Silly Season---Summer In Australia
Without Prejudice
My Aunty Betty and My Older Brother, George 2007
Tomorrow threatens to be 41 degrees Celsius and for my Aunty Betty In Wakefield in Yorkshire that is well over the hundred degrees Fahrenheit mark. I spoke to her today as a young relative died, over there, aged 14. So very sad. She has bronchitis and is feeling "poorly" my Auntie. But then she is 91 and the U.K. today has a top of 10 degrees. She said it was my turn to come over and I said only in the English Summer when the weather is at least tolerable.
I could not imagine going over there at the moment when the sun may not appear until 10am in the morning and sleet and snow appears. And you are back indoors again at 4pm. She said she can't get out much these days as she has a stick and a frame but she is convinced she is getting the telegram from the Queen when she is a hundred. She said she will definitely come again to Oz when she is one hundred.
I of course want her to come, Now.
I remember when she came with Auntie Pat, 15 years ago. My dead Mothers two sisters. My two genteel Aunts from Britain and they had spent two months in Brisbane, with my siblings. Then they had the chance to fly South to Melbourne and Jackie my older Sis said to them pack warm woolies. Which they did.
and we had ten days of a heat wave the day they arrived.
It was sweltering, but they never flagged once. A friend and I took them as a treat to the city, no air conditioning in the friends car and it was 41. We drove along Beach Road with the windows down and Aunty Pat felt like there were red hot flames coming in through the window. We parked all day at the Casino and then proceeded to trot around the city at a frantic pace. My friend and I could not keep up with the Aunts, who wanted to see everything.
We went up The Rialto at my friend Robyn's insistence and went outside to see the eagle eye view of Melbourne. Robyn passed out from dizzyiness and the Aunts and I had to wrestle her back inside. It was so humiliating for her but she rallied. We went to Davy Jones and Myer and Darreel Lea and Sussans and Portmans. We had lunch in Myers cafeteria and cold drinks along the way.
We went on the free tram and the sun beat down relentlessly all day and they wilted not a bit. Robyn and I did and we were used to this weather but the Aunts had two months toughening up in Queensland so they were fine. We returned to the car right on Rush Hour. The car melting in the heat and drove home which took ages and we all nearly expired.
I had to put the Aunts in the shower as soon as we arrived home and that night, Nifty Nev and I had to go to the 24 hour Kmart in Blackburn and buy fans. The unit we lived in was stifling, breathless and the fans did nothing to relieve the heat. The Aunts still insisted on giving us a a big breakfast the next day with a kilo, yes, one kilo of bacon.
And now we are in for a heatwave again but this time I am so much better prepared. We have a pool big enough to soak two adult bodies in, mine and daughter Yvette. The two youngest of her boys aged 4 and 2 play all day happily in it and we are careful to have it no more than one foor deep. We give them plastic cups and jugs and they play tea games and pour full jugs over their heads. We have strung up an old curtain on the line for shade.
We watch them from my unit window, the door open so we can hear them when we sit and chat. They go quiet after a while and we haven't noticed. Quiet always usually spells trouble. We are fixed on Ebay looking at Wedding dresses and veils and we realise there is quiet all around. The boys have clambered out of the pool with its soft puffy sides and have made a huge mud pit and have happily decorated all the exterior walls with mud. They look like Tar Babies covered from head to foot in the brown sticky goo and we laugh and spray them and they squeal at the coldness of the water.
We put them back in the pool and the water is tepid and we give them sand buckets and they spend the next half hour tipping buckets over each others heads and gasping. Acer, 4, does his best Hugh Jackman from Australia pose, throwing his head back and letting the water pour down his naked body. Cruz 2, has stripped off his nappy and Yvette realises too late he has dirtied it and she spends ten minutes cleaning him up by squirting him with the hose. He tries to dodge the cold water but she is determined.
All that water down the drain as its all soiled with grass and mud and streaks of a brown substance we don't even want to think about. I love these lazy hazy days of the Silly Season where its just sun and kids and keeping them cool and having fun. Where the mud pool is its all shaded by my unit wall, dark and cool, and they love to play there even if its not muddy. It can be dry as chips and dusty and they play there for hours with toy cars , making dirt raceways.
