Friday, May 04, 2007

Denial may well be a river in Egypt but it’s also a creek in Western NSW.



Hello.
Guess what?
We’ve moved Six to Eight Hours Drive away from where we lived the last time I posted here.

That's right!
I now live in... THE COUNTRY.

(*faints at realisation and then bravely picks self up*)


It’s still shocking to me too. And it goes like this:

C has this job.

It’s based in The Country for two years.

This means he’s based in The Country for two years.

Ergo, his wife and child are too.

When I say The Country, I should specify this means Country Town, not Isolated Homestead Surrounded By Dried Up Dams And Cow Skeletons, but as part of this job he (and we) will be visiting the above homesteads, discussing said dams and no doubt swooning over said skeletons.

When I was a kid, my dad was in the airforce and this meant that my family moved every two or three years. In one memorable year I moved from Penang, to Sydney, to Hoppers Crossing (you’ve never heard of it? Google and see!).

We moved from school to school and while that was a pain in terms of uniforms and exotic animals (hello, monkey raid) and saying goodbye, it was good too because if you made a dick of yourself at one school you always had the chance to start afresh.

But, being a grownup, it’s not quite as appealing.

There are all the same problems: the uniform (“I don’t have proper boots” I wailed to C, “I can’t move to The Country without proper boots!”), the exotic animals (Enormous Moths The Size Of Sparrows) and the saying goodbye (Naughty Nephews and their parents held Cricket Bat guard of honour as we sailed out through the gates of the Big House).

And of course now, as a sensible grownup, I realize that everyone makes a dick of themselves, constantly, and you never really get the chance to start again, you just have to get on with things and, ahem, love the dick within.

We are living in a big big house (no relation to the Big House sadly) with a garden, many bedrooms and wall to wall carpet.

Tricky especially enjoys this last bit because he now can do Proper Crawling and he slowly stalks up and down the carpeted hallway like a tiny Bantha.


I was going to say a tiny hairless Bantha but it seems the people who rented this house before us didn’t believe in vacuuming. They did, however, apparantly believe in rolling about naked on the carpet.

Let me say there is nothing that makes me run faster for the vacuum cleaner than the sight of my smiling baby coated in strange pubic hair.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hoppers Crossing sounds all funny when you say it like that! (Sitting in the wilds of Brunswick having never considered the literal meaning...) Very best wishes for your settling in.

LL said...

A tree change OG!... good lord, can you get good coffee?

... or Swappers Crossing as it is sometimes known...

eww... strangers pubic hair... ewwwww

Lut C. said...

The vacuum cleaner? Don't you mean you want to rip it out and burn it?

I hope you get settled in nicely, meet some friends.

Mony said...

North South or West?
You'll make a great boot scooter.

charlie's mom said...

My North American mind was still pondering "monkey raid" when you brought up the the Bantha.

Can you pull up the carpet and burn it? Ick.

Anonymous said...

Anna - Many thanks.I always thought Hoppers Crossing was a cute name...
LL-YES, good coffee is possible, thank the lord!
lut c - This was the first time he went for a wander up the hall so the vacuum cleaner was yet to weave its magical sucking spell. Having said that though, I now want one of those super sucking vacuum monstrosities that also let you see what you've sucked up.
mony - sort of west southish I think but have very poor sense of direction.
fq - great idea for carpet but no can do as it is a rental house and the carpet is wall to wall and seems to go on forever. See note to Lut above.

Eden said...

oh mighty yick there. Other people's dust mites are bad enough, but their pubes -- too gross! I once knew a guy called Walter Wall who sold carpets. Really. Do you think his future was laid the day he was named?