Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Cluckingham Palace

Love is a funny thing. Who would have ever thought that the Country Mouse would’ve fallen in love with four new females? Yet as 2012 draws to a close the mouse house’s new inhabitants, four Isa Brown chickens, have captured his heart and his imagination.

But this chicken love dance almost ended before it began when we hit a stumbling block – what were we going to call our feathery fowls? Yes, naming our new friends proved an interesting exercise in compromise. For weeks I was on high rotation with the same simple question, “We get to name two each. What do you want to call yours?”

The Country Mouse was adamant, “K and F-n-C”

My vision of the CM calling across the backyard “F-n-C!”, “F-n-C!” to some poor bird was enough for the Court (me) to immediately dismiss his suggestion. I figured he’d been having a Rake-ish moment, given that he is a recent and enthusiastic convert to the antics of ABC’S wicked criminal defence barrister Cleaver Greene.

After a series of other unsuitable names were proposed by him - Henny Penny and Chicken Nugget anyone? - I threatened to withdraw his naming rights altogether, so he took the position that he would have to see them in the feather so to speak before he could do any naming. Soon after they arrived, he dutifully watched them for signs of individuality and personality and he settled on ‘Shaker’ (shake a tail feather) and ‘Windy’ (wind beneath her wings) who soon morphed into Wendy.

Of course my naming suggestions were completely brilliant, just not to him. ‘Crosby’, ‘Stills’, ‘Nash’ and ‘Young’ was dismissed with a dry “they are girls”. My other suggestion, that they be called after girls immortalised in song titles: Peggy Sue, Sweet Caroline, Barbara Ann and Sharona (I fancied picking up a lovely hen and serenading her with “My, my, myyyyy Sharona!”) was also vetoed. He supported ‘Dixie’ (the obvious Dixie Chicks) and given that I love the name ‘Clementine’, (which he doesn’t) he generously agreed to this, although she’s now developed the classic Aussie moniker ‘Clemmy’.

The local Council advised we could have up to ten chooks, but no roosters and we were to promise to consult our neighbours in advance. One set of neighbours provided an eye-popping response to the news that chickens were moving in with Mrs Next Door announcing with a cheerful big smile, “Oh I hope our dog doesn’t kill your chickens!” Right on cue their snarling little terrier looked up and gave its distinctive teeth-baring growl. I scowled back giving it my best death-stare look.

The Country Mouse created a wonderful chook motel, with an adjoining weather and vermin-proof run complete with a proper roof, a range of perches and four separate laying boxes, so that the hens could feel very cosmopolitan while doing their egg laying in their own private studio apartments.

The backyard now echoes to ‘chooook ,chooook ,chooook’ (that’s us, not the chooks) and they answer back with the same call, with a quirky variation if we are slow letting them out in the  morning to do their daily free ranging. Lining up at the gate they announce their displeasure with ‘oooo-uuuu-tttt!’

‘The girls’, as we call them, are more formally known as Gallus gallus domesticus and they are no slackers; one week after arriving in their new home we got our first tiny egg and on 3 December we had our first two-egg day - our hen pen has now become an egg shed.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Public transport tales

Frustrated at the non-appearance of my Newcastle dream job (fabulous new Hunter-based career where are you??) I’ve been thinking laterally and decided that I am now perfectly placed to move sideways and take on a new professional life as a public transport consultant.

Never in my life did I contemplate that I would spend so much time in transit, but now that I do I am the keenest observer of what is right and wrong with the buses and trains of Sydney and the Hunter. I am the consumer who needs to sit on the boards of Cityrail and Sydney Buses.

Spending so much time travelling has also allowed me to develop a new fashion-related game I call ‘Defy the Weather’; it’s somewhat like the children’s lookout game ‘I Spy’. It started last year when I started noticing people who, to my fascination, had totally thumbed their nose at the weather.

There were men in shorts on the coldest days of winter, women in July wearing summer dresses and grasping thin cardigans around them with a frigid desperation, their bare legs shivering. At what point did these people not notice it was mid-winter?

