Saturday, June 1st

It's great-granddaughter, Macie's birthday today, certainly a good reason to feel all is right with the world.  And, if that's not enough reason to be happy, we've also found a very nice unit to buy.  There was an Open Day announced on Saturday for a couple of just-finished units in Longford.  We had a house to see in Perth as well, and there was another likely candidate in a suburb called Blackstone Heights.  Jamie was working so we sent Nera to Blackstone Heights and Marilyn and I set off for Longford, glancing at Perth on the way.

Longford was all we could ask for: brand-new, 2 bedrooms, air conditioner, dishwasher, walk-in pantry and en-suite.  There are five units in the block but they're cleverly designed to give maximum privacy.  We put in an offer and it's been accepted.  Jamie is handling all the negotiations and settlement date should be July 20, the same day as we hand over Dilston.

Exciting times, and now the hard work begins.

Friday, May 29th

It's very frustrating counting down the days until we have to leave this house and we haven't managed to secure a replacement yet.  The few we've found which would be eminently suitable have already been snatched up by searchers a bit faster on their feet.  We have a couple to look at tomorrow morning so we'll keep our fingers crossed.  In the meantime, I continue to sort out the boxes in the shed, taking them to Jamie's storage as I find time.  I haven't chucked out much and have made a resolution to start that process when we are settled in the new house, whenever that might be.

On a lighter note, I've had a new experience this week:  I've been wooed by a small business owner looking to secure my long-term business.  It's been weeks since I had a haircut and my barber-of-choice, the Celtic Barber, seems to be shut every time I drive past.  Marilyn was starting to complain that I was starting to look a bit shabby.  Most men of my age have a shortage of hair but it seems my problem is that I have too much.

Driving through Launceston the other day we saw a sign, Open Now, outside a barber shop. "Stop the car," called Marilyn. I'd never before heard of Spike's Barber shop but any port in a storm. There were no other customers in the shop and the barber, a youngish Asian woman, welcomed me warmly, Within minutes, she had weedled out of me where I usually had my hair cut, and.how much it cost.  She gave me a terrific haircut, trimmed my beard, and charged me $1 less than the Celtic mob.  As I left, she gave me a souvenir pen and encouraged me to come back.

I just might!

Monday, May 25th

We are narrowing down our parameters for the sort of house we want to buy, keeping in mind that we might be old one day and that puts limits on our potential list.  I'm working on list # 4 at the moment which gives us 10 to drive past and that might occur this afternoon.  In the meantime, we've started sorting out what needs to be packed.

We have a couple of boxes of stuff we've brought back from travel.  On every cruise we picked up s lanyard to which we attached out cruise ID cards - in the bin!  There are unwanted prizes won at trivia, various maps, straps and things to attach to suitcases - out!  Souvenirs picked up in exotic ports - out!  Marilyn found a couple of shopping bags emblazoned with  Princess Cruises.  "These will be handy," she said. "If people in the supermarket think I've been on the Ruby Princess, they won't stand too close.". Anyway, she discovered they were easy to turn inside-out so that makes them useable.

Our first priority, we've decided, is to find a place to live.  One problem we're encountering is that a number of places we like have tenants and I don't know how easy it is to get people out. Maybe, when we settle on a place, we'll have to address that issue  We'll be out again over the next week or two scouring the streets in search of our (next and final?) dream home.

Saturday, May 23rd

The topic this week is Nostalgia so I've written an anecdote called First Date.

At the beginning of the 1960s, my friends and I had all left school and were getting involved in our new careers.  For the first time in our lives we had a little money to spend on social activities and we certainly enjoyed it.  The highlight of our week was the Saturday night dance at the local Surf Club.  There was a dance held on most Saturday nights but we were careful to choose the ones which suited us.  The nights which involved the surf life-savers were pretty raucous and the girls who frequented those were not the ones our mothers would approve of.

On the Saturday afternoon before the dance, the boys knew we couldn’t expect any female company.  The girls were too busy ironing their petticoats and titivating their hair so they would look their best.  Very few of our group had paired off as boyfriend and girlfriend by that stage and the Saturday dance was a place to meet the opposite sex and ponder the possibilities.

 

I remember the girls always looked spectacular and the boys looked pretty good too.  We had nothing but disdain for the wannabees at the Surfie dances with their DA haircuts, their bodgie manners and their crepe-soled shoes.  We had sharply-cut suits, with 19 inch cuffs, white shirts and narrow ties.  We wore Julius Marlow shoes, highly-polished with chisel toes and proper leather soles.  We were probably the last of the short back and sides, brylcreemed generation.

