that his hand massaged my head, a constant soothing action which accompanied most prostate hours of the last few days, or weeks, of our time in Europe. Possibly last months. Not more than months. And no more than six. Six tops.

Out of nowhere a plane appeared on the screen, an advertisement for an airline.

I watched as the plane soared over Sydney Harbour, circling and soaring like a bird. It’s gliding frame set against a pink sky made radiant by the embers of a sun dropping off to sleep. It sailed and circled over the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, icons I can trace with my heart.

“Pete!” I said, weeping into his crooked arm. “We’re going home!”

And that was that. A change of heart. It happens so suddenly.

It is so beautiful here. Everywhere you look. Even if you shut your eyes.

White and occassionally rare black cockatoos screech and screech as they pinch flowers that smell like apples from high up in the trees. They drop the remenants to the ground which we collect and put in vases.

Butcher birds whoop and whistle throughout the day as do whip birds, inducing an attack of the giggles in passing kookaburras. It is very noisy on the whole.

Then suddenly there is silence and it is all you can hear; the sun through trees crackling branches.

It is a rare beauty and raw. Perhaps that is why Australians say “beautiful” so much. They do so at the drop of a sun hat.

On the telephone, someone asks me: ”Can I have your address?”

Yes, I think, you can because even though it is new I know it by heart.

And I give it to them, including the postcode.

“Beautiful!” they reply, like I have just done a pencil drawing and autographed it.

Beautiful, even if you shut your eyes.

Beautiful image: Spring, by John  Olsen

 

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Gone Bush Bakson!

I have been waiting forever to write this post. The title is a play on words. It’s from The House at Pooh Corner, by A.A Milne, a great novel with pictures. If you can’t read, it’s exactly type of novel that someone will usually read out for you. If you can’t read, I also don’t know what you are doing here.

There aren’t many words to go with the title. I have been waiting forever just to write this title.

Anyway, I hope you like it. There were other contenders. “Gone to the Outback, Bakson!” for example. That was the only other.

The seagulls are back. Not our seagulls I don’t think. All the others. One, at least. I heard the first squawk this morning

aaaaaggghhhheeeekkkk! 

lying in bed waiting for it to be later so I could get up.

“The Seagulls are Back in Town!” and it crossed mind to use that as a title. Titles are coming thick and fast now.

I was wide awake when the seagulls called because the removalists who we are not using had called earlier. The removalists who we are not using have been waking us up since Saturday. They did it on Saturday. And they did it again now.

“Are you all right for packing?”

Yes thankyou, we still are.

I have a feeling they run on chaos.

Tonight is our last Thursday night in Scotland. By the time you might read this we will be all out of Scottish Thursdays.

Our next Thursday night will be on a plane somewhere over the Pacific. For us it will be night. But before it has had a chance to fall our pilot and the earth’s orbit will make it morning and we will be in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia we will fall in love with a city and a country new to us both. I wish we could live there. I am pre-empting my feelings because I want you to know what it is like.

I don’t know when I will next read your funny posts, look at your wonderful images or laugh and wonder with you. Our computer is boarding ship soon and we will not have it for months. By the time we are reunited our Australian accents will be in full vowel so I might sound a little different but it will still be me. I am just letting you know.

In the meantime we have a shiny little tablet to use but the early signs are confusing. It is fantastic at lots of things. Except they are meant be intuitive yet so far ours is very bad at second-guessing me even when I tell it what I am thinking. Ditto if I explain things in detail. It’s just no good at hunches and worse at instructions. Who knows what communication holds over the next few months?

And we have a new country to adsorb. I kind of can’t wait now. I think there are treats in store, despite recent trembles.

I will miss you.

And I wanted to let you know

we have

gone bush!

Back soon.

Illustration for The House At Pooh Corner
by Ernest H. Shepard.

Photo: The Blue Mountains, Australia

Staying in a backyard in Oz

I hope this is not the accommodation we have to look forward to. We have set our sights on a house. It has been so long since we were there I don’t know what they provide these days. Maybe it is just a backyard? Maybe a house is extra?

My anxiety has gone through the roof. And it’s not really mine. I just found it.

Sometimes it feels like I am bungee jumping upwards: up-down, up-down - wheeeee!!!!

It is hard to depict in words so I shall try to use the cursor as a pencil.

