The High Wood

We have a turtle in the bath.

A great opening line but it’s true – we do have a turtle in the bath and it happened like this:

Last night, approaching the house as I walked home from the station, I saw Pamela, Robert and the German family from across the road all crouched down around something on the ground. Naturally I walked up to see if I could play too. It was the aforementioned turtle. It was sitting quietly in the middle of the alleyway.

The alleyway is much frequented by cars going to and from their garages so this was not a good long term survival strategy for the turtle. Being kind-hearted people we decided to save it from its fate. By an odd co-incidence we happened to have a fish-tank, sans fish due to my incompetence at managing fish tanks, so we offered to take turtle in. We added some water and a few bricks to make a little platform for him when he didn’t feel like swimming.

Note that I say ‘he’ but in point of fact I am hopeless at sexing turtles so it might be a ‘she’ for all I know. I realise this sort of sexism perpetuates the outmoded paradigms of the dominant male patriarchy but tough. For the purposes of this post, it is a ‘he’. But I digress.

The fishtank is on top of a sort of cabinet/shelves piece of furniture in Robert’s room. In the middle of the night we hear a crashing noise. Worried, we look, but Robert is sleeping peacefully. We go back to bed. Shortly thereafter there is another, much louder, crash. We run into Robert’s room, convinced he has fallen out of bed but he is still asleep (he is a pretty solid sleeper apart from the way he wakes up every few hours). There is a rustling noise in the pile of toys and boxes on the other side of the room.

Last week we had a rat in the house. Pamela is a bit Room 101 about rats so we called in the men from Rentokill, by which time said rat had decamped. The men found a rat skeleton under the house and put down some traps and we assumed the matter was closed. So, when we hear the rustling we think, o shit the rat is back. I turn on the light and Pamela (clever woman that she is) notices the fish tank is empty.

Amazingly, the turtle had managed to climb out of the fish tank and drop onto the cabinet/shelves (crash number one). Shortly thereafter it dived about a metre into the boxes (crash number two). Even more amazingly it seemed to be unhurt. Since the fishtank was clearly a habitation failure we ran a little water into the bath, put down a towel for it to climb on if it felt like it and went back to bed again.

It worked but we have a cast-iron bath. Every so often we would be awakened by a loud ‘bong’ as the turtle shell hit the metal. There would then be the sound of scrabbling claws followed by a splash as the turtle attempted to climb out the shallow end. Finally, it too went to sleep.

I am feeling very tired this morning. We have put posters on the telegraph poles. We have rung the local vet (who is happy to take it and return it to the wild). I am sure we will find a home for it. But for the time being…

We have a turtle in the bath.

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New Year’s day, 2007. Here we are again. Let’s review my predictions from last year.

1. Pamela gets her DCA
- DCA has been confirmed – actual ceremony not until this year.
2. Pamela gets her fantasy novel published
- Contract has been signed (for three books). Book one comes out in September this year
3. Stephen finishes writing his book (I did get 30,000 words written last year – need to double that this year)
- First major draft (actual 3rd draft) finished (95,000 words)
4. Robert swims 50 metres
- Not yet. Wouldn’t surprise me if he can do so by the end of summer.
5. Robert is reading real books
- Rather an imprecise definition here. Robert is certainly reading well, including stuff which he hasn’t seen before.

On the whole, not a bad effort at prognostication. Take that, Nostradamus.

The above tells you a lot about what has happened this year. What else?

Well, I moved my website from Optusnet to my own domain (this one) and updated the style. I started this blog. Blogs are good for ephemera but somehow the more important stuff still feels like it deserves its own pages so I’ll keep the rest of the site going.

Given that I have a full time job and a full time child, most of my alleged spare time has been taken up with writing. So far, I have managed to do some writing on the train to work but my office has just moved making the trip much shorter. This is good in terms of saving me about half an hour of travel each day but I am losing much of that writing time. We’ll see. At the moment I’m doing detailed revision which requires accessing reference books and/or websites all the time so I can’t do much when travelling anyway.

