The Next Project.
I have been asked to write a series of letters to be broadcast on radio in a by-monthly slot. Pure fiction of course but the natural need for material will no doubt come from life as it swirls around me and mine.
This is exciting and rather daunting as the deadlines seem to loom up quickly. However I shall post them here and hope anyone reading them will enjoy the content.

Letters From The Other Side by Cynthia are from an old friend of the radio producer. They knew one another when they were younger, much younger, during the 1970's when they both dreamed of peace and love, ate mung beans, wove macrame hanging baskets and wafted about in caftans smelling of sandalwood incense.
They are both much older, have moved on but still in many ways, Cynthia retains her original beliefs in the unorthodox life she enjoyed all those years ago.





20th March 2009.
Dear Del,
There I was up to my elbows in pears as I prepared the glut we have this year for preserving and in walked Teddy with your letter.
I was so thrilled to hear from you I am already sitting down to reply while the pears steam the kitchen windows and put their lovely autumn aroma through the house. Last week I made zucchini pickle and although it is a very good batch, the tang of its pickled contents must have wafted up the court because Ronald, a neighbour from across the road who seems to be a semi-permanent support to our front gate and of whom you will no doubt, hear more, asked me if I would be putting a ‘skipping girl’ sign out on our front fence. Still, I find he never says no to a small jar of whatever I have been making. Ronald is the local wheeler and dealer of cars and spends the time between propping up our gate lying under whatever wreck it is he is repairing getting it ready to be put back onto the unsuspecting market.
Your letter took a little while to find me as we have moved from our old home since you last wrote. It has been a most traumatic experience and sometimes I’ve wondered if doing something because it seems practical and sensible is wise. Life can become bland and full of unnecessary and petty occupations. I feel much separated from the very things that gave our days their grounding stimulus and joy. For me the vagaries of the natural world can be more challenging and exciting than a swirl of frivolous interests and constant social experiences which in the end, just leave me tired. I think it must be so for others because there seems to often be among people I have met so much dissatisfaction with their lives. I feel the cause of this dissatisfaction could be too much constant comparison of status or possessions. Comparisons with others can make us unhappy with our lot or perhaps even worse, give us a sense of superiority we don’t justly deserve don’t you think?
At last I can report everything is out of our packing boxes and put away. Where it has been put I am not always sure, but I do at least know that if I look hard enough I will find it…eventually.
Having our furniture and familiar old objects scattered about the house makes it more like ‘ours’ but it will be a long time before either of us can think of it as ‘home’.
In my mind I can walk around my old fragrant garden and visualize, smell and touch all the familiar plants. I can see the little patch of lavender under the tulip tree where our lovely dogs lie. Our spaniel seemed to try so hard to stay with us until we moved but his heart gave out two weeks before we left. I hated leaving him behind. He had always made a special stop at the tulip tree when making his morning rounds. So he is in a favourite place.
In that garden I could look up at the moody mountains and the only creatures remotely interested in my actions were the intelligent and gentle Aberdeen Angus cattle. As they looked over the fence to with a steady gaze of dark curious eyes. My favourite memory of them is of autumn mornings when their dark shapes would be silhouetted against the dawn and the early mist rising from the ground would swirl around their legs.
Here I wake in the morning and open my door to see the bare fences closing us in and the many anonymous roofs contrasting dully against a patchy sky
I will grow a cave of green around us in which I can hide and dream of happy days.
Teddy had a very hard time packing up his sheds. I watched him on occasions laden with some precious item he had salvaged from a clearing sale or a friend’s shed—he would walk half way to the rubbish skip, turn --- and back with it still in his arms to his shed. There were times when it took him two or three attempts before he could find it in himself to throw whatever it was out. He finally squeezed the contents of his three sheds into the one small one here. It was a hard thing for him to do and rather sad to watch.
He spent years collecting bits of this and that machinery ‘which might come in handy one day’ and true to his word he often made up or repaired motors and machines that others didn’t have the necessary parts for. I think his mates will be missing him and the contents of his sheds.
We know that this area has been hard hit by the lack of water, but I am fed up with people moaning that their places look dreadful because they can’t garden because of this lack of water. They have had more than many in some parts of the country so I have no patience. I yearn to scream Rubbish, rubbish! Instead I hold my tongue, but I do to prove them wrong and as fast as I can.
