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Monthly Archive: June 2005.
- Why, when you’re buying undies (this has bothered me for A-G-E-S) do they only have sizes 8-10, 10-12 and 14-16? What happened to the 12-14 range? What?! And what are the females who fit into that category supposed to do? I will tell you. They stand vacant eyed in front of racks of knickers: boy-leg, g-string, cheeky, bikini, full-fit, support, seamless, shorts-style, high-cut, hipsters… whatever and burn with righteous fury, or slump into a glazed depression while pondering the fact that in a land so replete with so-many-different-styles of underwear, there are none that are sizes 12-14.
- I am going to dinner at my mothers – it is the last I will see of her for a few months as she’s doing one of her regular visits across to the US. She called me just before:
“You know how you asked me to pick you up from Brighton Beach?”
“Yep.”
“Well, can you just stay on the train and I’ll pick you up at Sandringham?”
“But that’s Zone 2. It’ll be $5.10 instead of $3.10…” I trail off hopelessly.
“I know, but just pay the extra few dollars. It’s rush hour, and getting to Brighton Beach is hard.”
“It’s hard? To get from Black Rock to Brighton Beach?”
What I want to say is ‘No Mum, it’s hard getting from Melbourne to Brisbane to Hervey Bay, which is what I’m doing on Wednesday, driving three kilometres at 6pm in the opposite direction to most of the traffic is not hard it’s just that you find it inconvenient.’ Gah. - Does it have paw-paw trees? If it has paw-paw trees, I’ll buy it.
- I suppose I should actually hand you a deposit cheque, so I can make my intentions clear
- I’ve brought $5000 in cash with me as a deposit…
- We’re keen to buy in the area
[blushes]
Thursday, 2 June 2005
How embarrassment to read back what I wrote in my ‘Nomadic Bear’ post. Such a sooky-la-la. I think it was a result of the cold I had, as well as too much time in the office. Rae is right, I have to get OUT more. Anyway, I have already been adopted for two outings this weekend – so I have NOTHING to whine about. I even get to move house for a few days – back to Mung’s place in Collingwood while he is away. I can lounge around at will, knocking back glasses of my Tia Maria stuff and (…wait for it) cooking my own dinner! Too cool.
In other freaky news, M has been asked to contribute a song from his exaustive back catalogue to an upcoming compilation being organised by Bart Cummings. This is only weird if you consider that when you google the word ‘miaow’ his band comes up first, and this page comes up second. M went to get some dubbing done at a Hervey Bay studio [gasp] which is run by a guy who came fifth in the Eurovision Song Contest about twenty years ago – whose song subsequently went to number one in Germany, thus providing him with juicy royalty cheques for about ten years. That’s the kind of money I want to make. It’s called ‘passive earning’. I yearn for the passive earn…(maybe I could get paid royalities for rhyming?)
A Night Well Spent
Friday, 3 June 2005
Last night I moved into Mung’s place for the weekend. Oh the bliss. Oh the slobbing around. The first thing I did was drink his last stubby of beer and eat a delectable pizza from Mama Dora’s. I kicked back on the couch, flicked the channels as was my whim, and watched Las Vegas and Lost. Oh the trashy American television. Oh the illicit pleasure of being in control of the remote. This morning I got up in a leisurely fashion, secure in the knowledge that my boss was away in Sydney, and ate cornflakes with hot milk and made a pot of tea. For the first time in a month I didn’t slam down the museli with soy milk and head out the door – I. Took. My. Time. Sauntered into work just before eleven, in fact. In this case, a change is as good as a holiday.
Dyeing
Saturday, 4 June 2005
Trying to dye the roots of ones hair when there is no one around to help one is a recipe for dodgy results. However, my dodgy results are mostly on top, mostly. So I just have to stay away from people taller than myself, or have a hat handy if I am taken by surprise. Usually M does it – I just tell him to pretend I am a boat that needs a paintjob and to stay inside the lines and everything goes swimmingly. I had forgotten how hard it is to do it on my own – I kept stabbing bits of dye in the wrong places due to my inability to figure out backwards directions in the mirror [sigh]. Soon I won’t be a singleton. Soon. Actually, M bought a trailer for the journey south today – that makes things feel a little more concrete!