In the last couple of weeks my favourite ‘Defy the Weather’ contestant was a woman I spotted on one of Sydney’s rare scorchers, a day when the temperature soared past 30 degrees. Throw in dripping humidity and you get the picture. But there she was denim shorts (check), singlet top (check) and knee-high grey ugg boots (say what?) I felt anxious just looking at her calves and feet encased in all that sheepskin.

‘Defy the Weather’ can be played anywhere, but public transport gives you such a large number of potential game winners it’s the games natural home. The rules are simple:

  1. Assess the weather
  2. Define the worst thing(s) to be wearing for those conditions
  3. Go find the person wearing it
Another form of can’t-take-your-eyes-off-it public transport entertainment is watching the people who use the trains as their own personal bathroom. This is for some reason doesn’t seem to happen on buses, or not that I have observed. I am guilty of using my Sydney-Hunter-Sydney train time to pluck my eyebrows, do a manicure (and a pedicure if the train carriage is almost empty), but some people go the whole hog.

I see lots of women expertly doing makeup despite the rocking of the train, but my favourite ‘train as personal bathroom’ moment was a male one. A businessman, who carefully unpacked his battery-packed electric razor from his briefcase, had his morning shave and calmly folded up his shaving gear and packed it away. Getting out a moist towel to wipe his face, he finished with a splash of cologne and was perfectly poised to leave the train just as it pulled into his station. Now there is someone who knows about time management.

Another great thing about public transport is the opportunity it gives you to blatantly listen in to other people’s conversations; it’s the supreme snoop fest.

My overheard conversations have ranged from hair-raising horror stories to dialogue which would slay any stand-up comedian. It has included the world’s worst parenting threat (on the 428 bus), mother to little girl: “You’ve been so bad that when we get home the police are going to take you away”. On hearing this news the small child started screaming, bringing a new round of extraordinary threats from her mother.

Eastern Suburbs buses provide an international demographic for this snoop fest. Recently a Canadian was explaining to his compatriots that “right here” (i.e. at the five ways intersection at Paddington) was where “all the homosexuals of Sydney live”. “Ooooohhhh” sighed the Canadians pressing their faces to the bus window only to observe, no doubt to their disappointment, the mostly heterosexual upper middle class of Paddo going about their deli shopping and heading into the decidedly straight Royal Oak Hotel for a drink.

International backpackers regularly re-enforce racial stereotypes, which is disconcerting but undeniable. European males flirt and charm like it’s their birthright. Recently I watched as a young Italian train traveller slid up to a group of girls, sitting himself down in the middle of them and laying it on til they were soon giggling and cooing. A group of young Anglo males watched with undisguised irritation. For well over an hour they had been eyeing off the girls, daring each other to make the first move, yet the solo Italian backpacker with his expert eye came, saw and conquered making himself the centre of their attention within two stops of getting on the train.  

This year’s favourite overheard public transport conversation (so far) goes to a trio I’ll call Sean, Sean’s friend and Miss Finland.  Sean was an Irish backpacker, accompanied by an unnamed male friend (also Irish) and Miss Finland was the pretty Nordic princess in Sean’s sights on the 380 bus. Sean’s friend was uncomplicated, he was hungry - really hungry - and his sole focus was when, where and how quickly they were going to eat.

They were sitting behind me and first caught my attention when Miss Finland was asking Sean what sports he played. He eagerly explained ‘hurling’ which Wikipedia defines deftly as ‘an outdoor team game of Gaelic prehistoric origins and played for at least 3,000 years and thought to be the world’s fastest field team game and one of Ireland’s native games.’

Miss Finland heard ‘curling’ and nodded enthusiastically. “Yar! Curling!” Helpfully Wikipedia defines this as ‘a sport in which players slide stones across a sheet of ice towards a target area. It is related to bowls. Two teams take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones across the ice toward a target.’

There was a ‘Hurling? No…curling’ and ‘Curling? No…hurling’ misunderstanding which I could completely understand. To my English language only ears Finnish is a fiendishly impenetrable language and Finnish-accented English is really something to hear. Between Sean’s Irish brogue and Miss Finland’s limited English they were really doing it tough, but chemistry knows no linguistic boundaries and I admired their dogged persistence to find some common ground.

