Letter From The Other Side.

It is possible to become an unexpected expense for your friends when you are a writer.

Dear Del,

As you know I have my stories read on a few radio stations as well as your own. It has unexpected results which until I received a telephone call from a friend last week I have never dreamt would be possible.

The phone bleeped for attention and as soon as I answered it her voice bellowed out at me, ‘You cost me a fine yesterday!’

Rapidly my mind went through my actions of the day before and nothing leapt from my short term memory bank which I considered could have caused anyone a problem, especially a fine. I hadn’t left the house or even spoken to anyone except Teddy all day.

Taking a deep breath I answered, ‘I’m at a loss Fiona, how on earth could I have had you fined yesterday?’
‘Well,’ she continued in full flight as only she is capable of doing. ‘I was on my way home from work and turned the radio on in the car. There was a woman’s voice speaking and I thought ‘I know that voice, that’s Cynthia speaking. What on earth is she doing on the radio?
I turned up the volume and began to listen. You were reading the Christmas story they play every year on the local station. I hadn’t heard it before.
I must say it really got me in and I became very interested wanting to know how it was going to end.

When it was almost at the end, something attracted my attention in my rear vision mirror. To my dismay, there behind me was a big four wheel drive police car with lights going like a Myer’s window display and then of course the siren frightened the life out of me. I glanced down at my speed and to my horror I was fifteen kilometres over the speed limit. I pulled over to the side of the road all of a dither which increased when I saw the giant of a policeman getting out of the vehicle. He looked the size of a walking wheat silo. My palms became all sweaty as I lowered the window. Thinking I could maybe talk him around, I explained to the big impassive face peering in at me that I had been listening to my friend on the radio and hadn’t realized I was going quite so quickly.

You see I thought maybe mentioning you being on the radio might impress him and make him think I had friends with some sort of influence. Well it didn’t. He wasn’t the least bit impressed and gave me quite a lecture about concentrating on my driving and not on the radio etc, etc. He made me feel about seven years old to be truthful.

Then he fined me two hundred and forty dollars and took three demerit points off my licence. After turning me into a quivering lump, he rolled back to his car to drive off waving with his great cottage loaf hand in such a friendly way one would have thought he had just successfully saved a damsel in distress.

I sat where I had pulled over for a little while until I stopped feeling shaky and as though my third grade teacher had just chastised me in front of my friends. I can tell you Cynthia my weakness for men in uniform took quite a pounding and to make matters worse I now have to watch for the postman like a hawk to stop Tom (her husband) from getting to the notice of the fine in the mail before I do. He’d never let me forget it and I’d have no ammunition left in my arguments when I want him to slow down when he is driving.
By the time I had started the car again and turned the radio back on you had finished telling the story.’

I held the phone having listened to her tale of woe and wondered what on earth I was supposed to say. Although it was silly of me, I felt guilty and stumbled out an apology.
‘Oh don’t apologize’ she said ‘It wasn’t your fault. It was mine I should have pulled over to listen.’

Relieved I laughed and thanked her for not being cross.
‘Oh I’m cross, but not with you, I’m cross with myself.’
I understood her feelings but what did she expect me to do, pay half her fine?
I suggested this because the guilt lingered on. After all it had been my story which caused the problem.
‘Don’t be daft you silly woman’ she yelled loudly. ‘Just tell me how it ends or else I’ll have to listen again next Christmas and maybe get another fine!’

Writing has some peculiar outcomes doesn’t it Del?
Our parish market is on next week. I had thought of selling a few of my C.D’s with narrations of my stories but I think I’ll make dog biscuits instead.
Hopefully they won’t cause problems. If the dogs don’t like them they will just bury them and won’t ring me up to complain.
Cheers from your expensive ‘flower child friend’
Cynthia.

The Titanic

Letter From The Other Side; from Cynthia


Dear Del,

Have I told you Teddy is making a canoe?

I think it is an Inuit canoe design. Of course to be genuine it should be covered with seal skin or some type of animal skin but as Teddy is loath to skin anything roaming our hills and I would definitely do the same to him if he attempted it, he is using canvas which has been made waterproof by some sort of foul smelling substance.

I think most of the neighbourhood knows he is manufacturing something because there have been thick clouds of wood chips and dust and a cacophony of sawing and sanding sounds issuing from the garage for weeks. The size of the construction has now banished our cars to the driveway.

I have, up until a few days ago been referring to it as the Titanic, but now the ribs etc are being fixed in place and the shape is showing up I think it would be more suitable if I purchased him a fur hat, put some cow horns on it and allow him to invade England.

I know England has already been invaded but the inhabitants are a little friendlier now and seem to welcome back home grown eccentrics to their shores. Also, he really needs to go somewhere he recognizes because his map reading skills leave a lot to be desired.

I’m not at all surprised many of the English explorers who trekked across Australia trying to find various things, such as the other side and inland seas etc, became lost and died. If they were all as bad at finding their way in unfamiliar places as Teddy seems to be then it amazes me so many succeeded at all.
I have to admit that my family folk lore places one of the confused explorers on our family tree. But after reading biographies written about him, he seemed to have survived his treks and grew old enough to become very grand in his own opinion, a thorough snob and racist. Not a person to be proud of really.

Teddy’s idea of a short-cut has often led us into out-of-the-way quagmires and about two hours later for an appointment or a meeting than we would have been if we had stuck to the route on the map. Of course we have also seen some of the country that very few other people have seen and shocked the residents of villages with barely a handful of inhabitants wandering along their tiny streets by stopping to buy exorbitantly priced fuel from a one pump garage for people who are desperate to have enough in their fuel tanks in order to get somewhere else.

I’m quite convinced that had Teddy set out to find the other side of the country on his own when he first arrived in Australia he would probably be still making his circuitous way there forty years later.

As far as the canoe is concerned he has promised me he will take a river canoeing course to gain some knowledge from someone who knows what they are doing before he takes the dowel, rope and canvas construction into a lake or river.

Our former neighbour who seems to have the same odd wish to risk his life has said he wants to be on the vessel for the launching. I shall hope it is a warm day for the rescue team that will no doubt have to follow them into the water.
I suspect our neighbour’s wife will have much the same opinion and voice it to her spouse as I will when they arrive back drenched to the skin.

In the mean time the constructions go ahead interspersed by the slowly improving sounds issuing from the Indian flute.