Pedal to the Metal
Sunday, 5 June 2005
Last night I attended a GNI (Girls Night In). We ate disgusting amounts of pizza and watched Bride and Predjudice, while trying to figure out who was Lizzie, who was Jane, whether they had killed off that sister who is Lydia’s sidekick who never gets to do much, or had just judged the character as so boring that they edited her out of the script. None of us could remember the name of the hideous obsequious cousin who proposes to Lizzie, and when rejected, gets off with her best friend – if I was on a faster computer, I’d google for the answer, but as it is, if this computer was an animal, it would be a snail.
At about twenty to midnight I began to get the feeling that I should leave, or I was going to miss the last train back to Collingwood. I had ridden to West Preston from Thornbury station, so I took my leave and pedalled back, fast. But not fast enough. I had missed the last train by ten minutes, and had to ride my bike back to Collingwood – so if you were driving down High Street just after midnight, you might have seen me labouring along…
Sweaty Palm
Sunday, 5 June 2005
I leave to go to Beechworth via Macedon tomorrow morning. Which would ordinarily be a nice trip, but as it is for work, I will glimpse scenery on the way to the conference thingy each day, and that’s about it. Thank God I am staying with A and not dossing with everyone else, where I would run into people I only know by sight and have to pretend to look knowledgable (always hard – particularly early in the day). Today I discovered that my Palm Pilot has spacked out and erased itself. Everything. Everything on it is gone. All my information about flying cats to Melbourne. Phone numbers. The lot. I can sync it with my laptop, but it still means I’ll lose everything I’ve entered in the last month, as I just sync it on my work computer to update AvantGo. Goddamnit, this is annoying!
Seventeen days, including two weekends, until I leave to head north and find M, cats and house. I’m not counting hours, but I’m definitely crossing off the days.
Dead-Eyed
Tuesday, 7 June 2005
At conference. Need help. Beyond boring. B.O.R.I.N.G
Why do all computer nuffies have such bad refresh settings on their monitors?
Buzzword Bingo
Wednesday, 8 June 2005
Last night dinner was at a winery, so today everyone is walking around looking a little fragile. Myself and my associates have developed a game that aids conference survival – it’s called Wanky Buzzword Bingo. We make a list of all the crappy, overused, pompously annoying words that all these highranking people spew forth and then cross them out as the day progresses. None of us have jumped to our feet and yelled BINGO! yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Here are a selection of the buzzwords’:
convergence
unpack the idea
toolbox
code down
drill down
empowerment
toolkit
fine fuel moisture
UPDATED:
paradigm (ohhh, how could I have forgotten this one?)
method/methodology (used interchangably)
The Phone Ranger
Saturday, 11 June 2005
I have done an almost world beating long-jump in the realm of mobile phones. I began with a phone donated to me by Dylan (who out-gadgets me on a regular basis) – it was a Nokia so old that it probably didn’t even have a model number. It had red glowing LED and was insanely chunky. I thought it was totally the biz. So I had that for a year or two (back when I still wore glasses) and one day it rang just as I got out of the bath, and in groping blindly for it, I knocked it from the table and it fell in and drowned 
After that I got an Alcatel, which was my favourite thing, but the ’9′ key was dodgy. I met someone else who had the same phone with the same fault. My admiration for it waned.
