Back to the future

The Country Mouse and I are back to reality, but hopefully not for long. Our blissful Hawaiian holiday is now just a memory of halcyon days zip lining through the mountains of Maui, having our own private encounter with a green turtle on the Big Island and the Country Mouse playing bass with the house band at Jimmy Buffet’s restaurant ‘Margaritaville’ in Waikiki.

Reality = I have headed back to my work life in Sydney, while the CM settles back into life in the lower Hunter Valley. Damn.

It’s been frustrating going from the sense of togetherness we had on our Polynesian holiday to ‘face time’ of only about two days per week. House projects are progressing at an agonisingly slow place and I pray that we will return home one day and find a reality show makeover team has paid us a surprise visit. In this particular fantasy they have turned the junked up back room into a funked up chill-out zone and the messy laundry into a sleek washing space.

I am trying to cultivate my inner Buddhist (she used to exist); telling myself this situation is a great opportunity to develop my (virtually non-existent) sense of patience. Yet despite teeth-gnashing frustration on my part the Country Mouse remains almost unflappable. Does nothing rattle this man? He is so naturally Zen about our situation, adopting the attitude that in 12 months time the limitations we live with now, which are the DNA of a long-distance relationship, will be in the past and I will be happily settled in the Hunter wondering why I ever got so emotional about it all.

But this week does see a milestone for us long-distance lovers; I have gone from full-time to part-time work meaning that I now live part of the week in Sydney and part of the week in the country. It’s lots of commuting and I am definitely getting better at it, but it still has its moments.

After my full-time love affair with the F3 went sour (see earlier blog post) I started to train it north as well as drive it.  Alternating between the two on such a big commute is the key to travel sanity, but each of them has their unique moments of angst. My most recent travel to the HV was by train, which for some reason was jammed-full, and my initial thrill at finding a seat was soon crushed when I realised why it was empty.

I had unwittingly stumbled into a dedicated teenage bogan space and because the train was packed they were closing in around me. How close? I could smell them. One young women’s chosen body spray, stale beer and cigarettes, was a particular nasal assault, but I suppose that school holidays are long and you have to fill your time somehow.

For an hour and a half, from Central Station to the Central Coast, they swore/shrieked/screamed/shouted at full volume, but when they started playing their hideous music also at full volume I could be silent no longer. My firm but polite request “Do you have a headset?” met with a foul tirade about being ‘a fuckin’ music hater’.

Realising I was trapped I tried to adopt an out-of-body state of mind, trying hard (and unsuccessfully) to remember the Buddhist practice of detachment My body is here but my mind is somewhere else. It didn’t work. I then plotted my revenge – I would post all kinds of uncharitable things about these train companions on the superbly acidic blog ‘Things Bogans Like’. A crisis of conscience (mine) so far has saved them.

At that moment sitting in the bumper-to-bumper traffic out of Sydney seemed immensely appealing and I thanked the F3 god that my next trip up north was going to be in the privacy of my own vehicle, rather than on the forced intimacy of public transport.

But public transport does have its compensatory moments. When the Country Mouse took me to Newcastle station for my return journey it was a blue, crisp winter morning and I was mesmerised, again, by Newcastle’s working harbour.

As the train pulled away I watched a coal ship come into view, it was heading out toward Nobbys, guided by a tiny tug. It needed to be patient, progress was slow but it was gradually going forward. Soon it would pass between the heads and be out at sea – free – it was on its way to somewhere good. It seemed like a portent and I turned to watch it for as long as I could. As it swung toward the harbour entrance I saw the ship’s name, ‘Sea of Future’. An omen indeed.