Roof Top Views

Yesterday had to do some work on my roof so I took the trusty camera up and here are some of the views from my terrace house roof.

As you can see it was a lovely day, one of the warmest this Spring. Many more to come.

Spring Drive.

Canola fields, warm winds, leaves are budding. It must be Spring.

 Our back yard flowers and Rainbow Lorikeets.

Morning Walk Sunday

Night Shots

Bottle Shop

Spiky Tree

Small front garden

Blossom

A beautiful morning, blue skies and the blossom is out.

Road Trip

A short road trip this morning photos curtsey of LB.

Spring flowers at last.

Sometimes all it takes is a flower to tell you the world is turning and Spring is on the way.

A Moment In Time

A moment in time.

The back door had slammed shut behind me. It was 6 in the morning at the start of a late summers day.

My father had heard the door as he came down stairs to the toilet. Our paths crossed in the small walk through that was the back of our house. He growled at me, I was looking tired and unwashed. I’m sure that he was concerned for my well being, he didn’t show that emotion he just glared at me and indicated that this was not the end of the matter, more like the beginning.

I went up stairs, I closed the door to my bedroom and feeling very low, I climbed into bed still in my clothes and fell asleep.

When I woke up it was early evening, the day had passed without me seeing any of it. The cloud of depression was still there and I really didn’t want to have to talk to my parents about what I had been doing. I didn’t want to talk about either the future or the past 24 hours, but knew it was the immediate past that they would want to discuss. It was in that 24 hours that I had made some big decisions, decisions I knew they wouldn’t approve of. I wasn’t thinking clearly at all and felt trapped  unable to come out of my room and face the music.

When I thought the coast was clear I crept down to the bathroom and stole some pills, that I thought were sleeping pills, from the medicine cabinet. I took a handful, enough I thought to end my life. Very quickly I felt sick, nauseas to the point of throwing up. I thought if I lay down again it would pass and I would drop into a coma and die. Well that was the plan.

Within an hour, I was on the toilet unable to control my bowels. It was like, two weeks of food was being ejected from me. It was painful and even when there didn’t seem to be any more to come, it just kept coming. I sat there wondering what the fuck I had taken. Later I was to discover they were laxatives.  After about ten minutes I felt a bit better and gingerly got up and made my way downstairs. My aim was to give a frank and honest assessment of my state of mind.

My parents looked at me as if I was a ghost, I expect my exertions had left me a little pale. Being the sort of person I am I decided the way to deal with this situation was to be direct. No beating around the bush. I would tell them straight.

So I preceded to tell them about the lovely people I had met at a party a week before and how we had all met up again yesterday. How we had taken Acid and basically been love bombed by the fantastic music and company. How I had lost track of time and and and . And so I went on until it dawned on me that I wasn’t telling them what I wanted to tell them at all. I was just digging a hole for myself. Giving them ammunition to attack my behaviour. My lack of direction, how I had started on the road to ruination.

So I tried to concentrate, I needed to tell them what I intended to do.

Then came that moment in time. that can be a week, but looking back, it is referred to as a moment. The core of my moment, happened in the next few moments, as I outlined what I intended to do.  The conclusion to that moment came a month later.

“I am going to France” I said,” that is what I have decided to do.”

I had decided the night before. I couldn’t tell them how I had made my decision that would of sounded facile, improvised crap. No substance to the decision making.

I was going to France whether they liked it or not. That was fact, I couldn’t care less if they wanted me to go to college. Retake O levels, make a career in teaching primary school kids. Whatever their expectations were, it was my decision to make my own decision.

That moment of clarity had come and the full impact of it was now filling our living room. I could see my Mother’s mouth open. I expected a word or two to come out but not a sound. That was unusual for her. My Father had put on his stern, no you don’t son, look. But even he was silent. This gave me the breathing space to take a deep breath and add my final demands.

“I will work for one month, and then I will travel to Paris. What I ask of you is that you don’t ask for any board or keep for one month. Is that OK with you?”

I think they were that dumbstruck by the directness of the enquiry, that they agreed there and then. From that evening on, there was an uneasy truce until I left. Each day we moved around each other like injured animals. We didn’t have big discussions about what went wrong. We didn’t pull apart what fragile history we had. I wish we had, I would like to think I would want to discuss things with my kids if they told me they wanted to leave home at sixteen. But this was 1969, I think my Mum and Dad were still living in the 1950s . It took them another two decades to forgive me and the wounds from that moment in time could begin to heal.

Taz

Our Visitor had to go home. We are missing you Taz. X

Bangers and Mash

Reg's Story.

Reggie sat on his chair in the corner of the room. He looked like a lump of lard half slumped over the table, elbows and hands holding the weight of his large head. He was reading his evening paper. Occasionally he lifted his head to watch the TV.

Every night he sat there, always the same place, his place, I had never seen anyone else sitting there.