Here is the cliff:

/

/

/

Quite steep!

Here is the bungee cord:

§

§

§

It is a bit tangled.

Here is my drawing pad. You are looking at it now. I hope I don’t have to draw that for you as well.

I tried.

And I can’t.

When I leave a blank space my computer gets suspicious and closes them.

I have to enter a mark or it will do it again.

™

™

™ ™€€€

Does that look like a drawing pad? It is meant to be all whiteness. ™ and € have no special meaning. They are just random marks; I am hoping they define the whiteness.

I sketch roughly, sporadically, I sketch so that a blind man may also get the picture hoping that someone will read these words aloud to him and trace the marks I make on his hand.

Blind man, do you see my anxiety? I ask.

I see it, he answers. I see it with my heart. And I wish you peace.

The blind man is also a kind of saint. In these bouncy times I am lucky to have met him.

I think I know: no one can live like this and; it will not last. Just in case I phone everyone I know in the same time zone to check.

I phone Berlin. The time zone is very close – one hour ahead. It is straightforward there so I am pretty sure I will get an honest answer.

My friend picks up the phone. It is nine thirty (early for Berlin) and she has house guests who are still asleep so she is whispering.

“Are you standing on a cushion?” I ask.

“No …”

“Is it bouncy where you are? ” I am double-checking.

“No …” she sounds ready to listen.

She listens totally. Her whispering makes it easier because I feel like I am telling her a secret anyway. It’s not a big secret. But it could fall into the category of one. Twenty years ago it would have been. Not these days. Me and everyone else declare our secrets only online. It is a special kind of privacy only the truly vain can appreciate.

“At least Pete is calm” I tell my friend. Plus he is excited. His whole attitude is a blessing.

“Pete doesn’t feel anxiety the way you do” she says.

“No” I say, wondering if he feels it at all.

Later I check.

“Do you ever feel anxiety” I ask.

“Umm …”

“I don’t think you do.”

“Probably not.”

See what I mean? His whole attitude is a blessing.

I am not like Pete. Yet I thought I was before this, in a general way.

“Moving to Australia means different things to both of you” my friend reminds me. She is so good at reminding she can remind you of things you don’t ever remember knowing. Then she reminds you and you remember you know. She’s really good at it.

“Oh that’s right!”

We talk about Oz. I understand that just because we are moving down under, I don’t have to live upside-down which is a relief. I didn’t really believe that … maybe I did. It can be hard to know all your feelings.

“Pete likes the sun …” I say because like most of the nation it gives him a nice tan. A lovely golden brown. Like the rest of the population.

Don’t worry. This isn’t another rant about the devil sun. It’s about how my nice friend is. It’s about friendship, hope and chance encounters, like meeting my mother’s first boyfriend.

“Those sorts of things don’t happen staying in a backyard in Oz” my friend says and even though I don’t quite know what she means, I understand her perfectly and it is the funniest thing I have ever heard.

“Hehehe!!!”

“Hahaha!!!”

“Bye-bye!”

Sometimes you might need to go somewhere else. I think that’s what my friend means. And we are doing it again. In reverse.

Anxiety comes and goes. “It’s only anxiety” I tell myself and it is. After a while it’s like taking the lift:

Going up!

Going down!

There are buttons and I am learning how to use them.

Yesterday I saw a man with a white cane.

At first I noticed him because his cane had a rubber stopper on the end of it. He was using it to navigate pot-holled strewn pavements and cobble-stoned roads.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was wearing thick, whale cords in satin terracotta, a fine tweed jacket the colour of olive wood in the rain, and some kind of hat – a trilby, I think. He looked like he had come straight from Saville Row.

He was so beautifully attired, easily one of the best dressed men I have seen. Easily. Outside of Paris, very easily.

His bearing and his beautiful garments told me that he had dressed with his heart.

Image: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a film by Baz Lurman.

My father’s rival

Such is the private nature of my father’s rival that when I suggest he start a blog to air all his secrets he recoils. How innocent!

He says he would not want people knowing all about him. He says it flatly. He makes privacy sound cool!

“Well you could use a pseudonym” I suggest. I give him an example.

“I’m Gigi Galore!” I say by way of introduction.

“Galore …! Now where did that come from?”

It’s a long story so I don’t go into it. Actually it’s just boring – no story at all – so I go over it very quickly trying not to bore him to pieces. I sense he’s got a low threshold.

