Despite all the aggro and craziness, my little patch of ticket box was an oasis of neatness. Rubbish: in the bin. Vouchers: stamped and in their cubby. Refunds: written up, stapled together and stacked. 3D glasses in their box and ready to go. Voucher tub: organised. I even bring my own stationery (everybody likes my stapler) because I’m that kind of grl. Organised.

This is not a new thing. I have always loved neatness. Not everyone might agree with this, but neatness and order are able to co-exist quite happily with cobwebs and dust bunnies.

One of my favourite times of year as a kid was in primary school at the beginning of the year, just before we went back to school and Mum would get in all our new books. Each exercise book and new reference book had to be covered. Mum would cut brown paper to cover them and glue it down with Clag.

It used to come in a glass bottle with a cork top and a metal thingy that you poked the wood-handled brush through.

The important part of the book-covering was choosing the labels. Back in those days, the Australian Women’s Weekly magazine came out once a week (who’d have thought!) and in the week or so before school went back they would do a whole liftout of wonderful book labels that mums all over the country could cut out and paste onto their kids’ books. Did I want a pony in a field of daisies on my dictionary, a ginger kitten on my English exercise book, a fluffy duckling to cheer me up through maths, a puppy with floppy ears on the front of my science book? You bet I did! Just choosing those labels put me into a world of schoolie joy.

Why, yes, I was a nerd and teacher’s pet. Can’t imagine how you figured that out.

But there’s more. Mum wrote my name on every crayon in the new box of oil pastels. Sakura.Year after year of Sakura oil pastels in their packs of twelve with their new little blunt heads stacked against the top of their cardboard packet, waiting for me.

Then there were the coloured pencils. I didn’t get new ones every year, we couldn’t afford that, and I  never had Derwents. Not in primary school, anyway. I would gaze enviously at the kids who created masterpieces with their Derwents. For me it was a pack of twelve Lakeland by Cumberland, each one with a slice made in the end by Mum’s carving knife and my first initial and surname written there so that I would never lose one. And I never did.

I was a neat kid. Inside my desk, my textbooks were stacked according to size and my exercise books, since they were all identical in size and shape, were stacked according to how much I liked the subject. With the dictionary on top, because I liked that the most. Other kids needed to open their desks and rummage through squashed bananas, bits of scrunched paper and notes from their friends. I didn’t have to do this. My desk was so tidy, I could just reach under there and lay my hand exactly on the book I needed.

Also my friends didn’t pass me notes. Okay, one time I was asked to pass a note on, but it was from R to S and I was in between the two of them. I might well have passed it on, but R and I were having a fight at the time and she had written nit on it, just for me to read while I passed it along. This level of insult was not going to go unpunished. I could, of course, have turned the whole thing over to the teacher and got them a detention for passing notes in class, but I was a goody-two-shoes, not a complete sociopath, so instead I just ate the note. Later, R and I made up and we were friends for the next 35 years or so.

But neatness. Yes, it could well be my middle name, and as I write this, my house becomes neater by the minute. Well, sort of.

The library is almost finished. All of the books are now off the floor and we have space for 3 more shelves. Magazines are taking up an enormous amount of space, but that’s okay. I’m going to go through them and get them sorted, too. We have a room divider between the kitchen and loungeroom. It is one of these:

and the truly great thing about it is that you can get boxes and drawers and little cupboards that fit into those openings. I have two cupboards, three little drawers and five boxes. I have a neatgasm every time I walk past it. It is also exactly the right height for the magazine holders that I get from Typo (which is pretty much my favourite stationery shop).

I’ve got my cookery books in there as well as a bunch of Easter Bunnies and my knitting. I’d always planned for my cookery books to go into the pantry, but they do look lovely on the shelves. Especially the cool, retro ones from frankie magazine.

The pantry is still not finished. It’s almost finished, but not completely. This is going to be a big weekend for the pantry (I hope). Beloved has made the shelf for the long side. It’s a large box, so it’s actually two shelves and I’ve spent the week painting it. He’s also made the benchtop for the sink and the shelf for under the sink, and I’ve painted them, too. Tomorrow it’s back to the wonderful world of IKEA, or Neatnessland, as I like to call it, where we will get a sink for the pantry. Then the shelves can go on the walls and the sink can get installed and there will still be a few shelves to go.

In my mind there is a special little shelf for the food dehydrator and the bread machine and the slow cooker, as well as bookshelves, but I’m looking forward to hanging up my cute little bird shaped hooks and putting my pictures on the walls and organising my shelves and doing stuff in there. Bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling and soap curing on the shelves. A secret place for kitchen magic from all this neatness.

But last week, Beloved put me in my place about being tidy. ‘Neatness,’ he said, ‘is entropy. All of this order from chaos is just the heat-death of the universe.’ Is this the reason why he’s been so slow to get the shelves done? Is my need for neat just bringing about the slow, cold end of everything?

Time is measured in the ticking of atoms and at the end, when everything has dispersed and there is no light and the temperature is a uniform 0.000001ºKelvin, then the universe will have achieved the ultimate level of neatness.

Possibly by then my pantry shelves will also be finished, but I’m not holding my breath.

*Is that what it’s called? You know the thing I mean. The scrolly text thingy up above ticket box that tells you what movies are on and what times they are on.

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This is my friend Perry Huntsman. He is the “good” kind of Huntsman. Easy-going, friendly, happy, creative, has four limbs. I include Perry and all of his family and in fact any other human with the surname “Huntsman” in my category of “good” Huntsmans.

The problem with huntsmans is that there are two kinds. The human kind are good. The spider kind, not so much.

Now, I’m a long way from being an arachnophobe. In fact, I may well be less scared of spiders than average, as I found out the hard way at nephew #1′s birthday party last week. Group of teenage boys (well, technically nephew #1 has just stopped being a teenager) were sitting around on the back porch and we came out to sing happy birthday to him.

Just as we were about to get to the exciting bit (the cake), a spider (the regular kind) launched itself from the rafters and came gliding down on its web. It wasn’t a particularly large or scary spider (in my opinion) and I leaned forward over one of nephew’s guests to pluck it out of the air and put it on the garden. At that moment I was nearly run over by an out of control chair as nephew’s friend slammed it back into me in his panic to get away from the sssssppiiiiiiiiiiider!!!!!

I scooped it off his back and put it down on a plant. Poor little thing.

So there you go. That’s me, less scared of spiders than gangly young man.

That is, unless we’re talking about huntsmans (the lower-case kind).

This, my dears, is the bad kind of huntsman.

No, this picture is not life size. The real spiders are bigger.

Much bigger.

