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.

]]> http://amandale.net/blog/2010/06/09/things-to-do/feed/ 0 http://amandale.net/blog/2010/05/31/neat-is-my-favourite-colour/ http://amandale.net/blog/2010/05/31/neat-is-my-favourite-colour/#comments Mon, 31 May 2010 07:01:41 +0000 admin http://amandale.net/blog/?p=284 Yes, I am still here. Things have been happening. Wild excitement. Fabulous developments.

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.

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.

For a little while last week I was almost feeling organised. I put a diary here on the desk and started making my lists and ticking them off as I achieved each objective. You know. World changing stuff: hang out laundry. Bring in laundry. Research poem. Go to the gym. Let’s just say there’s not a whole lot of structure in my life, and trying to get things done on the kitchen table is confronting for me. The high point of my life was in about grade 2, when I had the inside of my desk so neatly arranged that I didn’t have to lift the lid in order to pick out which of the six identical exercise books I needed for the next lesson. I mean, it just made sense to me that my English book (fun) should be kept on top of the stack, and my maths book (yukkie) should be kept on the bottom. And that the dictionary (small) belonged at the top, where it was neatest, and the atlas (biggest) belonged at the bottom where it could support all of the rest.

Neatness and order. That’s what I’m trying to do with my life at the moment. And the pantry and loft are all coming into line at the moment.

I painted an undercoat onto the loft stairs during the week, so that they would be ready to go in on the weekend. Beloved’s leg and back are still playing him up a bit, but he soldiered on like a brave little Vegemite, and it got done. There was some exasperation as we had to put the stairs up, measure a bit, take them down, cut a bit, put them up a bit, swear somewhat (Beloved’s secret ingredient to all household chores) cut a little bit more, and put them up again.

Here, though, finally, is a view of the stairs in place in the loft. They are bolted in and ready for the first person to walk up them and into the exaulted storage space above.

I said Beloved should go first because he had dome all of the work. He said I should go first because I was lighter. This absolutely floored me. I was lighter. And it’s true! Not by much, but for the first time in many years I am actually lighter than Beloved. Now impressive as this sounds, bear in mind that he’s 185cm tall (6’1″) and 10kgs overweight according to the doctor, and I am 160cm tall (5’3″). But no! Less is less and I weigh ever so slightly less than does Beloved and he let me be first to go up the new stairs. It was massively exciting, even though I left dirty footprints on my white undercoat. Oh well. I’ll be painting over that soon enough, so not to worry. In this first photo I am standing in the (now removed) doorway that backs into the bedroom. I couldn’t get any further back because I’m against a wall. This part of the bedroom was once a hallway. Eventually this doorway will be filled in with a bookcase so that we can have a “secret” entrance to our hidey hole of a loft.

So here I am, looking down into the pantry. As you can see, we still have only half a floor in the loft, so it’s a little scary if you’ve got a tendency to vertigo, but when it’s all filled in it won’t be a problem.

I know I had that big rave about neatness and order before, and as you can see, there isn’t a whole lot of it in the pantry. Okay, stuff has been pushed out of the way while work goes on for the day, but things like the flour box and freezer are a source of constant annoyance. Not because there’s anything wrong with either of them, but because they serve as temporary storage space for the porridge oats, the cake box, the muffin/fairy cake carrier, and the metal shelf thingy that used to live in my locker at work. Now, every time I want to get some flour or rice out of the flour box, they get moved onto the freezer, and every time I need something out of the freezer, they get moved back onto the flour box. This happens at least once a day in each direction and it doesn’t fit in with my view of how the world ought to work.

And here it is. The loft. It’s just a little bit on the junky side at the moment. A lot of what’s in those boxes belongs to Radio Boy who says he needs it, but I reckon if I got rid of it he’d never even notice. I could donate the books to the local hospital, give the sick kids something to read while they get better.

The mattress and base and bed head were Radio Boy’s too. He doesn’t need them any more since he bought himself a nice queensize set when he moved to Bega. Someday, when we have the room space, we will probably use these as a spare bed. Who knows. Maybe someday we’ll have a grandchild sleeping on that mattress. Poss’s old single bed mattress is there too. The bed (one of those nifty bunk/desk/shelf arrangements) has a new home now, and like I said, maybe someday there will be a grandchild who comes to stay and sleep on dad’s/mum’s uncle’s/aunty’s old bed. Am I turning into a cluck? The other thing, right in the middle there, is my Fowler’s Vacola canning kit. Been ages since I’ve done stuff in that, but one year I made the most brilliant mango chutney. Looking forward to the day when I have the storage space to do that again. Down the the Queen Vic market for a box of mangoes. Yummy.

