Friday, January 10, 2025

 It's true what they say, that the older you get the more you think about your life and the things you've done.  I'm glad I started this blog back in 2010 because it's a wonderful resource for re-living experiences and for checking that I've got the details right.  I'm not, by nature sentimental nor philosophical, but I couldn't help feeling pleased when I stumbled across this post I made on January 8, 2022.  Here it is:

Marilyn and I are celebrating our 56^th Wedding Anniversary today.  It will be a rather subdued celebration: age and Covid are taking their toll. However, we have good memories of past celebrations. For our fortieth, for example, we took our first cruise – sailing from Singapore on the Superstar Gemini visiting the islands and ports of Thailand and Malaysia, and there have been many other highlights to stir our memories.

I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool romantic but I can’t help musing on the circumstances which led Marilyn and me to St Aidan’s Church in Corrimal back in 1966.  If you believe there is a force in the universe dedicated to bringing people together, you might be right.

The first sticky thread of the web of our relationship was laid on January 8^th, 1951, the day my mother, my brother and I arrived in Australia.  On the dock, waiting to greet us was my father carrying a large basket of flowers.  Those flowers had been arranged by Iris Lofting, Marilyn’s mother.

My family moved to the small mining village of Russell Vale where we soon discovered Marilyn’s mother ran the local corner shop.  I must have seen Marilyn often, playing in her yard, or walking in the street, perhaps to visit her grandmother, although I have no memory of it.  We went to the same primary school; in those days, boys and girls were segregated but we might have seen each other over the fence separating the playgrounds.  The threads may be tenuous but they’re real, nevertheless.

My family moved away from Russell Vale, first to Sydney and then to Gwynneville and Marilyn and I had no contact until about 1960.  In that year, the DeMolay Order was established in Wollongong and I joined it very early.  Marilyn joined the female equivalent, called the Rainbows and the two organisations became close.  Marilyn’s father, Bill Lofting became the first Chairman of the DeMolay Advisory Committee and the potential for more threads adding to the web became apparent. 

Marilyn was a regular attender at dances organised by the DeMolays, coming along with her father.  She would have stood out, being very pretty, very petite, beautifully dressed and a great dancer.  I discovered she worked at the Anthony Horderns Store in Wollongong and she waited at the bus stop outside the store each afternoon for her bus home.  I found that it suited me to wait at the same bus stop – another thread!

About that time the DeMolays were organising a bus trip to Luna Park and I plucked up my courage and asked Marilyn if she would be my date.  Yes, we talked like that, in those days.  At Luna Park, my watchband broke and Marilyn put my watch into her purse for safe-keeping.  A little touch of intimacy and another thread.  On a particularly violent ride, Marilyn let go of the purse, it flew through the air and landed on the ground, shattering a bottle of Electrique perfume in the process and dousing my watch.  A shared disaster and another thread.

I bought my first car in 1962 and promised Marilyn I would pick her up in the morning to take her to work.  Of course, I slept in and she had to catch the bus.  A disagreement, certainly but, in its way, another thread. 

In the way that things worked in those days, there was no formal asking of her father’s permission, or bending of the knee to propose; our relationship evolved to the point that the question being considered was not, ‘will we marry’, but ‘when will we marry?’  Being teachers, we married in school holidays:  as it happened, on the fifteenth anniversary of the day I arrived in Australia – a particularly strong thread, I think.

Looking back, I have regrets that I am not more romantic and overt in showing my feelings.  Marilyn, on the other hand, has no difficulty in sharing her emotions.  Somehow, Marilyn has accepted that my shyness has been an issue for me right through my life and I am eternally grateful that she has tolerated my failings.  She has been an extraordinary partner to me, and we have shared some very difficult times.  However, I think more of the wonderful memories we share and, if there is some force out there bringing people together, I would just like to say, “Thanks, mate!”

Better poets than me have alluded to 'golden threads' which hold people together; the best I could come up with was 'sticky threads'.  Hmm!

Tuesday, January 8, 2025

 It's our wedding anniversary today - 59 years!  It's extraordinary to think we've reached that milestone and are still independent and enjoying life. Looking back into the family tree I can't remember anyone who held out for that duration.  It seems that the men all died young so a long marriage was not on the cards.  Both my grandfathers were in their 50s when they died and my dad was only 68.

