Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Cheap as chips

One of the unexpected delights of regional living is how cheap everything is. This is still dizzyingly exciting to me. Recently I joined a local gym and realised, with delight, that my monthly membership fee is now almost half that of my former Sydney fitness centre. My car insurance has gone down dramatically; clothes/shoes/toiletries are so cheap here it’s hard to contain a spontaneous spending spree. Hairdressers/beauticians are steal and eating out – whoa….at prices this low how do bistros and restaurants even stay in business?

The Country Mouse doesn’t see it this way. In fact he and I have a serious price disconnect. It’s quite profound and arises dramatically wherever and whenever money is involved (i.e. everywhere): eating in, eating out, purchasing any kind of service and also extends to clothes, holidays and the cost of housing.

“Look at the cost!” he moans while I exclaim, “Yes! How cheap is that?”,
thinking (foolishly I now know) that we were walking and talking in financial sync.

He blames his Scottish heritage for his tightness with money, but I won’t put up with a bar of it, I could just as well claim that my Irish heritage means that I have a live for today, spend and be damned financial frame of mind. After all, who knows what might happen tomorrow – we’ll all be blown to pieces in a bout of random sectarian violence?

I have come up with a range of snappy one-line money retorts for the CM: “You get what you pay for”, “Be mean with money and money will be mean with you”, “Money is your servant not your master”. He must be sorely sick of hearing them by now, but I do think they are chipping away at his former poverty thinking because recently he had a significant breakthrough.

The Country Mouse threw out something that was broken. You have to know the CM to realize the gravity, the earth-shifting significance of this action and I still applaud his courage to leap into this new unknown emotional territory.

It went like this. The CM has a beloved plastic jug, one which he uses regularly to warm liquids in the microwave. That the rim of this jug had numerous chunks out of it, where they had broken off through wear and tear, and that the handle was seriously cracked – in fact just hanging on by a plastic thread – meant nothing to him. “Look at this jug!” I squealed. “What is wrong with it?” he replied. That kinda says it all.

I reassured him that a new jug was not negotiable, but he was not persuaded. On a visit to K-mart shortly afterward I saw my opportunity, not so subtlety steering him in the direction of microwaveable containers. “Look – a jug, just like the one you have – only not broken. Mmmm, mmmm and sooo cheap”.

The CM frowned; I could see his acute financial and behavioural distress. It meant two difficult, unpleasant things were now going to have to be considered simultaneously: firstly, spending money on a new jug, secondly, the possibility that this signaled the broken jug was on its way out. The first problem was easily addressed – I would buy the new jug. He relented, I could spend the extravagant sum, $7.00, on a new jug, but the old jug had to stay.

I love coaching, in fact I would have liked to have been a personal coach, getting people to move out of their comfort zones and shoot for the stars is one of my favourite things to do. This was an opportunity for me to be partner-as-coach, moving the CM out of his broken goods zone and into a shiny new future – or at least hold his hand while he threw out a jug long past its use by date.

We were standing in the kitchen, “You can do this darling, you can do this, I believe in you” I urged. The Country Mouse looked unconvinced, sadly eyeing the old broken jug as though it was a dear family pet about to be euthanised.

“CM you have to be strong, there isn’t room in the cupboard for them both – one of them has to go. And you know which one that is.” His genuine pain at casting that chewed up old jug into the recycling was something to behold. I did feel compassion, I just wasn’t budging.

It’s so hard to move out of our self-imposed comfort zones; they may be warm and familiar but by their nature they stop us growing. I’ve hurtled into the Country Mouse’s life like a cleanout and let’s-move-on tsunami and he has worn my whirlwind activity with grace and good humour. It’s a mark of the man. Love you Country Mouse! 

Friday, July 29, 2011

Spectral

I have a work colleague I particularly like and in the last year a unique bond has grown between us as we chewed over our shared long distance relationships and the emotional curve balls they have thrown our way. We’ve commiserated over separations which come around all too often and congratulated ourselves on love’s triumph over physical distance.

Her situation is much worse than mine, her partner is further away and their future more tenuous. Lately it’s been overwhelming for her, as her Sydney domestic life crumbled she felt the keen absence of her long distance partner, confessing through tears that she was finding the distance too difficult. In her endearing Eastern European accent she explained that it ‘was like being in love with the ghost’.

I know how she feels. For the 18 months that the Country Mouse and I have been what my mother quaintly described the other day as ‘an item’, his absence, as well as his presence, has been a defining part of our relationship.

There is the difficulty of facing emotional hurdles alone, like a single person, when you actually have a partner. An absent partner is much worse than no partner at all. If you are single you organise your life accordingly. When you are in a relationship you organise your life accordingly. To have a partner who is emotionally with you, but often physically absent, does your head in. It works on many levels, but the one I didn’t expect was how it would affect us socially.

Recently the disparity in our social lives was brought home to me when, at a Hunter Valley based social event, I scanned the room and realised that I now know most of the people in the Country Mouse’s world (good) whereas he still knows almost no-one in mine (not good).

“I DO HAVE FRIENDS YOU KNOW!” I announced suddenly, with conviction. Obviously too suddenly and maybe with just a little too much conviction because the Country Mouse looked at me with a frozen, terrified look. “I know you do!” he answered sensing instinctively that a strong affirmation was needed despite not knowing why.

I have many close friends he has never met and one in particular used to go further than the standard “when are we ever going to meet this man?” running commentary, joking that the reason we had never met the Country Mouse was because he didn’t exist at all. I had simply made him up (maybe just to create an angle for an angst-ridden blog?). How could, she argued, have so many people in my life have never met this man after so long?

To counter her argument I started to bring to our Sydney social events photographic proof of the Country Mouse’s solidity. By now we have been on enough holidays for there to be evidence, “See...here we are mountain climbing on Lord Howe Island”, “See...here we are snorkelling on Maui”, “See...here we are at dinner at Bondi Icebergs”, “See...here we are on Terrigal Beach”. She remained unconvinced, smiling smugly and purring “Photoshop”.

