“What would you like to do?” Roland asks me. (He is my old boyfriend from years ago – now just a dear friend.)

It is gone four in the afternoon and I have called in on my way home from visiting Ellie at her horse farm (see my blog post entitled “Talking Horse”). Now I am not really one for just sitting about doing nothing, so if a good friend asks me what I would like to do I usually answer honestly.

“Honestly?” I look at him with an expression that says I am hankering to do something more exciting than to sit around having a drink, and I have had enough chit chat, considering I have spent the day talking horse ( not hoarse, of course, of course, of course…).

“I think I know what you want,” he shakes his head but he means yes, “but it’s a bit of an effort….”

“What about using the small one? Won’t that do?”

“Come on then,” he beckons me outside. (I do not need to twist his arm too much because he is very soft-hearted.)

We walk over to the shed and I help him to bring out the special square resin target (with a heart, lungs and liver line- printed in the middle), the smaller bow, a quiver and nine arrows, some of which are different lengths and weights. We normally use the life-size resin deer but I am happy to use any target because I just love archery.

Funnily enough, I find that I miss the resin deer; after all, it is more rewarding to lodge an arrow in a  fake deer’s slender ankle or pretty ear than to hit a line drawing of a lung on a box. It seems that we both feel the same way.

“I’m going to show you a trick now,” Roly announces as he brings out two white plastic paint buckets from the shed and arranges them thirty metres or so from our stick which marks the spot to stand.

He holds the bow and arrow horizontally and aims the arrow up into the sky in the direction of one of the buckets.The idea is to send the arrow at the perfect trajectory to enable it to rise extremely high whilst at the same time progressing forwards to its target, the white bucket. You have to take into account the wind and the height reached. Roland sends off every arrow, soaring very beautifully and landing like slalom poles around the buckets, but not in them.

“I’ve never been able to do it,” he admits, “Of course, it is incredibly hard to achieve, especially with all the variables, like the wind changes, the differences between one type of arrow and another, and the dual considerations of height and distance. I don’t know what the probability of getting an arrow into bucket would be, but it’s not very likely. Let’s see who can get nearest the bucket”.

It is my turn. I take to this cloud shooting lark like a duck to water. I am a tad over-zestful and send one or two arrows precariously close to the neighbour’s property but all is well, the neighbours are taking the wise precaution of staying indoors. One of my arrows falls only twelve hundred centimetres wide of the mark – Roland’s best was not dissimilar – and I am thrilled.

Several goes later, we have collected my friend’s arrows (all wide of their marks) and we are walking back to the starting place stick when I suddenly have a premonition…

“Next time I shall land one in the bucket!”I call out.

Roland laughs.

The first two arrows are the long wooden arrows; I get carried away with the pleasant feeling of my muscles pulling against the string of the bow, and winning; thus both arrows go too far and drop into the boughs of a bordering gum tree. Chastened by the experience, I send the next three carbon-fibre arrows at acute angles upwards (almost straight up) and the arrows drop elegantly but very short of the buckets.

Arrow number six is one of the stumpy little gold ones with red and black flights that really need renewing. I aim, make allowances for a light breeze coming from the right and ping the arrow into the air. It feels good as it leaves my fingers. It looks good as propels from the bow. The arrow reaches its apogee and begins the descent; it gathers speed as it drops… right into the bucket! I am overwhelmed with joy, and would like to scream and jump up and down; I look at Roland’s face of disbelief and his theatrical walk away; and I restrain my natural urges.

“I told you I would do it!” I say modestly.

“You said you would do it,” he agrees, “It’s remarkable, unheard of, and not a fluke, but let’s not  talk about it ever again.”

And here are the photographs.

*By the way, cloud shooting is a dangerous sport. Do not try this at home. My little arrow came down with a force that sent it through the bottom of the bucket and into the earth beneath – think what it could do to a person. It should not be attempted without the supervision of a trained archer (like Roland), and a huge block of isolated land.