Though it did have one stand out feature, which was that you could run it on three AAA batteries if you needed to…
So then Dylan passed another phone my way…my trusty Nokia 5110, which I have had for about five years:
Until last night at the British Star hotel in Smith Street (you should check it out) where I met my small brother’s former flatmate who is over from London for a fleeting visit. My small brother had remembered his promise, and had bequeathed me his phone when he upgraded. His former housemate was nice enough to drag it all the way to Melbourne, despite having about one hours sleep due to excessive partying, and delivered it to me (with a couple of gin & tonics – thanks Liv!) in the front bar. Today I bought a travel plug converter, and I am feeling slightly bewildered by all the options it has – but I’m glad I can now have more than 30 numbers in my address book. I also have bluetooth, a camera and probably other stuff that I haven’t yet stumbled on. Now, if I could just figure out how to get my pictures from the phone to my computer…
Oh…and predictive text is insanely annoying, but I’m hoping it will improve with time.
Tipsy
Tuesday, 14 June 2005
I am coming second in footy tipping. However, being a footy nuffy, I often pinch my tips from the Swinburne Computer. My sister – the resident footy guru – doesn’t seem fazed by this. What she is giving me grief over is my confession that I didn’t get my tips in in time twice this season and put them in secretly on a Monday morning. I should add to this statement that I spent the two weekends concerned oblivious to any results – any results on anything. I was under media blackout with no paper, television or radio. Actually, more to the point, I wouldn’t have confessed to her what I’d done if I had cheated. Now it has all come to bite me on the arse. I did last week-but-one’s tips straight out of my own brain and did wildly well. The week prior to that I picked every team in the left hand column and screamed home again. Now I’m coming second, my sister cannot hide her disgust and keeps on bringing up the fact that I cheated. And not only did I cheat, I cheated twice. It’s like we have reverted back to being 11 and nine again; of course she didn’t give a toss when she was ahead.
Sunday Stroll
Wednesday, 15 June 2005
On Sunday I went down to Hampton where I’m going to be living from the 6th of July – over the road from the beach. Such hardship 
We took E’s sister’s 10 month old chocolate labrador Harvey with us, and did a huge walk. It was perfect weather for winter walking. These are the first photos I have taken with my new phone.
Vent Vent
Thursday, 16 June 2005
The vent in the office blows like a constant minor hurricane. Occasionally, for no obvious reason, the airflow ceases. We all look at each other, barely daring to breathe for fear that it might be taken as encouragement. The silence is more than blissful, it’s precious, because we know it will be fleeting. Except for our initial squeaks of delight, no one speaks while the air is off – the reprieve from the white noise is too sublime to interupt. It only ever lasts for a minute or two.
Spam Spam Spam Spam
Friday, 17 June 2005
FROM : Miss P. B. Michael
MISSIONARY QUARTERS
12.RUE DE L’EGLISE LOME, TOGO
Dear ,
With regard to your reputation and co-worshipper of God who will not disappoint me nor deny me in faith, I am directing this letter of assistance to you. I am Miss Paulina.B. Michael the only daughter of Mr.Michael from Republic of Liberia in desire toget somebody who will safe guard my interest, that of my junior brother (Victor) and this money. I went to a co-worshipper who works with lome Chamber of Commerce and Industries, he personally directed me to contact you in your position.
Briefly, our father Mr Michael was a Gold and Cocoa merchant who based in Lome Togo and had a branch office in Accra Ghana. My father was a wealthy Gold/Cocoa merchant who has business in many countries in Europe, America and Asian countries. According to my father, my own mother died when I was about six years of age which means that I did not even know my mother very well.
Cinema Verite & Keeping Up With the Jones’
Sunday, 19 June 2005
Have only eaten a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich all day due to excessive consumption of five course dinner last night. Feel like I inhaled a restaurant, buffet style. Lazed around room all day reading Bridget Jones’ Diary again, and it has affected my thought patterns and writing style. Must reject said style. V.bad. Decided to pack up stuff, though seem to have accumulated too much to fit back in suitcase, even with supermarket bag of pending op-shop donations. Bother. By three pm I was thoughtfully engaged in shaving the lint from my cardigan with a disposable razor, and successfully disposed of at least 35 minutes.
