That's Entertainment

A few weeks ago Sarabelle, Grice, and I joined up with Grice's friend and her stepdad (both Aussies) and mom (a Kiwi) to compete in the P & C's fundraising trivia night competition. I was a little concerned that the questions would be heavy on the Australiana, like the incomprehensible crossword puzzle book I once picked up, and so we covered our bases by establishing an international team with a vast array of knowledge. Various members specialized in literature, Eastern medicine, history, and Star Wars. Two are teachers, one even gets paid. The girls and I were pleasantly surprised to find quite a few "American" questions and not so pleasantly surprised when we missed nearly every one of them. (Okay, smarties, where does the U.S. flag always fly at full staff? And where is the only official palace in the U.S.?) In spite of a few forehead-slapping errors, we held a respectable tie for first place through every round and then dropped in the final round to a not-too-terribly-embarrassing third place. I assumed having a man on the team would help us in the Sports category, our last and lowest scoring, though to his credit he would have scored us an extra point in General Knowledge, our specially selected bonus category, for the answer "testicles" -- Question: What did men swear on before they swore on the Bible? -- if all the female team members hadn't been too squeamish to actually commit it to paper. (The Story of the World Volume 1: Ancient Times neglected to include that interesting tidbit and I'm certain Sr. Anne failed to mentioned it as well.)

Speaking of sports, not really, but whatever, Evonne Goolagong Cawley dropped by Grice's elementary school to meet and speak with the students. She told the children amusing stories about her early years as a young naive girl being taken off the farm traveling to the big city, Sydney, to train at tennis camp. Her husband of 37 years, British pro Roger Cawley, accompanied her and they were a lot of fun, answering questions from the kids:

Student to Evonne: What was your biggest trophy?

Mr. Cawley: That would be me.

I was invited by our coach, a friend of the Cawleys, as the secretary of the tennis club to photograph Evonne with all our junior club members.

And speaking of fish out of water stories, and in another near-brush with celebrity, or a brush with near-celebrity, Sarabelle was sent home from school with a media release last week. The Australian Broadcasting Company's television series Seachange, a reality show about city slickers making the move to tiny rural coastal communities, is being revived and filming episodes featuring two high school-aged Melbourne girls whose family has relocated to our little part of the world. One of the daughters is in Sarabelle's class.

And finally, no bad segues here, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks's joint venture The Pacific, a ten-part miniseries about WWII's Japanese theatre, is set up and planning to be in town for about the next year filming the companion piece to their other war series, Band of Brothers. One of our local beaches is doubling for several little Pacific island beaches. A notice appeared in the local paper and high school newsletter advising residents not to be alarmed if they heard bombs and machine gun fire, those would just be sound checks.


Trifles make the sum of life.

-- Charles Dickens

Mothers' Day

I awoke this morning (or more accurately, re-awoke, having gone back to bed after meeting Sarabelle's ride to work at 5:25 AM), after being allowed to remain in bed with the covers snugly over my head -- my return to the womb or auto-asphixiation, your guess -- to the smell, not of fried eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee, but of bleach and some other powerfully noxious glop. Elle, the only one home as Grice was at a birthday party sleepover, took it upon herself to clean the bathroom for me for Mothers' Day. I'll take that over breakfast in bed any time.

After Grice came home, they presented me with a treasure trove of gifts, gifts that the girls got together on their own and did not involve paste or macaroni noodles. All were handmade from local artisans, vendors at our local cotters market. Australian lavender and Australian bush mint soaps, two beautiful Tarzali silkwood bowls, one jar of coconut lip balm, a bouquet of cut orchids, and a gorgeous blue and white blown glass bud vase. I was truly surprised. They are now busily preparing what will be our evening meal, what looks to be peanut butter cookies and tuna fish.

Maybe the biggest surprise of all is that I am actually able to relate these facts to you. Yesterday morning someone, I won't say who, but it wasn't me, tripped on the cable to the printer and jerked my laptop off the table and onto the floor. I didn't yell and scream as I would have expected, instead I clapped my hands to my face, burst into sobs and collapsed on the couch. It is operable, sort of, limping along at approximately 1/6000th of its normal speed, though I am probably doing irreparable damage by continuing to use it. The rest of the day will be spent trying to recover and burn the most important contents to a DVD before it totally crashes. It'll have to be sent in to see if it can be repaired, so expect delays in posting and corresponding. At this rate, I figure I should be up and running somewhere around January 3, 2019.


Diligence is the mother of good fortune.

-- Miguel de Cervantes

Revolution

Since we came to Australia we have become a family of tea drinkers.

Whoopee, you say.

What you don't understand, and what to my mind makes it so amazing, is that my mother has been trying to get me to drink tea, or at least offering it to me despite my vigorous and very vocal protests that I don't drink tea, for over twenty years, even knowing that her high consumption of the swampy stuff is responsible for her kidney stones. Share the love, Ma.