I don’t know why I chose that title except for the fact that it has a “Hello” in it; several hellos might have been more apt, or “The Importance of Saying Hello” (possibly, though it’s not catchy), but I like the Lionel Richie song, and now you know that it isn’t quite right it may as well stay.

My doorbell rang this lunchtime. From behind the screen-door I could see my next-door neighbour, Wendy, standing at my gate.

“Hello,” she began, “you must think I’m terrible for not calling on you before but I have been ill.”

We were looking at each other through the prison-like bars of the gate so I pressed the remote button and one side of the gate glided back smoothly and serenely.We were still talking through the bars because it was the other side that had slid back; of course, I walked through and joined Wendy on the pavement.

“I’m sorry, I would invite you in but I’m getting ready to go cycling and swimming,” I answered.

Nevertheless, we chatted for several minutes outside.

Two hours later I was riding back from a blissful solitary swim at the house of my friend’s daughters when I noticed a young mother pushing her toddler in a buggy while an older child of about four was straggling behind. I smiled a greeting but did not speak.

“Hello!” called out the baby.

“Hello,” I replied, laughing with surprise.

“Hello!” called out the four-year-old.

“Hello!” I responded yet again and the mother and I laughed.

Heartened by the friendliness of the folk around these parts, I said “Hello” to the “Goth” schoolgirl who sat in a bus-stop.

“Hello,” she said, happily, yet quite surprised, as she ran her fingers through her boyfriend’s hair (he was on the phone).

At the beginning of Lakeland Court (my street) I recognised the car of Richard, the handsome Pilot. He saw me, too, and we slowed down to mouth the word, “Hello”, and wave vigorously.

A little farther up the road two girls came whizzing down on their skate boards. I thought one of the girls looked like Jade, Richard’s daughter. I didn’t have my distance glasses on so I wasn’t sure.

“Is it jade?” I asked as they approached, but by then I could see that it wasn’t.

“Hello,” I said anyway.

The girls beamed and their fair hair shone in the afternoon sunshine – they were a picture of health and innocent youth.

“Hello,” they called back (I had passed them by now).

I kept going to my house at the end of the road and I was smiling to myself.

Sorry, but you will have to wait another day to read about about my exciting exploits as a cloud shooter.

Happily for our house, just above the railway line and seawall at Dawlish, the storms over the weekend were not as bad as predicted. Chris took photographs of the repair work in the sunshine. The huge crates in front of the breached wall contain tons of granite rocks.

Do you remember “Mister Ed”, the old American situation comedy show about the acerbic talking horse? (We loved it  when I was a child.) It starred the gelding palomino, Bamboo Harvester, Allan Lane (the voice of Mister Ed), and Alan Young who played the architect owner… Well, I’m not going to discuss that, except in passing because you may have started to get excited thinking that I was going to write about Mr. Ed. Sorry to disappoint. In truth, I really want to talk horse, or rather, I would like to tell you about some of the horse-talk that I was party to yesterday during my visit to Jimboomba (love that name). Naturally, one is bound to have a bit of horse-talk when one calls on people whose living it is to train horses and riders, even when your own experience of horses was limited to Sunday treats as a child – riding old nags that used to wander off into the bush at will and, with the help of a sharp twig, cantered only on the way back to the stables (a gallop was out of the question, and they used to turn around and nip our legs!)

So there I was, with cherubic baby Rowan in my arms, out on the verandah; my friend’s daughter, Ellie, and her four-year-old, Kai, were there too. We were about to depart for the training paddocks in Logan Village when an attractive woman, dressed in a St Tropez-style white blouse over Levi jeans, turned up to book a lesson and have a horse chat with Ellie. I sensed they would not be too interested to hear about my ordeals with the bad-tempered old nags at Gumdale years ago, so I kept quiet, smiled occasionally, and listened. From time to time my mind wandered… but sometimes my ears pricked up.

“So how much did she get for Roger?” asked Julie-Ann (in the baseball cap and nice white blouse).

“About thirty, I think,” answered Ellie.

“Thirty? That seems alot for Roger,” Julie-Ann’s eyebrows furrowed.

Thirty dollars sounded quiet cheap for a horse to me.