There were always some parents at the dances to keep order, and one self-appointed father would arrange the program for the night.  He always prepared the floor by sprinkling around some dried wax flakes.  I think the brand was Taps.  Our regular ‘band’ was a local pianist, with his sister on the drums.  We had the full range of old-time dances; my favourite was the Progressive Barn Dance because it gave you the chance to dance with all the girls, even the ones you were too shy to ask.  We had Spot Dances, Ladies Choice, and something called a Paul Jones which encouraged everyone to change partners.  There were no wall flowers.  If a girl was left sitting on her own, one of the parents would grab the nearest spare man and instruct him to do his duty

The girls all brought a plate so that we could have supper towards the end of the evening.

One of the girls who attended regularly caught my eye.  I discovered she worked at the Anthony Horderns Store in town and caught the bus home each afternoon, so I contrived to be at the same bus stop at the right time each day and would strike up a conversation.  I planned my strategy carefully: I knew there was a trip being organised to Luna Park in Sydney, so I asked whether she was going.  “I haven’t been asked,” she said coyly. Seizing my chance, I said, “Consider yourself asked.” Suave as ever! 

As I worked  at the Bus Company, I knew that the romantic vehicle which took us on our first date was a Leyland Albion bus, painted orange.  It had 41 seats and registration number MO6304.  Its nickname at the depot was Cigarettes and it cost 16 pounds to hire for the trip

The Luna Park date was a great success, apart from a mishap with my watch.  The band broke, so Marilyn put it in her purse for safekeeping.  On a ride called The Octopus the purse slipped out of her lap, hit the concrete and a small bottle of Electrique perfume in the bag smashed, dowsing my watch.  The watch survived, but for many months I carried the scent around with me as a reminder of that first date.

By the way, we have now been married for 54 years.

Friday, May 22nd

Well, the house search is well underway and most of our original thoughts have been well and truly scuppered.  The house with the fearful owner who wouldn't let us inspect and which I had assessed as a 45, turns out be at the top of a very steep driveway and I have visions of struggling up and down with garbage bins in the rain, so it's back to the drawing board.

We drove down to Longford yesterday and saw some very nice modern units, but, like Dilston, it's a bit far from the rest of the world and we want to be more central.  It seems we will have to settle for something a bit older and more traditional.  The countdown continues: only 53 days to settlement.

Wednesday, May 20th

We had a 'phone call last night from the estate agent to say that he has received a written offer for our house.  That's just seven days after we first spoke to him and three days after it appeared on their website.  That's pretty slick and makes us think that we should have asked for more money.  And now we are faced with the task of moving our stuff yet one more time.

Jamie says he will get a mate who works at a removalist company to do all the hard work and that's fine but it's all the personal things that take the time.  And, the shed is full of boxes we can't bring ourselves to part with: mantelpiece clocks belonging to my mother and Marilyn's too, books from my Aunt Mabel, camping gear from our adventurous youth, accoutrements from our caravanning days.  It needs someone who is ruthless to load up a trailer and head for the tip.  The Council is making it as easy as possible by offering free dumping but it's that initial decision that's hard.

We've already been scouring the internet to see what other houses might be on offer and we've decided that a fairly standard 2-bedroom modern unit is the answer.  There's been a lot of building taking place in the village of Longford and we've found a couple of brand-new places there.  It's about 15 minutes from where Jamie and Nera live but it's still a village and maybe we want to be more at the heart of things.

We found one very nice unit closer to town and rang up to arrange an inspection but the current occupant is fearful of catching something horrible from us so sent videos of the interior hoping that will satisfy us.  We'll drive past to have a look but there's no doubt we will need to get inside at some stage.  We have two months before settlement so it's not urgent yet and new places are being listed every day. 

I have drawn up a short-list of a dozen possibles and so the search begins.  There's no shortage of potential places but Marilyn's not a great fan of house inspections and I need to weed out the most unlikely before we start knocking on doors.  I've worked out a checklist, giving scores for different aspects: scores out of 5 for Street Appeal, Kitchen, Position, etc, with bonus points if it has built-in wardrobes, dishwasher, etc, but I can only draw my conclusions from what I see on the internet and that's not always reliable.

As a starting point, though, I have, on the top of my list, 2 places on 45 out of 50, one on 43 and one on 40.  It will be interesting to see how accurate my assessment is when we get our feet on the mat.

Tuesday, May 19

I lacked inspiration for last week's writing task so fell back on some thoughts that had been mulling around in my mind for some time.

They say that no good will come of googling yourself but it occurred to me that googling my name would throw up other people who share the same combination of twelve letters and it might be interesting to see what other people with that same name have made of their lives. 

 

John Christie is not a particularly unusual name.  In my own family, there is at least one John Christie in every one of the last ten generations I’ve managed to uncover in my genealogy research but I don’t expect to find any of my forebears on Google.  But John is still one of the most common Christian names and there are enough Christies in Scotland to warrant the family having its own tartan and it is likely that some of them must have made some kind of mark on society.