But Sean’s friend wanted none of it. “Sean” he pleaded “When are we going to get something to eat?” Sean ignored him. And so the bus ride, and Sean’s budding romanced, was punctuated by his friend’s increasingly desperate hunger pains. “Sean, look that pub has a bistro”. “Can we get off here Sean? That pizza place is still open”. “Sean, I’m dying of hunger”. But Sean remained unmoved; he was focused on Miss Finland.

Sean’s friend could stand it no more and wailed my favourite overheard line of 2012.

“Awww Sean……..I’m so hungry I could eat a toddler!”








Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Bug world

Being in the country means being close to nature and that ‘closeness’ is an undiscriminating place. As the day turns to dusk I rejoice at the sound of kookaburras, but curse the bugs which buzz, bite and generally interact with me without my consent.

But as visionary nature writer Rachel Carson explained exactly 50 years ago bugs are the food of birds, so no bugs = no birds. Given this equation I try to maintain my equilibrium as I am bothered by these flying, swarming and slithering pests. But there’s a limit to tolerance and my forbearance in the face of incessant creepy-crawlies has now come to an end.

The Country Mouse’s house is a breeding centre for Daddy Longlegs spiders. I muse…is this because the CM is a daddy with long legs? Their webs decorate every corner of every room and no matter how determinedly I vacuum them away a replacement spider in a replacement web quickly arrives mocking “We’re baaaack!” Is there some inexhaustible well of these creatures in the lower Hunter Valley?

Last weekend spread-eagled in the hallway was the Elle Macpherson of Daddy Longlegs, a creature with impossibly lengthy appendages. I made the CM come and inspect it, but the CM was his usual unflappable self, simply squashing the supermodel spider between two fingers (in unison: “Eeewww”) and depositing its dead body in the front garden.

At the Mouse House I’ve had mozzies the size of magpies land on me and watched in a kind of warped fascination as clouds of insects descend at dusk. “Why are there so many bugs?” I regularly squeal to which the Country Mouse replies with the self-evident “You’re in the country”.

In my relentless war on these pests I have armed myself with citronella anti-bug candles, plug-in mozzie zappers and an environmentally-friendly insect catching jar. I pleaded for the CM to buy a great bug system I found at Bunnings, but despite this device having two things going for it – one, that it was a practical present and two, that it was in the CM’s favourite shopping destination he balked at spending so much money purely on insect eradication.

All these encounters have now paled into nothingness after my recent insect encounter, my own horror Room 101 moment. (For those who are not Orwell fans Room 101 is a torture chamber in George Orwell’s novel 1984, a place where The Party subjects a prisoner to whatever is their own worst nightmare, fear or phobia)

Having a shower last weekend and I casually picked up an old shampoo bottle on the floor. To my horror a huge Huntsman spider had taken up residence on the other side and, being disturbed, quickly scuttled up the bottle, its eight thick black hairy legs and huge body speeding toward my hand and forearm. I was naked and vulnerable, trapped in a glass box and it was coming closer, soon it hideous legs would be in contact with my bare hand, then up my arm and heading toward my face. I was in Room 101.

I felt the scream start in my diaphragm and travel through my body. Ripping open the shower screen, I threw the shampoo bottle, as it flew through the air the spider held firm riding the spinning bottle like some kind of evil skateboarder. In a blur of movement the CM arrived just as I started a hyperventilating chant:

“SPIDER-SPIDER-SPIDER-KILL-IT-KILL-IT-KILL-IT!!”

From my glass cubicle I watched as the CM jumped around the room chasing the monster Huntsman (are there any other kind?) armed only with an empty shampoo bottle. My hero! Soon there was a satisfying thump, thump as the CM beat the Huntsman’s sorry arse into the tiled bathroom floor:
 
IS-IT-DEAD-IS-IT-DEAD-IS-IT-DEAD??”

“Yes” he replied “and deaf”.


Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The great beach search: a winner!

It’s almost the official end of summer, a seasonal designation the Country Mouse and I refuse to acknowledge, so much so that we are going north for Easter, anything to prolong our sun exposure. As a couple with sand in our souls we go screaming and kicking into winter.