I sometimes wonder just what genes he carries in his cells that he finds it difficult to become engrossed in something mundane or just a little boring.

He has just been in to complain that the material he is making the ribs from is not as good as he had hoped for because they keep breaking when he tries to bend them.
I reminded him men have since Adam had his rib used to make Eve, if we are to believe the stories, complained about the problems their ribs caused them and it is unlikely to change.

I am going for some sort of nuclear medicine scan test next week which will be handy if it makes me glow in the dark for Halloween. It will save having to think of anything to do to frighten any unexpected ghouls I may come across.

Do you plan any ghoulish things for yourself Del?

Love from your not so spooky ‘flower child’ friend,
Cynthia.

Spring and the Dogwoods Flower.

Letter From The Other Side; from Cynthia

Dear Del,

There was something I saw this week but I’m not sure what it was.

Perhaps an explanation is in order here.

We have a big new supermarket in our village. It was not welcomed by many of the small businesses or the population but their protests were swept away by the powers that decide such changes and of course the supermarket was built.

True to many of the fears voiced, there have been butchers close, greengrocers close and the hardware store and other variety stores run by small business people are struggling to survive as the tourists who keep the town ticking over, unwittingly help strangle the economy by using the giant supermarket they are familiar with in the city.

Many of the local people also enter its doors to buy products they have not been able to previously purchase without travelling some distance. Some go in initially out of curiosity, like mice approaching the cheese in a trap and soon become beguiled by the enormous range and ease of buying everything they need under one roof. Soon it becomes a habit and they remain in its clutches..

I too was in there picking up some products I would have had to travel some distance to purchase so I admit to not being immune.

It was here while perusing the vast variety of cheeses that I saw a young mother who was, I think, in the store for the first time.

Many people here have not enjoyed sophisticated shopping experiences and come into the town from extremely small settlements where they recognise and can put a name to every face they see.

What I watched was this young woman leaving her trolley in the middle of the isle with her hand bag open for passers by to peer into. She walked the entire length of the isle to pick up something she had already passed.

I stood watching partly from concern because it would be an unthinkable act in the suburbs where one clutches one’s handbag tightly under an arm having been warned by signs posted everywhere about shoplifters and the dangers of leaving goods and handbags unattended.

I worried for her belongings wondering why she would just walk off. Was it forgetfulness, a lack of experience in shopping in the supermarket situation, a lack of intelligence, a naive trust in everyone about her?

When I came home I kept thinking about what I had seen. A simple silly act you may say, but not really when you begin to think about it.

To me it is something that would have been accepted as normal years ago because we did trust one another more and people did respect other people’s belongings and property more.

It is a pleasure to think there are still some who have that attitude but I wonder how long it will be before this girl loses her trust in others and in what nasty way it will happen.

The other thing that struck me was that despite the opportunity that any practiced and quick witted thief would have taken of the goodies which could have been so easily been snatched because of her negligence, not one person looked or even gave any indication of noticing the open handbag or showed any inclination of even thinking about removing a purse or mobile phone from it.

So while I initially thought about the young woman and hope she will continue for a long time to feel so safe and trusting, I also began to appreciate the other shoppers in the store.

It is good to see little things sometimes, they often say a great deal about people and places.

Sometimes the small things we see disappoint and sadden us but it is very uplifting to see the pleasant and good.

What were the lyrics the Beatles sang?

‘What the world needs now is love, sweet love.’

There is quite a deal out there, we just have to see more of it.

From your ‘flower child’ friend

Cynthia

Letter From The Other Side; from Cynthia

Dear Del,
Trying to do a kind deed can lead one into all sorts of difficulties Teddy discovered this week.

I think I have said previously that he is quite deaf. Well, to be really honest he is very deaf and it results in some most peculiar conversations in our house at times that can then accelerate into robust debates and a state of huffiness on one side or the other between us.
For instance last week on a day we were walking about in light clothing because of the mild weather, I asked him as he walked up to our study to turn on my printer.

An hour later when I eventually had time to go to my computer in the study I entered to find the printer not on as requested but the heater pumping out stiflingly hot air.

“Why did he not question my wanting a heater on when I was obviously not feeling the cold?” I asked. No answer for a while and then after he had time to think.
“Because I’m not the sort of husband who questions your motives for anything am I? I just do as you ask knowing you would have a good reason.”
Very cunning reply I had to grant him.

Well later in the week we were shopping or, I should say, I was shopping and Teddy was sitting in the car waiting in the car park.
He looked up and saw an echidna making it way across the asphalt toward a car parked in the line of vehicles in front of us. There it stayed underneath to rest in the shade. Thinking it would be killed if the driver returned to his car Teddy decided to rescue the small animal and put it back over into the trees and grass which shade the shopping centre. He was sure it was confused by its unfamiliar surroundings and since it is spring it would probably have young and was resting while out on food foraging jaunt. Taking a short cut through the car park was a very dangerous decision on its part.
He told me of the results of his decision to save it later on after he had recovered from his embarrassment.

He left our car and knelt down on the asphalt to look under the car that the echidna was hiding beneath. He could see it nestled hard up against the driver’s side wheel. Not having anything of much use to put it in or grab it with he tried to use a shopping bag but the little thing held onto the rough surface with a surprisingly strong grip. Its needles were far too sharp and difficult to grab so he thought he would try nudging it backwards into a bag and returned to our car for an umbrella to help extend his reach.

Once again he crawled under the chassis leaving only his bottom and legs poking out from under the car. He heard footsteps and then a woman’s voice asking what he was doing. Thinking it was me he replied he was saving a life.

The woman asked ‘Who’s life?’
“This little fellow,” he called back.
“I want to get in the car and I think you had better get out.’
“Don’t be daft woman, he’ll get killed if I leave him here. Have some patience will you?’
“Will you please get out from under there? I want to go home.”
“Don’t just stand there then do something useful’ he called back, “have a look to see if you can find anything I can use to get hold of him.”
“I’m not getting anything and I don’t think this is funny, so get out.”
“What? You think I’m comfortable lying under here do you? It’s bloody uncomfortable and the dam thing won’t let me grab it.”
He felt a sharp nudge to his leg. “If you don’t get out from under my car, I’ll go across the road and get the police.”