The Country Mouse’s chief denier argued that I had simply found a random male photo online and photoshopped him into my holiday photos. Of course I could of, so there was no argument, I was defeated. When I miss him and Iook at the empty space beside me I wish he was occupying, the Country Mouse may seem to be like a phantom, but to at least one friend of mine he will always be the Invisible Man.





Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Starry, starry night

I recently read an article in the SMH about Sydney natives who had transplanted themselves to rural cities and towns. They were asked the predictable question - what did they love about their new home - and most of the answers were easy to anticipate: a more relaxed lifestyle, cleaner air and a sense of community.

One unimaginative ex-Sydneysider said that what he liked most was the “lack of traffic jams” (who moves to a rural area because of road congestion?) but one new Hunter Valley resident was right on the money. He said one of the things that made it such a great place to live was “you can see the stars at night”. Absolutely.

The Country Mouse is most amused by my love of the country sky. “Look at the stars, look at the stars” I regularly exclaim to which he replies with typical CM practicality “They are the same stars as in Sydney”. They may be, but you can’t see them in the same way.

I discovered starlight many years ago on a memorable inland road trip through Parkes, a part of inland NSW which has rightfully rebranded itself Big Sky Country. It didn’t lie. Every night the sky was a fairyland and I fell in love with the night sky magic in a way I never anticipated. After that trip the stars and I had a whole new relationship and I now watch the night sky mesmerised.

One of my must dos in Hawaii was to see the Southern Cross in a new position in the sky. Late one night on our O’ahu hotel balcony the Country Mouse found it, low down in the Hawaiian skyline, just a few degrees above the horizon. It felt like a strange connection to home.

When things seem difficult I find comfort in the stars and the moon; I gaze heavenward to see what the moon is up to and which stars are going to reveal themselves. How could Oscar Wilde have got it so right so long ago? “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Monday, July 11, 2011

Back to the future

The Country Mouse and I are back to reality, but hopefully not for long. Our blissful Hawaiian holiday is now just a memory of halcyon days zip lining through the mountains of Maui, having our own private encounter with a green turtle on the Big Island and the Country Mouse playing bass with the house band at Jimmy Buffet’s restaurant ‘Margaritaville’ in Waikiki.

Reality = I have headed back to my work life in Sydney, while the CM settles back into life in the lower Hunter Valley. Damn.

It’s been frustrating going from the sense of togetherness we had on our Polynesian holiday to ‘face time’ of only about two days per week. House projects are progressing at an agonisingly slow place and I pray that we will return home one day and find a reality show makeover team has paid us a surprise visit. In this particular fantasy they have turned the junked up back room into a funked up chill-out zone and the messy laundry into a sleek washing space.

I am trying to cultivate my inner Buddhist (she used to exist); telling myself this situation is a great opportunity to develop my (virtually non-existent) sense of patience. Yet despite teeth-gnashing frustration on my part the Country Mouse remains almost unflappable. Does nothing rattle this man? He is so naturally Zen about our situation, adopting the attitude that in 12 months time the limitations we live with now, which are the DNA of a long-distance relationship, will be in the past and I will be happily settled in the Hunter wondering why I ever got so emotional about it all.

But this week does see a milestone for us long-distance lovers; I have gone from full-time to part-time work meaning that I now live part of the week in Sydney and part of the week in the country. It’s lots of commuting and I am definitely getting better at it, but it still has its moments.

After my full-time love affair with the F3 went sour (see earlier blog post) I started to train it north as well as drive it.  Alternating between the two on such a big commute is the key to travel sanity, but each of them has their unique moments of angst. My most recent travel to the HV was by train, which for some reason was jammed-full, and my initial thrill at finding a seat was soon crushed when I realised why it was empty.

I had unwittingly stumbled into a dedicated teenage bogan space and because the train was packed they were closing in around me. How close? I could smell them. One young women’s chosen body spray, stale beer and cigarettes, was a particular nasal assault, but I suppose that school holidays are long and you have to fill your time somehow.

For an hour and a half, from Central Station to the Central Coast, they swore/shrieked/screamed/shouted at full volume, but when they started playing their hideous music also at full volume I could be silent no longer. My firm but polite request “Do you have a headset?” met with a foul tirade about being ‘a fuckin’ music hater’.

Realising I was trapped I tried to adopt an out-of-body state of mind, trying hard (and unsuccessfully) to remember the Buddhist practice of detachment My body is here but my mind is somewhere else. It didn’t work. I then plotted my revenge – I would post all kinds of uncharitable things about these train companions on the superbly acidic blog ‘Things Bogans Like’. A crisis of conscience (mine) so far has saved them.

At that moment sitting in the bumper-to-bumper traffic out of Sydney seemed immensely appealing and I thanked the F3 god that my next trip up north was going to be in the privacy of my own vehicle, rather than on the forced intimacy of public transport.

But public transport does have its compensatory moments. When the Country Mouse took me to Newcastle station for my return journey it was a blue, crisp winter morning and I was mesmerised, again, by Newcastle’s working harbour.

As the train pulled away I watched a coal ship come into view, it was heading out toward Nobbys, guided by a tiny tug. It needed to be patient, progress was slow but it was gradually going forward. Soon it would pass between the heads and be out at sea – free – it was on its way to somewhere good. It seemed like a portent and I turned to watch it for as long as I could. As it swung toward the harbour entrance I saw the ship’s name, ‘Sea of Future’. An omen indeed.


Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Lunar love

In a couple of hours the Country Mouse and I take off on our first overseas holiday. It is a new moon - right now! - which I am taking as a wonderful portent.

