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!"

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.

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.