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Be all that as it may, meanwhile:
In other news…
Friday: The blasted mobile phone, which I have often had fantasies about inserting it, without Vaseline, up the jacksie of its owner, rang, waking us both up, while the landline was off the hook for the obvious reason of trying to get some peace and quiet. This mobble, which we dare not ever turn off, in other words, it’s on 24/7 and assiduously policed by Missus InkleIdarenoteverturnitofforelse, has woken us up a thousand times, and disturbed us a million. The phone call wasn’t from the owner, but enough folk know the number to cause it to be a daily disturbance most days.
I had barely had three hours’ sleep, but the start was enough to put paid to returning to sleep. I dragged myself up, and began a kitchen clean up stage two, to finish from last night, while the alabaster dragon did return to her slumbers. I also managed to water the bamboos and lawn outside, on this rather warm mid April day. A bit after midday Reeve Chocson arrived in his Rodeo, with Pa pree, and we loaded them up with vittles for a hundred – well, about ten for dinner tonight that Janny had cooked – and sent them on their way down to Balingup, where they will attend the Balingup Small Farm Field Day, and stay with Margie Kismikkin at The Homestead at the old Universal Brotherhood farm. Janny and I were to go, but Janny’s bad back pain and spinal injection recently put paid to the idea. Babies Ink&Peggletter were leaving about
There was joy all round to see Reeve, and to farewell the happy travellers, even inner joy unbridled in certain present. After the dust settled from all that temporary excitement, it was back to the grind to prepare to go to Bob’s. I made it by half two, ‘early’ by recent standards, and we trained on this warm sunny glorious day to Perth city, to begin Bob’s round of freebie collections as well as purchases, including his late lunch which he consumed in the beautiful Supreme Court Gardens. On the way to the corner shop in Pier Street, run by some rather sour faced Asian folk – they rarely ever smile at us, despite my attempts to break the ice, being happy to take Bob’s money but glad to see the back of us – I had a funny thing happen to me: I was just passing a group of pavement tables and chairs occupied by sundry folk supping on bits and pieces, when I sneezed, but if only that was all, for I passed wind as an equal but opposite demonstration of physics. I was glad I was in stride, and was past their eye contactable angles, if indeed they heard my resident Y-front cane toad, and naturally I didn’t look back. Next stop Barrack Street Jetty, and while Bob went to collect a travel brochure – as he does every time we come to the Jetty – I told him I’d be waiting in the little park between Swan Bells and The Lucky Shag (yes, some millions of my faithful readers out of the daily billions will recall, back in 2007, my fictional newspaper report about Vasily Copiscow and his watering hole, The Lucky Shag).
There are only two bench seats in the little grassed garden, and both had a single occupant, and my first instinct, as it always is, and as most folks’ is, was to not sit on either, so as to leave the first-in occupants in peace and comfortable; however, I suddenly decided to sit on the closer one to The Lucky Shag on which a man, younger than myself, was sitting. I politely ignored him for social reasons, you know, to not appear like some leech about to bite him for a dollar or a cigarette, and then after half a minute I looked at him and said hello. He reciprocated, and by his accent I discerned he was likely not from this land, and I told him so with a question about where he might be from. He insisted he was from here, but then opened up, and informed me he was from Cornwall four years back, and was waiting for friends – he was early – to have a drink at The Shag.
Before long, he let me know his wife killed herself but two months ago, and it was quite a shock to me. He was 42, and he found her. No children. A big struggle to get back to some sense of normalcy, and his friends were very supportive. I discussed, as carefully as I could, the things he had been through, and in fifteen minutes I bid him farewell when the Blue CAT arrived, Bob’s and my second purpose for coming to The Jetty. He was genuinely grateful for my time, and I realised why I sat there against my normal practice. Life is dangling on a tenuous thread for us all.
I got home after returning Bob back to
I recorded Letterman to watch another time. Don’t ask me exactly what transpired in the next many hours, for I cannot accurately recall, except that I spent many hours writing and posting diary entries, various poota bits and pieces, a late late walk, and before I knew where the hours had gone, it was dawn. Yet it would be another eight hours before my head hit the pillow…
+paytontedwithlove+
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