I was sitting with my brothers and sister, 4 of us around the table and I have my back to a cupboard. There is a open coal fire with an oven and hot plate, on the other side of the small room and in winter we would roast as we waited for our tea. We are watching the black and white images on the 27” TV screen that sits on a cupboard at the other end of the small room.  Above the table are a pair of Canaries are in a cage. Ever so often they start singing to one another, no one seems to take any notice.

Outside it is freezing, the puddles from the rain that fell yesterday are frozen over. The ducks that were on the pond at the end of our street have flown back to the river a mile away. Even the small patch of lawn outside the back door, is like a furry ice rink.  We have had Christmas, that was over a month ago. The nights are long, slow, cold, the days short and grey overcast affairs, with little relief from the numbness that inhabits us until Spring .

It was a Tuesday night so we were getting sausages beans and mash. Those big juicy fat pork sausages that spit in your eye when you drive the fork down into them. Reg would be served first, he has two slices of white bread buttered with margarine, a cup of strong dark tea with a dash of milk and two sugars. His face would light up in a smile as Mrs Mac put the plate of food in front of him.  Reg liked his food. He eats like a single man. No airs or graces, he has no one to wait for. He knows there were hungry visitors waiting for their turn.

I heard his plate of food arrive, I looked around to feast my eyes on the sausages still sizzling as Reg slowly picked up his knife and fork. I could hear the knife scrap on the plate as I turned back to the TV. Rin Tin Tin was action aplenty.

The next time I turned my head to see Reg’s progress, His head was resting on his plate. The side of his face was lying on the sausages and beans. I could see the end of a sausage poking out from his face, just under his right eye. His left eye stared at the table cloth unblinking. His colour was grey like the TV screen, his cheeks showed his jaw under the five o’clock shadow.  I had no idea what had happened, I nudged the arm of my older brother who was sitting next to me. He couldn’t see Reg I was in the way. He leaned around me and I could hear him gasp. I think he knew straight away what had happened.

Just as he jumped up to tell Mrs Mack, the front door opened and closed, away down the hall way. We both looked at the door to the passage. It would open in a minute and Mr Mac would walk in. Mrs Mack heard it too. She came out of the kitchen. My brother and I we are looking red faced and embarrassed. We had seen something first and we were dumbstruck. By now Reg’s head had made a proper mess of the baked beans, they had started to fall off the side of the plate.

Mr Mack opened the door and came in, he smiled at me and my brother. We tried to smile back, I thought we could pretend all was normal and act surprised when the adults saw the disaster lying on the table. I heard Mrs Mack start to shout, she swore at Mr Mack, 

“ Shit Stan what has happened to Reg?”

Mr Mack hadn’t seen Reg, he was still greeting us. He looked across at his brother slumped on the table. My brother and I fell back onto our chairs as Mr Mack pushed past. He steadied himself on the table edge. His face had also gone grey. Mrs Mack was trying to lift Reg’s head, the bangers and beans was making a bloody mess of everything.

I felt stunned, my younger brother and sister had now caught on to what was happening. They looked annoyed that they couldn’t hear the TV due to the high pitched crying coming from Mrs Mack. Mr Mack had managed to get Reg’s head off the plate. Reg was now flopped back against the back of his chair, his head falling to the side, despite Mr Mack’s attempts at holding it up.

Mrs Mack looked up, her eyes were cloudy, she knew she had to get us out of this small room. We were no good to anyone being there. She ask my brother to go next door and ask Mrs B to call the ambulance.

“Tell her umm, Yes tell her Reg needs the ambulance. Don’t say any more than that.”

“OK” and he was off, so fast, he tripped on the edge of the hall runner and had to jump up again and rubbing his knee he went as fast as his legs would take him.

The rest of us were told to go wait in the front room. The front room was never used except at Christmas and special days. There was no heating and it was as cold as sin. But we did as we were told. We could hear Mr and Mrs Mack , they were shouting and crying. I think it was then that I knew the worst had happened. I realised that Reg was dead. I had never seen or even known anyone who had died. Except of TV.

Peter came running back, he banged on the front door. I opened it and before I could step aside he was pushing past,heading down the passage to the back room.

“Mrs Mack, Mrs Mack” He could barely contain himself. “The ambulance is on its way, Mrs B wants to know if you need anything, bandages, cloths, anything, she said anything. She is coming over now.”

“No Peter, you go straight back and tell her, thank you very much, just the ambulance, that is all we will be needing.”

Then Mrs Mack lowered her voice, and said.

“Peter, Reg has died, it must of been a heart attack. He has just gone a died.”

 I couldn’t see how Peter had taken this news. But I did hear Mrs Mack say,  

“Now don’t go telling Marge next door. Just tell her, thanks for the phone call and then come straight back.”

He ran back down the hall, I could see the grim determination on his face, it was too soon for tears, he just needed to be grown up about it.

I stood behind the door to the front room. I started to cry. My whole body seemed to embrace the grief. It wobbled and crumpled. Jim and Pip, came closer and we all held hands. We didn’t know what to do except stand there, holding hands,  waiting for the ambulance.

I could still smell the sausages, but there would not be any Bangers and Mash tonight.