Yvette and I chatter for ages as she has the wedding coming up and I think to myself I was meant to live here. I was meant to come here nearly three years ago now. I have grandkids at my fingertips and company if I need it. But I also have my space that I can retire to. I think about how I would love to live in a big compound with all my kids and their kids. As long as you know the boundaries and there is a DOOR. You have to have the door.
Thats how families lived in the old days on properties. I fantasise about it. Feeling silly. Or I am just a big fan of Milly Molly Mandy who lived with Mum and Dad and Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents. All under the one roof, like in Willy Wonka. I often wondered about all those grandparents in the same bed and the cabbage soup, however. Phew.
I like having the door. I like being on my own and only letting others in when I feel like it. Same goes for me and wandering into Yvette's house. I never do, now, I wait to be invited. Boundaries. They work for all.
I love seeing my grandchildren grow, I love the teen boys when their voices break and they grow like mushrooms. I love the fat little Buddha Cruz at 2 as he is a sponge of learning and a happy fun cuddly bundle of sheer joy. I love Acer as he is a blue eyed blonde haired naughty kid who will just as soon rub mud in his own hair as well as Cruz's
Boys.
I had all girls and it is like a beautiful Karma that I now live behind boys. I have a role. I am the Matriach.
I would love to have all of them around me as I grow older, my girls, their hubbies and their kids. All with a place each but we have communal areas where we can join in. Of course there would be arguments and vicious snits but we could sort them out. Think of the joy as well, the shared times of fun and struggle. The dark days of winter when all seems wet and gloomy and a shared fire and cuppa is warmly welcomed. Days of sadness where someone else will step in and take your mind off it. Where problems are halved.
I have an 18 year old grand daughter and she is already engaged. I want her and her boyfriend and Tegan with her glasses and solemn eyes at 14 and Tiana, the tomboy at 12. Georgia the ballet Dancer twirling endlessly and Ashleigh who is a Princess but has a down to earth chuckle about her and a great sense of the ridiculous. Deb to organise us all, Andrew to make us laugh, Poor old Dean doing
all the work, mowing and building and chopping things.
Jai off to Army Cadets at 14 and Brock poncing about looking handsome and trying to avoid any sort of work that gets him dirty. Alena could share her cooking as she is the best at it. Dylan at 5 who hero worships Kyan at 8. All the cuzzy bros, Kyle, the Alpha who could fix all the cars and get them sprayed, the list goes on and on. There is only one left out. The Foster Daughter as she says she never felt included. So........
And it is the Silly Season and I am dreaming, day dreaming of course. Clint rings and interrupts me. I told him last night there is no future with us and he calls to see what I am doing and wants to come over and I say, I can't let him/ He just totally ignores what I say as if I have never said it and I like his cheek but can do nothing about it. He wants a family one day and at 35 is still young enough to have one, although Yvette said he needs to get his skates on.
If I continue to see him he won't push himself out of the very comfortable nest he has with his Mum and I think it's time he did. Not that that is any of my business, of course. He said he would bring Ivan and I still said No. Ivan, his Uncle, my Age and my older brothers friend. is not that keen on us being together anyway. I am sure he is jealous as he made a pass at me once and I slapped him.
The lady over the road hasn't spoken to me either since I took Clint over there one night. He is closer to her age than mine and he's a hunk. A croatian man with washboard abs and the high slavic cheekbones. My Aunty Betty would not be thrilled if she thought I dallied with a man 25 years younger than me. It's not done.
Can you imagine me introducing him. She would think he was Yvette's feller not mine. Things like that are not done in my Aunts world. She is a strict no nonsense Yorkshire woman and women marry men close to their own age. My Aunty Pat wouldn't have cared. She didn't like my ex husband and was happy for me to have anyone as long as it wasn't him. But she died, sadly. She was my Auntie Mame and I miss her with a passion.