Marilyn found an Anniversary card she had bought at some stage.  Her idea was that we would bring it out each January 8th, write a quick message and store it away until the next year.  The first message was dated 1997 and there were messages for the next couple of years, and then nothing. Clearly, the card had become lost.  It turned up again this year mixed up with Christmas decorations.  

We're going out for lunch at Stickybeaks, a favourite restaurant in Longford - just the two of us.

Monday, January 7

 I suppose Longford is typical of country towns around Australia: a mix of young and old, honest and dodgy, hard-working and lazy, financially successful and less so.  You can learn a lot about a town nowadays by reading the local Facebook page and Longford is no exception.  It's great that some people have no qualms about sharing their problems and worries, their hopes and fears, and their prejudices on-line for all to see.

"If the woman in Hobhouse Street who keeps yelling at my kids doesn't stop I'll take it further." 

"Does anyone have a rabbit hutch I could borrow for a few weeks.  My brother-in-law has given my kids two rabbits for Christmas."

Today, somebody was trying to sell a small collection of Biggles book.  Biggles books!  That's a blast from the past. I think I've read every Biggles books ever printed.  I suppose I read my first one when I was about seven years old and scoured the shelves of the library looking for new ones.   Christmas was always exciting because I could pretty well guarantee I'd receive one or two new titles.  And they were all hard cover in those days.

I carried my collection around for years until a major clean-up in about 2015.  With Jamie there for support, I took them in to a second-hand bookshop in Launceston and the young woman behind the counter gave me a few dollars for them.  She was quite excited to have what might have been first editions and said they would not be sold.  Instead, she would keep them in her private collection.  Looking back, she was probably saying that to make me feel better, that they'd be going to a good home.

And, no, I'm not going to buy the ones advertised on Facebook.  They're tacky, modern paperback reprints with lurid covers.  Just not the same!

Sunday, January 5

 Watching YouTube videos is a regular part of our routine.  I like Steve Marsh and Scott Manson, both from Scotland.  This morning, we caught a video of Steve and his wife, Alicia, in a small town in NE Scotland on New Years' Eve.  They stayed in a renovated Nissan Hut which was part of a POW Camp from the Second World War and joined in the NYE celebrations in the local town, which included a Fire Ceremony.  Brilliant!

We've recently discovered someone from Germany called Ken.  His channel is called Ken Abroad and most of his videos are filmed in South-East Asia, and all in English.  He's a strange fellow and takes incredible chances.  On one video, set in Indonesia, he decided he was going to visit a dockyard area (on his own).  He talked his way onto a decrepit wooden cargo ship, chatted to the crew, then left via a rundown area of dirty streets and hovels.  All the time he is carrying his state-of-the-art GoPro camera and who knows how much in his wallet.

I don't know why he hasn't been knocked on the head and robbed.  Today, though, he was in a five-star hotel in some other large city, enjoying the high-life.  It seems a strange career choice to be a blogger but it seems you can make a good living at it.   To each his own, I suppose.

Saturday, January 4

 I've never been a fan of growing my own vegetables.  The stuff you buy at the supermarket suits me fine and I don't see the value in growing my own.  I do have some rhubarb that I planted when we first moved into this unit and it provides me with a constant supply throughout the year. Apparently, I should be breaking up the crowns from time to time but I haven't worked out the process of doing that.  

Marilyn decided a couple of weeks ago that she wanted to try her hand at cultivation and bought a couple of punnets of lettuce and strawberries from Bunnings.  I faithfully water them each morning and they seem to be thriving, although the lettuce is a bit limp.  The other morning I noticed that there was a rather large strawberry on one of the bushes and it was starting to show some colour.  Marilyn asked me to keep an eye on it but, overnight some scavenger ate it.  Marilyn was furious and found some mesh material to cover the plants.  I had my eye on one large fruit which was starting to show colour and today I picked a ripe succulent prize-winning strawberry, the first of our crop.

Marilyn cut it into three pieces and we all enjoyed it.  Now we can't wait for the next one.