But he seems interested. I rethink: either he likes boring things or I was wrong about the threshold.

“Galore” he declares by the end of the inane chatter, “is Celtic. It means plenty, abundance, lots and lots. And that’s you” he says.

“Lots of words” I suggest.

“No, not words. Of everything – you, your presence, the way you are” he says gesturing with Tai Chi arms, indicating either a fire hydrant or a water fountain. His impersonation is uncanny. It’s obviously a water fountain and if he keeps doing it I am going to wash my hands and splash my face at his feet. And someone else will throw him bread for ducks.

Whatever it is that he is trying to tell me in this goodbye hour, in this charity shop, in this half of the world, his fountain is very moving.

Look at him …! (No, that is the fire hydrant. Rory is on the left <<<)

(<<< that left.)

It is a such a touching demonstration, over in seconds, that I wonder how my mother could not have chosen his fountain over my father’s.

But then maybe he never performed it. Or maybe my father had something better up his sleeve although it is hard to imagine what. A walrus, perhaps? A walrus in dinner suit, dancing like Gene Kelly on a makeshift stage set on the shoreline … an improvised platform thrown together from a piece of fallen cliff landed flat, creating the perfect rostrum for my father’s performance.

Look at him go …! (to your right >>>)

And while I applaud my father’s walrus - whizz bang! – shuffle shuffle shuffle  - (I applaud from the wings) I cannot help but feel that Rory never stood a chance with his fountain. It is so pure.

Plus my father does very good Gene Kelly as well as a host of others. Greats like Louis Armstrong,  Bing Crosby. On Christmas Day he does wonderful Jesus of Nazareth with all his Chrsitmas hits.

But that is by the by. We all know who won, not least of all me and the four other fruits of the pairing – a pairing of the young woman on the beach and my father’s walrus … although I definitely don’t mean it that way! Come on!

la la la laa!!!! (and I’m blocking my ears!)

We are five fruits to the bunch and no-one knows who to blame (the most.) It is possible that I have inherited my father’s big theatre skills yet I have put them to far lesser tasks than he. I just write mine down

- here -

slap — stick — !!!

See?

Pete also gets them although I do not think it is how I won him over. I had to save them up for later in case he didn’t get the joke.

These days he is party to a wide selection.

When Rory resurrects his showstopper before my eyes in real time in the charity shop, my liking for him goes through the roof, alongside my surprise which threatens to nudge the sky.

His animated reflection is a gift. He could ring up an old cardigan or something else pre-loved from the racks of clothes that line the walls but this gift is better. But how he has seen me so quickly? We have only met here, in this magical, charitable shop three times since we met here. Four times in all. He must be something of a wizard.

“And now you’re leaving – going back to Australia, just like your mother!” he says.

“She was crazy!” I say although I don’t say it because she was young. She’s definitely a bit crazy now though, for her an ambition fulfilled.

“When I am old, I am going to be eccentric!” she used to say. She said it like a mantra.

“Like an old bat?”

“Yes!”

“Well don’t go overboard” we warned but it is obvious she paid no attention.

(Actually, she’s not really crazy but we allow her her delusion that she is. She thinks reading lots of books, having a beautiful garden and doing whatever she likes are strong signs. She’s nuts.)

My father never met his rival -”she wouldn’t let me” says Rory – and if he had I don’t know what would have happened. Anything could have. But I think they would have seen much in the other to admire.

My father is fire, Rory is water. With the addition of fragrant leaves from an Indian hillside, that makes a cup of tea. They are each adorable. And these days I get to love them both.

We continue with pseudonyms.

“I don’t know anyone who goes by their real name” I say. Which is true because I don’t know anyone personally online. It would be almost impossible. We would have to shake hands, exchange cups of sugar and borrow garden tools through wiring and I am full of doubts as to plausibility. All the people I know from this shimmering, evanescent place may be real or unreal. it makes no difference. Such is life here.

He looks bored. He’s not interested.

I don’t think he reads here.

It seems safe to write all about him in this privacy.

Longfellows glass sculpture by Hans Godo Frabel

Beautiful photo courtesy of Pam and Richard Winegar at: naturetime.wordpress.com

Funny love

Perhaps this will be too intimate for you. Perhaps it will be too close. I hope not. I don’t want to break any hearts. Or minds.