“It might have been less – it could have been fifteen…” Ellie conceded.

“Blimey!” I though to myself.

“Are you talking thousands?” I asked them, incredulously.

They smiled their answer back at me.

“Well how much is a normal horse?”

“Anything,” said Ellie, “from a couple of hundred – the price for horse meat – to a few thousand, or thirty thousand – even millions!”

“Horse meat?” I thought of the horse meat scandal back in England.

“I know it sounds terrible,and I’m a vegetarian, but dogs have got to eat too,” Ellie felt uncomfortable.

We all looked at her dog called Bailey. He was well-fed. I turned cuddly baby Rowan over on my lap so he could sleep safely with his arms, legs and head free, and I patted his bottom (I remembered that my Mum used to do this with Henry and Robert… and all of us, probably). I was thinking nice thoughts about babies when the horse-talk conversation took precedence again.

“Grant is so much better educated than Clara,” Julie-Ann quipped.

“It happens,” said my friend’s daughter knowingly.

“When she asks him to do things he just looks at her as if to say, ‘I can’t be bothered – you’re way beneath me’. She’ll have to get rid of him,” added Julie-Ann.

“What’s he worth?” asked Ellie.

“I don’t know. What do you think? Thirty thousand?”

Like an alien actress, I nodded. I was glad the answer wasn’t “Two hundred dollars”.

And now for the lyrics to Mister Ed, courtesy of the show’s archives.

Hello, I'm Mister Ed 

A horse is a horse, of course of course, 
and no one can talk to a horse of course, 
that is of course, unless the horse, 
Is the famous Mister Ed! 

Go right to the source and ask the horse. 
He'll give you the answer that you'll endorse. 
He's always on a steady course. 
Talk to Mister Ed.

People yak-it-ti-yak a streak 
and waste your time of day, 
but Mister Ed will never speak, 
unless he has something to say... 

A horse is a horse, of course of course, 
And this one will talk 'til his voice is hoarse. 
You never heard of a talking horse? 
Well, listen to this... 

I am Mister Ed

Today I went to Jimboomba! Don’t you just love that name? It has to be Australia – doesn’t it? Perhaps I like it particularly because my son is called Jim, although he prefers to be called James (but only by strangers). Talking of strangers, I am no stranger to Jimboomba; in fact, my sister, Mary, and I spent a week there last year, though not at the same place I visited this morning. We found it a little too bushy and snake-ridden for our liking as a holiday destination but it is a great place for a day trip, especially if you love horses or you enjoy the wide open spaces without having to travel too far from civilization.

Oddly enough, my doctor and his wife (back home in England), for whom I painted the mural inside the American “Air Streak” caravan last spring, have a daughter with a young family who live in Jimboomba; and today I delivered some presents from Mum and Dad. I had thought I would stay an hour or less but I was made so welcome that I spent most of the day with them – and even went to the equestrian training paddocks where Ellie’s partner, Anthony (pronounced with the “h” – as we Aussies tend to do), was busy training riders and horses how to jump fences.

To be honest with you, I am not really much of a horsewoman (or at all really); nevertheless, I tried to show a bit of interest in the horse talk, and there was plenty of it. Hence, now rather tired, I will let the photographs speak for themselves…

I would like to tell you about something remarkable called “Cloud Shooting”, but you will have to wait until tomorrow because I am going to bed.

I have to get ready to go to Jimboomba (delivering presents down on the stud farm – all will be revealed later) so this morning I shall leave you with an email and photos from Chris, our lovely man with the news updates in Dawlish…

Darling, thought you might like to see the scene down below as it
develops – high tide this afternoon, rough, but not terrible; work seems
to have been suspended for a few hours,  guess to let the tide retreat a
bit.  You can see the sea’s still getting through the gap, but I believe
they’ve done their concreting, so there’s now a little more protection
for the house.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

What a relief! By the way, did you know that David Cameron (our English Prime Minister) visited Dawlish two days ago?