A new moon heralds the beginning of the next lunar cycle, a powerful time of new beginnings: for me the treechange is getting closer, for the Country Mouse his trip to Hawaii's Big Island means a visit and overnight stay at his first commune (albeit an upmarket one) and for both of us unknown adventures are waiting to happen in the next 21 days.

Watch this space...

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Aloha bound

Breaking news: the Country Mouse and the City Mouse are about to embark on their biggest holiday yet, winging their way across the Pacific to three Hawaiian islands - O’ahu, Maui and the Big Island of Hawai’i.
This holiday seems to have snuck up on me, I certainly haven’t done my usual level of planning (i.e. obsessed over-preparation) and despite this causing me some panic I am now so thrilled about this vacation, that, as of yesterday, it’s the first thing my excited mind jumps to every morning.
Many adventures are planned, including: flying through the air on a zipline in the West Maui mountains; seeing the world’s most active volcano on land and then doing the inverse, snorkelling in an underwater volcanic crater; spending time with a dear friend (Wendy-from-Maui who has already appeared in this blog) and her partner, the multi-talented Mark-from-Maui; indulging parrot head tendencies in Waikiki and searching the star-blanketed Hawaiian skies for the Southern Cross which will, to Australian eyes, be sitting in a whole new place. But it’s more than that.
For a regular couple (i.e. not us) this would simply be an indulgent tropical idyll, but for long-distance lovers (i.e. us) this vacation has a whole other layer of meaning. It is our longest period of uninterrupted time together and our first holiday not ruled from day one by an impending end date. Woooo hoooo......three weeks! Dear Country Mouse, a special Hawaiian message for you - ‘E Hoomau Maua Kealoha’.
The trip raises some intriguing questions: how will we travel as a couple? What secrets will be revealed after such an unprecedented togetherness? What’s your advice for these travelling mice?




Sunday, April 17, 2011

Birdland

Why look down when you can look up? The sky is home to some of my favourite beings – birds. Symbolic to me of ultimate freedom, I am entranced by their arrow-head flying formations, particularly at dawn or sunset when they seem to be inkily etched against the sky.

The Country Mouse and I once had a reflective conversation about life, death and the hereafter. Deciding that we would put our ambivalence about reincarnation aside, we speculated what form we would take if we revisited Earth again. The Country Mouse’s return plans had a particularly feline and particularly male fantasy bent, best not elaborated on here, but for me there was no question. I would be coming back as an albatross.

Who wouldn’t want to fly, to soar, to defy gravity and to do it with effortless ease and grace? I understand why Icarus ignored all those warnings from his Dad and once he was airborne just kept flying ever higher.

I especially love Australian birds - Bellbirds, Whipbirds, Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and Kookaburras. Bellbirds evoke strong childhood memories of car trips to visit my maternal grandparents who lived on the Central Coast. The final stretch of what seemed like, to a child, an interminable car ride was a sharp descent on a winding mountain road and it was here that we always heard Bellbirds.

“Listen! Bellbirds!” my mother would exclaim animatedly (hence the previous exclamation marks) and then start reciting, or urging my sister and I to recite, the opening stanza of the Henry Kendall poem ‘Bell-Birds’.

By channels of coolness the echoes are calling,
And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling:
It lives in the mountain where moss and the sedges
Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges.
Through breaks of the cedar and sycamore bowers
Struggles the light that is love to the flowers;
And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing,
The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.

There is something to be said about rote learning, as educationally discredited as it now is, as I can still almost recite that opening verse word-for-word. And despite my intense dislike of rhyming couplets there is something enchanting about the whole poem; in particular the line ‘the notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing’ just rolls off the tongue.

Bellbirds, which are technically called Bell Miners (and more technically called Manorina melanophrys), are honeyeaters endemic to south-eastern Australia. They were given their colloquial name ‘Bellbird’ because they feed almost exclusively on the dome-like coverings of certain bugs, called ‘bell lerps’, but also (and I think this is the real reason) because of their bell-like call. No loners, Bellbirds live in a large, complex social group - which is nice - I don’t want to feel that Bellbirds are lonely out there in the bush.

The final stretch from Sydney to the Country Mouse’s house takes me along a stretch of local highway with bushland right up to the bitumen. By this time I usually have the pedal to the metal, zooming along and grateful for this final fast stretch and its 90 k.p.h. speed limit. With my mind distracted by thoughts of an imminent County Mouse-City Mouse reunion and the music pumping I am oblivious to the world outside.

But on my last trip up I was in a cruiser mood. The music was off and I was taking in my surroundings as I drove, trying to consciously practice some Buddhist mindfulness. As I was doing my Zen-like best to be present in the moment what should I hear through my open window? Bellbirds.




Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Theft!

The Country Mouse stole my heart. Now Nathan Tinkler, the owner of his football team the Newcastle Knights, has stolen the head coach of my team, the St. George Illawara Dragons - the incomparable Wayne Bennett.

Most intriguingly this news seems to have hit every Sydney media outlet except the Dragons official website, which has even posted other football news since King Wayne’s announcement, but curiously remained silent on the biggest League story of the day.

Wayne and I – we are both heading to the Hunter. We've both been stolen. It’s a sign.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Update: a beach, a barbeque and Bondi

