Letter From The Other Side from Cynthia.

Dear Del,

We have begun the downhill run to Christmas. I can feel the pace of social obligations speeding up and the need to find my Christmas card list from last year etc.

This year’s cards from the Lost Dogs Home are lovely as are the ones we buy from the Moon Bear rescue association so I have no excuse but to make myself sit down and begin to write in them.

Birds seem to have featured in our activities this week.

Last week we enjoyed a pre-Christmas lunch with a woman we have known ever since our swinging years. She swung far harder and in more psychedelic ways than we ever did and lived the life of a free spirit for years painting and posing as an artist’s model for many of them. For the last decade she has been one of the artists who exhibit at Monica’s gallery.

She is a little eccentric, but then most of us appear that way to others don’t we? Especially as we age and our quirky habits which were once subdued come more to the fore as we cast off some of our inhibitions.

Joy painted traditional landscapes or portraits for a long time. As a younger woman, she was a tall, willowy, titian haired beauty who just needed to touch the arm of a potential buyer with the tips of her elegant fingers and his wallet or cheque book would magically appear from his pocket.

Please don’t misunderstand me, she is an excellent painter and has won many art show competitions and awards and has been successful enough with her work to have been a professional artist all her life.

Sadly as taste in art changed, the money began to slow down for traditional art and she turned to painting abstract and modern work.

Now, in her semi retirement she has returned to painting nature studies, life drawings-nudes-, and wildlife as well as teaching.

While travelling to a town not far away from her home, she noticed a dead magpie beside the road. It had not been long since the poor creature had been hit by a passing car so she stopped to pick it up and placed it carefully on a towel on the back seat of her car. It would help her with a watercolour bird study she was intending to paint.

When she arrived home she took the feathered carcass inside, wrapped it carefully in plastic film wrap and placed it on a plate in her fridge to keep fresh for the following day when she could take it out to begin painting.

Her family were due to arrive for a meal that evening so she washed her hands and began preparing a fresh salad. Her daughter and the children walked in while she was doing this and after the greetings etc asked what they were going to have with the salad.

“Oh I have a cold chicken in fridge’; she answered absentmindedly forgetting to warn them about the wrapped magpie. ‘Would you take it out please?’

The resulting screams of ‘Yuck…Yuck!!!’ which came from her family gave her such a start.

As she told us about her memory slip, she was quite mortified the grand-children not only thought she was of the belief the magpie was a chicken but that she had also forgotten she had the tiny carcass of a fairy wren on a saucer in there as well.

She laughed and her eyes shone with all their old mischief as she told us her tale and wondered what they would have thought if they had come the day earlier and met and seen the young, muscular man who had been posing languorously on her living room couch for her small life drawing class.

Sometimes, those closest to us don’t really know us very well do they Del?

The other bird I shall call the one who flew over the handlebars.

As you know Teddy enjoys riding his bike and when not accompanied by someone as fit as he is will venture far and wide around the countryside on the various bike trails.

Last week he left home with the intention of travelling about thirty kilometres to the peninsular. The trail follows the old rail route and at this stage still has a gravel surface.

He returned home earlier than I had expected with blood down his legs and one arm and small bits of skin hanging off, a broken watch, dented helmet and bruised ribs.

He said that when he was about two thirds of the way along, as he passed one of the golf courses, he rested back on the seat and relaxed wondering if he could ride without his hands on the handlebars.

As he flew over the handlebars after his front wheel hit a big stone, he knew he couldn’t.

Then while he lay dazed and wondering how badly he was hurt he found he was under attack. A pair of wattle birds were concerned Teddy was a threat to their chick which was foraging about in the long grass not far from him. The adults bombarded him for some time while he gradually regained his senses and feet and prepared to set off once more on the bicycle. A golfer who must have witnessed his downfall and not bothered to come and help but was leaning against the wire strand fence said unsympathetically.

‘You’ve made a mess of yourself haven’t you mate? Should take up golf, it’s safer.’

Teddy has been a little quiet these last few days because his ribs are too painful to indulge in any heavy breathing, laughing, choking on food etc.

Many times over the years I have asked him not to ride to places I can’t get the car into to rescue him, but I doubt he will change the habits of a lifetime. It may be too much of a shock for me if he did.

I must return to writing my Christmas cards also, there is another bird I have to think about which will be waiting at the butcher’s shop for me.

Your reluctantly festive ‘flower child’ friend’

Cynthia.