But before this summer is wrapped there has been a big job to put to bed. For the past 18 months I have been conducting a beach search of the Hunter, knowing that I couldn’t settle into my new home until I had a short list of beaches to call my own and a secret wish to find that special one above all others.

Despite this sad La Nina summer the CM and I have remained upbeat, heading ocean ward whenever it was possible. In my quest we have travelled north to Nelson Bays’ beaches, with my sister swearing by Zenith Beach and the CM raving over an old favourite Berubi Point. We went south to Caves Beach and I oohhed and aahhed over its sea caves promising pirates and smuggled treasure.

Nearer to Newcastle we had a dramatic visit to Redhead, our planned beach walk coinciding with a shark attack on a local surfer. I was fascinated by the beach’s rust-coloured cliffs and one of its most identifiable features, the old wooden lifeguard tower – ironically also the shark lookout – perched on a rock shelf.

So I am going to take this (wet, unbeachy) Leap Day in this Leap Year to announce that the verdict is in and frankly I’m relieved. Although I’ve loved the chase it’s good to be settled, to find The One and breathe a salty sigh of relief.

With the summer sun setting behind the winner’s dais the sash has been handed to… Dudley Beach for its unspoiled beauty, its surfing doggies, undesignated nudity and its air of a remote, almost private, paradise. Which it is.

Monday, February 27, 2012

The Circle Game

As my life heads off on another circuitous path, I’m watching with intrigue those people who live lives of regularity, routine and order.

One of the Country Mouse’s musical companions eats dinner in the same place, at the same time every night. The CM raises his eyebrows at this, seeing it as a sign of his rigidity and I agree, but secretly I am fascinated. How did he create such a tidy, ordered world? I barely know where I will be eating my next meal; let alone what it will be.

My life has never followed a straight line, or a gently curving arc, not even the predictability of a zigzag. It’s been more like a series of crazy spirals which careered off at right angles; circled back on themselves and either crashed in a spectacular blaze or shot off into the sky as a series of multi-coloured fireworks.
Well one of those wild curve balls is has just been thrown my way (again).

After living at Dulwich Hill since late 1997 I’ve said goodbye to the Inner West. I cried that my next move wasn’t north to the Mouse House (as I had planned), but the consolation is the utter absurdity that, despite my precarious financial situation, I am now a denizen of the Eastern Suburbs. And not just anywhere in the East, but the suburb which in 2008 the Sydney Morning Herald deemed to be the city’s best and which beat the other 640 contenders - Bronte.

It was given the gong by the paper’s judges for its great beach, vibrant cafes, good primary school, proximity to the city and all-round ‘liveability’. Soon after a local real estate agent praised the SMH competition and Bronte’s win because “it put another zero on the end of the suburb’s property prices”.

I am now living with The Swimmers, and they are family no less. The glory of the nearby ocean and my new fitness regime involving the possibility of early morning or late afternoon swims (or both), beach walks and seaside yoga classes is insane. This morning as I sat on a headland before work drinking coffee and watching the Tamarama surfers I had to laugh – my life, is anyone else’s this mad?

A month ago I was doing the hideous housing rounds, a situation so grim and joyless that my only relief from the horror of it all was my mate Mark who lives in a matchbox apartment with walls so thin he can hear his neighbour relieving himself in the bathroom next door.

He recently did Saturday real estate hell, i.e. viewing properties to rent in Sydney, and he had me whooping out loud with his description of viewing an apartment so small, with a hallway so narrow, that he confronted the agent with “If I had an erection I couldn’t turn sideways in this place”.

Shortly afterward I read a report confirming that it is official, Australia, and specifically Sydney’s, housing is ‘severely unaffordable’, indeed, second only to Hong Kong in the severity of its unaffordability. This grim statistic gave me dark comfort in some black hours - it wasn’t just me facing a housing nightmare.

And then out of left field came Bronte; and I’m back from the edge. The next chapter of my life is looking like an epic firework and I’m spinning, Catherine Wheeling, heading for the stars.

Monday, February 6, 2012

The other side

What do you do when life is too difficult, when so much has been thrown at you that your resources are exhausted and the only way out is to see your misfortune as part of some greater (at least benign, hopefully meaningful) plan?