The reality of moving to the Hunter Valley, is, almost unbelievably, becoming a reality. This is good. Yet my situation still feels unreal. I live everywhere but no-where. This is bad. I yearn to set down new roots, to begin a new life in a new place. It can’t come soon enough. But in the meantime it’s time for a few updates and an anniversary story.
Update no. 1: The Great Newcastle Beach Search. The Country Mouse and I recently took the opportunity to hit the sand on probably the last warm Sunday or summer. He took me to a fantastic unnamed beach (a quick check with the National Parks and Wildlife Service seems to confirm its unnamed status) which is just around the southern headland of Merewether Beach. This gem of a spot has a rocky enclosed swimming hole, natural bushland right behind the beach and is free of the tasteless take-away food shops which blight the NSW coastline.
Memo to Newcastle Council: please re-lease the take away food venues at your beaches to professionals who know how to serve decent café/deli style food (as opposed to bad, overpriced junk); employ staff who know something about customer service (as opposed to the present staff whose idea of ‘service’ is a permanent sulky pout) and paint and re-design - or preferably pull down and rebuild - the ugly cement buildings (was the Council inspired by Soviet-era summer holiday camps?) which mar the Newcastle oceanfront from Bar Beach to Merewether. I’m begging you - some buildings in concert and sympathy with their beautiful surroundings please!
But back to the unnamed beautiful stretch of beach, a coastal strip between Merewether and Dudley beaches, which the NPWS explains is the ‘last remnant of coastal temperate rainforest in the Newcastle region’. As this beautiful beach abuts the Glenrock State Conservation Area, surely this beach is, or should be, Glenrock Beach? If it isn’t it now is to me. Regardless of its possible namelessness, I love it, love it love it - this beach is absolutely making my Newcastle beach short list.
Update no. 2: Sausage Sizzle Saga - the sequel. Recently the Country Mouse and I made our first visit back to Bunnings since the great sausage sizzle saga. I was somewhat relieved to be back, thinking that the Country Mouse had possibly put me on a Bunnings no-go list after that particular culinary debacle.
We had no sooner pulled up in the car park than the Country Mouse, no doubt emboldened by his starring role in the SSS, headed directly to the ever-present Bunnings sausage sizzle, immediately and loudly engaging the group of men running the stall on my desire for a sausage sandwich minus the bread. Actually I hadn’t even decided that it was sausage time at all, but there was no holding back the Country Mouse – he was in his element.
“She” – I assumed this was me – “wants a sausage sandwich but… (rising crescendo) with NO BREAD! Did you know people in Bronte – in Sydney – eat sausage sandwiches, without the sandwich?"
The men, of course, thought this was hysterical, laughing conspiratorially in a kind of ‘Women! Who can understand them?’ male bonding way. But one sweet man, no doubt concerned that I was struggling with a weight problem, earnestly assured me that the sausages they were selling were low-fat. I explained that the fat wasn’t the problem, I was actually trying to avoid the carbohydrates in the two slices of nutritionally challenged white no name bread wrapping around the greasy meat.
Carb consciousness is definitely a major city-country divide. My country cousins don’t realise that for many city gals carbohydrates are the Anti-Christ; more feared than a Middle Eastern dictator, they are the Gaddafi of the kitchen. Quick - run, hide the carbs are coming!
I try not to engage in this hysteria, remembering all too well how full fat food was the ‘devil’ of the 1990s and watching as people religiously consumed only low fat or no fat products, despite the fact that these products contained double their own body weight in sugar, this amount of sweetening being necessary to make the products palatable.
Given that the carb debate certainly doesn’t seem to have moved beyond the Sydney CBD to regional areas, my attempts to explain ‘it’s the carbs not the fat’ to the by now confused, yet still very earnest, barbequing man fell on deaf ears. He stared at me blankly. But the gauntlet had been laid down. Laugh at me? Watch this! I grabbed a sausage, TWO pieces of bread and an overgenerous squeeze of tomato sauce. And I stuffed the whole lot in my mouth.
Anniversary adventures
There is a wisdom in the saying ‘the couple that plays together stays together’ (actually a corruption of the Christian saying ‘the couple that prays together stays together’) and certainly the Country Mouse and I make having fun a priority in our relationship. But we have another kind of peculiar bond, ours is more medical – the couple that migraines together…understand that hideous headache like no other. It’s not quite as catchy, but it certainly proved the background to our first anniversary together. I woke on the morning of 21 March, barely able to utter “Happy Anniversary – we are one!” before sinking into the pillow with an “Ice pack! Painkillers! Quick!”
By the time we made it to Sydney, where we had planned to spend the night dining romantically by the ocean before spending a special night at a swish Bondi hotel, my splitting head had stopped and I was feeling vaguely normal. But proving that a deep bond means that your pain is my pain I had no sooner come to than the Country Mouse suddenly went down with a migraine all of his own.
Our anniversary dinner ended up being takeaway beef ribs in bed, and our planned blue sky, blue ocean vista and sandy sunbake on the Bondi Beach ended up matching our pain: from the hotel window dark grey clouds filled the sky and set-in rain beat against our window. It was a study in various shades of grey. But as we lay in each others arms and administered pain killers we could at least see the irony and promise each other ‘there’s always next year’.

Monday, March 21, 2011

365 days

Happy anniversary handsome man – guess what? We are one! I love you for so many reasons...
For being brave when I am afraid
For being brave enough to show me when you are afraid
For never letting the distance defeat us
For being my safe haven
For looking after my heart
For all the beach walks on all those beaches
For that night at Terrigal and that day on Blinky Beach
For your big shoulder to cry on
For a family Christmas
For defending me on New Year’s Eve
For being with me at the hospital on my birthday
For all the adventures we’ve had and all the adventures still to come
For taking me back to Lord Howe Island
For the laughter, more laughter and even more laughter
For giving me 365 reasons to say ‘thank you’


Tuesday, March 15, 2011

It's the little things

I once received a bad Hallmark greeting card (is there any other kind?) which said, in part, ‘in a relationship the little things are the big things’. Despite the rest of the card’s sentiments being bilious I was forced to agree that, in this case, the card’s author got this bit at least right.

Aside: who writes the copy for these cards? No doubt a desperate out-of-work writer. Do they put a collection of these cards in their portfolio? Or do they just thank the publishing gods that the cards have no by-line, so they are not publicly named and shamed?

Anyway I digress....

I am thinking a lot at the moment about how the little things really are the big things. The Country Mouse and I share the big things: birthdays, a familial wedding and 21st, Christmas, New Year and soon to be our first anniversary (awwww.....), but we don’t share the little things. This was sharply brought home to me recently when the Country Mouse made his first mid-week visit to Sydney.

