Bug world

Being in the country means being close to nature and that ‘closeness’ is an undiscriminating place. As the day turns to dusk I rejoice at the sound of kookaburras, but curse the bugs which buzz, bite and generally interact with me without my consent.

But as visionary nature writer Rachel Carson explained exactly 50 years ago bugs are the food of birds, so no bugs = no birds. Given this equation I try to maintain my equilibrium as I am bothered by these flying, swarming and slithering pests. But there’s a limit to tolerance and my forbearance in the face of incessant creepy-crawlies has now come to an end.

The Country Mouse’s house is a breeding centre for Daddy Longlegs spiders. I muse…is this because the CM is a daddy with long legs? Their webs decorate every corner of every room and no matter how determinedly I vacuum them away a replacement spider in a replacement web quickly arrives mocking “We’re baaaack!” Is there some inexhaustible well of these creatures in the lower Hunter Valley?

Last weekend spread-eagled in the hallway was the Elle Macpherson of Daddy Longlegs, a creature with impossibly lengthy appendages. I made the CM come and inspect it, but the CM was his usual unflappable self, simply squashing the supermodel spider between two fingers (in unison: “Eeewww”) and depositing its dead body in the front garden.

At the Mouse House I’ve had mozzies the size of magpies land on me and watched in a kind of warped fascination as clouds of insects descend at dusk. “Why are there so many bugs?” I regularly squeal to which the Country Mouse replies with the self-evident “You’re in the country”.

In my relentless war on these pests I have armed myself with citronella anti-bug candles, plug-in mozzie zappers and an environmentally-friendly insect catching jar. I pleaded for the CM to buy a great bug system I found at Bunnings, but despite this device having two things going for it – one, that it was a practical present and two, that it was in the CM’s favourite shopping destination he balked at spending so much money purely on insect eradication.

All these encounters have now paled into nothingness after my recent insect encounter, my own horror Room 101 moment. (For those who are not Orwell fans Room 101 is a torture chamber in George Orwell’s novel 1984, a place where The Party subjects a prisoner to whatever is their own worst nightmare, fear or phobia)

Having a shower last weekend and I casually picked up an old shampoo bottle on the floor. To my horror a huge Huntsman spider had taken up residence on the other side and, being disturbed, quickly scuttled up the bottle, its eight thick black hairy legs and huge body speeding toward my hand and forearm. I was naked and vulnerable, trapped in a glass box and it was coming closer, soon it hideous legs would be in contact with my bare hand, then up my arm and heading toward my face. I was in Room 101.

I felt the scream start in my diaphragm and travel through my body. Ripping open the shower screen, I threw the shampoo bottle, as it flew through the air the spider held firm riding the spinning bottle like some kind of evil skateboarder. In a blur of movement the CM arrived just as I started a hyperventilating chant:

“SPIDER-SPIDER-SPIDER-KILL-IT-KILL-IT-KILL-IT!!”

From my glass cubicle I watched as the CM jumped around the room chasing the monster Huntsman (are there any other kind?) armed only with an empty shampoo bottle. My hero! Soon there was a satisfying thump, thump as the CM beat the Huntsman’s sorry arse into the tiled bathroom floor:

 
“IS-IT-DEAD-IS-IT-DEAD-IS-IT-DEAD??”

“Yes” he replied “and deaf”.

The great beach search: a winner!

It’s almost the official end of summer, a seasonal designation the Country Mouse and I refuse to acknowledge, so much so that we are going north for Easter, anything to prolong our sun exposure. As a couple with sand in our souls we go screaming and kicking into winter.

But before this summer is wrapped there has been a big job to put to bed. For the past 18 months I have been conducting a beach search of the Hunter, knowing that I couldn’t settle into my new home until I had a short list of beaches to call my own and a secret wish to find that special one above all others.