Waaaaaaay bigger.

Say the word “spider” in Melbourne and you will immediately start a long conversation full of ridiculous stories about the size, attitude and scariness of these monsters. You will also get nutbags (such as my mum) who say they eat bugs and will give them a name and let them live in the house. They will also say things such as “It’s more scared of you than you are of it” which is complete rubbish, because if the spider is scared of me, why in hell has it come INTO MY HOUSE?????

They say “Oh, I never kill them, I just pick them up and put them outside” – SO THAT THEY CAN COME BACK IN AND BRING A FRIEND AS WELL.

Did I describe these people as “nutbags” just then? I take that back. These unkillers of huntsmans (the bad kind) are SOCIOPATHS.

And at this time of year the spiders come into houses. Oh yes they do. Summer’s over, Easter’s coming, they know it’s getting colder outside so they pack their figurative bags and move on in.

Like everyone in this part of the world I have many stories of my battles with these spiders. This is just one of them. It happened to me this week.

So picture me, all sweet and innocent of the world, I’m about to go on my treadmill. Beloved bought me a cute little wall-TV last week, to encourage me to go on the tready. It’s fun to watch shows and makes the time go faster and I don’t get bored. As I’m about to step on the tready I see a dust-bunny next to it.

I’m moderately annoyed by this because I’d acted completely out of character the day before and actually cleaned the house. I’d swept. I’d swept the floors and the walls and I’d swept under stuff and around stuff and behind doors and in tight places and I’d done a good job, or so I thought.

Then, after the sweeping, I’d mopped. Kitchen, lounge, poorly-named sunroom, where the tready and offending dustbunny were, hallway and bathroom. It was mopped. It was mopped to within an inch of its life.

I cursed the dog for her furry behaviour and wondered if I should get the broom AGAIN and do more sweeping, but I knew I shouldn’t do that. If I started on more sweeping it would just be me procrastinating instead of getting on the tready and watching something fabulous and doing a bit of exercise.

Yep, in the battle between exercise and housework, exercise wins. It’s a close one, but I guess I just hate housework that little bit more. And I had to admit that I’d been walking past the dust-bunny all day. It wasn’t going anywhere.

Not going anywhere. Huh. Stupid, stupid me. Naïve and foolish me. Dust-bunny not going anywhere. Where did I think it had come from???

Anyway, as I got closer to the dust-bunny I realised that it wasn’t as innocent as I had thought. There was something else in there and it had [insert dramatic chords here] LEGS.

Yes. Ravelled up inside the dust-bunny was a huntsman.

The bad kind.

I looked closely at it. Well, as closely as you do when on of those bastards is down there on the floor threatening you like that, and I decided it was dead. There had been some sort of epic battle with the dust-bunny, and the dust-bunny had won.

I could safely get on my tready and do some ks and watch my wall TV.

But I kept checking

Because you never know.

Just because it’s dead doesn’t mean it doesn’t still want to GET me.

I watched Mythbusters (yay Mythbusters)

and I checked

I watched Family Guy

and I checked

I watched American Dad

and I checked

and when I say I watched these things and I checked, don’t think I mean I checked every half hour. Oh no. I wasn’t going to risk my sanity for that amount of time. I checked to make sure it hadn’t moved about every five seconds or so. Those things are bloody fast you know. Even dead.

Well, at the end of all that walking and TV watching I was pretty happy with myself. I’d done exercise and Beloved could take care of the spider when he got back from his motorcycle club meeting. I went to put my shoes away and I came back to see this:

Yes. It had moved. It had moved in the totally “Hah! I’m not dead, I’ve just been lying here WATCHING you for the past hour and a half. In a NON-DEAD way!”

And that leg was reaching out towards the treadmill.

Not away from, which is what it would have been doing if nutbag-sociopaths were right and the bad kind of huntsmans really are more scared of me than I am of them, TOWARDS.

So, being the sensible kind of person I am, I immediately got the biggest can of insecticide I could find and pretty much drowned/froze the bastard.

About three-tenths of a second after Beloved walked through the door, I demanded that he take the offending carcasse far, far away. He was dismayed. He is of the “I’ll put it outside” ilk.

So anyway, the bad kind of huntsman was gone, having traumatised me for a goodly part of the evening, but it could have been worse. If it hadn’t been in the epic battle with the dust-bunny who knows what kind of shenanigans it might have got up to.

So be assured that ridiculously large spiders are not welcome in my house, but dust-bunnies are okay.

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This odd building is in the middle of the city. I don’t know its name or what it’s all about. I was having a day in the city just before Christmas and pretty much stopped in the middle of Elizabeth Street when I came across this. I stood on the corner for quite a few minutes, taking photos, waiting for the lights to change so that I could get back into the middle of the road for a better angle, just staring up and wondering about it. The wonderful, whimsical architecture. When was it built? Is it owned by witches and wizards? Are there fairies living in secret gardens around it? Is it protected by gargoyles?

Will I ever find it again, or is this one of those mysteries that arise in cities? A building that arrives and stays, just for long enough to gather a few souls, and then vanishes back into its magical realm, robbing those who have seen it of some tiny essence of themselves. And if so, have I then changed some essential, secret part of it, by taking its photo? Is this new world, where everyone has cameras with them all the time a place that such magic can no longer inhabit?

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And happy new year to you, too. It was a big step for Beloved and me last night. We actually went and did something on New Year’s Eve. Occasionally we get invited to a party, sit quietly and then run home at two minutes after midnight, but not this year. I was supposed to work until 8 last night but the movie-going public was a little off its game yesterday and my shift was cut. Not that I minded.

So a little after 9, Beloved and I hopped on the bike and rode into town. It was a way better idea than taking a car, which we’d never have found a parking spot for, and I would not even entertain the notion of using what we laughingly refer to as “public transport” in this city. It was hot yesterday, 40º in what’s been a mostly cool and laid-back sort of summer. Beloved worked from home because it was a Total Fire Ban day, our first for the season. It’s an amazingly green year.

It was still warm when we got to the city, but very pleasant in the dusk by the river. We watched kids playing with lightsticks and we messed around with our cameras while we waited for midnight. I don’t drink alcohol, but we’d brought along a bottle of grape juice to drink, both thirsty; perhaps a little dehydrated from the heat of the day.

This was my favourite picture of the night, well, taken on my camera, (and not of Beloved)  anyway. My camera’s one of those little ones that will fit into your pocket. It takes an 8mp photo and has an optical zoom, but it just doesn’t have the grunt even of one of those bridge cameras, let alone an SLR. Still, I have a lot of fun with it. Heh, as you can guess, I don’t have a tripod, either, so just propped my elbows on my knees to take these wonky, funny photos. There was a path between where we were sitting and the river, and we watched a constant array of people walking up and down the river. This photo tracks a family with a baby in a pram. The baby is holding a roundfan* with glowsticks on its fins, which is what gives the wonderful twirly effect.