But My Aunty Betty survives, left alone without a sibling to speak of. Jack, My Uncle and Auntie Pat and My Mum, Natalie all gone and leaving the eldest all by herself. She is indominatble, a survivor, an institution to us her Sisters kids of love and more love and down to earth no nonsense. She always dresses smartly, she like her Marks and Spencers dinners and not some bland meals on wheels.. Her Auntie Mary is still alive at 103 and Auntie Betty says Mary is better than her.
I don't believe that for a minute but I must admit when I opened up my Sisters email this morning with two words in the subject line I felt a momentary lurch of nausea.
Sad News, it said.
But it was about My Great Aunts Grandson, just a child of 14 and I felt the heartbreak across the 12,000 miles that divided us. I picked up the phone immediately, not even checking the time it was in the U.K.. I knew she would answer and I knew she would know it was me. Thats how families connect. instantly.
I passed on my condolences and she said they had taken down all the Christmas things and I eyed my tree, still up, so I can hear Cruz say,
"Oh Man " a few more times, and star and santa and moon and the list goes on. We have a whole routine going and he wants to see the photos on my Ipad and says Acer delightedly to all of them. He can't understand a photo of him is him, Cruz, yet but that will come.
He ate four pieces of my fruit cake, while he burbled and drank icy cold water from my water filter, thingy, that Vicky gave me for Christmas and my present seemed so inadequate in comparison. I feel for Vicky, Peters Mum, as she has cancer and is down to 40 kilos and is on morphine, poor baby.
We hope she makes it to the wedding. Peter ;ost his Dad two years ago and he is only 22, nearly 23 and Yvette is almost double his age and yet now he has all his issues sorted it works, it just does. So the gae doesn't matter. Yvette looks like a teenager anyway, even though she has had 7 boys and was told by her ex, Simon, the father of the first 5 that no one would take her with five kids. Well they did and has and he adores his Yvette with a passion only a youngster can.
So the night is calling, the sun is setting on this hot hot day. The boys have had their Supper and I can hear them playing outside. Boys never tire like girls. They will bounce and run and jump until they are strong armed in to bed and go out like lights until tomorrow and it all begins again. Bless
Love Janette
My Aunty Betty and My Older Brother, George 2007
Tomorrow threatens to be 41 degrees Celsius and for my Aunty Betty In Wakefield in Yorkshire that is well over the hundred degrees Fahrenheit mark. I spoke to her today as a young relative died, over there, aged 14. So very sad. She has bronchitis and is feeling "poorly" my Auntie. But then she is 91 and the U.K. today has a top of 10 degrees. She said it was my turn to come over and I said only in the English Summer when the weather is at least tolerable.
I could not imagine going over there at the moment when the sun may not appear until 10am in the morning and sleet and snow appears. And you are back indoors again at 4pm. She said she can't get out much these days as she has a stick and a frame but she is convinced she is getting the telegram from the Queen when she is a hundred. She said she will definitely come again to Oz when she is one hundred.
I of course want her to come, Now.
I remember when she came with Auntie Pat, 15 years ago. My dead Mothers two sisters. My two genteel Aunts from Britain and they had spent two months in Brisbane, with my siblings. Then they had the chance to fly South to Melbourne and Jackie my older Sis said to them pack warm woolies. Which they did.
and we had ten days of a heat wave the day they arrived.
It was sweltering, but they never flagged once. A friend and I took them as a treat to the city, no air conditioning in the friends car and it was 41. We drove along Beach Road with the windows down and Aunty Pat felt like there were red hot flames coming in through the window. We parked all day at the Casino and then proceeded to trot around the city at a frantic pace. My friend and I could not keep up with the Aunts, who wanted to see everything.
We went up The Rialto at my friend Robyn's insistence and went outside to see the eagle eye view of Melbourne. Robyn passed out from dizzyiness and the Aunts and I had to wrestle her back inside. It was so humiliating for her but she rallied. We went to Davy Jones and Myer and Darreel Lea and Sussans and Portmans. We had lunch in Myers cafeteria and cold drinks along the way.