Finally headed out to Lygon Street and got toasted sandwich outside cinema box office – it was a very very good one. No fancy bread, just lots of margarine on top. Intended to go and see A Good Woman, but did not buy ticket when two hours early as felt it would demonstrate to the world my loser life. Thus procrastinated in supermarket (bought Lindt 85% cocoa, and learnt that chocolate actually can be too dark – something previously thought impossible) and Borders, finally appearing to buy ticket 20 minutes prior to screening, only to discover that it had sold out.
Could have spiralled into depression and dwelt on remains being chewed over by Alsatian, instead put self on tram, went to work and made cup of tea. Grimacing way through Lindt and surfing net. Only two more days until I escape this stupid situation and fly back to M in Hervey Bay. Can’t wait. Though beginning to have pending doom feeling about saying goodbye to house. This time next week it will be my last ever night in it. Feel sick.
Two Annoying Things
Monday, 20 June 2005
Smooth then crunchy
Tuesday, 21 June 2005
Everything has been going waaayyyyy too smoothly with this house settlement. M and I, probably aided by the a thousand or so kilometres between us, have not had a single argument about anything. Naturally there have been times when we have both bitten our tongues, i.e. when I told M to tell the buyers that we would accept a-particular-sum-of-money for our…
– lounge suite
– ride on mower
– 2 two seater couches
– coffee table
– beds
…he did the equivalent of saying ‘Yes dear’ (which should have been suspicious in itself) down the phone line and then proceeded to email them citing a figure that was five hundred dollars less than the particular-sum-of-money I had just nominated. I bit my tongue, breathed deeply and said, if not nothing, then not a lot.
But now…of course there has to be a but. M never emails me unless pressured. I wouldn’t ever know if he’d ever even received an email from me unless I ask him when we speak on the phone. I kind of visualise him checking his email, reading what I’ve sent, and grunting Homer-like at the screen, as his brain shifts into another gear and becomes clouded by thoughts of beer and sailing. Multihull sailing, naturally. So I was never emailed the ‘list’ of the things that the buyers would be getting for this five-hundred-dollars-short-amount that they said ‘seemed very reasonable’. Duh. You don’t say? THAT’S BECAUSE IT’S FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS SHORT.
And just now, in a hideous conversation with M (and so timely, too, as we are supposed to meet after over a month of separation on the train platform tomorrow, and now will probably just bow to each other from the waist and walk uncomfortably to the car) I find out that my little list up there, the one with only five things on it, is somewhat lacking. Because he has also given them the fridge, the groovy 1950′s chrome and laminex table, the whipper-shipper, the normal lawn-mower and god knows what else. And, in case you were wondering, it’s actually my fault that I didn’t know this, because
a) I was told but didn’t listen; or,
b) I didn’t make the proper efforts to find out.
It’s true that I thought we would just take the fridge to the recycle shop at the Tip the day before we left. It’s also true that I don’t much care about the lawn-mower. But the table is cool and the whipper-snipper is very useful. But I hate not having been told this stuff – I only know what is going on up there if M tells me, and he didn’t (even though he vehemently denies this). Gah. And, after pining to go home and see M and the cats, all I now want to do, is fly up there tonight under the cover of darkness, wait for M to go out and burn the whole house to the GROUND. (With everything in it, obviously.)
And the horoscope says…
Tuesday, 21 June 2005
If you are in a lawsuit, you may get a chance to settle your case at this full moon June 22. Full moons bring closure.
Perhaps you will sign a contract, see a book published, or end a chapter of your life and be ready to start a new one.
This month’s full moon is at zero degrees of a cardinal sign, which means it will be capable of bringing extraordinary energy and news. Always give a full moon a plus or minus four days – most full moons assert their news on the day they appear or in the days after they appear.
The July full moon (July 21) will also be at what is called a critical degree at nearly 29 degrees, considered the degree of completion or ending. One part of your life will end and another will begin.
By June’s end, you will have four planets filling your communication sector, so it certainly looks as if you are about to sign a contract or travel.