I hope to find that there are John Christies who are famous scientists, doctors, and musicians and I know that one namesake founded the Glyndebourne Festival in England, but the first John Christie Google chooses to list is John Reginald Christie, the notorious murderer. They made a movie about him in which he was played by Richard Attenborough and books have been written about him.  Years ago I was stopped by a policeman in Hobart for some trivial driving offence and, when he looked at my licence, he commented, “I’ve just been reading about you.”  Well, not me, of course, but he clearly had a professional interest in my namesake.  

John Reginald was a sad character who killed at least 8 women between 1943 and 1952 in England and he was so notorious the local authorities destroyed the house and changed the name of the street where the murders took place in an attempt to erase memories of the outrage. Of the many  books written about him, the most sensational is entitled ‘The Rillington Place Strangler’.

The next of my namesakes suggested by Google has had a book written about him too.  It’s entitled ‘Damn You, John Christie!’ and it’s the story of John Mitchell Christie, who, in 1866, joined the Melbourne detective force which was then said to consist of well-educated men of standing. Later he was described as a 'well-groomed, refined-looking, walking embodiment of good taste', but he was also seen in a less favourable light as one who grew rich on his share of fines.

John Mitchell was a master of disguise who was variously a travelling tinker, a street-sweeper, a clergyman, but most often a 'gentleman'. The highlights of his career, however, were when he 'shadowed' visiting royalty; in 1867 he travelled throughout Australia and New Zealand with the Duke of Edinburgh; in 1881 he accompanied Princes Albert and George, and in 1901 acted as bodyguard to the Duke and Duchess of York when they visited Australia to open the first Australian Parliament.

A good athlete, Christie became well known in boxing and rowing circles throughout Australia.  He resigned from the detective force in 1875 to devote more time to sport although he did then join the Customs Service, spending a great deal of energy trying to close down illicit stills which were rife at the time.  It may have also been a good career move to give him better opportunities to put something aside for his retirement.

I wonder, in fifty years time, when people Google the name John Christie, will the names of the notorious criminal and the notorious policeman still appear at the top of the list of results, or will some other worthy namesake take their place?

Friday, May 15

We had a family conference the other day after I complained about the grass around our house starting to grow out of control, that it's been too wet to cut for a fortnight and, in any case, the mower has had to go in for a gold-plated service and who knows when it will be back.

It didn't take long before the discussion broadened into thinking about our long-term future in this house.  Dilston was bought with the intention that Jamie would eventually build his dream home here.  Of course, there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then: Jamie has married and the idea of them building a new house has been permanently shelved.

We enjoy living here, we like the wildlife coming around but it is a long way from town and we see ourselves as essentially city people.  It's also very limiting in size and we can't ever have friends or family coming to stay for a few days.  Clearly, it will become increasingly harder for me to maintain the place so a decision was made that we will sell the Dilston property and find something more suitable for Marilyn and me.  It's not a run-of-the-mill property and we thought it might take 12 months to sell so we agreed that it was a good idea to start the process sooner rather than later.

Jamie rang a local estate agent who came to view the place on Tuesday afternoon, a sign appeared on the front lawn on Wednesday morning, a photographer arrived to take publicity shots on Thursday morning and a drone flew around taking the aerial view, and two separate people arrived for viewing on Thursday afternoon. It's not even on the agent's website yet!

Of the two who viewed yesterday, one is talking to a builder-friend to see how hard it would be to  extend the house, and the other has taken a copy of the contract away to think about it.  We thought we had twelve months to prepare for this but we could be homeless in a matter of weeks.

It's just one more thing to worry about.

Sunday, May 10

It's a double celebration today, being both Mothers' Day and Jamie's birthday.  Every now and then, the events fall on the same day and that's always the excuse for a special celebration but, with the Covid-10 lockdown still in place in Tasmania, we are reduced to a chat on the telephone.  No matter, at least we're alive and well. 

The writing topics this week were a little limiting but I've chosen to write a piece on 'Waiting for Robert'.  Funny, all my classmates thought it was based on fact, but I had to reasure them there was not a word of truth in it.

We’re not a close family. Oh, as children, we were well looked after and were never neglected but, looking back I get the impression our parents saw nurturing as an obligation rather than as something they enjoyed.  It’s not surprising, I suppose, that we became very self-centred, thinking only of ourselves and only considering how situations would affect us personally.

Even as children, we followed our own paths, finding our own friends and our own individual interests. One of my sisters became obsessed with ballet, another wanted to be a musician and experimented with one instrument or another until she settled on the clarinet.  Robert, my older brother, played football.   I was the studious one, absorbing myself in books, and I joined the local Cub pack after reading The Jungle Book.  