*Roundfan is one of those “family” words invented by Radioboy when he was a tot. He loved watching things that twirled, anything from windmills to ceiling fans to these kids’ toys, pinwheels. We still call them “roundfans”.

Anyway, I hope this year is good for you. I’m having a shot at writing a “small stone” every day this month, a thought that puts me into the moment.

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Thank you )

Yes. Yes, I did have a good day. In fact I had a good week. Lunch with friends from work. Lunch with writing buddies. Awesome poetry workshop. On my actual birthday, Beloved took the day off. We had pancakes for breakfast and we went to the shops and we had a movie in Gold Class with lunch and we had dinner with the kids and with Ribs and her hubby. The restaurant we went to was pretty ordinary (no soap or anything to dry hands on in the toilet = ordinary) and the whole day finished off with chocolate. So much to love about all of that.

Beloved and Poss got together and gave me a present that matched my Mothers’ Day gift: it was a pasta maker, noodle extruder (just say that out loud and enjoy the vowels. Go on. Noodle extruder. Noooooooodle extruuuuuuuder. Good, isn’t it?) and a jigger for making ravioli.

Check this out. It was my first go at noodle extrusion and I’m pretty happy with how the whole thing turned out:

how awesome is that! Check the perfect curliness of that noodle. Happy? Oh yeah. On the second day I made spinach macaroni and put it in a salad. It’s fabulous. Each batch makes so many noodles that we get more than enough for a meal, plus a whole lot left over for another time. They dry quickly enough and I can store them in an airtight with container with boring shop noodles which I need never buy again. It’s also a good way to use up eggs, which are more than plentiful at this time of year.

Today, Poss came round so that Beloved could help her revamp her website and blog (which is what’s inspired me to get onto the keyboard and do something useful here) and so I of course had to get some noodly action for lunch. I made some small wholemeal macaroni which I served up with garlic butter and chopped up parsley. It was delicious and plentiful. The chooks are going to have garlic breath, because I’m giving the leftovers to them.

All of this noodly goodness is of course a spiritual journey for the pastafarians among us. Which Poss is (I’m proud to say). I find the whole concept of the FSM rather wonderful because, really, who doesn’t like spaghetti? And who doesn’t like pirates? And the idea of putting the two of them together is completely brilliant.

Poss did a collection of pirate clothing for her course this year. I like that she turned up today wearing the frilly pantaloons and clockwork-looking t-shirt.

Pirate steampunk? I think there’s something for all of us in that.

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This picture is a spoiler space. It’s my daughter’s late kitten, Java. He was a ragdoll, and the most beautiful and loved little cat. He died last night. Only 6 or so months old. I was at Poss’s place on Saturday and she was playing with Java. She came over to me and showed me that he’d just lost one of his baby teeth. She held it on the end of her finger. Then they went back to playing. Chasey and hunt the mouse. He cuddled up on my knee for a nap. We had afternoon tea and he demanded bits of scone. He’d gone from being healthy and happy to dead in one day and we don’t know why. He was up to date with all his vaccinations, had been desexed a few weeks ago, and was a total indoor cat. Yesterday morning he didn’t want his breakfast and then he started having trouble breathing. They took him to the vet at 7. There was no temperature so guessing the vet decided it wasn’t an infection. Gave him some cortisone to open up his airways. Poss called us after 9 but by the time we got there, he was gone. His lungs had filled with fluid. We took him home because there is nowhere to bury him at Poss and BF’s place. It was midnight and raining as Beloved dug the grave and I stood by, holding Java wrapped in an old Christmas tea towel that I had given to Poss as part of her kitchen setup. A faded tea towel with Christmas fairies on it. I put yellow rosebuds on his grave and planted it with the white hyacinths I’d been growing on my kitchen windowsill. A small tragedy in my safe, suburban existence.

The nuts and bolts of this blog, however, is the big M. Menopause. This week I am celebrating my cronedom as it is now 12 months since the end of my last period.

For some people, menopause is nothing. It passes in the blink of an eye and they suddenly realise they haven’t been pestered by periods for how long?… and isn’t that great. For me, it was months of depression bordering on paranoia. Not because I miss my periods, please don’t think that for a second. I have to say, from my very first period I was appalled! I hated having them so much. They disgusted me. They caused pain and embarrassment and inconvenience.

I got my first period on new year’s day, 1971. Sissy and I had spent the night at Nana’s place and lay in our sleeping bags the next morning, only to get a visit from Nana’s pervert boyfriend who came in to “put his cold hands* on our backs**”

*it was the middle of summer. His hands were not cold.

**that was not my back.

Anyway, I didn’t know how to tell Mum. I mean that I had my period. I knew that I just wanted to keep away from pervert boyfriend. And I did, but that is for another blog.

So the next morning, I hear Mum going to the toilet. I know she has her period because she always takes newspaper to wrap her used pad in, and I can hear the rustle of the paper. As she comes out of the loo (which is just next to my bedroom) I say ‘Want to see something funny?’ and I show her my bloodstained knickers.

‘You’ve got it!’ she says.

She gives me a packet of Modess and a belt thingy. I immediately hate the whole situation. The way Mum had acted as if I have some terrible illness. That it is never spoken of beyond that.

I get a pair of pants that are possibly worse than the belt thingy. They have a plastic liner in them and little metal attachments for the ends of the pad to hook into. Despite the plastic liner, I still manage to get the pants all bloodstained. Blood soaks into the elastic around the legholes and despite my hours in the laundry, stays there. My sister makes fun of them as they hang on the line. Each day, as I walk to school, I feel the blood seeping out of me. By the time I get to school, the pants, and my knickers over them, are bloody. I suffer the most awful cramps. I sit in the school library at lunchtime, feeling as if I have ice running through my kidneys. I do not speak to anyone about this. Not my mum, not my sister, not any of my friends.

My periods managed to embarrass me for most of my life. Heavy spills of blood that leaked onto clothes and onto my sheets. During the heavy days I had to wear a super tampon and a super pad and change both every hour or so. I had to give up being a blood donor because my iron count got so low, my doctor thought I had cancer. I guess I got two good things out of having periods though:

and

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*

But that was long ago. Poss will be 22 next month and Radio Boy will be 24 in October and I’ve been feeling that all those periods have been pretty-much redundant since Poss’s birth. I just put up with them because women, foolishly, do. I never really believed all that stuff about them being natural. In pre-industrial societies it was natural to be either pregnant or lactating for most of your childbearing years, so having periods wasn’t such a huge part of life. Aside from that, I don’t always buy into that whole “natural” thing. Death is natural and I plan to put it off for as long as I possibly can.