Friday, January 3, 2025

Sandra, our cleaning lady is here this morning so I'm at my desk trying to keep out of her way.  We set this cleaning arrangement up for Friday because I am normally at the Writing group, but I don't do that any more so I find myself in the way.  While the weather is fine, I can sit outside but you can't depend on good weather in Tasmania.  The weather, in fact, is beautiful this morning and I suspect we will be outside most of the day.

Today's story is one I wrote a while ago but I didn't date it.  No matter, here it is - Six Minutes.

SIX MINUTES

“It’s only six minutes to the station,” the Real Estate agent said, clearly struggling to find something positive to say about this sad-looking little cottage in an out-of-the-way suburb.  The cottage was weatherboard, with a tin roof. The boards were tired and more than a lick of paint would be needed to put some life back into this old-timer.

Funny – that phrase ‘lick of paint’ always reminds me of an old Fawlty Towers episode where a dodgy builder, o’Riley, was trying to convince Basil to hire him to do some alterations to the hotel.  He outlined the job, ‘knock a hole in the wall here, tidy up the edges, lick o’ paint, and it’s done’.  In my head, ‘lick o’ paint’ was always said in an Irish accent.  Was this a subliminal message to me?  Was my subconscious trying to tell me that there might be something dodgy about this deal that I am too tired to recognise?

We’ve been married for only a couple of years and I’m not yet earning a reasonable wage.  We’re expecting our first child so my wife’s income for the foreseeable future is not guaranteed but continuing to rent is certainly not going to get us ahead and everything we pay to a landlord is money we’ll never see again.

One part of me wants to forget the whole thing, stay in our flat, pay the rent and forget about home ownership, but my more sensible half demands I think about the future.  I can hear the slogan in my head: a small sacrifice now ensures a comfortable future.  But, is it a small sacrifice?  The mortgage repayment is going to be about the same as the rent we’re paying, and there will be rates, and insurance, and expenses for repairs and improvements - a lick o’ paint is never cheap.  These are the times I wish I’d been born to rich parents.  Life would have been so much easier.

I have to drag my brain to consider another aspect of this dilemma.  If we buy this house, my weekends will be taken up with house-related activities.  The lawn will need mowing regularly and I’ll probably have to reduce the number of golf games I play.  That may not be such a bad thing and, in any case it’s probably time I gave up my membership of the Golf Club.  My wife has been gently hinting that the money I spend on this activity, not to mention the amount I spend at the bar afterwards, is an indulgence and could be expended more wisely.  After all, a baby’s needs are insatiable and when he – I assume it will be a boy – arrives, my golf-playing days will be no more than a happy memory.

I’m starting to realise that my life is changing rapidly and I’m not sure I’m adapting to the changes as well as I might.  It seems only yesterday I was a carefree, self-contained bachelor, with no-one to consider but myself.  But now I’m in a situation where an unborn child has more rights than I have.

I have to give myself a shake.  My wife and I are young, energetic and resilient.  No doubt, things will go wrong from time to time in the future but we know we can deal with any eventuality.  The house is not wonderful but it’s a start and we will have great fun turning it into our dream home.  This suburb is a bit further away from my work and I’ll have to get used to travelling by train but, after all, it’s only six minutes to the station.

Thursday, January 2, 2025

 One of our neighbours has just popped in to chat with Marilyn so I'm taking the chance to write my first blog of 2025.  We both had appointments this morning with our new doctor and decided to have lunch before coming home and have now settled in to do nothing very much for the rest of the day.  Jamie has dropped Archie off to be looked after while he and Nera are busy. 

2025 looks like being very much like 2024.   I'm resisting making any New Year resolutions as I'm hopeless at keeping them.  Instead, I'll take each day as it comes and make the best of it.  

The weather is beautiful and we look forward to more of the same in the next few months.  Last night, we had a spectacular Aurora Australis.  Marilyn and I have lived in Tasmania for nearly forty years and we haven't really seen an Aurora until this year.  Are we getting more of them, or have we been looking in the wrong place?  I wonder whether the atmosphere is changing and there are more of them but who knows.  

There's a blackbird splashing around in the birdbath which is just outside my window.  When he's finished, I'll top it up.  I shouldn't be so nice to them.  They're making a mess of the strawberries that Marilyn is growing and we've had to organise some mesh to protect them.  Of course, it's cheaper to buy a punnett from Coles but where's the fun in that?