He froze realizing his assumption it was me speaking was incorrect.
A second female voice asked the first one what was going on.
“This person is under my car and won’t get out.”
“What’s he doing under there? Is he mad do you think?” the second woman asked somewhat hopefully.
“I don’t know if he’s mad.” The first replied, “but he’s making me mad.”
“He might be one of them terrorists they keep talking about” The second mused.
“Don’t be silly, he’s probably drunk which is disgusting this time of the day.” The first woman answered angrily.

Teddy stopped the rescue attempt and turned his head enough to see two pairs of ankles he didn’t recognise.

Crab-like he crawled backwards, dislodging his glasses so that when he sat up they hung from one ear across his scarlet face as he tried to peer through the one closest to his eyes.
Although the sun was behind her, he recognised the formidable outline of one of the district’s leading matrons.
Fortunately she recognised him. ‘Teddy! What on earth do you think you are doing down there?”
He sat on the asphalt at her feet like a supplicant explaining his actions and this is how I found the three of them when I came out of the supermarket.

Eventually the echidna was prodded out of harm’s way, Teddy was brushed down and after numerous apologies for calling her daft and swearing at her and various other abeyances, we left for home.
The second woman wandered off rather disappointed there was not to be any further excitement.
We presume the echidna went home oblivious to the trouble it had caused us and not at all grateful for having its life saved.

Teddy is not looking forward to sitting near the grand matron at the next art gallery meeting.

So Del, if you intend to do a kind deed this week, think carefully and listen well,
Your ‘flower child’ friend
Cynthia.

Letter From The Other Side; from Cynthia.


Dear Del,

The late afternoon sun is shining through the windows showing up all the dust that has settled on the wooden furniture, television screen and knick- knacks in the family room.

Aunt Alice and Uncle Rodger have just left following their first visit to us since we arrived. Despite the fact they now live in a retirement village where neither of them has to lift a finger to do any sort of domestic chore, she was very quick to point out to me before leaving that dusting should be one of my first jobs in the morning.
It was of little use my saying I had wiped all the surfaces this morning and the evening sun always shows up the daily accumulation.
There is something to be said for the darker houses of the past with their small windows… and maids of course.

However during the week, courtesy of our aged aunt and uncle, we gained an extra spring in our step after we spoke to one of our neighbours.
It seems while we were still packing to come here Uncle Rodger persuaded his daughter, the frightful Fran, to take them on the short trip from the retirement village to drive them to see where we were to live.
Our neighbour was outside in his garden and Uncle Rodger not being someone to avoid a chat with anyone strolled across and introduced himself.
We had wondered why the young fellow and his wife smiled at one another when we first met them. Now that we know them a little better they felt free to explain that it was because Uncle Rodger and Aunt Alice had told them that their young niece and nephew were coming to live here.
When we met our neighbours of course it was obvious we are far from young and are in fact retired people and old enough to be their parents.
We all enjoyed the joke at our expense while realizing being almost thirty years younger than the revered ‘oldies’ in their nineties must make us appear forever young in their eyes.
After all Uncle Rodger has been retired ever since we met him as this is the second marriage for them both. He was a family friend of another uncle when his wife died and Aunt Alice had been a widow for a number of years. His first wife had not been dead long at the time of their wedding but as she was the mother of the frightful Fran who evidently takes after her mum in every way, it cannot be a surprise that little Aunt Alice who appears to be gentle and compliant would have appealed to him.
How was he to know that tiny body of hers held a steely backbone and a tongue like a cattle prod?
Aunt Alice was seventy when she married him and so far they have been married twenty five years which makes both their marriages longer than many.

They were telling us today that shortly after they married when Uncle Rodger was still legally able to drive and menace the rest of us on the roads, they had been on holiday in South Australia and were given the opportunity for a joy flight in a small plane.
They took off in the plane marvelling at the sight of the countryside below them. The pilot banked this way and that giving them a roller coaster view of the sea many miles in the distance.
Aunt Alice finished the tale by explaining to me that after they were back on solid ground she had been very frightened and white knuckled as she gripped the arm rests while the pilot banked the plane to turn round in readiness to land on the rough dirt runway in the tiny paddock far below. She hadn’t wanted to go for the ride but thought Uncle Rodger had wanted to and so she didn’t wish to spoil his enjoyment.

Uncle Rodger looked at her with surprise. ‘I didn’t want to go either. After some of my experiences during the war, planes scare the living daylights out of me. I only went because I thought you wanted to experience it!’
For a change we all laughed at the same thing.
Still, they have done us a favour this week because we know now that no matter how old we get or feel, so long as they and those of their age are still with us we will always be young in someone’s eyes.
So long as I stay away from the mirror I will remain for a short time your youthful ‘flower child’ friend,


Cynthia.

Crimson Rosella

I'm Here Again!



Letter From The Other Side from Cynthia

Dear Del,

We left the day the heavens opened. The road ran small rivers across it and the spray and splashing from the passing vehicles on the highway made for a difficult drive. There were patches of fog, sleet and fierce winds when we crossed the Great Dividing Range. After months of packing it seemed a fitting and dramatic finale to a very stressful time.
Eventually we arrived like two blots on an already soaked landscape and the downpour hardly stopped for the next two weeks.

We had been aware of potential flooding in the area and had chosen a house high enough above the river not to be worried by its level which was rapidly rising as the ground became water logged and the run-off from the mountains started to gain momentum.

Soon the river overflowed its banks and the surrounding paddocks in the valley became lakes which eventually cut the roads. Rural fences were washed away; bridges were broken by logs floating down the torrent. Landslides and fallen trees blocked some roads in the mountain areas and homes and businesses were inundated as the waters met with other rivers and slowly made their way down onto the lower plains.

After more than a decade of drought most people were philosophical about the damage and inconvenience, because they knew how much the people and animals were in need of the replenishing waters.

The water reservoirs have more of the precious liquid in them than we have seen for years and because we are only just into spring after a long and heavy snow season there should be plenty more to come in the next month or so.

People are hardly daring to hope they may have seen the last of drought for a few years. They live in the moment, savouring the greenness and the renewal of life.

Our only inconvenience was a shortage of some staple foods such as milk and bread and we were advised to boil all drinking water because the pumping station of the local water supply had been compromised……….. I knew all those extra things I stored in my pantry would be handy one day.

After about two weeks the waters had gone down sufficiently for us to be able to drive to the next town down the highway to do some shopping. Our village has quite a few shops but as it is largely a tourist resort we often have to take the twenty minute drive down the valley.