Mum went through her menopause in her mid 40s and Sissy was only 40 when she had hers. When I was 8 I had all of the “facts of life” explained to me when Mum put a little book into my hands. It had all the stuff about puppies and kittens and babies and where they came from. It was a little vague on detail though. It just said that when a man and woman got very close, the sperm entered the woman’s body. I imagined the man and woman sitting together on the sofa, watching TV. In my mind, I made them very close by putting the man’s arm around the woman’s shoulders. A tiny, enterprising sperm pops out of the man’s pants. It is so small, it can fit between the weave of his clothing. It swims in its own bubble of spermy juice-stuff and I marvel at how it navigates the expanse of laps and finds its way through the maze of the woman’s clothing in order to impregnate her.

At this point I stop. Naïve I may be, foolish I am not. The idea of that sperm, that microscopically small tadpole, being able to go all that distance and find its way through all those layers of clothing just didn’t make sense. They had obviously left some vital piece of the story out of my book.

Well, the book went on to say that I could expect my period to begin when I was “about thirteen” and to continue until I was “about fifty-two.” I turned thirteen in November 1970 and had my first period on 1st January 1971. I had my last period in August last year and will be 53 in November. Sheesh. Talk about doing it by the book.

Pretty sure my kids weren’t conceived while sitting on the sofa watching TV fully clothed, though.

So now I have reached the third age of womanhood. No longer the maiden/warrior, no longer the mother/protector, I am now the crone, the teacher and keeper of mysteries. I look into the mirror and see my nana’s face. I see the blotches of old-age which, typically, since I’m a boomer, I try to deny. I see the wrinkles and spots that are the embarrassment of this reverse-adolescence.

Stray whiskers grow on my chin and I pluck them out. Yesterday as I was peering at my reflection (what a masochistic passtime!) I noticed a mustache.

The hair on my head is mouse-brown. Oh, alright. Mouse-grey, but I was blonde as a kid. I don’t have much body-hair and what little of it there is, is blonde and hard to spot. Which is I guess why I hadn’t noticed this mustache before. Hard to spot plus it means looking at myself in the mirror. But there it was. The hairy upper lip that frankly belonged on a walrus.

So I bagged on down to Priceline and got myself some facial waxing strips because I can put up with hairy legs (as I said, they’re not that hairy and they’re blonde, so you have to get real close to see them and nobody gets that close to my shins) and I don’t give a rats about my hairy pits (last shaved in 1998 for Sissy’s wedding, due to stupid comment from Mum that almost spoiled Sissy’s special day) and my eyebrows are partial at best and pretty well invisible (one of the signs of thyroid disorder is lack of eyebrows) but I will not put up with a mustache.

So I’m doing away with tampons and pads. No more secret stashes in the glove-box, in my locker at work, in every single bag I own, in the pockets of coats and my wardrobe and a whole drawer in the bathroom devoted to them. Instead, I will have the little box of waxing papers and rip those hairs off my face and tweezer out all the nana-whiskers, too. It will take up a lot less space in my bathroom drawer and in my life, too.

No more periods.

I won’t miss them at all.

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I hope you like them.

This first one was my first big success with a winning story. It was published back in 2000 by Write Spot, the publishers who ran the competition, in a collection called Briefs. When I wrote it, it was just for the fun, but members of a writing group I was part of at the time suggested I might like to submit it to a competition.

A Level of Cool

Chook had been staring into the middle distance for so long that the others thought he’d forgotten the question. Their conversation had veered onto a whole new topic when he finally said: ‘Maggot’s dad.’

Maggot had just taken a mouthful of Coke and it came out of his nose when Chook said that. By the time he’d got over the initial shock there were Jax and Horrie solemnly agreeing with Chook.

‘Yep,’ Jaxie was nodding sagely. ‘He’d have to be right. Your dad really is the coolest bloke in town.’

Horrie patted Maggot consolingly on the shoulder. ‘Too bad coolness isn’t an inherited trait, Mag.’

‘No but I reckon stupidity must be contagious. My dad?!?’

‘Well, he looks cool,’ said Chook.

Maggot’s dad was a lean, lanky man who looked as if he’d been made out of sinew and leather. The thing he resembled most in the world was a knotted stockwhip. With boots on. He had a thatch of sandy hair burnt gold by the sun and piercing blue eyes that could see into tomorrow. There always seemed to be a half-smoked rolley in the vicinity of the grin that lurked about the lower parts of Maggot’s dad’s face.

‘His car’s cool,’ said Jax.

They all loved it when they got the chance to travel in Maggot’s dad’s ute. There was a bench seat in the front so two of them could sit beside him while the other two could squeeze in the space behind, sitting on the car fridge and whatever else was back there.

‘His dog’s really cool too,’ said Horrie.

While his dad’s bluey barely acknowledged Maggot’s existence, it would would do anything in the world for Maggot’s dad. He’d trained it to open the fridge and fetch him a coldie. While Maggot’s dad took care of the tinny, the dog would sit at his feet, gazing adoringly up at him.

‘Cheez, he’s my dad. How can he be cool?’

‘He opens beer with his teeth,’ said Chook dreamily.

‘He only did that once and Mum made him go to the dentist cause he busted his front tooth.’

‘Cool,’ said Jax. ‘Busted a tooth! What about the time he cracked that snake?’

Maggot shrugged. ‘Yeah. Well…’ there was no arguing against the coolness of a man who could break a snake’s back by grabbing its tail and cracking it like a stockwhip.

‘And what about the time he rode Bloodeye?!’ said Horrie.

That was when the rodeo had been in town. Maggot, in an act of recklessness had volunteered to ride Hellraiser, one of the buck-jumping horses. It had given everyone a good laugh, seeing him fly through the air after a few seconds of Hellraiser’s leaping about. After he’d recovered, Maggot made wild promises about being able to ride the placid looking Brahmin bull in the paddock, but it was his dad who had managed to stay on Bloodeye the Brahmin Bastard for five full minutes and take away the rodeo’s grand prize and trophy for his efforts.

‘Face it Maggot, your dad’s just cool,’ said Jax.

‘He farts in bed!’

‘Nice one,’ grinned Chook appreciatively.

‘He falls asleep in front of the TV and snores.’

‘Fair criticism,’ nodded Horrie.

