Now, of course, I’m not actually interested in the handsome pilot who lives virtually across the road from my current abode, after all I’m a happily married woman and he is a happily married handsome pilot, and he must be much younger than me… although that is really beside the point because, as I said, I’m not interested anyway for all the aforementioned reasons. We have spoken only the once, on the day I arrived, which was when Glenn and Sue were still here; but we have waved from our cars and respective driveways. I’ve often wondered if we would ever speak again as he is often up, up and away at work. Why did it have to be today of all days?

Well, I’m sure you will understand my predicament when I explain. Today, for the first time during my four weeks here, I decided to abandon the Stepford look of sartorial perfection, beauty and composure, which I normally adhere to – especially whilst doing the household chores – in favour of the more natural look… for lawn mowing.

“Who will see me?” I reasoned with myself, “And anyway, there are only a few housewives at home during the day and they won’t mind or even notice what I look like…”

So after my shower I left off make-up and I scraped my unkempt hair back into a ponytail; I put on a pair of my shortest shorts and wore only a bikini top above them – it was going to be hot work in the garden and I had a feeling I would get covered in grass cuttings and grass seeds so I reckoned that less was best. Just as I was about to go out and search for the mower in the shed there was a knock at the front door and a man’s voice called out.

“Hello?”

I couldn’t see who it was from where I was standing; I hoped beyond hope that it was just a postman with a parcel too big to fit in the letterbox. I considered, but thought better of, pretending not to be home as the open front gate and kitchen door were a bit of a give-away. No, I had to brazen it out, but not at the front door, I went to the side door by the kitchen…

“Hello Sally!” the handsome pilot had moved across and stood the other side of the screen door and lifted his sunglasses to reveal his lovely eyes.

“I bet he has twenty-twenty vision,” I thought to myself.

“Sorry, I haven’t got any make-up on and I’m dressed like this. I’m about to do the mowing,” I explained.

“You look alright,” he said, “I’ve just come to move the car.”

I opened the screen door a tad, in pretence of being casual about my new look, and we chatted about the gorgeous children belonging to the handsome pilot. At last he wanted to check and see if the car was still running and I moseyed over with him (I put my hand on my hip in order to look relaxed and at ease). The engine wouldn’t start.

“I’ll just nip home and bring something to get it started,” he said.

“Not the usual jump-leads,” I noted to myself and wondered what modern device had been invented since last we used jump-leads at home (without actually speaking aloud).

This was my opportunity to dash inside and put on a top to hide my modesty, and while I was about it I also brushed my hair and put on some eye-liner. Feeling much more myself, I walked out of the bathroom just in time to hear Richard calling through the screen door:

“I’ve got it started so I’ll be off. Thanks Sally!”

I went to the door and waved goodbye as he pulled into his drive (my open-plan lounge-room is very long and his house is very close). I returned inside, cast off my pretty top, and proceeded to get a great tan while I did the mowing.

Out cycling slightly farther afield two days ago I came across these impressive murals painted on a long brick wall. I’m sorry I can’t tell the names of the different types of birds.

Next time I might tell you about an English mural, one of mine, that suffered in the storms recently…

This afternoon I stood outside, on the opposite side of the road to my old home, and had a few tears. It wasn’t either of my old family homes at Gumdale or Wynnum where I spent my childhood; it was my home during my mid-twenties when I had returned to Australia with my darling little son, James. At that time I had been looking for my future – our future – but was unsure as to whether or not I had found it… and we moved on after a very happy year at Parker Street.

I had no idea that Parker Street was so close to my present local Hyperdome shopping mall – it had not been built when I lived there – and it came as quite a surprise to realise, after checking on Google Earth, that my old home was only around two kilometres farther on.  It was a bit “uphill and down-dale” (good exercise as I was cycling) and I hardly recognised any streets because the formerly new houses, which I had been accustomed to were now mature (in Australian terms) and set in established gardens.

A large poinciana tree, afire with vermilion red blooms, and not even a sapling when I lived there, now towers over my old house at number three. The front lawn has been dispensed with in favour of cement – for the trailer, car and caravan – and the car-port area is now built in; and a green fence acts as a mighty girdle to hem in the tree, the house and forms of transport all wedged in behind the high metal railings. In my day it was all open and grassed, and people could come and go at liberty. We could see the neighbours and they could see us… probably dancing… We had no money but we danced a lot.

It’s always funny going back to old homes – isn’t it? We move on and come back, perhaps to retrieve a forgotten memory of something that helped to form what we have become. I had to come home before it got dark (you know I get a little scared travelling on my own  in the dark!) but I shall go back soon and look for James’ old primary school; and I might have a few more tears when I remember the times I held his hand as I walked him to school… He will be getting married two days after my return to England in April.

I wonder if Chris will remember me? It seems that I have been away so long…

Thanks once again to my funny kid brother, Robert, who, as a small child, once sent a toy aeroplane through our mother’s thick hair and announced with glee, “An aeroplane going through the bush!”

The “Funnies”

Going out with rod is always fun… even though some might not regard him as a very good catch!

As much as I would love to be a good Samaritan at all times, I confess that yesterday, I was not. Was I mean or was I sensible? I don’t know.

To cut a long story short, I had declined my Coochiemudlo Island friends’ invitation to stay on for a roast dinner around six-thirty at The Kiosk; although tempted, I decided it would be better to leave in the mid-afternoon and drive home in the light.

But that was hours before. I had long since said my good-byes to my friends, and to some other would-be ferry passengers who had been waiting, like me, unaware that the ferry could not run at low tide. I found myself still there at five-thirty, not on the jetty, but alone on the beach to the right, and I was studying the water. Well, I was almost alone – there was a thin man in a pink shirt and white hat, and he had been sitting on the same big log under a tree higher up on the beach since before I had come along. The man had seemed absorbed in something on his lap and I barely took any notice of him. I had positioned myself close to the seashore that I might watch the tide intently.

