Overdue

The tea lady is about to throw her annual "overdue" afternoon tea party.  This marathon tea drinking event is an amnesty for all those slow coaches who’ve borrowed books off the writer and won’t return them until they’re given a virtual kick up the backside.

Each year the tea lady threatens to introduce cash fines for overdue books, each year the writer comes up with excuses, “It’s not that unusual for someone to take three years to read a book.”

Each year the tea lady fumes. “Cash fines! Cash fines! Cash fines!”

Each year the writer loans out more books.

 I've recently released my latest novel which you can download from amazon for $7.99.

Sea Dog Hotel

It's also on goodreads.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18627596-sea-dog-hotel

Gardening our Garden.

We’re gearing up for another studio/home exhibition of  artwork.  While my husband, the artist, organises his studio I attempt to garden our garden which is more like a forest.  Set amongst a two-story studio and a centenarian house on a quarter acre block are approximately thirty trees, (many soaring high above us), and countless shrubs. It’s a tight fit and sometimes I don’t know where the forest ends and the house starts.

At times, it’s romantic.  At times, it’s hard work.

I mean, have you ever tried to garden a forest?   Bizarrely, I have, for years now, and the wanting to give-up factor can get pretty high. I might have chucked it in, but the forest would soon become a fire hazard, and who wants a bush fire in their back yard?  So I garden, sweep and rake leaves day in, day out.   I pick up branches; break them up with my bare hands.  Piles of composting leaf litter are scattered around the yard like gigantic ant nests.

The pay-off is that visitors are charmed by our idyllic retreat set in suburbia. They think it’s wonderfully romantic, that it reminds them of Pemberton or Margaret River — why you can almost hear the surf.

We planted this forest almost thirty years ago, and it has given us much, trees are the ox of the world. They absorb carbon from birth; they give shelter and shade and provide fruit and flowers. Then even in death they provide fuel. 

I yawn.  Tired. But then as I look out, sunlight flickering through the trees and spilling onto leaves moving in an early sea breeze, I’m invigorated. Our work and living environment is sublime. Trees also give spiritual sustenance. They remind us that the soul needs more space than the body.

Birdie

One of the best jobs I’ve ever had was at Hayman Island, Queensland in 1979. I worked in the resort’s laundry for three months.   The boss was a woman called Birdie.  And she looked like a bird, even sounded like one, sweet and melodious. Birdie never “bossed” us girls as we sweated away in that Dickensian laundry in paradise. She showed, suggested, and sighed softly when we girls dropped wet sheets in the sand surrounding the washing lines.

Birdie carried not an ounce of fat; she was all wrinkled flesh and withered bone. But Birdie had the most remarkable eyes. They were brown and outsized within her small frame. Yet they reflected a depth of tenderness of which I have rarely seen since in another human being.

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.