‘He’s scared of spiders!!!’ yelled Maggot.

There was a small, awed silence which was only broken when Jaxie said: ‘Bullshit.’

‘He is. He practically pees his pants when he sees a big one. He runs out of the house like his arse is on fire and Mum has to swat it with the broom.’

‘What, his arse?’ said Chook.

‘The spider, dopey.’

‘Don’t believe you,’ said Chook.

‘Well, all we have to do is ask him,’ said Horrie.

‘Oh, sure. He’ll say yes Nelson dearie. Big spidies give me the willies. Please don’t bring them near me. If you have a problem with one, ask my wifie to deal with it.’

Jaxie shrugged. ‘Then I guess he’s just cool until proven otherwise.’

It was about a week later that Maggot’s dad decided to take them to help out with the ferreting at McKenzie’s place.

‘You can sit in the front,’ Maggot offered graciously, allowing Horrie and Jax the bench seat. Blue had parked himself in the tray, minding the ferrets, and Maggot and Chook squeezed in behind the seat, perching themselves on the car fridge and bunny nets.

It wasn’t until they got started that Maggot slipped the jar out from under his shirt and showed it to Chook. Chook was impressed. The spider was so big, its legs seemed to fill up all the space and overlap each other like a tangle of string. Maggot made a face behind his dad’s back and unscrewed the lid.

It was as if the spider was a rubber toy that had been compressed while it was in the jar. As soon as the lid came off it unwound itself all at once and made a sudden, spastic rush. It raced over Maggot’s hand and was up his arm and onto the inside pillar of the car before he had a chance to make a sound. Maggot’s eyes bulged and he choked as if he either needed to laugh or scream. Chook stifled a nervous giggle as he watched the spider’s long legs carry it to a spot directly over Maggot’s dad’s head. There it paused as if considering its options.

The car slowed to a stop. The spider nibbled one of its legs in a thoughtful sort of way.

‘Get the gate, Jax,’ Maggot’s dad ordered.

Jaxie jumped out of the car to take care of opening and closing McKenzie’s gate. While he waited, Maggot’s dad lit the cigarette he’d been keeping behind his ear.

It must have been a non-smoking spider, because when the blue cloud drifted from Maggot’s dad’s nose to the roof of the car, the spider took offense. Before Jax got back into his seat the spider had moved to the apparently secure spot between the sun visor and the roof.

Maggot and Chook watched in silence, their eyes riveted to the dark space where the spider lurked. They could just make out the paler grey of its body and three black toes that clung to the edge of the visor. It seemed as if it was determined to stay safely tucked away. And then they hit the first potholes in McKenzie’s paddock.

Jax and Horrie, oblivious of the drama unfolding, laughed as they bounced around in the front seat. Maggot and Chook hung on as best they could in the tangle of bunny nets. They jarred through the paddock and Maggot’s dad, grinning away, bounced up and down, his head thumping on the roof of the car. It was all too much for the spider. It secured a bungee cord to the visor and launched itself from its safe spot. It hung suspended in front of Maggot’s dad’s face for a moment with its legs splayed out so that it looked sort of like a surprised asterisk. And then it fell.

Maggot’s dad emitted a noise like a struck bull. He didn’t stop the car, didn’t even slow down. He just opened his door and got out, his long arms and legs bowling him across the paddock in a series of clumsy cartwheels. They were doing forty.

It was just as well Horrie wasn’t the type to panic. He reached one foot across and slammed it on the brake hard enough for the car to shudder to a stall. Tom McKenzie drove the boys home in the ute and Bill took Maggot’s dad to the hospital. They never did see what happened to the spider.

‘Told ya he was scared,’ said Maggot.

‘Yeah, but the way he just got out of the car,’ said Chook.

Horrie nodded. ‘Totally cool, Mag. Your dad has raised being scared of spiders to a level of cool.’

THE END

Yes. These spiders are real. In the big picture at the start of the story, the spider is not life size. Oh no. Huntsmans are much bigger than that. Put your hand over the picture and imagine those legs spread out beyond the length of your fingers and you pretty much have it, because that’s how big they are.

Huntsmans are common spiders that have flat bodies, adapted to slipping beneath the loose bark of eucalypts. They are extremely dumb spiders because they don’t know the difference between “trees” and “houses”. They are also highly controversial spiders, and all you have to do is say the word “huntsman” within earshot of any collection of Victorians and you will get a whole heap of stories about them appearing in the scariest of circumstances. Half of the people telling you these stories will complete the tale with “and then I scooped it up on the end of the broom and put it outside because they’re harmless, you know.” The other half of the stories will not end so well for the spider.

I’m in the “other half” camp. I hate these bastards. They’re sneaky and scary. I do NOT believe the “they’re more scared of you than you are of them” theory of huntsmans. If they are scared of me why have they come into my house/car/motorbike??? Yes. I have scare motorbike huntsman stories and trust me, you do NOT want one of these running up your arm when you’re in traffic. Or hiding under your tank while you’re “seeing what the bike can <cough>”do”<cough> on the freeway. My theory is to feed them to the chooks or pet rats, or empty a can of fly spray onto them until they’re so iced up and toxic they will never move again.

The “they’re harmless” camp suffer under the delusion that huntsmans are not venemous. This is a furphy. ALL spiders are venemous, their venom is harmful to humans in varying degrees from “not at all” to “make out your will”. Since huntsmans are so common in houses hereabouts, they are also the spider most likely to bite people. Strangely, the “they’re harmless” people are also the ones most likely to come down hard against the White Tailed spider, which is no more or less likely to bite than a huntsman, and whose bit is no more or less painful and nasty. I, personally, don’t mind the White Tail. They’re smaller and nowhere near as creepy.

And yes, my dad is scared of them, and quite right too. As he explained to me when I was very young: You can go to the hospital and get some antivenin if you’re bitten by something, but there’s no cure for being scared to death.

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Okay, not really. Just the usual. Just life going on. Just the moon getting all fat and then getting all thin and then disappearing altogether and then coming back again once or twice and meanwhile I’ve achieved very little in the way of writing or blogging.

On the plus side I went on a holiday with Beloved, the kids are well and more stuff has gone on around the house. Although we went away for the first week of our break, the second week was pretty much devoted to Doing Stuff At Home. A lot of this did consist of sleeping in, yelling at cats and taking trips to Bunnings that started at around lunchtime and didn’t finish until after dark, but that’s another blog. This one is to be about what we have achieved over the past week, and a little about what we haven’t.