(…these predictions appear to be more accurate than my communications with M, so maybe I should just move in with Susan Miller of AstrolgyZone. Humph.)
Hazy Shades of Winter: Part 1
Thursday, 23 June 2005
Where to start?! Arrived home [sob] last Wednesday and realised just how much had to be done before d-day (yesterday). I can’t even remember half the things that happened in between then and my dad arriving. I do know that we went out to a last dinner at Angelo’s (after I had replaced a headlight on the Humber, so we could drive at night) where I had my favourite spaghetti marinara that I cannot recommend highly enough. It was lovely to see M again after about a five week absence, even though we were instantly submerged in logistics and goodbyes to his side of the family.
Thursday morning saw M turn into an anxiety ridden alien. He had to get the van to the auto-electrician at 8am and at 7.30am he was shrieking around the house in a complete state…
“Where the f@#k is my wallet? Someone must have got in during the night and they’ve stolen it. Either that or it fell out of my jacket at Angelo’s….maybe it’s in the van…”
He ran from the house, while I croaked from under the doona;
“We didn’t take the van out last night.”
He returned inside, still ranting, now looking to deflect the blame elswhere.
“It’s you. You. You came home and distracted me. This kind of thing didn’t happen while you were away. Goddamn it. Meet me in the cafe near the auto-electricians. The van could take all day.”
I had, by this point, shoved my head under the pillow, wondering what it was that I’d actually missed about him as I whiled away my time in Carlton.
“OK, I’m going now. F@#k it.”
“Remember to take the spare wheel of the trailer so we can get it checked for a leak,” I replied romantically, through gritted teeth.
And the back door slammed.
I eased my way out of bed, walked to the coffee table, picked up M’s wallet, had my first rainwater shower in quite some time, fed the cats and drove out of the driveway and up the hill. As soon as I got halfway to the top, mobile coverage kicked in and there was a text from M.
Bring wheel.
As I turned the car around, I pondered on ways to intensely annoy him for the rest of the day, and dabbled along these lines of thought until another text popped through as I (and the spare wheel) reached town.
I am sorry I was in a flap. I have separation anxiety.
I found M, threw his wallet at him, and wallowed in his apologies for at least ten minutes. After that, we went and found a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich, and made our ‘to do’ lists. They were scary. As we left, to begin to tackle the lists, the electrics on my Humber started going crazy. Dodgy indicators, mainly. We fiddled with the fuses and they came back. Then the left indicator died. The switch had broken. I managed to massage the indicator into performing, but it was getting worse. Perfect timing really, considering that it was being driven to Melbourne in four days time…
Hazy Shades of Winter: Part 2
Friday, 24 June 2005
M and I were packing up the house like chickens with our heads cut off for the first half of the day. The hideousity of packing cannot be understated. I am particularly bad at it, because I always think that if I throw anything out I will need whatever it is desperately in approximately three days time. Argh. I infuriate M by packing stuff that we don’t really need – an unused packet of jelly crystals, a candle… while he drives me mad by not packing with any system or precision (this is the same guy who once chucked all our crockery into a box, taped it shut, and called it ‘packed’). Anyway, we muddled through with no arguments, but a growing sense of desperation.
Later in the afternoon I drove M to the auto-electrician (we had to take the van back, as the dash-lights didn’t work), and I left him there while I went to pick up my Dad and his friend Rick from the bus. By then, the Humber indicators were no longer ‘indicators’ they were ‘indicator’. The right one. So we drove home, via three six packs of Coopers, and I showed them around the house. Which was in a state of disarray. We had a night of beer and looking at photos of the house – before and after.
Day of Leisure
Saturday, 25 June 2005
I had my doubts about M imposing ‘Day of Leisure’ on a Saturday. There was so much to do, and it seemed to me that it would be better to make Sunday a leisure day. Wrong. We got up and had a big banana porridge breakfast, endless tea, and then all got in the Humber-with-one-indicator with Oomoo behind on the trailer. We headed down to Toogoom (the best place in Hervey Bay, which will be trashed by developers very soon, and rendered irretrievably crap) and on to the bridge over Beelbi Creek, where we launched.