One of my strategies is to opt out and consult the other side, much to the Country Mouse’s incredulity. Yep, off I go to my clairvoyant, an angel-eyed English woman whose spookily accurate predictions have given me so much comfort since my first visit in late 2009 I make seeing her an annual present to myself.
At my first reading The Clairvoyant looked me straight in the eye, smiled broadly and said “a big love is coming your way”. Whoa! Three months later the Country Mouse, that Big Love, came crashing into my world. I was converted; so converted that I started converting others.

Last year it was the turn of the Culinary Goddess to get ‘psyched’. You might remember her from a post almost a year ago, she is the Good Samaritan who took me in when I needed it most, the circumstances of which were so traumatic I choose to forget them, and in whose Inner West home I roost during my Sydney working week.

On the Culinary Goddess’s last birthday she might have been anticipating a dinner out, or a movie, a book or a gift voucher – nooooooo – I knew what she really needed was The Clairvoyant. The CG had been on a cosmic see-saw of loss and love the previous 12 months and I’d watched sadly from the sidelines as she dealt with huge grief and cheered loudly when she was blessed with great love. The Clairvoyant came through for her delivering messages which were precise, emotionally confronting, but balanced. Her future was looking good.

I decided to piggy-back on her birthday reading and get an early annual one of my own; I needed a fix from the other side. My reading was full of Hunter hope, clear descriptions of the great job I was going to get and of the future happiness I was going to have. And the timeframe for all this was… summer. I left elated. Now in the final stretch of this pseudo summer my mood is as grey and wet as the skies. The job hasn’t eventuated. And I’m about to move sideways in Sydney instead of north to the Promised Land. Has The Clairvoyant lost her touch? I’m done for.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Chantel and me

Do you know those strange ‘my life as a percentage’ statistics?  The ones which tell you that on your death bed you will have spent a third of your life asleep and another frightening percentage watching bad TV? Of course for women there will be one unique entry, the amount of time spent in toilet queues just waiting to pee.

When my final tally comes in it will include a hefty transport percentage, the amount of time I’ve spent commuting north. Then south. Then north again. I don’t want to know how much bitumen on the F3 I’ve worn out, or how many hours I’ve stared blankly watching (yet again) the Hawkesbury River and other scenic attractions on the Sydney-Newcastle-Hunter train line.

The only thing which makes this regular long commute bearable (other than my delight at seeing the Country Mouse waiting at Broadmeadow station at the end of the journey) is that public transport remains, as ever, a source of unique entertainment. Ever wondered where Chris Lilley dreamed up those Angry Boys, Summer Heights High, We Can Be Heroes characters? He travelled by train; a lot. You couldn’t invent the people you encounter, regularly, on public transport. Right now as I am writing this two young (very young) gay men nearby are debating how many men you can sleep with before you become ‘a male slut’ and how having sex with anyone 30 years or older would be like ‘screwing a dead man’.

But my favourite fellow traveller of all time was Chantel the junkie, who enlivened my trip north one day with her unmitigated chutzpah and made me wish I was a documentary filmmaker so I could have captured her on celluloid. Chantel was accompanied for part of her journey by a male companion whose name I never determined, but whose loud whine “SHAAAAN-TEELLL” announced her repeatedly to the rest of the carriage.

Chantel was a vision in pink. From her stretched sweatshirt to her lurid Little Mermaid Disney backpack and her shabby faded suitcase, her clothes were a fascinating amalgam of odd items, but all solidly colour co-ordinated in every fathomable (and unfathomable) shade of pink. My favourite item was her pink rubber thongs which, given that it was a cold day, she had sensibly paired with matching thick woollen socks. 

She first caught my attention when she and her companion began a too loud conversation about their latest soon-to-start rehab stint at Jarrah House in Little Bay. As Chantel said to her fella it was “her last chance” it was rehab or “I’m goin’ inside this time”. Chantel looked stressed; nervously pacing the train’s corridor she explained to her companion (and because of the conversation’s volume the rest of the carriage) that she had to get to Jarrah House before 5.00pm, or she would miss admittance. It was mid-morning and I could see Chantel had a problem - she was heading north instead of south.