We inherited a garden which I think was designed for a lazy and bad tempered occupant who was oblivious to the environment around him. Everything was spiky, spiny, leathery and useless to the local fauna and flora. It is my firm belief that some of the hardy plants we are being encouraged to grow are the next generation’s nightmares. A little like the pampas grasses we put in during the ’70 and ‘80s and lived long enough to find they were a potential environmental menace.
The local birds are only the common ones, but they have a right to live. They were thirsty because no one left water out for them and the few honey eaters surviving found little nectar to feed from.
We have removed all the of the plants the former owners probably paid a fortune for and began a garden I think will deal with the local conditions and provide habitat for the birds and pleasure and shade for us. We have three bird baths and this year two families of honey eaters moved into our shrubs. They became so besotted with their change of conditions they produced two families for the season. I’ll know we are succeeding when we have our first blue wrens make a home and it will be cause for celebrations whenever I hear a frog………..if ever I hear a frog.
In all the months we have been here we have never heard a Kookaburra. The big trees which they need to nest in have all been cut down. When I was young our family holidayed here and they were abundant. How sad when people come to enjoy a place and destroy the very habitat they profess to love.
We are already self sufficient in most of our fruit as we were lucky enough to inherit fruit trees that were obviously too difficult for the former lazy owners to remove. We have pruned them and brought them back from the brink of death with our grey water from the laundry. The first thing we did was to put in a tank which we were lucky enough to get filled by the first April rain last year. It has been topped up occasionally and with some care, has seen us through the worst of summer. The grey water was fitted shortly afterwards and its obvious benefits were almost immediate.
Teddy is a very good vegetable grower and after purchasing some excellent garden soil he built it up further with the compost from our worm farm. This marvellous thing was a goodbye gift from our former neighbours….they just the right thing to please us.We have enjoyed our own vegetables for the past twelve months. That’s quite enough of the garden tho’ for now.
Aunt Alice and Uncle Rodger are still much the same. He is the unofficial mayor of the retirement village and runs everything they will let him get his hands on. He still flirts outrageously with the ladies and acts the innocent when Aunt Alice gets jealous or furious with him, usually both. Aunt Alice is still apt to voice her opinions too loudly at inappropriate moments and her little body seems to be smaller than ever. She also has the added problem of excessive flatulence which can be disconcerting in confined spaces.
They both suffer various health problems and provide Teddy and me with more information about their illnesses, digestive tracts and bowels than either of us really wish to know.
Her brother in Wellsgate is ill and she has already told us we will have to drive them up to his funeral. Oh dear…….
I mentioned I thought they hadn’t been speaking for some years. Silly me….she replied that at his funeral she didn’t expect she would be speaking to him. So, I suppose we can expect to have to take the long drive up with them at some time.
Uncle Rodger had his licence taken away some months ago when he backed over a lady. Fortunately he didn’t hurt her badly. The police told him he had to take a driving test and refused to return his license after going through what I can only think was a rather traumatic test drive with him. He is quite deaf, can’t turn his head to see if traffic is approaching from the right and as he needs a walking frame to get around, you can imagine his reaction time is very slow.
He was furious with the officer and threatened all sorts of things a younger man might well have been fined for. Since then he has been firing off indignant letters he bashes out on his ancient Olivetti typewriter and sending it bouncing across his desk with the vehemence of his prodding digits. The various dignitaries receiving his diatribes wisely don’t reply which for the rest of us using the roads, is fortunate.
This morning along with your letter I received a new card for my savings account at the bank. The logic of it has left me quite dazed. It is a cash only card but when I want cash I am to press credit. When I want to use cash but also withdraw cash as I sometimes do at the supermarket, I am to use cheque! So the upshot according to the bank as I see it is savings=credit. Cash = cheque.
Is it any wonder the world has a monetary crisis when the banks have a logic crisis?
Oh how wonderful! It is raining REAL rain! The sky had made us so many idle promises these past few weeks but at last it is delivering. If we have fairies at the bottom of the garden dancing I would love to join them, but I fear I would look more like a clumsy overweight garden gnome.
Teddy is standing in the kitchen with a vacant look on his face as though he has just discovered this strange room in the house and surmises it may have something to do with the production of food. i.e. his afternoon tea. So I shall go and minister to him because if he tries to make it he will leave a trail of milk drops, tea stains and sugar crystals that the ants will find in an hour.
We hope you and yours are all well and content.
We presume our family are all well as we haven’t heard from them this week.
From your aging flower child friend, until next time,
Love Cynthia.