Beware the Cleaner

What everyone should ask a  cleaner before employing them.

The all important question to ask a prospective cleaner is — Not, have you got a police clearance not worth the paper it’s written on document? Not, are you reliable? Not, have you got references?

The question to ask is — are you a writer?   

If the answer is yes – don’t employ them – believe me.  I’m a writer who’s cleaned plenty of houses. When times have been lean I’ve gone out to clean. And what has always floored me, is the amount of security people installed into their homes. Because when I look around me, and think, okay if I broke into this home what would I steal? Well, quite, honestly, the selection is poor.  Bugger me, if I know why people think their possessions are so precious that people would want to steal them.  Houses crammed with electrical goods attached to countless power points, and enough furniture to make IKEA blush. Nah. These things are hardly tempting, besides how would I get a lounge suite into my puny car?

But being a writer, I steal something much more, I steal lives. I steal sights, sounds, smells, histories recorded in photographs and certificates hung proudly on walls. I steal people’s idiosyncratic ways, their behaviours, how they treat their pets, their children, their neighbours. I steal their insecurities mirrored throughout their conversations and houses and front and backyards. I steal so much. Yet I always leave their houses looking immaculate and clean and with a nice smell. Not a trace of things having been stolen.

Then, from all the things I’ve stolen, I distill into words. Threaded throughout my writing are all the people whose houses I’ve cleaned, and stolen from.

There is no such thing as being secure when a writer set their sights on you.

So next time, before employing a cleaner, ask — do you write?  

The importance of teaching children how do a bombie.

Summer circa 1995. Watching Lindsay teach our two kids how to do a Bombie at Lake Leschenaultia . 

Lindsay stood out a mile. With his ripe white belly and dirty great big red beard, he couldn’t blend in, or disappear. He stood out.  Even when quiet, people always look at him. But now concentrating hard on doing the perfect bombie off a long wooden jetty, on a very hot day, he had everyone’s rapt attention. Everyone being all the local teenagers; scrawny, pimply faced, with their wet jeans hanging off them, they stood at the water’s edge, or slouched on a rail, focusing on the master bomber that was Lindsay.

First, Lindsay crouched, ready to sprint. Everyone holding their breath. Then off like a rocket roaring down the jetty which shuddered under Lindsay’s weight before launching himself off the end of it, one leg tuck in tight against his chest, clamped with his arms, then pitching his body, a missile, a fully grown man    f   l   y   i   n   g    then momentarily suspended mid-air, a ball of white flesh, red beard, and blue striped board shorts. Then the master bomber landed onto Lake Leschenaultia. Kersplat!!!  The crowd sways, awed by the splash, jets of water shooting sky high and creating waves which ripple across the lake.  Our children’s eyes wide and widening, the spectacle before them seared into memory, to be practice and pass down to the next generation - the perfect bombie.

That afternoon when Lindsay did bombie after bombie, he was followed by the army of teenagers and, our two children, desperate to emulate the master. Lake Lesnaulitia became a sea, a tempest, churned by a hundred or more human bombs.

The master bomber’s beard is now grey and he hung up his board shorts a long time ago. But my children have learn something invaluable; they have learn how sheer joy and exhilaration feels using only their body, water and a long wooden jetty on a hot summer’s day. 

The Door House

In the early 1950’s Mr Wieman arrived in Fremantle with his tiny wife, fourteen children, and two- hundred and fifty doors, and a plan.  Mr and Mrs Wieman believed, rightly, that they’d landed in a country filled with opportunity.

                Like many Dutch migrants they went to lived in a suburb called Queens Park where the land was affordable, and most importantly it was on a railway line. Mr Wieman was a man of ingenuity; he had come to Australia with his two-hundred and fifty doors because he planned to start up a door factory in Welshpool which is a suburb close to Queens Park.

                Mr Wieman soon discovered that his two-hundred and fifty Dutch doors weren’t wanted. They simply didn’t fit in with the climate and type of houses being built in West Australia.  Disappointed Mr Wieman might have been, but he quickly made use of the doors that their new country didn’t need – he made a house out of his doors, and it quickly became known as the Door House.

                I remember the Door House well.  As a child, I ran through the house, opening doors, closing doors. I don’t remember any windows; it seemed it only had doors.  It wasn’t a large house, how could it be, two-hundred and fifty doors only goes so far. It was square shaped, and simply not big enough for the Wieman family, hence they moved to go live in a house in Welshpool. Their new house sat alongside a factory that Mr Wieman had set up and ran successfully for many years. The factory made doors and fly-wired doors for Australian homes.

                Many families lived in the Door House. 

                For me, the Door House came to symbolise the wonderful lifestyle and opportunities available in Australia.  Doors didn’t close; they only opened in this country, giving poor migrants a chance, a chance at having a better life.

                Sadly, the Door House is no longer there. But the memories of it live on in the hearts and minds of many people, especially the Dutch community who lived in Queens Park at the time.

Has Australia become a giant shopping mall?

The big inescapable problem with going away for a week’s holiday is in the coming back. The returning to a mountain of washing, cleaning, unpacking, and all –round catching up. Suddenly the holiday vibe is in tatters. Thank God I’ve got photos of the holiday to remind my weary self that I actually went away to a beautiful place and had a lovely time. Oh, that, and the novel I read, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain.  A fantastic read for those rare days when time stretches before you, empty, unscheduled, begging to be filled with a book that demands your undivided attention.  Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk won this year’s U.S.A. National Book Critics Circle Award. It’s a merciless critique of the Iraq war and contemporary American culture as seen through the eyes of nineteen year old Billy Lynn, a soldier on two weeks leave from duty in the Iraq war. 

The prose is wonderful. At times subtle, but generally it fairly shouts at you.

 The following line from the novel really had me wondering how book sales were going for Ben Fountain.      “Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.”

I wish I had a holiday snap of me reading this fine novel. Why? Because I enjoyed its interesting and witty companionship, even if it did make me seriously worry about American culture and their attitude to war and military personal, and of course, the inevitable question – how much is our country following in America’s footsteps?  Has Australia become a giant mall with a country attached?

Writers don't do Relax

Most writers I know are incapable of relaxing. The word relax isn’t even in their lexicon. Mention the word, shout if you like, and writers will gawp at you as if you’ve just suggested they run naked across the Nullabour.

Writers are always active. Either they’re writing, reading, or waiting anxiously to hear from their editor, agent, publisher or working at their day job.  And even the writers, who don’t have to hold down a paying job, are lively critters.  There is something in a writers DNA that inhibits relaxing – that something is the anxiety of getting published, getting good reviews, getting good book sales.  

Someone once mentioned the M word to me.  (Massage). Told me they were off to have a massage, I nearly puked.

Dear Writers - am I right? Or am I right?  Let me know if you’re incapable of relaxing. Please form an orderly queue.