After trying unsuccessfully to make a call on her mobile (pink, naturally) and realising she was out of credit she cast her expert eye around for a likely sympathiser, settling on a nervous-looking Asian businessman. She pleaded. She needed to ring her mother, just make one quick call – PUH-LEESE could he lend her his phone? How could he say no? Handing it over Chantel settled down to make her call. Well actually… calls.

When her mother wasn’t home she rang her grandmother and then a series of men all whom she addressed all by their first name and the generic surname ‘Mate’ (“Warren.... mate”, “Barry...mate”) urging them, unsuccessfully, to meet her at Woy Woy station. Yes, she assured them she did have money. After she had racked up about six or more calls the phone owner apologetically asked for his phone back, explaining that he was so sorry to ask but he had to get off at the next station.  

Chantel was affronted, “but I have to ring me kids” she explained as she launched into another series of phone calls, none of which seemed to be to children. After finally lining up someone  to meet her at the Central Coast station – “Dave....mate” I think it was – she most reluctantly returned the phone.

A thirsty Chantel then spied a woman nearby with a bottle of Coke. “Luuuuuvvvv could I just have a little sip?” she begged. The Coke’s owner reluctantly handed it over and Chantel almost emptied the bottle, apologising “sorry luuuvvv...”. She was really dry she explained, pointing to her throat.

Soon she was on the move again, pacing the aisle. Her eyes settled on my just opened snack pack and I realised that scrawny Chantel looked really hungry and that we were about to have our own one-on-one moment. I knew that if her powers of persuasion were directed at me I too would succumb to her saucer-sized eyes and sad pleas.

Before I had the option, or not, of sharing morning tea with Chantel the Woy Woy station sign appeared and she gave a squeal. Scooping up her luggage she was suddenly gone, a rose-coloured blur of movement on an otherwise colourless train trip. Dear Chantel, I hope you made it to rehab - bless you and good luck.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Hoop of hope

My latest plan to move permanently to the Hunter was dashed just before Christmas giving a bitter sweet edge to the end of 2011. It was tears before bedtime one night as I cried on the Country Mouse’s shoulder and threw myself a fully fledged pity party. It was hard to face the New Year celebrations knowing that at the stroke of midnight last year I vowed that the dawn of 2012 would see me a fully-fledged, card-carrying Hunter resident.

Mercifully my equilibrium had been restored before the clock struck 12 on the last day of the year, so I could truly toast the New Year without bittness and look forward to everything it would bring into my life. I was philosophical about my situation, full of hope for the year ahead and buried my residual disappointment in a joyful nine-day summer holiday with the CM.

But on my first day back at work in Sydney I found that I hadn’t buried that disappointment deep enough and it oozed to the surface and ran it foul odour all over my brand new year. Reality check: I was going to be working in Sydney for the foreseeable future, commuting for the foreseeable future and due to upcoming major renovations at the Domestic Goddess’s castle I now had to find a new Sydney abode as well. My mood and my emotions went rapidly south.

At lunchtime I took my sad self to the healing walls of Westfield Bondi Junction. As though led there by some benevolent shopping gods I soon found one of my favourite shops, Lulu Lemon Athletica, and got lost in its ambience. One of the many things I love about this shop is its superb service. I had barely made it to the complimentary rehydration station than a genuinely concerned Lulu Lemon staffer asked if I was OK. She meant it. So I told her, “You know I feel really down.”

“I find”, she said earnestly, “that when I feel like that hooping really helps. Do you want to hula hoop? We can do it together.” Delighted? I was beyond delighted. She appeared with two hoops, cleared a space in the shop and we started to swing, she in her designer yoga wear and me in my ridiculous business skirt and heels. I hadn’t hula hooped since I was a kid; I closed my eyes and I was on the cement driveway of my childhood home, my orange plastic hoop whirling around me. (Hula hoops were strictly forbidden inside, as was another childhood favourite, the pogo stick, another late 1950s classic surely due for a revival).

I started feeling heady, then slightly dizzy and then euphoric - the oxygen rush and the hoop were doing their magic. After a couple of minutes I was transformed. I left the shop laughing and full of gratitude - for the kindness of the staffer, the recovered childhood memory and the sheer physical buzz of hooping. A hoop of hope indeed.