We stopped to enjoy a lunch in one of the pubs. All the time Teddy was eating his meal he kept remarking how nice it was and he must have it again when we next visited the pub.

Less than two minutes after we returned to our car I told him he wouldn’t be having that meal again because he reeked of garlic.

‘Really? I thought that was caramelised onions through it, must have been garlic if you complain that much.’ he replied rather crestfallen.

A friend of ours who lives alone on a property half way back to our village asked us to call in on our way home.

However he warned us not to attempt driving up his drive to the homestead as it was still too wet. He would come down in his ‘Ute’ when he saw us at the bottom of the hill.

We arrived at the farm gate and Teddy gave me a short respite from the garlic by getting out and opening and shutting the gate. Naturally I was driving because we were using my small car. There wouldn’t have been a problem if we had used our four wheel drive. I thought I had sufficient room to be able to turn around to face the gate to make it easier when we returned to it to go home. I misjudged and made my turn too wide with the result I sank into the gluey mud and the car became bogged to the wheel trims and any effort to move it resulted in a spray of red mud but no movement.

Mathew arrived shortly after this in his battered old ‘Ute’ and greeted us after four years absence with ‘What did you do that for you silly pair of Galah’s?’
Before I could think of a reply he turned to his two Kelpie dogs which were standing on a pile of hay bales in the tray of the ‘Ute’. ‘Shut up you noisy blighters.’ The dogs obliged and sat down, panting with glee, their long pink tongues flapping about as they awaited his next command.

‘I’ll pull you out when we get back. Hop in, I just have to go and unload this lot in the cow paddock.’

We obeyed and hopped in the front seat of the ‘Ute’, not really designed for three reasonably large people. It was very snug as garlic from Teddy, blood and bone or some sort of high powered fertilizer and probably a dollop of cow pat from Mathew’s gum boots filled the warm air of the cabin.

The dogs began barking noisily again once we were on the move and the men chatted just as loudly over my head about the weather event and probability of an impending locust plague during the early summer. They talked on about the damage to the farms, the extent of the number of trees down and the time it will take to repair everything.

I sat between them listening and smiling to myself as I tried not to inhale to much of the garlic and whatever it was which covered much of Mathew’s clothing. The discreet little spray of perfume I had used that morning would have very little chance of improving the state of the air for the next fifteen minutes.

As we bumped along splashing ever more layers of mud onto the duco of the ‘Ute’ my mind wandered to the table in our house covered with ‘welcome back’ cards and messages and the gifts for our garden which is already filled with flowering spring bulbs, camellias, rhododendrons, azaleas, dog wood trees, maples and magnolias. When we sit beneath the trees which are just coming into leaf, we can see from every angle the seemingly endless views of the mountains and hills covered in eucalypts and the highest peaks covered in snow.

Home means different things to everyone. It doesn’t have to mean where a person in born, or grew up and went to school or spent much of their life. Instead home can be the one place you find at some time during your years when your heart and soul quietly settle into a space which completes the jig saw puzzle that a certain restlessness which may have followed you like a shadow for many years has created. It can be a place of challenge and work or a place where you feel a peace and calm seeping into your very soul and gives your mind and emotions a sense of well being that nowhere else has ever been able to reproduce.

I thought of our dogs enjoying the warmth in front of the fireplace while we were away for the day and the pleasure with which they would greet us. I thought of the people we would have as new neighbours to enjoy good times with and with whom we will share the times of trouble and hardships ahead as well. I am yet to learn of their various talents, quirky ways and humour.
Yes, this is where we belong. Between the calm blissful days there will be the rain, flood, drought and fire and this is my home.

We are even further over the other side now Del, far away from the city and its glitzy pleasures, far away from the shopping malls and sleazy alleys, a long way from many of the amenities that the city provides and I couldn't be happier.

Some of the family have already visited. Our eldest grandson found the excitement of being here during the flooding just, ‘cool’ and other members have been enjoying a week skiing. So we think we shall not feel neglected by them even if at times we are the reluctant ones to make the trip and return down to the coast.

I think I shall have to sit through a football match this evening as Geelong is once again in the season’s football finals and Teddy, our son and his wife and probably our grandsons will want to see it. I’m outnumbered by too many to win an argument over the television remote. Yes, we have better reception here than we had in our previous home; Teddy has even found the radio station we like. It only took a week to find the right place for the aerial. So Chopin, Brahms and Dvorak are still with us.

The music I am listening to at the moment as I write this is the chorus of Currawongs in the garden. It is the birds evening social club and choral society yodelling their greetings as they meet before bedtime and the sun goes down.

Once again the Kookaburra's are our alarm clocks. Their batteries never run out and their time keeping is impeccable.

Your soggy but flourishing ‘flower child’ friend,
Cynthia.

Dear Reader,

There will be a short break while we move house but letters from Cynthia will continue as soon as possible.As you can read in the header, these letters are printed by openwriting.com, kiwiboomers.com and are broadcast over 3RPP radio on the Mornington Peninsula. Some of my shorter stories are broadcast by 4RPH Queensland and Vision Australia Victoria. My self sustainable articles go into 'Grass Roots' Magazine available from all good newsagents.

There will, in next year or so, be a book available with a selection of the 'Best From Cynthia'.

In the meantime why not listen to a few of my pod-casts.

Thank you for your constant support and to all who just listen or read my work.

Elizabeth. M.Thompson

Letter From The Other Side from Cynthia.

Dear Del,

How did a couple of young things who started their lives in a tiny flat with two chairs, a table, a second hand couch and bedroom furniture end up forty six years later with so much stuff?

After packing for weeks and spreading large items of furniture, such as our piano, an old Indian overmantel from my grandparent’s home, coffee tables and bedside units around the countryside amongst family and strangers alike, we still have far to much waiting to be packed.

We’ve made many trips to the local Salvation Army op-shop and yet, because of sentiment or just a particular fondness for some things, we still have enough to fill a very large truck.

So far, there has been little affect on our everyday lives. We can still telephone people, send emails and watch our televisions cook our meals and do all the daily things with hardly a hiccup in the proceedings. So why is it we, and by this I mean so many of us in the world, feel the need to be surrounded by so many objects?

Most of our possessions sit in cupboards undisturbed for months or even years, gradually being affected by the vagaries of weather and time. We keep accumulating objects we like or are given. Occasionally liking and being given coincide.