It was a beautiful day. We motored down to the fishing spot, where Rick, the guest, instantly caught a couple of mo-fo bream. Three minutes later, the tide turned, and there were no more bites! We persevered for a bit, but then continued exploring. Our path blocked by a fallen tree across the creek, we tied up and had another sustained fishing attempt, while my Dad disappeared, catlike, into the surrounding jungle (via the logs).
Meanwhile, we continued to try and catch fish. Finally, with great stealth and daring, I hooked another big bream, while Rick pulled in another one a few minutes later. One big fish each seemed to be quite perfect, so we put the next one that I caught back into the creek, and began motoring back toward the car bridge. We took Oomoo ashore and headed into Toogoom proper – settling down with chips and beer at the pub (where the food has gone downhill in the past six months, but the chips are still safe, though oily). I had two stubbies of VB in shandy form, as I was designated driver. After a short walk around to the beach to say goodbye to our favourite swimming spot, I engaged in some trepidacious trailer-backing, and we took off in the direction of home.
Rick, enthused by his Grand Day Out, insisted on stopping to buy a couple of bottles of white wine, and a bottle of whiskey (a recipe for next-morning hell, in my humble opinion). We continued on towards home, but I was getting anxious. The Humber now had only one headlight and no indicators at all. At the pinnacle of bad timing, as I drove toward our turnoff, a police car came out of a side street and settled in behind me. As I’d passed him as he was waiting to turn, he’d had a good view of my headlight-uno. He let me sweat for about four minutes as he trailed me, before putting on his lights. Dad, M and Rick all gave me varying instructions, while I gripped the wheel – the only thought in my head being
‘How do I pull over without indicating?! Goddamnit and bugger.’
M, who can’t help himself, was instructing me how to behave. I was trying to ignore him, while internally freaking out about the two stubbies of VB I’d drunk just an hour or so ago.
The policeman came to the door…
“D’you know you’ve only got one headlight?”
“Yes,” I squeaked, softly. Too softly.
“Sorry?”
“Yes. I realised back at the supermarket. I tried my high beams, but they’re gone too. I think it’s a fuse. I can fix them when I get home…”
“Right. Can I see your license please.”
It wasn’t a question. I fumbled with my purse and handed it to him. He noted my Victorian plates and address.
“You living up here?”
“I’m leaving for Melbourne on Monday,” I said truthfully.
He unwrapped a breathalyzer thingy.
“Have you had anything to drink today?”
My stomach dropped.
“Ah, I had a few drinks at lunchtime.”
This was when M, beside me in the passenger seat, decided to ‘lighten the moment’.
“I bet she’s at about .016!”
I heard small thudding sounds as my Dad and Rick simultaneously hit him surreptitiously in the back of the head.
“Just blow into this until I tell you stop.”
I blew. It beeped. He examined the results. I sweated, trying to remember to breathe.
“When did you say you had those drinks?”
Oh god.
“Over lunch.”
“Must have been a late lunch…”
“Well, yeah. Probably around two thirty, three o’clock? Why? Am I over?”
A pause. The Humber was still.
“Nah. You’re .018 – make sure you get that headlight fixed.”
“Thank you,” I squeaked, trying to sound even more freaked out than I actually was, in an effort to excuse what I was about to do…
I pulled out and had to instantly turn left down the road towards home. Of course, I couldn’t indicate, and had to just hope that he thought I was a blonde, scared Victorian who was too flustered to remember such minor details.
In the car, once we’d got around the corner without incident, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief, and M got some bollocking about his attempts to bond with the policeman. The drive home was further fraught with lack of indicators (and the fact I was pulling a trailer didn’t help either). Finally we made it home – where I had a large glass of white wine, to stop my quaking. M cooked up the fish like the gourmet he is, and we feasted our way through fish, rice and salad. I stuck with the rest of the Coopers, while the others (particularly M and Rick) quaffed white wine and whiskey in equal quantities. Ugh. Both of them paid the next morning.