He saw me in my work clothes and later in my normal evening routine and commented on a number of things about my routine (none of them complimentary, but that is for another post on another day). And it struck me that in our almost year together he has never seen me acting out my daily routines; the utter normalcy of me coming home from work is something we don’t share.

The Country Mouse has no idea what I do in the evening five nights out of seven. Likewise I have very little concept of him coming in the door from his work, or what his nightly routine is before or after we have our customary long phone call. His weekly evenings are as foreign to me as mine are to him. This bothers me.

I live in the Inner West with a dear friend who is part Italian Earth Mother, part Culinary Goddess. She has a new beau, The Gardener, and it’s been fascinating to watch a regular relationship take shape. Not so long ago they progressed to the mid-week visit; that point in togetherness when the time between weekends gets too long and a mid-week starts to happen naturally. I enthused to her about the significance of the mid-week visit and although I think she remains unconvinced, I see it as a relationship milestone. 

I feel sorry for myself and the Country Mouse that we will never have the mid-week visit - sometimes we don’t even have weekly visits. Let alone spontaneous visits. Or an ‘you-obviously-have-had-a-shit-of-a-day-and-so-I-am-going-to-come-over-and-cheer-you-up’ visit.

Other things bother me, such as being asked what the Country Mouse is up to and having to answer truthfully that I don’t know. Much of his week remains a mystery to me. Do you want to know how much trust you have between yourself and your beloved? Try a long distance relationship it’s the definition of faith, hope and trust.

I need an inspirational solution to a knotty problem. Wonderful ideas anyone?

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Revelation at Nobbys

I have always believed in going to something, not going from something. Life has to be about arriving somewhere new, not just leaving the past. For me to move on all the conditions have to be right, the ‘where’ I am going to has to be in place – or there is no moving of any kind, emotional or physical.

Sometimes I blame the stars. The oft-described Libran need to weigh up every option, get all the information possible and make sure everything has been thoroughly considered before any decision can be made is something those of us born under the sign of the scales are renowned for. It’s been like that with my planned move to the country - a few steps forward, some regression and a lot, a lot, a lot of deep questioning - do I really want to go?

The whole move has been framed in my head as ‘leaving Sydney’ and this mindset has determined the questions I’ve asked. Can I emotionally leave my home town? Why do I have to leave a job I love for the man I love – why can’t I have both? Can I leave the glitz, the glamour, the cultural richness of a cosmopolitan city?  Leaving, leaving, leaving. As long as I thought that all I was doing was leaving I was never going to go.

To my surprise this all changed suddenly, emotionally and unexpectedly on Friday 25 February. I was ‘up country’ in the Hunter Valley, having a rare couple of mid-week days off. I was looking longingly at the much publicised open days for Nobbys Headland organised by Renew Newcastle, L!vesites and the NSW Government Land and Property Management Authority and cursing that I was going to miss it.

I am absolutely fascinated by the magnificent Nobbys Headland, which lies like a sandstone beast guarding the entrance to Newcastle Harbour. I was dismayed when the Country Mouse explained that ‘no’ we couldn’t go up there to have a look around because it was closed to the public. You had to have official grounds to be there, something wonderful like...you were a lighthouse keeper, or some other insanely romantic reason. Nobbys Headland – look, but don’t touch. Novacastrians hadn’t walked on the headland for generations, something like 150 years. What a tragedy.

And now this was changing. On a designated six days, in late February and early March, Nobbys Headland was going to be open to the public. This is part of an ongoing program whereby Nobbys Headland and the surrounding areas are being returned to Crown Lands from the Newcastle Port Corporation. Go Port Corp!

Regular blog readers will remember my excitement at proclaiming that Nobbys had now officially become my Newcastle beach, with Caves Beach nipping at its heels a close second. Although a drive past Newcastle city beach the other day reminded me that I do really love that beach too; and for lots of reasons the quirky Catherine Hill Bay will always hold a very special place in my heart.

On an early date the Country Mouse and I walked to the end of Nobbys breakwater (officially Macquarie Pier, but only to the officials, the locals all know it as the breakwater) and he told me about the history of Nobbys and how it used to be an island. It was late in the afternoon at the end of a particularly romantic weekend.

As we stood watching a coal ship being pulled ocean ward by a series of cute-as-a-button tugboats, I remember leaning against him and feeling deeply at peace. Apart from the beauty and significance of the headland, and that moment between us, I always remember this as one of the earliest occasions he talked about us making a home together.

Now Nobbys Headland was having open days – perfect. Not. The open days either coincided with days I was working in Sydney, or, on the days I was free the tickets were sold out. Tickets were necessary as the numbers on the headland at any one time had to be limited for safety, there was to be no sneaking in under the fence to get up to Nobbys Headland. I was troubled. I had to go to Nobbys Headland. I had to. 

Friday 25 February had already been going well; I had had lunch with my dear friend DJ at a Hunter Street pub which had now become our lunchtime regular. I love having a regular haunt. I especially love having a regular haunt with a particular friend, so that that a place then becomes stamped as ‘ours’.

After DJ left to return to the rigours of her workday world I was basking in the gloriousness of a rostered day off and indulging in one of my favourite leisure activities Рsitting at an outdoor caf̩, drinking too much coffee and reading too many newspapers. Heaven; but it was about to get better.

Deep in The Guardian I was startled when the phone rang and it was the Country Mouse with exciting news. He had been listening to the ABC and they had announced that there were some Nobbys Headland tickets left for today, but advised to get down to the beach quickly before they were gone. Go Country Mouse!

I was actually secretly thrilled that the order to ‘go quickly’ came from no less an authority than the ABC, thus giving me complete licence to do something I had so far managed to restrain from doing i.e. to subject Newcastle motorists to my worst Sydney driving habits. Decades of attempting to criss-cross the city and arrive somewhere (anywhere!) on time means that Sydney drivers have skills honed to murderous precision. Seriously - The Stig learnt to drive that way on Sydney’s roads.