Despite this sad La Nina summer the CM and I have remained upbeat, heading ocean ward whenever it was possible. In my quest we have travelled north to Nelson Bays’ beaches, with my sister swearing by Zenith Beach and the CM raving over an old favourite Berubi Point. We went south to Caves Beach and I oohhed and aahhed over its sea caves promising pirates and smuggled treasure.

Nearer to Newcastle we had a dramatic visit to Redhead, our planned beach walk coinciding with a shark attack on a local surfer. I was fascinated by the beach’s rust-coloured cliffs and one of its most identifiable features, the old wooden lifeguard tower – ironically also the shark lookout – perched on a rock shelf.

So I am going to take this (wet, unbeachy) Leap Day in this Leap Year to announce that the verdict is in and frankly I’m relieved. Although I’ve loved the chase it’s good to be settled, to find The One and breathe a salty sigh of relief.

With the summer sun setting behind the winner’s dais the sash has been handed to… Dudley Beach for its unspoiled beauty, its surfing doggies, undesignated nudity and its air of a remote, almost private, paradise. Which it is.

The Circle Game

As my life heads off on another circuitous path, I’m watching with intrigue those people who live lives of regularity, routine and order.

One of the Country Mouse’s musical companions eats dinner in the same place, at the same time every night. The CM raises his eyebrows at this, seeing it as a sign of his rigidity and I agree, but secretly I am fascinated. How did he create such a tidy, ordered world? I barely know where I will be eating my next meal; let alone what it will be.

My life has never followed a straight line, or a gently curving arc, not even the predictability of a zigzag. It’s been more like a series of crazy spirals which careered off at right angles; circled back on themselves and either crashed in a spectacular blaze or shot off into the sky as a series of multi-coloured fireworks.

Well one of those wild curve balls is has just been thrown my way (again).

After living at Dulwich Hill since late 1997 I’ve said goodbye to the Inner West. I cried that my next move wasn’t north to the Mouse House (as I had planned), but the consolation is the utter absurdity that, despite my precarious financial situation, I am now a denizen of the Eastern Suburbs. And not just anywhere in the East, but the suburb which in 2008 the Sydney Morning Herald deemed to be the city’s best and which beat the other 640 contenders - Bronte.

It was given the gong by the paper’s judges for its great beach, vibrant cafes, good primary school, proximity to the city and all-round ‘liveability’. Soon after a local real estate agent praised the SMH competition and Bronte’s win because “it put another zero on the end of the suburb’s property prices”.

I am now living with The Swimmers, and they are family no less. The glory of the nearby ocean and my new fitness regime involving the possibility of early morning or late afternoon swims (or both), beach walks and seaside yoga classes is insane. This morning as I sat on a headland before work drinking coffee and watching the Tamarama surfers I had to laugh – my life, is anyone else’s this mad?

A month ago I was doing the hideous housing rounds, a situation so grim and joyless that my only relief from the horror of it all was my mate Mark who lives in a matchbox apartment with walls so thin he can hear his neighbour relieving himself in the bathroom next door.

He recently did Saturday real estate hell, i.e. viewing properties to rent in Sydney, and he had me whooping out loud with his description of viewing an apartment so small, with a hallway so narrow, that he confronted the agent with “If I had an erection I couldn’t turn sideways in this place”.

Shortly afterward I read a report confirming that it is official, Australia, and specifically Sydney’s, housing is ‘severely unaffordable’, indeed, second only to Hong Kong in the severity of its unaffordability. This grim statistic gave me dark comfort in some black hours - it wasn’t just me facing a housing nightmare.

And then out of left field came Bronte; and I’m back from the edge. The next chapter of my life is looking like an epic firework and I’m spinning, Catherine Wheeling, heading for the stars.

The other side

What do you do when life is too difficult, when so much has been thrown at you that your resources are exhausted and the only way out is to see your misfortune as part of some greater (at least benign, hopefully meaningful) plan?