I’ll have to do a blog on the market one of these days. It’s a fabulous place. Beloved and I used to shop there regularly when we were first together. Going in on a Saturday morning with the backpack on and stocking up on fruit and veggies.

I hadn’t been there for ages, but since I was there just before Christmas, I  spent a day there and it was even more fabulous than it used to be. I bought Beloved the most amazing coffee machine (will have to do a blog on that, too) and had a good wander round all of the shops.

Aside from anything else, the market has a mysterious and spooky history. It was the place of Melbourne’s original general cemetery. When the market took over, some of the graves were opened and their contents moved. Some. Not all. Headstones were moved, but beneath  the carpark are the remains of a good many of Melbourne’s early citizens.

It didn’t feel at all spooky on the fine day in December when I was there, though.

The next step in the loft and pantry story was to box the stairs in. Don’t want any gaps showing since Poss and BF use that bedroom (the one behind me in the photo, so you can’t actually see it). Also stops the cats from sneaking in.

Don’t look too closely at the paint job. In the end I will paint it all black so that it merges into the dark and spooky heights of the loft. Yeah. Spooky. I mean, what’s the point of having a loft unless it’s just  little bit on the spooky side?

Spooky? Yeah. That’s what I want. And just to show you what I mean, here are a couple more hints. These cobwebs are just part of our life here, living with very high ceilings and open beams, and a person (me) who is disinclined towards housework. As I read in a cross-stitch pattern this morning “if a woman’s work is never done, why bother starting?” That’s a profound thought that I am tempted to turn into a personal credo. Besides, if you sweep down cobwebs then your hair gets all dusty and cobwebby. I am more of the school of thought that says “if I chuck a handful of glitter into it I can call it a decoration.”

The other spooky moment came when I took this photo of Sophie. Now I know there are those who insist that orbs are nothing but artefac. That they’re all about light reflecting off the lens or dust in the air or dud pixels not processing properly or something else that sounds plausible and sensible and frankly quite boring, but I like to think they’re just a little bit spooky, so I was pleased when I took this photo of Sophie during the work on Saturday, and found this orb hovering over her. Nice one Soph. If anyone’s going to communicate with orbs, it’s that old grimalkin.

On Sunday we bought the final bits of flooring for the loft. They haven’t been installed yet, mainly because Sunday was hot and the loft gets really hot. Instead, we did a bit of work cleaning out the pool, which should be ready for swimming in about March, when the weather turns cold again. Oh well. So my plans for spending part of today putting Christmas into its own corner of the loft have been somewhat stymied, but that’s okay. It’s beginning to look like a real possibility now, instead of just one of those wonderful fantasies I tell myself as I’m falling asleep.

And this is what the pantry looks like, now that the staircase is in place and boxed in. I’m not sure if I’ll paint this side of it black or white. I’m thinking white, as black might be a bit heavy and make the space look too small.

Not sure what I’ll put on the side, but I have decided that the sloping bottom of the staircase could be a very good place to put in some hooks for hanging up herbs for drying.

In its position over the freezer, it’s nicely out of the way. Not even Beloved (who is notorious for banging his head on stuff) has banged his head on the stairs.

Anyway, last weekend was it. Cold and rainy, in fact, which was brilliant for someone who might have been driven crazy by the heat less than a week before and shaved all her hair off. Yeah, Sunday I was wearing my wooly hat to keep my head warm. Gotta love Melbourne weather.
But this was what Beloved did on the weekend. Stairs. Yeah. They’re all glued and screwed together. It was a fairly mammoth task, but he did get to use the router, which is one of my favourite woodworking tools (I’d love to learn woodworking). At the moment they’re only G-clamped into place while the glue gets a whole week to dry. And that door opens inwards, so obviously nobody’s got to use them. Except the cat. Mr Black and Miss Puss are both obsessed with the pantry and zip in there whenever they get the chance. Mr Black has been up those stairs checking out the loft.

I hope this gives you a good idea of how it’s all going to work. The stairs will be boxed in, so you won’t be able to see them from the pantry-side, and of course all of the top will be floor soon. The door will be replaced with a bookshelf with a switch ) so the only way in will be through that secret door. I just love the idea of having a loft with a secret door. It fits all of my childhood fantasies. I’m looking forward to having the camping equipment and stuff like the Christmast deckies and fleeces (note to self: must start washing/carding/doing stuff with wool) and other things that only need to come out occasionally.

I hope you are all well, and with that in mind, I ask anyone who is of a mind to please send a healing thought, light a candle or say a prayer for a friend of mine. His parents were in a terrible car smash a few days ago and his mum is in a bad way at the moment, having had a clot in her lung and had to be returned to one of those comas that they put people in. I worked with this young man and I have a lot of affection and respect for him. I really hope his mum gets better.