“Is the tide still going out?” I wondered.

I fixed my eyes on a puddle in the shape of a map of Australia (how apt) and figured that if the tide was coming in it would soon deluge the puddle. As I watched the ebbing waves lap the large clumps of seaweed that held the many little elliptical pools, including my map of Australia, I regarded myself as a captive on the island and I suddenly felt homesick for another, much larger island which I now call home, on the other side of the world. It hit me that I was a lonely alien. My thoughts turned to Chris. He would have loved to be with me on that beach under the golden skies of the setting sun; with him, I would not have worried about the onset of nightfall and the fact that the ferry would not run again until the tide had turned and come in sufficiently for the water to reach the jetty steps – as it was, the bottom step hung in the air a foot above the water. With Chris I would not have felt so isolated by the loss of my mobile phone now that the battery had given up the ghost completely; even my camera had run out in the same manner and I felt somehow bereft and incommunicado.

At last a wave flooded Australia and turned it into Lake Ontario. Walking back up the beach towards The Kiosk (where I thought I might meet up with my friends after all) I nodded to the man in the pink shirt.

“You must be waiting for the ferry,” I observed with a look of resignation.

I was still walking, not really expecting a conversation with the loner, when he jumped up suddenly from his perch and I realised, to my great surprise, that he was a woman – at least, she had breasts… or she appeared to have breasts. She was as thin as a rake but she could not be described as petite – not at around six-feet tall. Her dark hair was short beneath her white hat and her skin was swarthy and free from make-up; her jaw and cheeks were angular – her nose was thin and hooked; her eye-sockets were deep and dark-rimmed, and her brown eyes darted as she spoke. She spoke in a deep voice without any resonance, like one of those voices that has died from a lifetime of shouting and smoking… but she liked me – I could tell. She moved closer and closer.

“Is someone picking you up on the other side,” she asked.

“No, I have a car,” I replied, taking a step backwards.

“I live down on the Gold Coast,” she continued, moving backwards with me, “I was staying with friends overnight but one night is enough!”

“Sorry,” I said, “but I’m not going anywhere near the Gold Coast.”

“Oh, of course not… I shall catch the train – the service is good – and I’ll catch a bus to Cleveland, where I can get the train…”

“I’m not going to Cleveland either, sorry,” I got in quickly and turned to make it clear that I was going to move on. “Well, I think I shall join my friends at The Kiosk for dinner.”

It was seven-thirty and we friends had finished dinner when Hayley, who was facing the sea, noticed the lights of the ferry as it pulled in beside the jetty. I hurriedly kissed the girls and ran to meet my only means of transport off the island. I was the last person in the queue apart from a teenager who hung back because she was speaking on her mobile phone; I gestured to her to go on because she was ahead of me in the queue.

“Oh, I was away with the fairies,” she said, stepping in line.

“Not away with the ferries?” I joked.

“No, I was definitely off with the fairies!” the girl said with determination and a lack of humour.

There were fewer people than I expected on the ferry and no sign of the tall woman in the pink shirt, or the ‘love-birds’ I had encountered during the first hour of my long wait for the ferry. Somehow, perhaps during the lively conversation over dinner, I had missed the arrival of the ferry for its first pick-up. It didn’t matter to me. Actually, I was glad because I had been dreading further conversations with the odd woman who had made me feel so uncomfortable.

In six minutes the ferry drew in to Victoria Point and I jumped off first… There under the lamp at the end of the jetty was the now familiar figure of a tall thin person in a pink shirt and white hat, and she didn’t look very happy; in fact she looked very angry with a reproachful expression (aimed at me) on her sharp face and with her arms crossed over her chest.

“I hope you had a nice dinner with your friends,” she said very pointedly (and meaning the opposite) like a jilted lover. “I missed the bus and now I have to go back to the island!”

“Oh, so sorry,” I answered, still walking.

“You just run along home,” she jibed.

I didn’t run at that point but I power-walked to the road end of the jetty; I broke into a run going up the poorly lit hill and jogged the similarly poorly lit half kilometre to the car. I did not look back to see if I was being followed (I was trying to play it cool). I plipped the car with the key, opened the door, fumbled with the key in the ignition and zoomed off. After a mile or so I pulled in to set my “Sat Nav” for home. It took me on a very dark, lonely, frightening  and extremely circuitous route… but no, I said I would cut a long story short.

Another joke comes your way from my little brother, Roberto, who was always a funny child…

This morning I awoke early and made for Victoria Point where the ferry leaves for Coochiemudlo, a beautiful little island just off the coast at Redland Bay. I befriended a family moving back to the island and they invited me to stow away in one of their vehicles going over on the barge, thus I was happy to have a free passage whilst the family were happy because they had more for their money, and the ferrymen were happy in their ignorance because they had already made $120 out of one family (plus one stowaway).

Soon I met my gorgeous friend Lee, who had organised an island “Clean Up Sunday”, but I didn’t have to work because it was my Funday Sunday. We went to a quirky property with quirky houses and quirky railway carriages painted pink and purple, where even the animals are quirky; the small dog liked to ride on the back of a chubby donkey that was clearly broody over a cream-coloured kitten; and the kitten loved the donkey who took care not to stand on the kitten as she napped in the shade created by a fat donkey tummy; the blue tabby cat glowed against a background of blue; and guinea pigs and baby chicks came out to say hello from their pink and purple doll houses. And all the animals and all the people in the vicinity had something in common (apart from being quirky) – they all loved Hayley, who is somewhat quirky herself, as you may detect from her photograph…

Tomorrow I might tell you about my weird departure (even stranger than my means of arrival!) from the island…