Zooming across Newcastle I had one particularly hairy moment when I realised too late that I was speeding the wrong way down a one way lane. The Newcastle Council garbage truck and its growling driver I just missed seemed unimpressed (to put it mildly) but I figured I was justified. Had not the national broadcaster itself exhorted me to ‘go quickly’? In less than five minutes I was holding a ticket for Nobbys Headland and on my way.

Walking up the steep road to the headland I saw a delighted group pointing to something in the outer harbour. It was a seal, rolling, turning in circles and repeatedly pounding a flipper against the surface of the water. Wow, thanks for the welcome. It was a portent; it had to be, the whole thing was too incongruous – a cavorting seal where no seal should be. I was already smiling before I reached the top of the peninsula.

Now I’m stuck. How can I describe the view from the headland which isn’t just a sad cliché? I’m struggling. It was beautiful, breathtaking, sweeping, panoramic...there was Newcastle revealed in all her glory. And not just the city. To the south down, down, down the coast and the other way up, up, up the Hunter River. I was even looking eye-to-eye with Fort Scratchley, not looking up at the Fort from below, and I vowed that one day I would work there (I entertain a fantasy of being Fort Scratchley’s historian you see).

I felt so privileged to see what had been denied to Novacastrians for so long. How on earth must the locals feel up here?  

A coal ship attended by its tugs came into view travelling up the harbour on its passage to the sea. Instead of looking up at that bulky structure from the breakwater now for the first time I looked down on it from Nobbys Headland.

As the tug ropes were pulled away, the ship was free. It and the crew didn’t look back at the group of us on the headland mesmerised by its journey. It wasn’t leaving Newcastle it was travelling to its next port. I was no longer at sea. I was free. I wasn’t leaving Sydney; I was going to my new home in the Hunter.

As the city shone before me in that particular brazen gold light of early sunset I finally got it. I could see how everything in my life had led me here; to this city, to the Hunter Valley, to this moment on the headland. And I cried. I was home.



Saturday, February 26, 2011

Aesop and his fable

When I had a light bulb moment about naming this blog I rang the Country Mouse in excitement. "I am going to call our blog The City Mouse and the Country Mouse". I thought I was so clever; I knew he would think I was so clever too. Instead there was silence.
"Am I a mouse?"
"Yeah, you're the Country Mouse, you know like in the fable".
Silence.
"You know the Aesop’s fable".
Silence, then "No". Oh dear he was going all monosyllabic, not a good sign.  
"Aesop’s fable The City Mouse and the Country Mouse".
Silence, then "Oh well, as long as you are not calling me a rat".

Okay – time to do a fast rewind.
"Darling do you know who Aesop is?"
"No".
"So you don’t know the Aesop’s fable The City Mouse and the Country Mouse? And so you have no idea what I am talking about?"
"Yeah, well it seemed a bit strange all that stuff about the mice".

Now the Country Mouse is a smart mouse, but you can’t be up on everything and obviously early Greek fables are not his area of speciality, nor, I suspect of even the slightest interest to him. But…it’s the title of the blog after all and that matters, so explanations must be given. In case anyone else is puzzling over this blog’s moniker, here goes.

Aesop was a Greek folk hero who is supposed to have lived in the 6th century BC, c. 620-564. He was born a slave and one story about him has his wisdom so delighting one of his masters that he was given his freedom. Aesop gained a great reputation as a teller of animal fables, through which he showed both the wise and foolish behaviour of humans, teaching a moral lesson at the same time.

In most of his fables animals speak and have human characteristics; their antics are simply a reflection of human frailties, vanity and foibles. Well-known Aesop’s fables include The Tortoise and the Hare, The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Fox and the Grapes (from which the term ‘sour grapes’ originates).

Although today his fables are told as children’s tales, they were not meant as children’s stories at all, but as ethical lessons for adults. I loved one writer’s description of early Greek fables as “a technique of criticism and persuasion, which, by its indirectness, i.e. by making the protagonists animals, might avoid giving offence to those it was targeting. It was particularly valuable to the weak as a weapon against the powerful”. I like that.

No writings by Aesop himself survive, but what we do know is that numerous fables attributed to him were gathered, written down and translated into many languages in a moral storytelling tradition that still continues in many countries today. Not much else is known about the life of Aesop, although some accounts have him being murdered at Delphi. Some scholars even believe he may not have existed at all and that the fables were written by a number of different authors and all attributed to a fictional wise Greek slave.

I like to think that Aesop was a real person, probably because I like his fables and the fact that he was such a smart slave – I am very partial to the idea that he used his intelligence to gain his freedom. Also I have philosophical heavy weights Socrates and Aristophanes (who thought him a real person) on my side and who am I to argue with them?

The first written collection of Aesop’s fables appeared about 200 years after his death (or supposed death, depending on whether you believe him to be 'real' or not) and now have been translated into almost every language in the world. Obviously over time and with multiple translations there are slight variations to the fables’ details, but their moral message remains unchanged.

In the fable The City Mouse and the Country Mouse (also known as The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse), a proud city mouse visits a friend (or sometimes a relation, usually a cousin) in the country. The Country Mouse offers the City Mouse a meal of simple country foods, at which the visitor scoffs and invites the Country Mouse back to the city for a taste of the ‘fine life’. But their rich city meal is interrupted by a cat (or, in some versions of the fable, a dog) which force the mice to abandon their feast and scurry to safety. After this, the Country Mouse decides to return home, preferring a quiet life of security to a precarious life of plenty.

Here then is the fable:

Aesop’s fable: the City Mouse and the Country Mouse
There once was a mouse who liked his country house until his cousin came for a visit.