Take care.

Be safe.

My doctor’s appointment was first. I haven’t been to see him for a couple of months so I thought, you know, maaaybe I could get away with it. Stood on those scales and found that I had done rather well. I was surprised and very happy to see more than a kilo gone. The doc is very happy with my progress too and there were no adjustments to my band. It’s doing what it was put there to do and we’ll just keep the status quo for now.

Curves was going to be more of a challenge. I get weighed there every month and between stepping on the scales and last month there had been a lot of gingerbread. And chocolate. And maple syrup lollies. And chocolate coins. And mince pies. Not good. I know. Not good. But I needed the head up, the punishment, the realisation that it’s 2010 now and time to get back on the ol’ treadmill.

Turns out I’d lost weight. Yeah. Sooooo happy. Only .4 of a kg, not something to crow about? But this was .4 of a kg lost over Christmas. Impressive, really.

In fact, I think I deserve a star for my effort.

Let me tell you about my hair: I have a love/hate relationship with it. Back in 2000 I worked for a small ISP. It went bellyup with a lot of other small ISPs when the dotcom bubble burst and I was out of a job. Got myself a haircut from someone who had left a flyer in my letterbox and that, my dears, was the most awfullest of mistakes. You see, I have the kind of hair that about 99% of hairdressers cannot cope with. I have thick, angry hair with a mind of its own. So there I was with this bloody awful haircut and not enough $$$ to do anything about it. I was bemoaning the situation to my buddy Ribs and I pointed to a lady with a crewcut. ‘That’s the kind of hair I want,’ I said.

‘Why don’t you?’ said Ribs. Well, after all, my hair couldn’t have got any worse.

So I did. And I was happy with it. Damned happy. You see, I’d never seen my head before and it turns out I have quite a nice one. It’s sort of Charlie Brownish, nice and round, you know. So I kept my hair short that summer and from time to time after that, I take to myself with the shears and let the old hair know who’s boss. Then from time to time I’d think nah and I’d let it grow. It would go through the awkward Doris Day stage and then the curls would come in and I’d be happy. Occasionally. Or it would look like a shaggy pony. Or it would get in my eyes. Or it would be flat when I wanted puffy. Or it would be too grey. Or it would have that dark stripe down the middle which meant I needed to dye it again.

I’d shave it in the summer to cool down and I’d shave it in the winter because I have to wash it every day and it takes a long time to dry and I didn’t want to spend all day with cold, wet hair.

I haven’t shaved my hair off since I started working for the cinema chain in 2007. Goodness, they will be surprised when I turn up for work on Thursday.

Last year I kind of thought I wanted long hair again. I’d been inspired by my buddies at Clarion. There was Carrot with her long, long, Titian locks, Mermaid, who freqently described herself as “Charcoal Blonde” (don’t believe a word of it) and Black Angel, both with their magnificent brunette manes and Butterfly and Window Doll with their fabulous crops of long, blonde hair, and Doc and Dark Heart with long, silky, perfectly-behaved hair. Only Unicorn and I had the short hair.

I desperately wanted to fit in. I decided to let my hair grow.

Once, a long time ago, I went to a hairdresser who loved my hair. I had gone to see him for two reasons:

1 because his shop was near where I worked

2 because his surname was the same as my nana’s maiden name, and if that isn’t a good reason to choose a hairdresser then I don’t know what is.

He took one look at my hair and I expected him to come out with the drooped shoulders and “you’ve got a lot of hair” comment that I usually got from hairdressers. Instead he told me my hair was wonderful. ‘I’m going to do that with it.’ He pointed to a poster on the wall. I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t argue either. It was such a novelty to have someone say something positive about my hair. I don’t have a lot of pictures from that time, but this is one of my favourites, just because my hair looks just as the guy said it would.

So last year when I was at Clarion I figured that I could have hair like the others. Like the young ones. Like I used to have in the seventies. Delusional? I think so.

It worked moderately well. There were days when I didn’t actually hate my hair and days when I admit to having liked it. It would do the curly thing and I’d believe that it would alllll be okay.

Then there was yesterday. My hair had been pushing its luck all summer and I’d started having to tie it up. I tied it up on hot days and I tied it up when I went to Curves. I had to beccause otherwise it would get pulled by the squat machine. Not fun. Not fun at all.

Now, when I say “tied it up” I mean in the way that unruly animals get tied up. I wish I could slip it into a nice, neat bun the way Poss does. She sort of twists it and then does something tricky with a chopstick (if she’s feeling Japanese) or a paintbrush (if she’s in an artistic mood) and it just stays there. Mine has to be lassoed and leg-roped the way you see in rodeos.