Okay, so I’ll start with the bad news. I really did think I was going to get painting done. Lots and lots of lovely paint slapped all over the walls and making them look fabby. I’ll get it over with: not one drop of paint was spilled, looked at, applied or in any way sloshed about in this house last week. The lids remained firmly on the cans as plaster refused to dry, or, worse still, fabulously and even brilliantly-applied plaster had to be scraped off the wall in order to get at errant electricity, and then re-applied, and then scraped off again as devoted but not very experienced plasterer had forgotten to put the tape stuff on first.

About half a tub of plaster bog was applied to the walls of what was once Radio Boy’s bedroom and will someday be the library, as RB’s method of hanging an A4 poster was to grab a 4″ nail and bash it into the wall. Yep, nice, solid bit of poster-hanging there. Maybe put another nail in, just to make sure. I’m not even going to mention the 2cm holes drilled into random spots up near the ceiling so that he could hang up speakers. Nope. Not saying a word about that.

But we did make stuff happen (and by “we” I mean Beloved).

This is just to catch you up to the state of the pantry. No lining, lighting only by way of a couple of lights stuck in the wall cavity, light switch and power point likewise just sort of hanging there. What you can’t see in this picture (but believe me, it was there) was the two black plastic garbage bags which have been taped to the back of the louvre door on account of it’s pretty draughty having a room with no lining. Draughty and dusty. And messy. Look at all those untidy wires. Kind of weird, isn’t it, all those wires all over the place in a simple thing like a house.

The laundry, though I haven’t included any pictures in this blog, was in a similar condition from the middle up. It had no ceiling, just the floor joists for the loft and the loft’s floor above them. Its light was stuck on the wall where it had been for months, and it meant that when you stood at the laundry trough you were completely in your own light. The pantry has looked pretty much like this for about a year now, but last week was our week to make a difference, and Beloved rolled up his sleeves and took it on.

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Now there are some people who say that they love a man (or woman) in uniform, but for me, it’s the guy who knows his way around a shed full of tools. Is this one of those situations where they say that all girls fall in love with some aspect of their dads? I don’t know (my dad was a carpenter). But I do love it when Beloved dons the proverbial tool belt and gets out his tape measure. You have no idea how much I love it when he gets out that tape measure, mainly because it’s a minor miracle when he can find the bloody thing. Many’s the day that has begun with the phrase ‘Have you seen my tape measure?’ and fallen into a complete shambles not long afterwards. What really sucks about this is that Beloved has at least three of them.

During a fact-finding* mission to Aldi last week (*that’s not true. We actually went there to get a new kitchen toy.) I came across a package containing TWO (count ‘em) tape measures. As you do in Aldi. I love that place. ‘Hey love, nick down the shops and pick up some bread and milk and a couple of tape measures and colouring books and a 42″ TV and a USB drive and a compressor and some A4 paper for the printer and a printer and some motorbike boots, please.’ All there in Aldi. Plus chocolate. Anyway, I’ve kept the smaller tape measure for my kitchen drawer (now also featuring Allen keys, a box cutter and a multi-tool with pliers as well as bottle-openers, nut crackers etc) and set the other one free to roam about the house with the rest of the tape measure pack. I’m hoping they breed up enough so that at any given moment Beloved will never be further than an arm’s reach from a helpful tape measure.

You may have noticed the empty condition of the pantry as Beloved works in it. The sad fact is, it’s very hard to wrangle plasterboard when there are boxes and plastic stacking thingies in the way, so this is what had to happen. It was like the kitchen of old, looking at all that clutter over my nice, empty bench. I shudder now, just looking at this photo with its mess everywhere (and yes, that’s my computer sitting on the table, why, one might ask, is it not in its correct position in the study? Because laptops are migratory).

I was torn here, between the mess and the fact that work was being done in the pantry. In the end I just wore a completely painty and plastery track suit for the whole week as a form of camoflague and I sucked it up, buttercup, because sometime the needs of the pantry outweigh the needs of the tidy kitchen. Cooking was a challenge and all of the cats spent their time trying to get into their food box, but we lived through it, and someday we will sit around the campfire with our grandchildren and tell the tale of how exciting it all was, living in this mess.

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Now to get you up to speed with what’s happened. Yeah, that’s the same room. There it is, all plastered up. Okay, still not finished, there’s no archetrave and we haven’t patched up the cracks and (in this photo) the lights aren’t in,  and there’s no paint at all (but I warned you about that) but it’s plastered. There are no big spidery gaps and you can’t see al lthe dust and cobwebs and I’ve even ripped those two big black bags off the back of the door.

It took Beloved the best part of a day to wire the lights in, but they are fabulous. There are 6 in all, 3 above where the sink will go, the one you can see in the foreground, and two more behind where I was standing to take the photo. They are only 11 watts each, and I’ll probably drop that down to 9, because they give a tonne of light.

You can see the tap fittings just next to the broom on the wall’s end. Beloved is going to make a box to fit on the timber just below them and we’ll put the sink in there. There are going to be LOTS of shelves, nice wide wooden ones for storing jars full of stuff, and all of my plastic boxes have been moved back in because even though it isn’t finished, we deserve a couple of weeks of tidyness (and rest) after our hard-working holiday.

So the kitchen is neat again and the laundry is lined as well, with the light now overhead, so you can see what you’re doing in there, and with the shelves I’d always planned to live in the laundry now doing what they should. It’s wonderful. Unpainted and in need of a bit of plastering and probably a bit of tiling as well, but looking wonderful. (The tiles in there at the moment are the same as the ones that were in the old kitchen, and, like those tiles, have now begun to fall off the wall.)

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So here is my hero, just having driven home the last nail. I helped a little, I mean, there was no way he could have got that ceiling plaster up without me on the step-ladder, standing on my tippy-toes, holding that plasterboard in place with my aching arms and my head. What can I say? It’s a skill. Not as much of a skill as measuring stuff though, or cutting and handling that drill like a pro, or knowing exactly how much of the blue goopy stuff you need to put on the wood to help stick the plasterboard in place. Beloved is my hero, even if he does lose his tape measure all the time and expect things to work properly just by swearing at them. Who knows, perhaps he’s right and we just need to employ these magic words with a bit more gusto in order to make them effective.

Maybe that’s the true skill of blokiness that I’m missing out on.

In other news, Radio Boy is doing well and Poss and BF are happy in their new home. Miss Puss went to live with Poss for a little while, but she’s come home now. She’s very much an outside cat and wasn’t allowed out of the flat. I am thinking about what sort of kitten I can get for Poss that she and BF will be happy with. Everybody needs a cat and I know how much Poss is missing Miss Puss.