We come from a long line of tea drinkers. It's the Irish in them. Or more likely that 25% English they so strongly deny. Dear Aunt ML (I was going to call her Dear Old Aunt ML, but she would not like that so much) can absolutely not function without a cuppa, which I now understand to be symptomatic of a massive caffeine addiction. How many times were we in a rush to get out the door when someone would have to put the kettle on for just one quick cup before we went anywhere? When I get all steamed up hear me shout.

But now? People here drop by without calling ahead. And when they stop in, they expect a cup of tea. Which led to my keeping tea in the house. And a teapot. And you can't just have tea, you must be able to offer bikkies (Translation: biscuits = cookies) and all the accoutrements that go with tea like milk and sugar and clean spoons. If you are really fancy you might try having a few gourmet items on hand like lemon and honey. And then you must know how to properly prepare and serve these items. And with all that preparation you will eventually actually start drinking the stuff, if for no other reason than keeping your hands occupied. I've almost got it down pat and I think I'm nearly ready to take the next big step, having advanced from standbys like Lipton, to the Greys, both the Earl and his Lady, to green tea, to Prince of Wales and Irish Breakfast, camomile, chai, and my favorite, the fabulously smoky Lapsang Souchong: It's time to lose the teabags and go with the loose leaves. I am still unclear on what exactly a tea towel is for, though.

Elle prefers a cuppa green tea in the mornings and afternoons, Grice sticks with the locally grown black tea with a squeeze of lime, only Sarabelle remains unconverted, but she has mastered laying it all out and serving our frequent guests. Come on over! Anytime! We'll be ready for you.

As I finish up my third chai this evening -- eschewing a dainty china cup and preferring a tall heavy mug -- it dawns on me why I'm still up at 2:00 AM typing madly away.

Cheers.


This is the most magnificent movement of all! There is a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity, in this last effort of the patriots that I greatly admire. The people should never rise without doing something to be remembered--something notable and striking. This destruction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important consequences, and so lasting, that I can't but consider it as an epocha in history!

-- John Adams


"Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more."
"You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing."

-- Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)

Barefoot and...

...just plain barefoot.

Dy reminded me.

The first experience that really endeared us to this part of the world was when we stayed at a lodge in Mission Beach six years ago and watched in absolute amazement as the owners' daughter went off to school without shoes. It's too wet they explained. Leather rots. Sneakers stay soaked. We were later shocked to see people waltzing in and out of the grocery store, the grocery store, something that violates the law in Florida (and probably for a very good reason), sans footwear.

We arrived here this time around with Crocs for all and a pair of Birkies for me for those dressier (or "flash" as they say) occasions. I supplemented my shoe collection with a few pairs of high-heeled sandals on our Christmas trip back and have watched them rapidly moulder away along with our luggage, belts, purse, and some tack we salvaged from our last residence. Teething puppies love Crocs so now we're almost entirely shoeless.

Grice sets off for school each day in her uniform, hat mandatory, shoes not. We now play tennis, ride horses, go grocery shopping, visit the library, the post office, the doctor, the bank, get haircuts, dine out, heck, I even went to a meeting the other day, barefoot. As a precaution we can always dig out a pair of someone's flip-flops (or "thongs" as they oh, so wrongly refer to them) or partially digested rubbery clogs shoved under a seat or tossed in the way-back of the car in case of unavoidable emergency public restroom stops. You've got to draw the line somewhere.

Isn't it getting to be winter over here? Why, yes it is. And while I still don't have any proper shoes, I do have plenty of socks. What more does one need?


As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.

-- Margaret Mead

Road blocks

Tuesday evening the listing was delivered to my inbox via the automated updating service: 20 acres at the end of the road, with a bore, creek frontage, and a flow from a small nearby spring trickling through the middle of it. It was the most affordable property available since we arrived. A local realtor also forwarded me his version of the same listing, knowing we are still looking.

Wednesday morning, first thing, after advising Jorge of the potential deal, being quite familiar with the property, map in hand, Elle and I raced over to take another look. The realtor happened to be on site. He had already shown it once and was waiting for his next appointment. After another call to consult with Jorge, we decided to make an offer. I raced back to the property, caught the realtor after his second appointment and communicated our interest. He went back to his office to prepare the paperwork and called to confirm our meeting the next morning for signatures. He also advised me another offer had just come in. The first people who looked at it earlier that morning. Offers would be sealed and presented to the seller, all details of both offers to remain confidential to avoid a bidding war.

Thursday, yesterday, papers had been emailed, signed, and returned via fax from halfway around the globe -- in the middle of the night unfortunately for Jorge -- and were delivered to the seller. The realtor called me around 10:00 PM last night to say our offer, full-price, cash, no contingencies, was not good enough.

That's what we're up against.

That, and taking a loss on our Florida property in order to move it.

Buy high, sell low, or go back with our tail between our legs and live with what we've got, those are our options.


"Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed" was the ninth beatitude.

-- Alexander Pope