Yesterday was in the low 40s. For those of you who speak Fahrenheit, well 100ºF = 38.something, so we were well into the

hundreds and I don’t think it got out till sometime around midnight. And my hair was, well, here’s a “before” picture:

Me (on the right) with Sissy. This was taken Christmas Day as we kicked arse, playing Pictionary.

But last night was the end for the hair. I just couldn’t take it any more. No more fighting. I wanted the short hair again. I wanted it because it’s easy to take care of and it’s cool and it feels good. It’s thick as a seal’s pelt and people want to touch it (I know why dogs and cats like to be patted).

I knew that I had to cut it because my hair isn’t me, it’s just hair. It’s not my personality and my ability to write isn’t bound up in a bunch of old keratin strips that I keep dyeing blonde. I am not Sampson. My superpowers are neither lost nor gained through the posession of hair,  it’s just hair and keeping it on was like wearing a nice, wooly winter hat and the heat was making me miserable and angry and I kept having to rearrange it on the pillow when I was trying to sleep.

I shaved and shaved. I filled up the sink with hair and there was a hair blizzard in the bathroom. There was enough to stuff a pillow in the end. There was enough to stuff a mattress. Long hair was neither my strength nor my punishment. It was just hair. Mind you, I think there was probably a kilo’s worth shaved off, so it was worth it for that, at least.

So now I have this.

They’re gonna be surprised when they see me at work this week.

So Merry Christmas. To all of you.

I apologise for not including some sort of spoiler with the last post. I do try not to give away any cool plot twists or other surprises when I talk about a movie, and I hope I didn’t in my little review, but I know I do tend to get over enthusiastic, so I hope I didn’t spoil it for anyone. Have had people coming back for their third and fourth viewing of the movie, it’s just so lovely to look at.

And now to the subject of the mysterious CD.

Beloved is a very musical person (unlike me). His parents met and fell in love at a music camp. He has aunties and uncles who play in orchestras. He’s one of those guys who can pick up any instrument and immediately play it. I am one of those [rare] people who can make a flute sound bad. Anyway, he’s just a little bit obsessed at the moment with the Uilleann pipes, which, if I have spelled it incorrectly, is also known as the Irish bagpipes. A very beautiful sounding instrument which was clearly designed by fairies.

I wish I could say that I had saved up the $1000 or so and bought Beloved a set of Christmas, but I didn’t. Instead I bought him 3 CDs of bagpipe music so that he could listen on his iPod on the way to work and have a dream about them in the daily traffic jam of the Monash tollway.

So the day came for present-wrapping. Poss and BF were away and Beloved was at work. All was safe for me to revert to my elf-self and get the job done. I found the electronic barometer that I’d stashed away months ago and the gym towel and the manual espresso machine that wasn’t a surprise at all because he had to carry it home from the city for me and I found two of the CDs.

What?

I searched again. I put most Chrissie presents in the basket drawers at the back of the wardrobe. It’s hard to get to them. You have to put the laundry basket out and squash down under the shirts and the lab coat I’ve had since form V and refuse to get rid of. Had to be there. I searched again. No CD.

Where could it be?

Although I’d bought all three CDs from the same place, they had arrived separately. I remembered getting this one. I remembered the sort of cardboardy packaging it had come in. I remembered taking it out and looking at it and feeling kind of smug because this was the best one. This one wasn’t just Irish folk music with Uilleann pipes, this was Christmas Irish folk music with Uilleann pipes and Beloved would put it on and we’d open the presents and feel all Christmassy and maybe we’d mix in a bit of Loreena McKennit and a bit of old Bing, you know, and all be round the table pretending it was snowing and that the flame robins were sitting on the mistletoe. But now I couldn’t find the bloody thing.

I searched again. I took all of the baskets out and looked under them. I rummaged amongst all the stuff I’d had piled up on the table and I plumbed the geological ages of stuff that have taken over my computer desk.

It was not there.

It was gone.

I spent half the day driving myself nuts, searching for it. I tried tricking myself and lulling myself into a false sense of security and having a good old girlie look but it wasn’t there.

I kept searching for it up until Christmas Eve, hating myself and finally having to accept that terrible thought that I’d thrown it out with the packaging it had come in. There was no use even searching the rubbish bin, it had been emptied and the garbos had collected it over a week ago. I wrapped the two CDs together and the next morning admitted to Beloved that the missing present had been for him and I was sorry. He wasn’t all that bothered. He’s that kind of guy.

Now.

The mysterious part?

Yesterday the CD arrived in the post.

Yeah. I know. Let’s not talk about it any more.

Next Christmas it’s going on. We’ll all listen. Maybe the flame robins will come back.