I’ve actually spent a bit of time working on my novel, and although I won’t get much time this week to do more, at least my brain is getting into the right place, and that’s a start. I know that the words are all in there, falling over each other and trying to get out, I just have to make a nest for them to live in.

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Oh, and one more bit of kitchen awesomeness:

This was my Mothers’ Day present. It’s a red one, so of course you know it goes faster. I’d kind of been wanting a new mixer for a while now. My old Kenwood just wasn’t cutting it any more and I’d seen these about and rather fallen in love with them. I know they are on the trendo side, I mean is there any self-respecting TV chef who doesn’t have one of these somewhere in the background of the set? Even if all they’re making is cheese on toast, you’ll see the KitchenAid there on the bench. They look great, they’re well made and darling they come in such FABULOUS colours.

I had saved up my pocket money and paid for half of the mixer. Now I’m going to have to save up more pocket money and get some of the fabby attachments. I mean, what’s the point of having one of these unless you also have the pasta maker, vegie slicer, grain mill, ice cream maker and mincing attachment to go with??? I’m just wondering where to start. Pasta maker, I think. Beloved and I have an old, broken pasta maker and I do like to make my own. It’s fun and it’s just so much nicer than what you can buy. Besides, it’s winter so we don’t need the ice cream maker just yet. I think I’ll ask Father Christmas for that )

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Miss Puss does look as if she’s up to something a bit, uh, kinky in this photo. Actually, her only intention here is to beat the stuffing out of her toy. Despite being the sweetest-looking little kitty-cat with soft fur and also being very tiny, she is the roughest, toughest cat with the baddest attitude I think I’ve ever had. I think it’s probably because she was a street kitten. Brought up in the wilds of Bega and having to take care of herself, she learned to scratch and swipe with the best of them.

She is also (to my dismay) the most prolific hunter I’ve ever owned. Fortunately we have a cat bib, which is working brilliantly. Without the bib she was known to catch up to 2 birds a day. With the bib on, (and she’s had to wear it whenever she’s outdoors for weeks now) she has only caught one bird. She knows she’s not allowed outside without her bib. Poss’s theory about Miss Puss and her hunting skills is that cats who have to hunt for a living (as we belive Miss Puss once did) have the added edge of desperation, and will leap at prey with their mouths open go in GO IN! I need food!

Miss Puss’s small size would also attest to the resurgence in a somewhat Lamarckian field of study which seems to indicate that some acquired traits can be handed down from generation to generation. The study was done in the Netherlands where a group of pregnant women who were starved during an incident in WWII gave birth. Their children were (understandably) of low birth weight because of the hard times the mothers had been through. The thing is, in the 1960s, when these daughters were having children, they also were of low birth weight. And then in the 80s, the same thing happened again with the grandchildren of the original low birthweight daughters. I’m not sure what happened in the following generation, they never got to that in the radio show I was listening to (and I can’t remember if it was The Science Show or The Health Report on ABC Radio Australia) but it was very interesting.

More cheek is the Fat Cat who has two favourite places to sleep: clean laundry and anywhere black. As you can see, he is more of a white cat with some ginger than a ginger cat with white on him. He’s a classic A-spectrum cat with lush fur and a generous girth and he has RADAR whenever there’s clean laundry about. Okay, I know it’s partly my laziness. First of all: I don’t iron. I really don’t. I don’t mean “I hardly ever iron” or “I only iron once a week” or “I only iron when I need to” I mean I just don’t. My theory is that by the time I’ve worn something in the car to wherever I’m going, it will be full of creases anyway, so who’s going to know? Okay. I know. There are some things that you can tell, but I just don’t care all that much. I don’t notice it. I figure it’s enough that it’s clean.

So anyway, when I bring a load of laundry in off the line, I generally dump it on the bed. This way I will be forced to put it away before I can sleep (because I couldn’t stand to have one thing on the bed, not even a sock. It would drive me nuts.) Maybe the Fat Cat can smell the fresh breeze and warm sunshine in clean laundry and that’s what brings him to come and sleep on it. I don’t blame him. I love the smell of it, too.

Conversely, the Fat Cat’s mortal enemy, Mr Black, loves to sleep on white stuff. Is this some sort of cat-conspiracy, that cats must only shed their fur on contrasting colours? I am currently knitting a free-range baby blankie (it’s free-range because I’m not sure who it’s intended for. It was originally going to be for one of Beloved’s workmates, but she’s gone and had her baby and I didn’t get it finished. So I’ll just have a spare). This blankie is a mostly pinkish pastels with a second ball of dark pink for contrast. You can imagine how great that looks, covered in cat fur. Fortunately my theory with baby blankies is that they should be made of bright, colourful, easy-to-wash acrylics, because the last thing any new parent needs is to be worried about hand-washing some special blankie that’s made of pure virgin lambswool. I’ll give this one a wash when it’s finished and hopefully nobody will be any the wiser (sssh).

This is my third cheeky thing of the day. Not just cheeky but ironic. A spider that builds its web on the open mouth of a pitcher plant, thus depriving the poor plant. Very cheeky, Mr Spider.

I do like my carnivorous plants. I have a collection of Venus Fly Traps on the kitchen window sill and I rotate them to the verandah outside the bedroom when they start to look a bit tired or go into their dormancy. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don’t. I’m always delighted when they do. As a kid I regularly bought and killed Venus Fly traps. although perhaps if I’d known better I might have just left them for a year and they might have come back.

I only keep the pitcher plants outdoors. They don’t seem to enjoy it at all inside. I have some short, fat ones like the one in the picture, and some long, skinny ones. One of the long skinnies made a flower at the start of summer. That flower is still there. I’m quite amazed with its longevity. The long skinnies have also caught a lot of stuff over the summer. Not sure what because it’s hard to see down their long, skinny necks, but I’m told they’re partial to European wasps, so that’s fine with me.

I also have some Sundews on the verandah. I never bought them, they’ve just hitched along with the Venus Fly Traps and been quite happy to live alongside. They have long leaves, different from the round leafed little Droseras that I sometimes find in my back yard. I am tempted to dig some of the little native ones up and add them to my collection. There’s something cute about carnivorous plants. They have a personality. They don’t even seem to mind when cheeky spiders do them out of a meal. Maybe they have that planty patience, maybe they know that if they wait long enough, that spider will someday slip to where no web can save it.

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I have never even really liked coffee, though I did go through a phase of drinking cup after cup of thin, bitter instant coffee during my working day. No sooner was my cup empty than I would get up and head for the kitchen and boil the jug for another cup. No milk. No sugar, just the thin, awful coffee. I did it because I thought it was a cool and clever thing to do.