Crash!

was that your mind? God I hope not.

Pete thinks it is funny.

“I think I’ve got a bit of a crush” I say.

That’s the thing about having no-one else around. Pete gets everything, all my news. I don’t know how he retains it. Although maybe he retains nothing at all. He is not that interested in details.

But he knows who I am referring to.

“Oh!” and then he laughs.

“He’s so nice!”

“Ohhh … Do you want me to pick anything up on the way home?”

“Yes but what am I going to do?”

“About what?”

“We’re moving back to Australia. I’ll never see him again!”

Pete the giggler. It was one of the first things I noticed about him and he’s doing it again now.

“Pete!”

“Yes?” I can hear him trying not to but struggling.

“Is it funny?”

“No, of course not! See you soon.” he says solemnly hanging up. But I am left with the distinct impression that it is.

Pete is home. He walks through the door like he lives here.

“Hello!” he says, opening his arms wide to offer me consolation, knowing he is my consolation prize.

“I’m sorry I’m not him …” he says laughing. But then he sees my eyes filling up and hugs me closer.

“I don’t want two husbands! I only want you” I say and he holds me close.

My heart – is gone! Somewhere over the moon. Later, when everyone in the neighbourhood has turned off their lights, I can see it soaring through the night sky, attempting another leap over a moon with a compassionate face.

The next morning has instant conversation. To the sound of his alarm, Pete is rolling out of bed. I catch him.

“I don’t want to love anyone else …” Everything I say is coming out like a moan.

“Pardon?” he asks and then registers the moaning and remembers. “Ohhhh … Don’t worry” he says and gives me a kiss.

He comes back in later, so handsome in his suit and smiling. It is still early and dark but I can see his eyes. They are twinkling. They are also one of the first things I noticed about him. It’s like a phenonmenom. I don’t know how he does it.

“Your eyes …” the only lights in the room. He looks straight at me, twinkling sparkles.

Instantly my heart soars back – zoom! – into my chest. I can feel it beneath my ribs, whirring and pounding gently. I drop back to sleep.

A second awakening is better. I check … yes! Still there.

The day passes as strangely as every day does these days. Every one is different from the next. There is no consistency other than that they are all strange.

And oh how they drag … which I guess is another consistency. In these in between days it’s like lugging a corpse which you still have to feed.

“Here you are, dead thing, eat up.” You have to spoon feed it.

I do not think it is always the case that a blog should be the model of searing honesty (God forbid, I hear my mother say …) but these days are interminable. Knowing it is transition makes no difference. The days are still three times as long.

It is like you’re waiting, somewhere. Less than that … Very undefined. Between here and there. Who knows? There are no whereabouts other than a vague identification with here, which you are so bored with you are starting to resent although this snow helps; it is so pretty.

At the same time – and this is where it gets really weird – you don’t actually want to leave. I don’t know if I will like where are are going. I can’t imagine the sun. I can’t imagine light. I am sick of this cold. I can’t see in this dark.

It is peculiar in the extreme.

So I fill the void with guesses, mostly bad ones.

All my bad guesses and nearly all of my dread centre on these two things: beardless Viking, very hot country. I am afraid of anything too hot or too sunny because my genetics are Viking. If I had a beard you would see what I mean.

Yesterday I learn that some of my worst guesses are not far off the mark because yesterday, it was 48 degrees celcius in Sydney. Actually the day before. It is not the when that bothers me, it is the where.

Over the telephone I could hear my mother simultaneously quoting temperatures, my stepfather relaying them to me, while my mother instructed “Don’t tell her!”

It was quite confusing but it sounded like there was a heatwave in Sydney, half the amount of which would be too stifling for me coming from the relative comfort of zero degrees.

Yet my complexion won’t take any suncream – or anything but water on it – so I am left to think quick.

…!

I have and came up with this: mineral powder. Pure zinc. It works on holiday so I am hoping it will work in life.

Pete is nearby.

“Where does zinc come from? Deep in the earth’s crust?” I ask.

“Not necessarily deep” he says and he is a geologist so he should know. “From rocks.”

It is better to love than to not. My heart is at it’s best in love. It is the organ most suited to the task.

There is so much in the world. Looking at Pete, I know it is true.

Image: Clown Oil Painting, early 1900′s.