"In the city where I live," his cousin said, "we dine on cheese and fish and bread. Each night my dinner is brought to me. I eat whatever I choose. While you, country cousin, work your paws to the bone for humble crumbs in this humble home. I'm used to finery.”

Upon hearing this, the Country Mouse looked again at his plain brown house. Suddenly he wasn't satisfied anymore. "Why should I hunt and scrape for food to store?" he said. "Cousin, I'm coming to the city with you!"

Off they went into the fine town house of the plump and prosperous City Mouse. "Shhh! The people are in the parlour," the City Mouse said. "Let's sneak into the kitchen for some cheese and bread."

The City Mouse gave his wide-eyed country cousin a grand tour of the leftover food on the table. "It's the easy life," the City Mouse said, and he smiled as he bit into a piece of bread. Just as they were both about to bite into a chunk of cheddar cheese, in came a cat!

"Run! Run!" said the City Mouse. "The cat's in the house!"

Just as the Country Mouse scampered for his life out of the window, he said, "Cousin, I'm going back to the country! You never told me that a cat lives here! Thank you, but I'll take my humble crumbs in comfort over all of your finery with fear!"

Monday, February 21, 2011

Sausage sizzle saga

One of the good things about being in a long distance relationship is that it’s like being on one long date. One of the bad things about being in a long distance relationship is that it’s like being on one long date. Now the purpose of a date is not just to have a fabulous day/night out with someone new, but to assess your date’s potential (is he a keeper?) and, if the answer is in the affirmative, to showcase yourself to your best advantage (hair! clothes! makeup!).

While date-land is a fun place to visit, you just can’t live there. For a start the pressure to constantly appear witty, wise, well-groomed and all-round wonderful 24/7 is just too much pressure to bear. But one of the bizarre unrealities of a long distance relationship is that you stay in this early-days-of-dating headspace long after the early days of dating are over in real life. Limited time together means striving to make every moment count, with the accompanying pressure to make every hour in each other’s company Quality Time.  

Recently the Country Mouse and I decided that we needed to do more ‘normal’ things together, a realisation we came to when it became obvious, even to us in our rose-coloured bubble, that our relationship was heavy on adventure, passion and holidays, but light on day-to-day reality. So we planned some regular couple time doing couple things, and what could be more suburban couple than a visit to Bunnings on a Sunday morning?

Now the Country Mouse loves Bunnings, a hardware megastore he describes as “like a dress shop for men”. As a highly impractical woman I’m lukewarm on Bunnings, a shop devoted solely to the practical end of life – like making things and fixing things. ‘Lukewarm’ is probably a bit generous, I am more like tepid on Bunnings. But I love the Country Mouse and the Country Mouse loves Bunnings, so a-Bunnings I was going. Given that I set out with such good intentions it was sad that it unravelled before we even got to the first do-it-yourself aisle.

For those of you not in the know, here’s a short explanatory paragraph: Bunnings is known for its charity sausage sizzles. Every weekend a different local charity is given space to set up at the front door of the store and make a motza selling sanga sandwiches to the hungry hardware crowd.  

Diversion over, back to the story: Heading toward the door I was assailed by that delicious smell of artery-clogging barbequed meat – salt and fat, yum! It was the perfect start to our perfect normal couple morning. I joined the queue. The older man serving took my order - one sausage, no bread, lots of tomato sauce. He looked stunned. “No bread?” “Yes, no bread” “Where will I put the sausage?” “On a napkin” “You want a sausage sandwich with no bread?” “Yes, I want a sausage, not a sausage sandwich” “Why?” “Because I have already had all the bread I want to eat today and honestly...that white sponge-like bread you are using is disgusting, devoid of flavour, fibre and nutrition.”

Stunned silence is such a cliché, but stunned silence it was. I could see in his eyes I had gone too far, I was an obnoxious weirdo. So he turned. Addressing his co-workers, he rolled his eyes heavenward loudly and sarcastically repeated my request “YOU WANT A SAUSAGE SANDWICH WITH NO BREAD?” He thought he would embarrass me, that I would be named and shamed as a food freak. Poor deluded man. “YES! THAT’S WHAT I SAID! A SAUSAGE! NO BREAD!” It was a standoff.

At this moment I remembered the Country Mouse and the fact that we were supposed to be having a normal couple kind of morning, that is, one that involved going to a hardware shop and well, shopping. Instead the Country Mouse was shuffling from foot to foot wishing that he was anywhere but here.

Like many men, the Country Mouse hates conflict - any conflict anywhere, anytime. And a conflict involving a woman is the worst kind of conflict of all. Any sign of disagreement, dispute and, worst of all, raised voices flips him immediately to his wide-eyed kangaroo-caught-in-the-headlights look, the kind those poor marsupials give just before they know they are about to morph into road kill.

Despite my attempts to reassure the Country Mouse that conflict is normal, that those folk who can argue honestly and fairly are emotionally healthy, he remains unconvinced. To him conflict is Bad; ‘bad’ with a capital ‘b’. And here I was having a conflict:
(a)  with a stranger
(b)  at a charity fundraising stall
(c)  outside his beloved Bunnings

Worst of all it was actually (d), all of the above. This was not good. The morning was not going well. I could read his mind “City Mouse, move away from the sausage sizzle, move awaaaaaaay from the sausage sizzle.”

But just at that moment an unlikely saviour appeared in the form of one of my oldest friends, DJ. One of the pros of moving to the country is that the Newcastle-Hunter Valley area is already home to two of my closest friends, DJ being one of them. As an ex-Sydney woman now happily settled in the HV she is a source of wisdom on what I need to know to acclimatise to country living and how to wrestle with – and win - the cultural clashes I regularly encounter.