These days I’ll often have a cup of tea beside me, and at night Beloved and I will often make each other a cup of milk coffee (half a teaspoon of instant is all I care for) put it in the mug and, well, this is why we really have microwaves, isn’t it? If someone offers me a hot drink at their place I seldom risk tea because I’m so fussy about it. Instead I will ask for coffee ‘weak, white and one’. Usually I don’t drink it because it will still be too strong and bitter for my liking.

Nevertheless coffee has always been a part of my life.

My family lived as an extended unit, in Nana’s house, until I was 10. Nana had an old gas Kooka stove, something like the one these ladies are using in the picture. It was green. I only ever remember Nana and Mum making cups of tea. Our kettle was different from the one the lady in the picture is holding. Ours didn’t whistle, it had a long, curved spout and sang and hissed and sputtered when its water boiled, threatening to put out the little gas flame and kill us all.

When we moved, Mum and Dad got an electric jug. I don’t know anything about its history, but it was a great, heavy ceramic monster that didn’t whistle or turn itself off when its water boiled, just sputtered and burped boiling water all over the bench, threatening to scald and then electrocute whoever was making the tea.

They also got a percolator. It wasn’t electric, but sat on the stovetop and bubbled away over breakfast, making their mornings all bitter and speedy. Percolators also make me think of a really stupid old TV commercial from the 70s. I cannot begin to imagine what possessed Dame Zara Bate to do one of those chatty “to the camera” ads where she insisted that whatever brand of instant coffee she was flogging was as good as percolated (a highly subjective call, since I prefer instant, but let’s not push it). She said she would put the instant into her percolator and then sat there giggling and saying ‘perk, perk, perk’ – honestly, this lady had been married to a prime minister. Did she really need to resort to instant coffee? – and then all her friends would be so impressed because she was making “real” percolated coffee. All I can think is that the mysterious disappearance of her husband, Harold Holt, who was Prime Minister at the time, had all been too much for her, and it had sent her just a little bit dotty. (I am assuming this, also, on account of surely it was she who gave permission for a swimming pool to be named in his memory. All very well, the man did love to swim, but a tad ironic, considering he disappeared while on a swim.)

So, Mum and Dad and coffee in the morning. I would sometimes help by grinding the beans for Mum with one of those little hand-wound mills a bit like the one in the picture. Later, though, they started having mills in the supermarket. You would choose your blend, choose how fine you wanted it ground, empty the beans in, place the bag under the grinder, and Bob was the proverbial parental sibling. I tried to like coffee, I really did. I tried it black and except for that time when I was working, well, I really didn’t like it. In milk, okay, but I have it so weak, it’s only the milk I can taste. I just eat the foam off the top of cappuccinos, and I just stir lattes and play with the sugar packets.

Beloved, on the other hand, is a bit of a coffee desperate. His life, like Kathryn Janeway’s, is a quest for the great coffee. He admits that when he was studying, he used to chain-drink coffee. Unlike me, he probably did this because he actually liked it.

He had a percolator, much like Mum and Dad’s but said it made the coffee a bit bitter (a bit???) so he got himself one of those little aluminium octagonal pots that you always see in the Italian delis. It became his constant companion, so much so that he got a second pot to take when we went camping, and later I got him a tiny pot so that he could take it when he went on trips on the bike, and even for bushwalking.

I got one of those dripolator/filter things from a second hand shop. You put the coffee into the disposable filter paper and the water into the reservior. Plug it in and turn it on. As the water heats up, it drips through the coffee and into the jug. Very handy thing to have at parties, because it basically looks after itself, just has to be freshened up when all the coffee’s gone. Beloved was never a big fan of this. I think it just didn’t make the coffee strong enough for his liking. He also has a number of mini-versions of the dripolator. Little things with grids on the bottom. You put the coffee in, sit it on top of your cup, pour in the water and wait for gravity to work its magic. Oh, and the plungers, too. Big ones and little ones. Again, they fill our cupboards, but seldom get used.

When Beloved first became obsessive about hsi coffee, he bought this. I’m not sure what its real name is, we’ve always called it the coffee siphon (although “George” would have been a good name, too). You put hot water in the bottom jug and coffee in the top jug. You can see that it’s sitting on an odd metal plate, but that’s because our stove is convection and convection doesn’t work on glass, the plate heats up the water though.

The water goes up the pipe and bubbles into the coffee. When it’s all gone up, you turn off the heat, and it sucks back down again into the bottom jug, so it gets filtered through the coffee twice. It’s much gentler than regular percolation, and I can almost drink this coffee (almost).

Of course it’s all about the beans and Beloved has found this nice little place in Balaklava that does its own roasting. They send the beans nice and quick (and a nice mango sencha for me). Many’s the morning we’ve had the parcel man at the front door just in time for breakfast.

Beloved would love to have one of those magnificent Gaggia machines that cost thousands of dollars and take up half the kitchen, steaming and hissing and roaring like a steam engine. We’ve had a couple of espresso machines, but both have died. One died just in time for Beloved to need to buy another one for the new kitchen. He did his research and got a machine that he was very happy with. It was loud, though. Such a noise first thing in the morning, the hiss and scream of it. It died a few months ago. He still hasn’t been able to replace the part that carked it.

So what did I get him for Christmas?

A new coffee machine, of course. This is an elegant thing. I bought it from a wonderful coffee shop in the Queen Victoria Market. I thought it was called a French Press, but apparently that’s just another name for the things we call plungers. No, this one is pure USA. Clever people those Americans.

You put the coffee into the grip, just like with a normal espresso machine, and you put hot water into the clear bit on top. You raise the two wing-like handles and leave it for a few seconds to soak into the coffee. Then you press the handles down, which forces the water through the coffee. Basically, it’s a manual espresso machine.

I love the elegant lines of it and the serenity of its silence. The only noise in the morning now is the scream of the grinder (or, as we like to call it, “the Poss Signal” since if she is within hearing range of the coffee grinder, Poss will appear like magic, cup in hand, and insist on being given the first coffee.)

It was a good gift, though.

Poss, like her dad, is a coffee drinker. Radio Boy is more like me. Not that interested in coffee, but will drink tea or herbal tea.

So that’s our morning. The scream of the beans grinding, our kettle, which doesn’t sing or whistle or sputter and has 5 different settings, depending on how hot you want your water, and beeps politely when it’s ready.

There’s so much quiet now.

BF’s parents bought him an espresso machine for his birthday last year. I suppose it’s just as well. He and Poss will be making their own coffee soon, as he has bought a house for them.

Life goes on. Another generation of coffee.

I think I’ll go make myself a cup of tea.

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