One of my strategies is to opt out and consult the other side, much to the Country Mouse’s incredulity. Yep, off I go to my clairvoyant, an angel-eyed English woman whose spookily accurate predictions have given me so much comfort since my first visit in late 2009 I make seeing her an annual present to myself.
At my first reading The Clairvoyant looked me straight in the eye, smiled broadly and said “a big love is coming your way”. Whoa! Three months later the Country Mouse, that Big Love, came crashing into my world. I was converted; so converted that I started converting others.

Last year it was the turn of the Culinary Goddess to get ‘psyched’. You might remember her from a post almost a year ago, she is the Good Samaritan who took me in when I needed it most, the circumstances of which were so traumatic I choose to forget them, and in whose Inner West home I roost during my Sydney working week.

On the Culinary Goddess’s last birthday she might have been anticipating a dinner out, or a movie, a book or a gift voucher – nooooooo – I knew what she really needed was The Clairvoyant. The CG had been on a cosmic see-saw of loss and love the previous 12 months and I’d watched sadly from the sidelines as she dealt with huge grief and cheered loudly when she was blessed with great love. The Clairvoyant came through for her delivering messages which were precise, emotionally confronting, but balanced. Her future was looking good.

I decided to piggy-back on her birthday reading and get an early annual one of my own; I needed a fix from the other side. My reading was full of Hunter hope, clear descriptions of the great job I was going to get and of the future happiness I was going to have. And the timeframe for all this was… summer. I left elated. Now in the final stretch of this pseudo summer my mood is as grey and wet as the skies. The job hasn’t eventuated. And I’m about to move sideways in Sydney instead of north to the Promised Land. Has The Clairvoyant lost her touch? I’m done for.

Chantel and me

Do you know those strange ‘my life as a percentage’ statistics?  The ones which tell you that on your death bed you will have spent a third of your life asleep and another frightening percentage watching bad TV? Of course for women there will be one unique entry, the amount of time spent in toilet queues just waiting to pee.

When my final tally comes in it will include a hefty transport percentage, the amount of time I’ve spent commuting north. Then south. Then north again. I don’t want to know how much bitumen on the F3 I’ve worn out, or how many hours I’ve stared blankly watching (yet again) the Hawkesbury River and other scenic attractions on the Sydney-Newcastle-Hunter train line.

The only thing which makes this regular long commute bearable (other than my delight at seeing the Country Mouse waiting at Broadmeadow station at the end of the journey) is that public transport remains, as ever, a source of unique entertainment. Ever wondered where Chris Lilley dreamed up those Angry Boys, Summer Heights High, We Can Be Heroes characters? He travelled by train; a lot. You couldn’t invent the people you encounter, regularly, on public transport. Right now as I am writing this two young (very young) gay men nearby are debating how many men you can sleep with before you become ‘a male slut’ and how having sex with anyone 30 years or older would be like ‘screwing a dead man’.

But my favourite fellow traveller of all time was Chantel the junkie, who enlivened my trip north one day with her unmitigated chutzpah and made me wish I was a documentary filmmaker so I could have captured her on celluloid. Chantel was accompanied for part of her journey by a male companion whose name I never determined, but whose loud whine “SHAAAAN-TEELLL” announced her repeatedly to the rest of the carriage.

Chantel was a vision in pink. From her stretched sweatshirt to her lurid Little Mermaid Disney backpack and her shabby faded suitcase, her clothes were a fascinating amalgam of odd items, but all solidly colour co-ordinated in every fathomable (and unfathomable) shade of pink. My favourite item was her pink rubber thongs which, given that it was a cold day, she had sensibly paired with matching thick woollen socks. 

She first caught my attention when she and her companion began a too loud conversation about their latest soon-to-start rehab stint at Jarrah House in Little Bay. As Chantel said to her fella it was “her last chance” it was rehab or “I’m goin’ inside this time”. Chantel looked stressed; nervously pacing the train’s corridor she explained to her companion (and because of the conversation’s volume the rest of the carriage) that she had to get to Jarrah House before 5.00pm, or she would miss admittance. It was mid-morning and I could see Chantel had a problem - she was heading north instead of south.