We went on the free tram and the sun beat down relentlessly all day and they wilted not a bit. Robyn and I did and we were used to this weather but the Aunts had two months toughening up in Queensland so they were fine. We returned to the car right on Rush Hour. The car melting in the heat and drove home which took ages and we all nearly expired.
I had to put the Aunts in the shower as soon as we arrived home and that night, Nifty Nev and I had to go to the 24 hour Kmart in Blackburn and buy fans. The unit we lived in was stifling, breathless and the fans did nothing to relieve the heat. The Aunts still insisted on giving us a a big breakfast the next day with a kilo, yes, one kilo of bacon.
And now we are in for a heatwave again but this time I am so much better prepared. We have a pool big enough to soak two adult bodies in, mine and daughter Yvette. The two youngest of her boys aged 4 and 2 play all day happily in it and we are careful to have it no more than one foor deep. We give them plastic cups and jugs and they play tea games and pour full jugs over their heads. We have strung up an old curtain on the line for shade.
We watch them from my unit window, the door open so we can hear them when we sit and chat. They go quiet after a while and we haven't noticed. Quiet always usually spells trouble. We are fixed on Ebay looking at Wedding dresses and veils and we realise there is quiet all around. The boys have clambered out of the pool with its soft puffy sides and have made a huge mud pit and have happily decorated all the exterior walls with mud. They look like Tar Babies covered from head to foot in the brown sticky goo and we laugh and spray them and they squeal at the coldness of the water.
We put them back in the pool and the water is tepid and we give them sand buckets and they spend the next half hour tipping buckets over each others heads and gasping. Acer, 4, does his best Hugh Jackman from Australia pose, throwing his head back and letting the water pour down his naked body. Cruz 2, has stripped off his nappy and Yvette realises too late he has dirtied it and she spends ten minutes cleaning him up by squirting him with the hose. He tries to dodge the cold water but she is determined.
All that water down the drain as its all soiled with grass and mud and streaks of a brown substance we don't even want to think about. I love these lazy hazy days of the Silly Season where its just sun and kids and keeping them cool and having fun. Where the mud pool is its all shaded by my unit wall, dark and cool, and they love to play there even if its not muddy. It can be dry as chips and dusty and they play there for hours with toy cars , making dirt raceways.
Yvette and I chatter for ages as she has the wedding coming up and I think to myself I was meant to live here. I was meant to come here nearly three years ago now. I have grandkids at my fingertips and company if I need it. But I also have my space that I can retire to. I think about how I would love to live in a big compound with all my kids and their kids. As long as you know the boundaries and there is a DOOR. You have to have the door.
Thats how families lived in the old days on properties. I fantasise about it. Feeling silly. Or I am just a big fan of Milly Molly Mandy who lived with Mum and Dad and Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents. All under the one roof, like in Willy Wonka. I often wondered about all those grandparents in the same bed and the cabbage soup, however. Phew.
I like having the door. I like being on my own and only letting others in when I feel like it. Same goes for me and wandering into Yvette's house. I never do, now, I wait to be invited. Boundaries. They work for all.
I love seeing my grandchildren grow, I love the teen boys when their voices break and they grow like mushrooms. I love the fat little Buddha Cruz at 2 as he is a sponge of learning and a happy fun cuddly bundle of sheer joy. I love Acer as he is a blue eyed blonde haired naughty kid who will just as soon rub mud in his own hair as well as Cruz's
Boys.
I had all girls and it is like a beautiful Karma that I now live behind boys. I have a role. I am the Matriach.
I would love to have all of them around me as I grow older, my girls, their hubbies and their kids. All with a place each but we have communal areas where we can join in. Of course there would be arguments and vicious snits but we could sort them out. Think of the joy as well, the shared times of fun and struggle. The dark days of winter when all seems wet and gloomy and a shared fire and cuppa is warmly welcomed. Days of sadness where someone else will step in and take your mind off it. Where problems are halved.
I have an 18 year old grand daughter and she is already engaged. I want her and her boyfriend and Tegan with her glasses and solemn eyes at 14 and Tiana, the tomboy at 12. Georgia the ballet Dancer twirling endlessly and Ashleigh who is a Princess but has a down to earth chuckle about her and a great sense of the ridiculous. Deb to organise us all, Andrew to make us laugh, Poor old Dean doing
all the work, mowing and building and chopping things.
