Utterly exhausted

Fact.
It is possible to be so tired that even earlobes can hurt.

Poppa - a rare blog from Cameron...

Paper aeroplanes. That's what I remember. Not the regular dart, but a kind with intricate folds and tearing a piece that would become the body and tail of the plane. He always tore that part, never cut it, but it was always straight. You didn't throw those planes, you launched them, and they flew.

He made me a bush bass once. I think it was something for school. He used a special string. He got the string from the looms at the place where he worked as a security guard... He told me that he wished he'd had the chance to finish school and learn a trade like his brothers, but he had to leave school and work because things were difficult. It was the depression. He slept in a shed in the fields with a gun to protect the produce. He hated that. He felt bad that he had to stop people who were hungry from getting something to eat, but if he didn't stop them then he and others would go hungry.

He had a bicycle that he rode to the fields.

He didn't go to war because he had to stay and grow food.

The string was stored in his garage - there was so much stuff in there, how did the car fit? That great brown car. Was it a Renault? He took me to soccer in it and watched me play. It was that game when the ball bounced over my head. I was embarrassed about that. But he loved watching the soccer.

The garage was where he made the billy cart for us. It was great! I think he made one for Angus and Clint too. Steering was with feet and strings and a lever brake with a spring that worked on the back wheel. We rode the cart down the path in the back yard, down toward the clothes line.

The clothes line was an old one. The concrete it was set into had 'Pat' and 'Stan' written in it - is that right? It took me ages to work out what that referred to.

Below the clothes line was where we played 'sorries'. The bat and ball game where we said sorry every time we mis-hit the ball. We laughed a lot, but had to be careful not to hit the ball into the plants too much, and if it went into the plants you had to step carefully over them onto the planks of wood that ran between the rows of flowers. The bats were wood with a cork coating on the paddle.

There was that big tree that was to the right of the the cubby house, the cubby that he made for mum and her sisters when they were young - a perfect little house. The tree was where he built us our tree-house. He put up a thick rope so we could swing from the tree house. We would swing back and forth. I took some photos with the an old camera. They were blurry, but he was smiling.

I don't know where those photos are.

If we stayed on Friday night we ate fish and chips from the shop. We always had buttered bread. He never spoke at the dinner table.

He would come home late, very late, from his job. We would hear him come in while we were in bed. He would have been a good security guard - he was so tall.

Oh, typewriters... I remember typewriters on my back and on my chest. It made me laugh until it hurt.

Later he told me jokes. I loved the jokes. He would get them from the radio I think, and he would save them up until he saw me. I loved them. Sometimes they were a bit risque. Not bad, but for an older audience, which I had become. They really made me crack up. I loved them. They were a special highlight of visits and of Christmas.

So tall, always gentle, soft spoken, sharp humour that surprised most of us I think - it certainly surprised me. A lovely man who became a lovely old man. He loved the dog. The last photo I have with him is with the dog, just after he moved into the home. It's in the gazebo that out the front.


Poppa - I started calling him 'Pop' in the last couple of years. I wonder why?

I've just made one of those paper planes, to make sure I could remember.

Soggy

It's really very wet here at the moment. Our house is damp and misty from the atmosphere, but thankfully we have not seen our home or street turn into a fast flowing river as some our our friends—and a very great part of the English Midlands—have.

We are especially thankful for the lack of flooding (to date) as church is running their annual Summer (!) Holiday Club for Infants and Junior School kids. We have slightly soggy but otherwise energetic kiddies each day for this week and so far, so good. However the forecast is particularly bad for tomorrow (Thursday). Your ideas on a postcard for how to keep 61 kids and 30+ leaders amused and safe in a modest-sized village sports pavilion if we can't venture outside for games...by midnight tonight please.

The winner gets our eternal thanks...
(and maybe some of our wet clothes to dry)

22 hours of today were rubbish until...

At the end of a less than joyful day came this sublime surprise:




I'm not sure if I love Shaun Tan (gift) or Rowan and Geoff (gifters) more.
I don't need to choose do I?

I encourage you to accumulate your literary points by buying their books. Visit Shaun Tan and Rowan. In fact, the more of Rowan's books you buy, the more she will be able to buy for me!


PS Thanks guys for coming to visit and putting up withe chaos of tonight. It means a lot.

Hedgehog

The spaniel found us our first hedgehog last night* Intrigued by why Sasunnach was spending minutes outside when there was a vacant and unguarded sofa to be sat upon, I went outside to find him very, very gently prodding it with his dinner-plate sized paws with the said hog of the hedge. I dare say we won't be seeing it again!


*yes, this does prove that I haven't got much energy to write about interesting things at the moment. It also shows that I adore hedgehogs and have been on the look out for one since we arrived 21 months ago. I envy their ability to eat slugs and roll up into a ball and pretend they don't really exist.
Okay—not so much the first.

Waste 5 minutes of your life

Having a bad day? Not after watching this!




Love it!


Then there's this gem-this one brought to our attention by dear friends Rob and Clare. (Personally, I'm thinking of handing over my card details just for the chance to sing "O come let us adore me" at Christmas services this year. I've got a nice sparkly top to match my ego...)






What??!! You mean it's not about me?

Ruby, ruby, ruby

Welcome to the world, Ruby!
We send our love. Wish we were there to meet you at your youngest...

x

All quiet on the northern front...

Every day we pretend we open the Sydney papers (by logging on the www.smh.com.au) to be informed of what is happening in the world. Today is no different, and so we were enlightened by the news that we are presently in the 'grip of terror".

Alex did some baking for church supper this evening (!), but surely that's not the cause of the alleged terror. (You may disagree—especially if you realise that after baking, the next logical step for her are Liberty-print frocks. That's classified as HORROR.)

Well, looking out our window everything seems very calm to us...



... but we thought that we should be responsible and educated residents and thus checked www.bbc.co.uk.
There is a murmur of trouble with foiled bombings, but there is a much more significant issue at hand according to one of the leading stories on the website:

"Thorntons (confectioners) has been banned from selling rum and raisin ice cream to kids because of its alcohol content. "

(Apparently It would take 26 cones of the ol' rum 'n' stuff to equal one pint of lager. Not a real threat in my guess.)

No need to panic. On either account.

PS. That's an aerial photo of where we are near Boringstoke. We are the ones waving in the middle-ground.