Until now the Country Mouse had not met DJ, and DJ had not met the Country Mouse. So when she appeared, at that most timely moment, the situation got complicated, there were now four of us, all having different conversations. Me doing the introductions between DJ and the Country Mouse, those two greeting each other, and me and the barbequing man having our ongoing bread-based standoff. DJ was curious “What’s going on?” After a brief explanation she laughed uproariously, put her arm around my shoulder and said “Oh Kimberly you are not in Sydney anymore”. And then she was gone chuckling all the way into Bunnings.

I tried to salvage some dignity “I didn’t really want a sausage anyway!” I announced to the Country Mouse, the barbequing man and the rest of the sausage sizzle queue. And with that we went, like a normal couple, to buy some kind of inexplicable hardware. The Country Mouse was smiling: the conflict was thankfully over, he was buying things in Bunnings and we were holding hands – peace and order had been restored to his world.

A happy ending? Not quite. About a month later I was at Bronte Beach early on a Sunday morning, swimming in the cool ocean and recovering from a 42 degree C day in Sydney. And what should I see in the park behind the beach, but Bronte Surf Life Saving Club’s regular Sunday fundraising barbeque? I headed straight for the sausages. There was a big crowd; the surf club was raking it in. One of the women running the stall announced: “Can everyone waiting for food form two queues please? People wanting a sausage only, no bread, queue to the left. People wanting a sausage on bread, queue to the right.”

There were enough people wanting sausages only to form their own queue! But wait. It got better. The queue for people wanting a sausage only was longer than the queue for people wanting a sausage and bread. I strutted through the park. “There were TWO queues! TWO QUEUES!! And the queue for no bread was longer than the queue for bread!!! Longer!!!!” It was a moment of triumph. I was victorious.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Travelling, travelling, travelling

I know every centimetre of the F3. If the RTA ever wants a consumer expert on what they classify as ‘Main Road 6003’, but we know as the Sydney-Newcastle freeway, or the F3 - I’m it. I know every bend, every pothole, and every tree at the side of every stretch of the road, exactly where the highway patrol hides out, at what point 702 ABC Sydney drops out and 1233 ABC Newcastle drops in (unfortunately not the same point).

I know how far along the F3 a ½ tank of petrol will take me, along with everywhere I can refill. I know every takeaway food outlet and I thank the culinary gods for Oliver’s at Wyong, which serves the only edible food on the whole freeway.

I’ve driven the F3 at sunrise, sunset and on one dramatic occasion between 1.00am and 4.00am sobbing all the way (definitely the hairiest trip of all). I used to find the trip exhilarating. “I’m going on an adventure! I’m going to see the Country Mouse! I am having a weekend away! F3 I love yooouuu!”

Wow the F3 even has its own online presence (impressive eh?): http://www.ozroads.com.au/NSW/Freeways/F3/f3.htm
With musical goddess Joni Mitchell providing my F3 soundtrack I would often sing as I drove, with ‘All I Want’ from Blue a particular favourite:
“I am travelling, travelling, travelling, travelling
Looking for something, what can it be...
And later in the song I used to max up the volume:
“I want to be strong I want to laugh along
I want to belong to the living
Alive, alive, I want to get up and jive.”
But as the weeks turned to months it became obvious that because the Country Mouse is also a Musical Mouse I would be travelling north far more than he would be travelling south. It was about then that my F3 love affair turned sour.
That formerly wonderful road, which had taken me on such great new adventures, soon became just another stretch of bitumen I knew all too well. The gloss had gone off our romance. The honeymoon was over.
A trip to the Country Mouse involves a drive through Sydney’s leafy northern suburbs to reach the F3 turnoff. This is an area of inevitable traffic holdups and is surely one of the most persistent traffic snarls in Sydney. At first I was irritated, but philosophical, at the bumper-to-bumper cars; after all, what was a little traffic jam? I would soon be on my fabulous F3 and doing that magical straight through run to Newcastle and the Hunter Valley.
But as my Friday nights turned into a regularly weekly car crawl through Lindfield-Turramurra-Roseville and surrounds, my mild irritation turned to a snarling growl and I cursed the barely moving traffic like a resentful wife. By the time I got to the F3 turnoff I was livid.
I used to calculate a good trip at about two and a half, or if the traffic was troublesome three hours tops. One Friday night I hit an all-time travelling low, clocking the trip at three hours and 40 minutes. As this unfortunate Friday night also happened to coincide with a BBQ I was supposed to attend, and therefore missed, the timing of this Worst Trip Ever couldn’t have been more difficult.
The answer? Public transport. I would go to the country by train. How civil! I would take music, books, magazines and my laptop, damn, I could even sleep the whole way up and back if I wanted to. The train was a cheap, clean and green alternative to my increasingly frustrating car trip. F3 - you’re dropped! It’s over between us.
My new travelling regime was perfect for a month or so, until my last public transport trip which, after starting well enough, soon disintegrated into farce. It began uneventfully; I left home and headed to my local bus stop to catch a train to Central station, it was 2.00pm and there was a bus due at 2.10pm. It didn’t show, nor did the following bus, or the bus after, or the bus after. Between 2.10pm and 3.10pm there should have been four buses cruising past, instead there were none.
I went home and rang a taxi, thinking I could make up time by going directly to Strathfield station. The problem? I didn’t know how to get there and obviously the taxi driver didn’t either. By the time I had done a tour of the greater Sydney area, only to find myself one suburb away from where I had begun – in the wrong direction of Strathfield - it was obvious the taxi driver was lost, or just blatantly ripping me off.
I exited the taxi, cursing the fare, the driver and the trip. I walked to the nearest train station and made it to Central, only to realise to my teeth-gnashing frustration that I had just missed the Newcastle train. Do I need to state the obvious – that country trains do not run regularly?
When I finally caught the next train, feeling like a broken woman, I couldn’t help myself; as my train passed through Summer Hill, I could almost see my house. No, no, no I told myself – do not look at your watch! I tried to resist, I did, but I couldn’t help it. It was exactly 5.00pm, in three hours I had gone everywhere, but nowhere. I was back where I began.