If you have been following my blog recently (by which I really mean yesterday) you may have wondered if I had forgotten that I intended to tell you today about something nice that happened yesterday. Well, one thing overshadows another and, truthfully, I began to think that you might be more interested in an update on my health. However, after taking a cold shower to relieve the itching (from the various strange lumps with blisters that have appeared), and downing some paracetamol and allergy tablets, I think I would prefer to try not to dwell upon health matters too much so I’m reverting back to the original plan…

Yesterday morning I went over to nearby Wynnum to see my younger brother, Henry, and his girlfriend, Diane. Henry was looking out from a front bedroom window as I pulled up in my new and impressive (apparently) Impreza car.

“I’m impressed!” he exclaimed through the fly screen.

Now I am not a car person – if my car goes and is relatively comfortable and cool (in Australia) then I am happy – so I  surprised myself by glowing with pride at Henry’s reaction to my borrowed snazzy car. After more than two decades of driving cars that never impressed a single soul, it was a new and uplifting experience to be admired and considered cool simply because I have the use of a friend’s cool car for the next three months.

“Want to come out for a run in it?” I asked benevolently.

Half an hour later, after reversing out of Henry’s driveway with the greatest of ease -having made use of the hi-tech screen showing the view from the special camera at the back (although I’ve never had a problem reversing any of my unimpressive lo-tech cars – except when I took my driving test), we were making our way to Lota, where my mother used to live many moons ago before moving back to England.

“Mum’s house isn’t there any more – is it?” I asked my younger brother.

“Yes it is, but it looks different because it has had an extension on the front,” Henry answered, “I’ll show you.”

So we found the old house, now drab in a modern dirt-brown, with its new extension. And I took some photo’s for Mum, yet as I did so I knew the results would not thrill – the house that I once helped my mother to decorate had been much prettier in the old days.

A short while later we pulled up outside another house that our mother owned, but which I could not recognise because I had changed countries by the time she had bought it. The second house was quaint and white. A pretty woman in her forties came out of the house and down the front path. She looked at me from over the other side of the picket fence where I was poised with my mobile camera and our eyes met.

“My mother used to own this house many years ago,” I explained.

“Would you like to come inside and look around?” she asked, “You’ll have to excuse the mess because I’ve just moved in.”

Diane stayed outside while Henry and I accepted the invitation. Despite some obvious modifications, many of the original features were still there, like the louvre windows running along the façade and the tongue-in-groove boards so typical of the period of my childhood. I did not know the house and yet it felt familiar; I imagined our mother in middle age, living between those same walls, walking on the those wooden floors and cooking in the kitchen; and I was overwhelmed by the sense of something of my mother remaining in the house, and also by the kindness of Justina, the new owner, who understood and thought it quite natural when I smiled and cried at the same time.

“The speed limit is fifty kilometres per hour,” informed the female voice of my car for the umpteenth time.

I was going at fifty-two per hour at the time, but I was not irritated – it was rather impressive.

“Take a left turn here,” said Henry for the umpteenth time.

Henry, unthinking, didn’t seem to realise that I know the roads around here almost as well as he does, but I did not mind – perhaps it had something to do with the new car – I was rather cool about everything.