After trying unsuccessfully to make a call on her mobile (pink, naturally) and realising she was out of credit she cast her expert eye around for a likely sympathiser, settling on a nervous-looking Asian businessman. She pleaded. She needed to ring her mother, just make one quick call – PUH-LEESE could he lend her his phone? How could he say no? Handing it over Chantel settled down to make her call. Well actually… calls.

When her mother wasn’t home she rang her grandmother and then a series of men all whom she addressed all by their first name and the generic surname ‘Mate’ (“Warren.... mate”, “Barry...mate”) urging them, unsuccessfully, to meet her at Woy Woy station. Yes, she assured them she did have money. After she had racked up about six or more calls the phone owner apologetically asked for his phone back, explaining that he was so sorry to ask but he had to get off at the next station.  

Chantel was affronted, “but I have to ring me kids” she explained as she launched into another series of phone calls, none of which seemed to be to children. After finally lining up someone  to meet her at the Central Coast station – “Dave....mate” I think it was – she most reluctantly returned the phone.

A thirsty Chantel then spied a woman nearby with a bottle of Coke. “Luuuuuvvvv could I just have a little sip?” she begged. The Coke’s owner reluctantly handed it over and Chantel almost emptied the bottle, apologising “sorry luuuvvv...”. She was really dry she explained, pointing to her throat.

Soon she was on the move again, pacing the aisle. Her eyes settled on my just opened snack pack and I realised that scrawny Chantel looked really hungry and that we were about to have our own one-on-one moment. I knew that if her powers of persuasion were directed at me I too would succumb to her saucer-sized eyes and sad pleas.

Before I had the option, or not, of sharing morning tea with Chantel the Woy Woy station sign appeared and she gave a squeal. Scooping up her luggage she was suddenly gone, a rose-coloured blur of movement on an otherwise colourless train trip. Dear Chantel, I hope you made it to rehab - bless you and good luck.

Hoop of hope

My latest plan to move permanently to the Hunter was dashed just before Christmas giving a bitter sweet edge to the end of 2011. It was tears before bedtime one night as I cried on the Country Mouse’s shoulder and threw myself a fully fledged pity party. It was hard to face the New Year celebrations knowing that at the stroke of midnight last year I vowed that the dawn of 2012 would see me a fully-fledged, card-carrying Hunter resident.

Mercifully my equilibrium had been restored before the clock struck 12 on the last day of the year, so I could truly toast the New Year without bittness and look forward to everything it would bring into my life. I was philosophical about my situation, full of hope for the year ahead and buried my residual disappointment in a joyful nine-day summer holiday with the CM.

But on my first day back at work in Sydney I found that I hadn’t buried that disappointment deep enough and it oozed to the surface and ran it foul odour all over my brand new year. Reality check: I was going to be working in Sydney for the foreseeable future, commuting for the foreseeable future and due to upcoming major renovations at the Domestic Goddess’s castle I now had to find a new Sydney abode as well. My mood and my emotions went rapidly south.

At lunchtime I took my sad self to the healing walls of Westfield Bondi Junction. As though led there by some benevolent shopping gods I soon found one of my favourite shops, Lulu Lemon Athletica, and got lost in its ambience. One of the many things I love about this shop is its superb service. I had barely made it to the complimentary rehydration station than a genuinely concerned Lulu Lemon staffer asked if I was OK. She meant it. So I told her, “You know I feel really down.”

“I find”, she said earnestly, “that when I feel like that hooping really helps. Do you want to hula hoop? We can do it together.” Delighted? I was beyond delighted. She appeared with two hoops, cleared a space in the shop and we started to swing, she in her designer yoga wear and me in my ridiculous business skirt and heels. I hadn’t hula hooped since I was a kid; I closed my eyes and I was on the cement driveway of my childhood home, my orange plastic hoop whirling around me. (Hula hoops were strictly forbidden inside, as was another childhood favourite, the pogo stick, another late 1950s classic surely due for a revival).