The Humber Whisperers
Sunday, 26 June 2005
Our last full day in the house. M and Rick were somewhat green around the gills. I provided tea, coffee, boiled eggs and buttered bread for sustenance. It rained steadily. M rigged up a tarp over the Humber, and Rick began to prove his worth. The electrics needed to be working for the trip down south, so while I packed away the remaining contents of the house, and M finished packing the trailers, Dad and Rick began working their magic on the Humber. If they hadn’t been there, we would have been fairly stuffed. Dad called a few Queensland members of the Humber club, in an effort to source a new indicator kit, while Rick tried to discover what was throwing all the electrics out. All day they tested some things, ruled out others, and finally traced the problems to a dodgy fuse and an suspect connection on one of the headlights. By 6pm they had cracked it. Thank GOD!
M and I were duty bound to go and do ‘final dinner’ with his family. We took along some pizza and headed over to his mother’s place, where we were certain that we would be met with an atmosphere of hushed mourning. Instead, we ate dinner while the tv blared on about ‘Guiness World Records’ and I wished silently to be at Angelo’s eating another spaghetti marinara (which is what Dad and Rick were doing). I had thought that our dinner at M’s mother’s house the previous Thursday was our ‘last hurrah’ – but, unusally, I was mistaken. After an hour or so of pizza and television, we met up with Dad and Rick, said goodbye to our favourite restaurant, and went home for our last ever night in the house.
Au Revoir Lovely House
Monday, 27 June 2005
We had to be on the road by 11am. I managed to squeeze more into the back seat and boot of the Humber than anybody believed. We dashed into town to say goodbye to M’s mother and nephew and to fill up the van. In the meantime, my Dad drugged the cats :-0 and vacked the house (many, many thanks!). When we got home, we had One Hour. I arranged the electricity to get cut off, and did final packing (‘packing’ meaning; stuffing odds and ends anywhere I could find a gap, and throwing things into the bin that should probably have been taken to the op-shop) while M gave our beautiful floors a final mop. Rick did some final Humber-whispering and assisted in assembling the new cat carrier.
I went to examine the cats. Saf was spread, whalelike, on the ground, looking like he’d had too many whiskies and white wines; while poor Mow had retreated to his bed box, and couldn’t be tempted to leave it. Dad had to help me get him. I stuffed both of them in a carrier each. They were drugged, floppy and unhappy. I began to worry about how they were going to survive such a long day of travel – four hours to Brisbane, then probably another four hours of waiting around and flying to Melbourne. Horrible.
M and I said goodbye to our house and I took some final footage of our acre – the trees, the little creek… It was very sad. But I almost didn’t have time for it to register. When I left back in April, not knowing if I would see the house again, I cried all the way out of town. This time, I was swamped by logistics and drugged cats. It was all over very quickly, which, I suppose, is a good thing. Dad took pictures as we drove the van, pulling the boat trailer, out of the gate for the last time.
The Big Sell
Wednesday, 29 June 2005
Part One: Paw Paw Poor
My boss says he’s very keen to see the house. He requests that we don’t do any advertising until he’s seen it. He says all of the following:
He and his wife finally make it up, two days after Christmas, to come and inspect the house. As soon as she walks in, I can see what’s going on. She is either unconcerned by his verbal committments to buy the property, or completely oblivious. It takes about ten minutes, and I realise that she thinks she’s just come to have lunch with us. She never mentions the house. He drags me aside on two occasions and conducts semi-whispered conversations about the $5000 ‘deposit’ (what $5000 was going to do for him I don’t know, as the usual deposit is 10% of the asking price – and we were definitely not selling our house for $50,000) and the fact that they had another house to look at in the area. He does not mention the paw-paw trees (I planted three, just in case). They stay for three long hours and then leave, never having discussed the house at all. M and I go and drink gin.