Some of them I have come to believe procreate in the privacy of our darkened cupboards in the same way the things in the boot of our car increase without any help from us.

We have never been avid shoppers, in fact I rather dislike veering away from my planned sprint through the shopping list to divert into clothing or giftware places. I shop because I have to, not because I want to wander about aimlessly waiting for some assistant to drag her cell phone from her ear and come out from behind her counter to ask me if she can be of help or if I just want to browse. The botanical gardens and plant nurseries are about the only places I can be caught browsing with any enthusiasm.

We seem to be living through a time when shopping has become a national means of entertaining the children during school holidays.

Instead of being told to ‘go out in the yard and play’ as we were. Parents seem to feel they must constantly entertain their offspring by going to every holiday movie that is produced. The standard and content or the escalating costs of the entry tickets don’t appear to be a consideration. They also take them out to the shopping malls to wander aimlessly around the various boutiques and fast food outlets. They drift about disturbing carefully arranged displays in the variety stores and as they become footsore, bored and tired, screw their faces into a variety of heart rending efforts and whinge in a way designed to induce their mothers to spend yet more money on more things.

I have asked my family many times not to give me any more dust collecting gifts, but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

So despite the culling we made when we last moved, we still have enough crockery to feed a crowd.

Next week, we shall begin to cut ourselves off from the world as we disconnect our computers and televisions prior to packing them.

If the signals in the hills have not improved since we were there last it could take us some time to get them all tuned into the correct stations again.

It took Teddy almost eighteen months to find our favourite classic music radio station. He walked around the house with his rod and aerial looking like a confused Water Diviner for some time until he at last found the right spot to fix it. Fortunately they stream their programmes on-line now which will make life easier.

We only ever did tune into two television stations because of the large hill in front of our house blocking the signals from the north.Most people use satellite T.V.

There are a couple of valleys where mobile phones are quite useless and it can be a source of amusement for the locals to sit in a pub and watch the frustration of the tourists as they keep trying to dial out.

The last box I packed was to take the Christmas decorations. Now, ordinarily I would have given them away and begun again because we don’t go in for a great deal of Christmas decoration since the children left home. However our daughter gave us a large round wreath for our front door. It has the merry face of Santa complete with gold rimmed glasses, a very long beard and lots of stars and decorative bits and pieces. It weighs quite a lot and is a nightmare to get into any sort of box to pack in a way which will not have him arrive looking dishevelled and sad with his beard and tinsel in disarray. Just another of those things, we would happily do without, but should she arrive for Christmas and Santa isn’t smiling at her from our front door she will be very disappointed. Perhaps we’ll ask them to come for Easter instead.

As a little bit of respite, Teddy has discovered a computer site which gives instructions for making Native American flutes. I wish he hadn’t. But there we are.

It would have been so much better if this particular obsession had not raised its unwelcome head until after we arrived up there and then he could have gone to sit on a mountain far, far away and practice ‘Scarborough Fair’ and ‘Blowing In The Wind’. Individually the notes are lovely; it is the combinations he makes that I am having problems with at the moment. Our spaniel sets up a mournful cry each time he begins and sits looking at him with big round eyes pleading for him to stop.

Oh no, ‘Blowing In The Wind’ is issuing from the shed and Walter the spaniel has joined in.

I used to like that song……. once. To think I’ll have this for a few more months combined with Teddy’s favourite sport, a Federal election as well.

I think I’ll put my boots made for walking on during the next few weeks.

Cheers from the head of the local union of domestic house packing, your ‘flower child’ friend,

Cynthia

Letter From The other Side from Cynthia

Dear Del,

We are well along with our packing.

I think if Teddy stood still too long contemplating some knotty problem his mind is working on, I would have him wrapped in bubble wrap very quickly.

The house is gradually being placed in boxes which in turn are filling up the spare rooms that used to be Teddy’s studio and our spare bedroom. Most of them are large and look as if they are is readiness for one of the building sites for a pyramid. Some feel almost as heavy.

The rooms are losing the personality our belongings gave them and as we walk around or call out to one another there is the beginning of a faint echoing because the sounds, once absorbed by furnishings, now bounce unmuffled from the bare walls.

Now the initial excitement has turned into the busy preparation time. Lists of people and utility companies we must contact regarding our new address etc are being made and we have reached the very middle of the packing and leaving phase.

We are still happy to be going, but as we take things apart and remove them from the places they have been for a few years there is a small part of us which, when we look around at the empty spaces where photographs, favourite knick–knacks or books have been, there is an odd feeling of discomfort. It is hard to describe but it is a vague sense of disloyalty toward the house. After all, this is the place which has given us shelter and pleasure as we turned it and the arid gardens into our idea of a haven.

We know the next occupant loves the look of it and thinks the gardens, once so empty of birds and greenery and now so full of both, loves what we have done. However we can’t prevent ourselves from wondering if she will appreciate the thought, planning and toil which went into creating it or will she just accept what she is paying for and take it all for granted.

We have some work ahead of us in our future home but not as much as we faced here.

I suppose we can only hope that in a few years we will look around our next place and feel the same sense of achievement.

As I write, Teddy is out cycling along the river and gaining a little normality time.

I suspect Kevin Rudd our former prime minister may be doing something similar. At least we have enjoyed the luxury of being able to make our own decisions. The blood sport of politics in Australia has certainly outranked the interest in soccer this week.

We have enjoyed a few outings with people we have hardly seen since our return and who are now I suspect, realizing they haven’t been in touch for some time.

Others, the type of old acquaintance who says vaguely, ‘Oh we must meet up for a coffee before you go,’ we don’t find time for.

We understand that as we age the lives of friends drift apart onto differing avenues and interests. Some of ours who don’t really know us well cannot understand our need to move so far away from our family. I suspect that is simply because it would be the last thing they would contemplate. Many familles have a very strong need to feel they belong to a clan.

Teddy and I began the story of our lives meeting in a city far from both our homes and families. He arrived on Australian shores alone and I had arrived a thousand of miles away from my southern home in Victoria in Brisbane, alone.

The adventure of our lives together began there and we feel we still have other chapters to live, together, in our favourite place.

We are sensitive to the fact our decision will not only alter our story as it was being played out these past few years, but it will also alter the life stories of our children and grandchildren.

We don’t expect regrets or recriminations from any of them or from one another other. It really just means that on our final days on earth, there will be a different ending.