Perhaps you have never wondered what Australians talk about after dinner; or perchance you are Australian and already know that we sometimes like to have a bit of snake chit chat. Having finished our barbecue lunch, we were relaxing and chatting around the table; I don’t know who started the conversation but we were discussing our favoured subject of snakes. Incidentally, the we who comprised the small gathering on this occasion were my brothers, Bill and Henry, Henry’s girlfriend, Diane, and my old boyfriend, now just  good friend, Roland – my niece, Loretta, had left early to go on to another party..

“I’ve seen two snakes since I’ve been back,” I announced proudly (well, I was still alive).

Everybody looked suitably horrified and nodded to each other as if to say “She’s still alive though – well done to Sally!” Few people really like snakes, and certainly not in our family – not after a childhood in Gumdale.

“I used to have a recurring nightmare about snakes when we lived at Gumdale,” Bill said, “In my nightmare I was always backed up into a corner looking out – I thought it was safer to look outwards to see them coming for me – but they drilled through the walls behind me to get at me.”

Bill winced and we all winced with him, in sympathy.

“I had nightmares about snakes every night of my life until the age of ten when we moved to Wynnum,” I joined in, wincing, “Sometimes I lived in a tree-house in the jungle, like Tarzan, where I was safe but whenever I walked on the jungle floor bags of snakes would open up in front of me…”

“Why were you all so traumatised by snakes?” asked Diane, “I, too, grew up with snakes but I never had nightmares. Although my uncle nearly had a heart attack when he thought there was one in the thunder-box once, but it was just a bit of paper that had fallen against his back.”

Bill, Henry and I glanced at one another knowingly. Bill was about to answer when I beat him to it.

“Well, let me tell you about the time Mum was in the old sentry box toilet and there was a black snake coiled around the inside of the door knob…” I began excitedly.

“That was me in the toilet with the snake coiled around the door knob, not Mum,” Bill interjected, “And how do you think I managed to get out?”

He paused to heighten the suspense before telling us.

“I had to climb up and crawl out of a gap under the pitch of the roof.”

“And, you won’t remember, Henry, because you were younger, but Mum got Mr. Conelly to come over with his gun to shoot it,” I added (and Henry nodded vigorously to confirm his memory was as good as mine).

“No, it was Mr. Pigooli (not sure of the spelling but that’s how I always heard it – think he was Polish!),” Bill corrected me, “and…”

“Mr. Pigooli shot it then,” I asserted.

“No, you wouldn’t believe what he did – he grabbed a piece of fibro and threw it at the snake!”

“Did it kill it?” I asked stupidly (because fibro isn’t very heavy and it would have taken years for the snake to develop asbestosis).

“Of course not, and the worst of it was that the snake got away and went under the toilet box – I never wanted to go in the toilet again!”

Everybody laughed, even Roland, (who didn’t have any snake stories from his soft, English childhood), because we all knew that nobody ever really wanted to go in those nasty, smelly old thunder-box toilets.

No, the gorgeous male in question was not my handsome pilot neighbour, although I saw him (Richard) today too, but only from a distance, and not alone – he was with his children, his parents and a dog that was attached to a fishing rod by way of a leash. But I’ll come back to that when I have told you about Mason…

It was because of Mason that I was up with the larks and racing out of the house at 7.45 this morning; I had decided to expend some energy by walking to meet Mason for our second date (it’s okay, Chris approves) but I ended up running because I was running late. He had to wait only four minutes – it was okay. We thought we would walk to nearby Alexander Clark Park.

On the way we stopped for five minutes to watch a palm tree cut being cut down expertly (it was fascinating and the tree- fellers – two, not three – gave us a thumbs up at the end); we were pleased to see two magpies (“for joy”;) we calmed a couple of ferocious dogs; we were approached by a weird looking big bird that had come out of the bush, and we were rather wary and unfriendly (it might have been a dangerous casawary but it was probably just a bush turkey) so it took the hint and walked off disconsolately, back into the bush; and I picked flowers for Mason, by way of adding a bit of romance to our walk. Mason (not actually a “Worshipful Master” or even an ordinary, normal mason) didn’t talk much but he showed his appreciation by making all the right noises; on the other hand, I talked a great deal, not from nervous excitement as such, but because I thought it would make him feel more comfortable.