On winter evenings, when it got dark early, my parents decided that I shouldn’t walk home from Cub meetings on my own, so it was arranged that I would go to the local football ground where Robert was training and wait for him to finish so that we could walk home together.  It wasn’t unusual for me to be left in Robert’s care; my parents didn’t see that their responsibilities extended  to going out of their way to pick me up.

I didn’t really mind but I had learned very early that Robert had no concept of good time-keeping. Like everything else he was involved with, his training sessions never seemed to finish on time so I found myself, night after night, sitting for what seemed like hours in a cold and draughty football ground, waiting for Robert to decide it was time to go home.

As we became older, we moved gradually away from the heart of the family.  A couple of us went off to different universities, others moved into their own places as soon as they could afford to.  We got together, of course, on significant but rare occasions, and a pattern started to evolve.  No matter what the occasion, Robert was always the last to arrive.  My wedding was delayed because Robert was late in picking up my parents.  He showed up late for the christening of my first child even though he was to be a god-parent.

The only regular occasion when the family invariably met together was for our mother’s birthday.  I have no idea when this day took on special significance but on the Sunday closest to April 16^th each year, the four siblings and their own families would gather with my mother and father for the celebration of the anniversary of her birth.  I suspect that everyone there would have preferred to be elsewhere but we were dutiful enough to accept that it was reasonable to set aside an hour of our time if it gave our mother some little pleasure.  But, of course, bloody Robert was always late and none of us could leave until at least an hour after he arrived.  

Our lives might have continued for years in this stilted way, each of us in our own little silo, meeting only on rare occasions, but the day came when we received news that Robert had died.  He had been running to catch a train, late again; he tripped and cracked his head on the platform, dying in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

We gathered as a family in the church to say our farewells, then set off for the local crematorium.  We should have anticipated what would happen next.  The hearse carrying Robert’s body broke down on the way to the crematorium and there was a delay while a replacement vehicle was sent.  We had always joked that Robert would be late for his own funeral, and he was.

Wednesday, May 6th

Another piece of writing - on the topic 'Mrs Windsor's Children:

Living in a modest three-bedroom house in Rocherlea might seem like a world of difference from the very comfortable (some might say privileged) existence they had enjoyed in England but Kathy and Bill didn’t see it like that.  The fiasco of Brexit had not delivered what PM BoJo had promised, the shambles of their Coronavirus response and the withdrawal of Scotland and Wales from the Union hadn’t helped and, when Bill’s grandmother had died (of a broken heart, perhaps) and his father had taken over the family business, all the resentments of a disillusioned population had spilled over into riots in the streets.  Everyone said performances like that were disgraceful and to be expected in places like Hong Kong, perhaps, but never in civilised England.

Bill’s brother and his wife had already settled in Canada and, by all accounts, were living life to the full, but Kathy and Bill wanted something different – to be normal for a change.  Moving to Tasmania seemed a good start.  Adopting other versions of their names also seemed like a good idea – another break from the past. His old name, Will, smacked too much of Eton and Kate sounded too much like the sort of person who played Netball on Saturday afternoon and got drunk with her mates after the match.  Kathy and Bill, on the other hand, sounded like the middle-aged couple you might meet playing bowls. 

Bill couldn’t do much about his receding hairline but he did manage to grow a pretty decent moustache, even though Kathy said that it reminded her of Frank Zappa, whoever he was.  Kathy was quite happy with her life, working three mornings a week at Woolies, and looking after their kids who were at the local high school, and Bill had a job selling cars.  He had first been offered a job with Holden but that didn’t last long so someone put in a good word with Errol Stewart and a job was found for him at the Ford dealership in Launceston.  It was probably that nice Mr Morrison who arranged it.  

When Kathy and Bill had first come to Australia, their visas were signed personally by a Mr Dutton.  Mr Dutton and Mr Morrison had met them at the airport with welcome gifts and offers of directorships and so on.  Kathy and Bill hadn’t realised that Australia was so welcoming to refugees.  All those reports in the Guardian about turning back the boats and locking people up in concentration camps must have been fake news as Mr Morrison had said. 

The local people they had met in Rocherlea all seemed nice.  Australians didn’t seem to have the habit of tugging forelocks and bowing like people in England, and they seemed to swear a lot.  When Bill had sold his first car, the manager had said, ‘You’re a bloody beauty!’  Bill didn’t know whether that was a compliment or not but when the boss bought him a beer later, he assumed it was a good thing.

Yes, life might be alright in Tassie.  Well, the kids were picking up some bad habits, like chewing gum, and Kathy had taken up smoking but these were probably just teething problems.  As the Australians often said, “She’ll be right.’