It is late at night Del. There is a clear sky and a full moon so bright the street lights of our road are almost unnecessary.

To-morrow will come quickly with more people to contact and things to pack.

My mother once told me to enjoy your life you must always have something to look forward to, no matter how trifling it may seem to others it will give you reasons to look forward and not back.

From the head of the packing department,

Your ‘flower child’ friend,

Cynthia

Letter From The Other Side from Cynthia

Dear Del,

We unwittingly caused some consternation to our neighbours by not sharing the information we were to go on holidays and also, that we were thinking of selling our house.

While we were innocently lounging about in the high country autumn sun a group of estate agents, all dressed in their dark business suits, arrived en-masse to asses our house. It is the practice of our agents to send a team,

each one to make their individual assessment and then return to their offices where they compare notes and opinions and banter back and forth until eventually they come to an agreement over what they consider to be a fair price for the property.

Well, some of our neighbours saw these men arrive, park in the street and make their way into our house. It was quite a long time before they all returned to their cars and left.

The neighbours after much discussion and analysis of the men’s business at our home, which evidently ranged from writ servers to a crime or murder squad, came to the eventual assumption one of us had died and the funeral directors had paid our home a visit.

When we returned home everyone was busily checking the death notices in the local paper to ascertain when the funeral would be and which one of us had fallen off the twig. I suspect some had even bought cards for the bereaved spouse.

On the evening we arrived back, we unpacked the car unobserved and Teddy, with his habitual forgetfulness, left it standing in the drive with the lights on.

The neighbour opposite saw the car sitting for some time with its lights on and wondered if she should come across the road. Eventually she plucked up the courage to cross the road but now she was convinced the spouse who had not died a few days earlier had possibly suffered a heart attack and was now sitting stiff and very dead in the car!

Teddy and I have been under an obviously false impression that we look quite young for our ages and because of my constant walking and gardening and his cycling we were sure we had been demonstrating to everyone we knew we were quite fit and healthy…evidently we were wrong.

It must be one of the many drawbacks of ageing…...everyone expects the worst.

The packing proceeds despite the bank messing up our prospective buyer’s papers and putting her in a dreadful dither. We understood her predicament because we are old enough now to have been messed about by our bank enough times to know it can happen and will probably keep on happening.

We keep being asked by friends what our family think of us going so far away. It is only 400 kilometres after all and as we tell our inquisitors the children would think nothing of going to the other side of the world if a lucrative job offer came their way or they felt there was a better life so why shouldn’t we be free to do the same?

I suppose if we lived in England 400 kilometres would put us somewhere in Europe but here, it is still in the same small state.

Monica and her husband are off to Kathmandu next month to attend a wedding, they didn't ask us if it was a good idea they should go because they know I definitely would have said it is a stupid idea for someone with bad knees and feet to be going somewhere with so many steps and a reputation for a less than adequate health care standard than she would have here at home. So why would she bother to ask, I wouldn't expect her to. She is an adult, free to make her own decisions and take her own risks just as we are.

I have always said I would not like any of my family to take care of me in my old age. Firstly they are too bossy and secondly you can dismiss an employee who doesn't do the right thing by you but, it is much harder to dismiss one of your families.

Teddy and I have decided if ever they suggest having us too close we will stay with them for an extended holiday and develop really irritating behaviours when they take us out in public. When in their home we will make sure we get up at least three times a night, bump into as much furniture as possible during our rambles to the bathroom and flush the toilets each time to make sure they remain sleepless for our entire stay. We shall also hide or hog the remote controls of their televisions. There is a host of irritating possibilities we can think of which should put them off the idea of having us too close fairly quickly.

We shall be kind and loving to our daughters and sons-in-law and patient and generous to our grandchildren so that as they wave is good bye they will all sigh and say, 'they are so sweet but we just couldn't live too close to them...EVER'

We have, after all had enough training from Aunt Alice and Uncle Rodger who, by the way, will be closer to us when we return to the hills and we shall have the pleasure of their company more often.

Uncle Rodger when we last saw him was in need of having his nose cauterized because he keeps experiencing profuse nosebleeds. He greeted us at the door with his nostrils plugged up with so much rolled up cotton wool he looked like a walrus that had been in a nasty fight with a rival and he had come off a very bad second best. It wasn't a pretty sight.

I must get back to packing the study’s books and papers. The shredding machine has been working as hard an outgoing government’s office machine works when there has been a change of leadership.

I have developed ‘packers stoop’ this week

Cheers from your slightly bent ‘flower child’ friend,

Cynthia.

Letter From The Other Side; from Cynthia.

Dear Del,

We have ceased being sensible.

As I said in my last letter we were heading off on holiday.

We spent two weeks in the North East amongst our beloved hills and have decided to move back despite the problems the distances bring and the vagaries of the supply of some amenities that suburban people take for granted.

As we drove around the long slow hill and looked down at the valley where our two favourite towns are settled our hearts leapt at the view of the mountains and the gold, amber and dark plum colours of the autumn foliage amid the greenness of the paddocks. Our minds were made up.

Because the villages in the valley are so small there were not many houses for sale which could suit us. Some were in dangerous wooded areas, others on steep sloping sites which would have been impossible to walk around with ease and many were far above our price range. Eventually, on our last day of searching we found what is to be our new home hidden behind a coloured curtain of crab apples, alders and crepe myrtles.

There is a river nearby which is fed by the mountain rains and snow. Parks, cycling and walking tracks criss-cross the town in all directions.

We met up with old friends and enjoyed their unpretentious company.

Many of them have Italian heritage and so we ate home cured olives and olive oil, sun dried tomatoes and capsicums. Some folk had been making this year’s supply of salami and hams and others continue to make their own wines. There are probably a few stills for grappa production around as well.

These hills have become the home to many people from all over the world whose forbears rushed for the gold buried in their depths or easily panned from out of the rivers.

Others came with the great flush of immigrants after WW2 to help build the dams and hydro electric turbines which supply so much power for the state.

It is the place where bushrangers terrified wealthy travellers and robbed them of their hard won money as they travelled in the crowded stage coaches while making their precarious trips along the narrow mountainous roads between Melbourne and Sydney.

Many of the pioneers lie buried in unmarked graves, others at least had the dignity of a cemetery burial. The number of children and young people who died from illness or as the result of accidents gives testimony to the hardships the early settlers endured.