I started feeling heady, then slightly dizzy and then euphoric - the oxygen rush and the hoop were doing their magic. After a couple of minutes I was transformed. I left the shop laughing and full of gratitude - for the kindness of the staffer, the recovered childhood memory and the sheer physical buzz of hooping. A hoop of hope indeed.

Cheap as chips

One of the unexpected delights of regional living is how cheap everything is. This is still dizzyingly exciting to me. Recently I joined a local gym and realised, with delight, that my monthly membership fee is now almost half that of my former Sydney fitness centre. My car insurance has gone down dramatically; clothes/shoes/toiletries are so cheap here it’s hard to contain a spontaneous spending spree. Hairdressers/beauticians are steal and eating out – whoa….at prices this low how do bistros and restaurants even stay in business?

The Country Mouse doesn’t see it this way. In fact he and I have a serious price disconnect. It’s quite profound and arises dramatically wherever and whenever money is involved (i.e. everywhere): eating in, eating out, purchasing any kind of service and also extends to clothes, holidays and the cost of housing.

“Look at the cost!” he moans while I exclaim, “Yes! How cheap is that?”,

thinking (foolishly I now know) that we were walking and talking in financial sync.

He blames his Scottish heritage for his tightness with money, but I won’t put up with a bar of it, I could just as well claim that my Irish heritage means that I have a live for today, spend and be damned financial frame of mind. After all, who knows what might happen tomorrow – we’ll all be blown to pieces in a bout of random sectarian violence?

I have come up with a range of snappy one-line money retorts for the CM: “You get what you pay for”, “Be mean with money and money will be mean with you”, “Money is your servant not your master”. He must be sorely sick of hearing them by now, but I do think they are chipping away at his former poverty thinking because recently he had a significant breakthrough.

The Country Mouse threw out something that was broken. You have to know the CM to realize the gravity, the earth-shifting significance of this action and I still applaud his courage to leap into this new unknown emotional territory.

It went like this. The CM has a beloved plastic jug, one which he uses regularly to warm liquids in the microwave. That the rim of this jug had numerous chunks out of it, where they had broken off through wear and tear, and that the handle was seriously cracked – in fact just hanging on by a plastic thread – meant nothing to him. “Look at this jug!” I squealed. “What is wrong with it?” he replied. That kinda says it all.

I reassured him that a new jug was not negotiable, but he was not persuaded. On a visit to K-mart shortly afterward I saw my opportunity, not so subtlety steering him in the direction of microwaveable containers. “Look – a jug, just like the one you have – only not broken. Mmmm, mmmm and sooo cheap”.

The CM frowned; I could see his acute financial and behavioural distress. It meant two difficult, unpleasant things were now going to have to be considered simultaneously: firstly, spending money on a new jug, secondly, the possibility that this signaled the broken jug was on its way out. The first problem was easily addressed – I would buy the new jug. He relented, I could spend the extravagant sum, $7.00, on a new jug, but the old jug had to stay.

I love coaching, in fact I would have liked to have been a personal coach, getting people to move out of their comfort zones and shoot for the stars is one of my favourite things to do. This was an opportunity for me to be partner-as-coach, moving the CM out of his broken goods zone and into a shiny new future – or at least hold his hand while he threw out a jug long past its use by date.

We were standing in the kitchen, “You can do this darling, you can do this, I believe in you” I urged. The Country Mouse looked unconvinced, sadly eyeing the old broken jug as though it was a dear family pet about to be euthanised.

“CM you have to be strong, there isn’t room in the cupboard for them both – one of them has to go. And you know which one that is.” His genuine pain at casting that chewed up old jug into the recycling was something to behold. I did feel compassion, I just wasn’t budging.

It’s so hard to move out of our self-imposed comfort zones; they may be warm and familiar but by their nature they stop us growing. I’ve hurtled into the Country Mouse’s life like a cleanout and let’s-move-on tsunami and he has worn my whirlwind activity with grace and good humour. It’s a mark of the man. Love you Country Mouse!