“Want to go on the swings?” I asked.

My handsome date pulled a face. Regardless, we went on the swings and a wobbly thing like a giant spring with a seat on it. Neither of us was impressed and we decided to simply walk instead. It transpired that Mason isn’t as keen on exercise as I am – he went to sleep for forty minutes or so – but he perked up when we arrived at my house. After a lunch of boiled eggs and soldiers (we shared the same plate for added intimacy) Mason had a bath. Fresh and clean, he snuggled up with me on the sofa… and I fell asleep; he was more interested in helping me to water the plants and hang out the washing (apparently he has a penchant for pegs).

My gorgeous boyfriend is, of course, way too young for me – he is only sixteen or seventeen months old and is the nephew of Sue and Glenn. Not only am I taking on house-sitting while they are away, but also their baby-sitting arrangement on Fridays.

Going back to the incident of the dog on a fishing rod in the afternoon, later today; well it was such a strange and amusing sight that I sat for a while on a chair by the front door and tried to make out what was happening. Richard’s little boy and girl rode their bikes around the turning circle (my grand house is the last in the road) whilst I stared at the scampering tiny dog on the end of a fishing line. After a while the boy, wearing a green tee-shirt, pulled up to a stop in front of my grand gates, which I had left open in an attempt to appear friendly and not too mysterious.

“Are you staring at me riding my bike?” the six-year-old asked, fixing me fairly and squarely in the eyes.

There was something comical and rather beguiling about the precocious lad. Oddly, I didn’t feel he was being rude; on the contrary, he seemed just very interested to know whether or not he had my attention – I believe he wanted to make my acquaintance (typical male!).

“No, I was looking at your dog, actually,” I said, getting up and walking over to him, “Is it really attached to that fishing rod?”

“Yes, my granddad uses it as a lead,” he answered, as if that was the most natural thing in the world.

The boy’s sister drew up on her bike to join in the conversation.

“You must be the handsome pilot’s children,” I said to the pretty ten-year-old with flowing long hair under her helmet.

“That’s right,” she replied, “My name is Jade…”

“And I’m Drew,” the boy drew closer, “Would you like to see my hair?”

Drew took off his cycle helmet to reveal a head of thick, dark hair which stood up in long spikes , in spite (not spike) of the helmet (which usually has the opposite effect on normal heads of hair!).

“A great head of hair! Have you just had it cut?” I enquired.

“Yes, every day, it has to be cut every day,” he said earnestly.

Not wishing to be left out, Jade took off her cycle helmet too.

“Oh what lovely hair, you’re the fair one,” I admired.

“She sprained her ankle on her skate-board just now,” Drew drew attention to her bandage.

And so – I won’t go on with the entire dialogue – today has been very much a kiddie day, and I enjoyed every minute of it!

Tonight I retire to bed much more at ease than last night. The storm abated and the next high tide, I am told, arrived not so high and stayed within its normal bounds; the waves did not not venture above the roller-coaster railway line and into the hole that was a road until  just an hour after the Dawlish sea wall was breached. At present he engineers are arranging for special quick-setting concrete to cap the most vulnerable areas before the storms return.

But perhaps you know this already because you may have heard it on the news; I have it from my man on the spot, quite literally.

After a tearful prelude to bedtime and an understandable lack of sleep, I was heartened a little this morning to receive these photographs. You may think it strange of me, especially as you can see the utter devastation of the higher part of the sea wall, under the railway line, but that is my reasoning – the lower part of the wall is still intact. Hitherto I had imagined that whole sections of sea wall were completely gone and that the sea would erode the base of the cliff into which our terrace is built.

Chris remains in good spirits (maybe for my benefit) as he goes to bed. He feels safe and confident in our old house, and I have every confidence in his good judgement.

New storms are forecast for tomorrow… perhaps they will not be as bad as predicted. Please God that they will be little storms farther out to sea!