Some of the towns also have Chinese cemeteries. The Chinese people trekked vast distances overland to make their way to the area and became suppliers of vegetables and very often rich merchants.

When one stands in the forest and listens to a whip bird echoing his call through the bush it is hard to feel alone. The spirit of the original aboriginals is still so strong here it would not surprise me to hear a Didgeridoo.

The cattlemen of the high country have always been an iconic breed of people. Sinewy, expert horsemen riding strong sure footed steeds, many of which are the progeny of the horses the soldiers took with them to the Boer War and WW1 and died far away in foreign lands.

Certainly there are fine restaurants, deer farms as well as cattle and goat farms, vineyards, olive groves, chestnut groves, apples and cherry orchards.

The tourists rush to the hills in their shiny clean cars to enjoy the short winter snow season. Some of them oblivious to anything other than having a good time and many of them only aware of the wildlife when they run into one of them along the road.

In spring the cyclists arrive around the same time as the blow flies and cause much muttering behind the steering wheels of cars as drivers become annoyed by them straying our of the cycles lanes. It takes a little while each year to become accustomed to the sight of Lycra clad men and women clip clopping down the footpaths in front of the shops in that peculiar bowlegged walk cyclists have when wearing cleats.

The whole place has an air of unhurried life amid enormous space.

Teddy is delighted he will be able to find open areas where he can once again test his water rockets without having some busy body ringing the authorities complaining about a terrorist threat in their midst.

We heard about a friend of ours who was badly injured in a car accident and has been in rehabilitation for eighteen months. She owned a small second-hand bookshop which despite her long absence is still being cared for by her friends and neighbours because that is what you do in this part of the world.

The towns have unfamiliar names for strangers to pronounce, there is Mudgegonga, Barwidgee, Yarrawonga, Yackandandah, Nug Nug, Wangaratta and so on. All of them have larger than life characters, hermits, eccentrics and also the just plain dangerous types who are best left alone because it is easy to disappear in the forest.

One wag written about in the Yackandandah tourist guide was…. ‘Bill Newton was known as the “Yackandandah Kid” He had a finger in every pie….drove a taxi, owned a shoe shop and a funeral parlour, all at the same time. He was especially known for accidentally locking his customers in his shop at night’

There are stories everywhere about the personalities which have helped forge the special character of this vast and still largely untamed area.

As we were driving back home our selling agent rang to tell us he had sold our house. We stopped by the side of the road for a little while feeling stunned. Two weeks had resulted in our lives making a complete U turn.

Our present house is full of boxes and packaging and our garden has been pruned within an inch of its life. It will have a family living in it next.

It is a comfortable home but for us it is not in the right place.

I will need to travel the one hundred and twenty miles to the specialist which will be a bit of a nuisance at times for us and our nearest bank is forty miles away but I don’t care. The thought of breathing the air filled with the smell of the vast eucalypt forests and enormous pine plantations again is wonderful.

We won’t try and be brave and fight any summer fires which are sure to threaten us again. This time we shall hitch up our caravan and travel to the nearest place of safety. We will try and be sensible in some ways even if our decision has dismayed some of our more careful and conservative friends and family.

Teddy says he never did get around to paragliding while we were there before and this time he intends to. I have requested he do it first then come home and tell be afterward.

He is scraping cream paint off an area in the bathroom at present and each time I see him he looks as if he has an acute case of dandruff.

The family all expressed their support and echoed my sister’s words in various ways by asking what took us so long to decide suburbia was not our glass of Shiraz.

Back to the boxes, bubble wrap and paper now Del. Each day as I pack I see more of ourselves withdrawing from this place and August will come quickly.

I will keep you up to date with our exploits,

Your lighter hearted ‘flower child’ friend,

Cynthia.

Letter Fron The Other Side; From Cynthia.
Medical Matters.

Dear Del,

My mind has been involved with medical matters these past few weeks. I suspect this will be so for some time and much of it you will not wish to know about. However I have found no matter what gruesome procedure is being contemplated by doctors, surgeons and the unfortunate patient, somehow humour even of the darkest kind is sure to be found.

I was sitting on the hard chairs of the doctor’s waiting rooms last week contemplating if I dared to touch the crinkled and worn magazines. Most of them were of no interest to me and as they were tired and tattered by the many hands which had turned their pages, I decided I would probably be risking being infected by the amount of dangerous bacteria which were crawling all over them.

So I kept my hands on my lap and relaxed as much as I could while envying the only person in the room who had the foresight to bring a book to read.

Seated near me were three very large women. Like everyone else in the waiting room I pretended I could not overhear their conversation. The longer we remained waiting, the louder and less censored their conversation became.

The group was an obese mother with her two obese adult daughters.

Daughter number one had evidently had some small procedure that day which affected her right knee which she constantly complained was ‘giving her hell’.

Also because of what had been done to her painful knee she had been required to fast. Food, which must never be far from her thoughts, was on this particular morning very much on her mind.

‘Oooohh I’m starving.’ she groaned.

‘What are you going to have for lunch?’ her mother asked.

‘Oh, maybe fish-n-chips, or Moroccan pasta.’

‘Why not a sweet and sour chicken?’

‘Naaah! That stuff makes me puke.’ The daughter pulled a face.

A lady sitting opposite me glanced up at me and raised an eyebrow. I replied with an eyebrow twitch of my own.

For the next half hour we sat listening to menu choices, all of them take-away food. The ebb and flow of the merits or dislikes and in some cases distain for the suggestions put forward by all three. A weekly women’s magazine was taken from the pile on the table and all of the recipes discussed at length and commented upon. ‘Yuk!’ Who’d eat that rubbish!

‘Ugh, nothing but vegetables and stuff. Not in my place thank you very much.’

The book was thrown untidily back onto the table and the discussion returned to the lunch menu and the evening menu.

I felt relieved not to be living under their roof as a lodger or elderly parent.

The decision seemed to have been finally settled with a frozen lasagne from the supermarket and a large helping of double choc ice cream. That is, until a forth member of the family walked into the room. She was younger but well on the way to becoming as obese as her siblings and mother. Her first question after showing them her latest tattoo and of course displaying it to the rest of us, was to ask ‘what are we having for dinner?’

The woman opposite me broke into silent laughter, the newspaper a man was hiding behind started to shake and thankfully I heard my doctor call ‘Cynthia!’