Jai off to Army Cadets at 14 and Brock poncing about looking handsome and trying to avoid any sort of work that gets him dirty. Alena could share her cooking as she is the best at it. Dylan at 5 who hero worships Kyan at 8. All the cuzzy bros, Kyle, the Alpha who could fix all the cars and get them sprayed, the list goes on and on. There is only one left out. The Foster Daughter as she says she never felt included. So........
And it is the Silly Season and I am dreaming, day dreaming of course. Clint rings and interrupts me. I told him last night there is no future with us and he calls to see what I am doing and wants to come over and I say, I can't let him/ He just totally ignores what I say as if I have never said it and I like his cheek but can do nothing about it. He wants a family one day and at 35 is still young enough to have one, although Yvette said he needs to get his skates on.
If I continue to see him he won't push himself out of the very comfortable nest he has with his Mum and I think it's time he did. Not that that is any of my business, of course. He said he would bring Ivan and I still said No. Ivan, his Uncle, my Age and my older brothers friend. is not that keen on us being together anyway. I am sure he is jealous as he made a pass at me once and I slapped him.
The lady over the road hasn't spoken to me either since I took Clint over there one night. He is closer to her age than mine and he's a hunk. A croatian man with washboard abs and the high slavic cheekbones. My Aunty Betty would not be thrilled if she thought I dallied with a man 25 years younger than me. It's not done.
Can you imagine me introducing him. She would think he was Yvette's feller not mine. Things like that are not done in my Aunts world. She is a strict no nonsense Yorkshire woman and women marry men close to their own age. My Aunty Pat wouldn't have cared. She didn't like my ex husband and was happy for me to have anyone as long as it wasn't him. But she died, sadly. She was my Auntie Mame and I miss her with a passion.
But My Aunty Betty survives, left alone without a sibling to speak of. Jack, My Uncle and Auntie Pat and My Mum, Natalie all gone and leaving the eldest all by herself. She is indominatble, a survivor, an institution to us her Sisters kids of love and more love and down to earth no nonsense. She always dresses smartly, she like her Marks and Spencers dinners and not some bland meals on wheels.. Her Auntie Mary is still alive at 103 and Auntie Betty says Mary is better than her.
I don't believe that for a minute but I must admit when I opened up my Sisters email this morning with two words in the subject line I felt a momentary lurch of nausea.
Sad News, it said.
But it was about My Great Aunts Grandson, just a child of 14 and I felt the heartbreak across the 12,000 miles that divided us. I picked up the phone immediately, not even checking the time it was in the U.K.. I knew she would answer and I knew she would know it was me. Thats how families connect. instantly.
I passed on my condolences and she said they had taken down all the Christmas things and I eyed my tree, still up, so I can hear Cruz say,
"Oh Man " a few more times, and star and santa and moon and the list goes on. We have a whole routine going and he wants to see the photos on my Ipad and says Acer delightedly to all of them. He can't understand a photo of him is him, Cruz, yet but that will come.
He ate four pieces of my fruit cake, while he burbled and drank icy cold water from my water filter, thingy, that Vicky gave me for Christmas and my present seemed so inadequate in comparison. I feel for Vicky, Peters Mum, as she has cancer and is down to 40 kilos and is on morphine, poor baby.
We hope she makes it to the wedding. Peter ;ost his Dad two years ago and he is only 22, nearly 23 and Yvette is almost double his age and yet now he has all his issues sorted it works, it just does. So the gae doesn't matter. Yvette looks like a teenager anyway, even though she has had 7 boys and was told by her ex, Simon, the father of the first 5 that no one would take her with five kids. Well they did and has and he adores his Yvette with a passion only a youngster can.
So the night is calling, the sun is setting on this hot hot day. The boys have had their Supper and I can hear them playing outside. Boys never tire like girls. They will bounce and run and jump until they are strong armed in to bed and go out like lights until tomorrow and it all begins again. Bless
Love Janette
