Some of my time is still spent tidying papers in what is called The Shack here at home in the ACT. For whatever reason I find it impossible to throw away papers I have collected and stored, some for many years. A timely find, given the arrival of the 2021 New Year, is a handwritten document headed The Season’s Greetings, dating from early 1986. It is reprinted here without amendment (or apology).
The Season’s Greetings
We had a bag of pears today from Mrs Cole. Packham’s I believe. Pears with a few blemishes; odd sizes; in a plain plastic carry-bag. And I realised how far away from our everyday lives were fruit trees: the days at Kentucky when we were surrounded by orchards, and at Beardy Street where we had a nectarine right at the picture window; those things have changed.
Our address is no longer Beardy Street for those who are uncertain. We now have traffic of almost metropolitan proportions at our front windows and, at the back, one tree. Were it not for the pears we would hardly know it’s autumn; the tree is an evergreen (Laurel?).
Mrs Cole is a symbol of our new life: a much-needed new friend of the older generation, a potential babysitter, a neighbour, a Canberra dweller. So she has to take on the roles previously played by Ella, Pearl, Reg and Daisy, and Eileen. The home-based one of the couple is of course the one in greatest need of a Mrs Cole; the other has workmates and non-family distractions. The need for these is substantial: Parri is it that frightful age – big enough to reach, not old enough to teach – cute to look at briefly, sticky to hold. Tadryn, according to Alpha, is in a phase of pleasant disposition; characteristically, nude. Pella and Tauri seem to me to have swapped dispositions, she now fractious, rude, disobedient, he quite a reasonable pleasure to be with. And he’s as brown as a berry too, and already has the sort of shoulders I’ve been trying to develop for 40 years.
I was trying for three months to swim two lengths underwater. The week after I finally did it, one of Tauri’s friends did three lengths without any trouble. He wets his bed at night though.
Canberra is the most expensive city in Australia: food and housing, mainly. We were paying $125 per week for renting a 4 bedroom place for the first three months; hated the agents – especially the agents! – hated the house, hated the garden: dark and soggy. Our mortgage on this place is the same weekly rate. The pool, the spiritual centre of the house for the duration of the warm weather, is at the very back and properly secluded. (I do, Alpha doesn’t.)
Tauri and Pella attend Hughes Primary School, located some 150 yards down from our house. There are shops there too: garage, chemist, supermarket, fish shop, bottle shop. Buses go past our front door,- several in an hour during rush hours! – one way to ‘the city’, the other to Woden, the shopping centre which dwarfs ‘the city’ in shops although not in office buildings, hotels/motels or civic places.
One of Canberra’s characteristics is unpeopled civic places; grey be-fountained squares, mini-Soviets, with flagstones untrodden and seats unbummed. This because it seems to be a car city, whether because of its design or its people I’m not certain. Out of your car, into your workspace; out of your car, into your home. As one would expect of a car city, the network of roads is magnificent: large roundabouts, dual carriageways and, on some, an additional fast bus lane. And traffic lights! – Oh those traffic lights.
We had the house done last week for fleas, ants, bugs, vermin et cetera; Parri is still here. As well as the vermin, the house has a number of special effects such as we haven’t had before: heaters in several rooms, exhaust fans in kitchen and shower, a second toilet and shower (en suite – off our bedroom), variable light in the living room, and fly screens.
Alpha is soon to become an Australian citizen, without having to renounce Canuck-ship. The ACT Education Authority, for which our bank manager thinks she should work, is part of the Federal public service, for which Strine Cinship is a sine qua non. Such aspects of status are no bar to home-based preschool music activities, which are due to start next week.
Editorial comment.
The piece is a reminder of the relative luxury to which we moved when we left Beardy Street in Armidale: some house heaters – and a variable light switch in the living room, which is unchanged to this day! The final paragraph is outstanding in its significance for it marks the beginning of Alpha’s Pied Piper work which became a core activity until 2020. Also significant is the fact that, as yet, there is no work with choirs mentioned. It is notable that at the time the ACT was part of the Federal jurisdiction, not an independent political entity. The swimming pool remains central to the residents’ feel for the home – perhaps Brad would enjoy reading this piece?