‘Thank you Mark.’ I replied and rushed to his room.

The second amusing time was when I was lying on my back in the hospital ward bored silly and wanting to be home.

The woman opposite me was to have an operation and her church minister was visiting her. Her doctor came bustling into the ward. He is a well known specialist, a marvellous doctor and inclined to be a little eccentric.

He is one of those men who still like to use a razor to shave his face. That particular morning he must have used a blunt razor because he had nicked his face a couple of times and put tissue on the wounds. Rather like the Norman Gunston character on our TV’s used to do, much to the bemusement of many of his guests.

The minister introduced himself to the doctor and they talked briefly. All the while I could see the ministers eyes focussed on the still quite bright red tissue patches on the doctor’s face.
‘Shall we pray together?’ he asked, not giving the doctor time to say ‘Yay’ or ‘Nay’ and he closed his eyes put his hands together and prayed for the patient’s full recovery and then very forcibly for the skill and steadiness of the doctor’s hands.

I lay giggling to myself for ages afterward with no-one to share my silly humour with until Teddy came in to tell me about his latest invention.

This one came about because his friend Barry broke his ankle and couldn’t get his wheel chair up the three steps to his front door.

It is made from three large (sack size) dog food bags, an old fan, some bits of steel and wood and all this has been cobbled together to make a platform which you stand on. The fan blows the bags up and raises whoever is standing on it up to a height which gave me vertigo, but allows Teddy to reach things in the garage which have been put up on the rafters etc. It works very well and when the power is turned off deflates very gently.

Obviously my absence allowed him to get on with important things in the shed. I hope the dogs were fed; they are still alive so they must have been.

We are going away again next week. I know we have not long had a break but this is for a twofold reason, one for us to relax and the other to seek a new home. We are thinking seriously of moving back to the country and will be travelling up to the mountains to see if we can find somewhere suitable for a couple of old folk who took themselves out of the country because it seemed sensible, but the country hasn’t taken itself out of them.

I can’t wait to see Mount Buffalo again. Unlike everything else it is unchanging and always beautiful in all its moods.

I know some of our friends will be exasperated with us as we have taken up more space in their address books than most with all our changes but one can’t live one’s life on ‘ifs and buts’ and worrying about what might happen. It is for living and squeezing everything you can out of it.

Until next time,
from your wandering ‘flower child friend’
Cynthia.

Letter From The Other Side, from Cynthia

POLITICIANS WHERE DO THEY COME FROM?
Dear Del,
Have you ever asked yourself where politicians come from?
There seems to be a pandemic of elections in the offing around the world at present and we are not immune.
We have the misfortune of expecting a state election and a federal election soon giving us all very little time to catch our collective breath and cool our addled brains after all the gabbled and garbled advertisements between them both. We will barely have the time to shred or compost all the mail-outs and leaflets which will be flowing into our mail boxes from politicians suddenly keen to make our acquaintances and assuring us they have our very best interests at heart and always have done. They stand smiling on our doorsteps like long lost relatives while dreaming of the coming moment when we would elect them to be the messiahs of our little part of the world.
It is a nightmare scenario.
I have in the course of my life spoken with a few politicians and seen them at work and in more relaxed circumstances. I have never warmed to any of them and whichever party they were representing had nothing to do with colouring my views.
They seem to be a separate species to the rest of us and I have been wondering where they actually come from.
I don’t know anyone who likes them, would like to be become one when they grow up, wants to marry one or cohabit with one or readily admits to being related to one in the presence of anyone over the age of three.
Is there a special humidified place where they are genetically constructed in a particularly formed womb which is only able to produce the politician breed? It is a puzzle.
Each one must be especially endowed with selective hearing to enable them to avoid unpleasant truths and questions put to them by mere mortals. All of which they can’t or won’t answer. Their skin must be much thicker than any human’s and their eyesight must be very special to enable them to see our sick and fractured world through eyes in such a way they remain convinced of their invincibility to keep it going without leading us all into complete annihilation.
This special eyesight also allows them to see into the future and tell us exactly the type of utopia we can all expect if we would only listen to them.
There are some REAL people from the REAL world who try to become politicians but of course they have little hope. Many of us recognise them and vote for them but the strength of the SPECIES POLITICIAN and those other REAL POLITICIANS backing them will inevitably win.
Should the unthinkable happen and a REAL person actually by some absolute fluke makes it into a parliamentary seat, they will inevitably be hunted. If they resist, their emotions and morals are sucked out of them and their body ejected out the door of the parliament by the SPECIES POLITICIAN to spend the rest of their lives as a sick and broken sub-human wandering the land.
What can we do about it?
I suspect that which has always been done….nothing.
No REAL human wants the job when they have watched what has happened to others. The pay is not comparable with private sector pay, the home life is negligible, the early death rate is high and everyone dislikes them and is willing to tell them how they should be doing their job. It isn’t a very good career summary really is it?
I suspect we shall all just moan our way through more of the empty promises the rosy outlooks, the dire warnings of doom if we vote from the other party and accept what happens in the way we usually do.
Other countries have revolutions and wars but live to regret their actions when the people they put in power turn out to be REAL POLITICIANS they hadn’t recognised and are just as awful as the ones they replaced.
So far throughout our short history Australians have gone about getting their way pretty well. We have done it without wars and revolution using our basic traits of tenacity, a will to survive no matter what our harsh environment throws at us whether it is drought, bushfire, plagues or as is happening at present, thousands of square kilometres of damaging floods. We have a very strong collective will to defeat any opponent from without or within and we posses what some people tell us, is an ironic sense of humour they find hard to understand. When coupled with a highly developed amount of inertia it is a difficult mixture to dominate.
As a nation we have been largely ignored by the rest of the world and allowed to get on with our own way of doing things. Our lack of respect for anyone pompous enough to try and tell us how to live is sneered at as we continue to do things our own way.
After a while the REAL POLITICIANS who are bred for speed-talking and debate find we have all gone to the football, cricket or beach and they have no one to talk to or debate with, leaving them to feel free to slink off out of the spotlight.
Teddy and I have a good supply of C.D’s and books for the coming tide of talking heads on the television and will do our law abiding duty and vote, hoping that just once it may result in something good or at least, not worse.
Happy walking on your beach Del,
from your incredibly cynical
‘Flower child’ friend,
Cynthia.