Pamela similarly has been tied up with her DCA so she hasn’t had a lot of time either. This will not improve much this year as she has to produce another 130,000 words for volume 2 of the trilogy. However, Robert is going to big school this year so she will have five days a week for writing rather than three. She won the 2006 Premier’s history award for children’s writing for the previous year’s work – The Black Dress which tells the story of Mary McKillop’s early years.

We are all a little stressed what with one thing and another. We have had a couple of week holidays but in both cases we have been sick so we haven’t had much rest. We are going away for a couple of weeks shortly. Hopefully we will actually get a proper holiday this time.

Robert has had a big year. He had his second year of pre-school, his fifth birthday and he started playing soccer – it has been good for him to play in a team game. He has been doing gym and swimming. It’s a wonder he has any energy left, let alone the amount he does have.

Prognostication time. The crystal ball is a little cloudier this year.

There are some gimme’s.

1. Pamela will be awarded her DCA, her novel will get published
2. Robert will start kindergarden and will play soccer
3. Pamela will write volume 2 of the trilogy (not quite a gimme but she has a contract and she is a pro – it’ll get done)

After that it gets trickier.

1. We may be going overseas (US/England) later in the year. It depends a bit on whether I can get leave from work.
2. I will get a publisher for my novel (well, why not – other people can)
3. Stuff will happen with our extended families (a fuzzy prediction)

See, it’s hard to say. We’ll revisit it next year.

In the mean time, Happy New Year and may it be a good one.

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A while since the last post. Quite a lot has been happening.

The family went on a week’s holiday to Avoca last week, along with my elder sister and her husband who are visiting from England. It had its good bits and its bad bits.

Robert had a great time. He got to go to the beach twice a day on most days. We went to putt-putt golf (he’s getting very good at it) and took him to a driving range for the first time where they loaned him some cut-down clubs. Then he and I went ten-pin bowling. This is not easy for a five year old but they put up barriers so the ball can’t go into the gutters and they have light balls for kids (although Robert still has to throw it with both hands). Fun though.

The bad bit was that Pamela was a sick as a dog nearly all week – necessitating a trip to the doctor for anti-nausea treatment. I was fine until we got home, at which point I started throwing up. My sister is a Rain Goddess. Wherever she goes, it rains. The week was sunny until about Wednesday then wham. Hence ten-pin bowling.

By the time I got back to work I was totally stuffed. A colleague here has pointed out that coming back from holiday is always difficult. After you have been back a week a so, the hopelessness and despair become part of your existence again and you don’t notice them, but the first week is difficult. I am settling in.
On the positive side, I got to spend some time with my sister which is always fun. I got away from work for a week which is always worthwhile. And I guess having a job to come back to is not to be sniffed at.

We have been infested with tradesmen this week. The tree people have been and lopped the dead wood off our camphor laurel tree and cut off the bit which overhung our neighbour’s yard. The latter had been causing some angst on the neighbour’s part. Unfortunately, they also trimmed off some new growth at the bottom of the tree which had been shielding us from the the flats behind and was to provide cover for Robert’s tree house (which I am slowly putting together). We asked them not to but, of course, they knew better. We were not happy.

The bathroom is being refurbished. The 1920′s red tiles on the floor have been replaced with something a bit less dingy and sundry outstanding plumbing jobs are happening at the same time. I had to help carry the cast iron bath in and out as neither the tiler or the plumber turned up with an offsider. I seem to have avoided a hernia. The bathroom does look a lot better.

We had a swimming pool full of kids on Wednesday. Pamela has instituted a sort of open house policy on Wednesdays so we tend to get overrun. This is not a bad thing. It is good for Robert to have other kids around.

That’s about it for now.  Time to head off to work and find out what today’s emergency is going to be.

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Congratulations to Pamela on winning the Premier’s History Award for 2006 in the Young People’s History Prize category for The Black Dress – a book about the childhood of Mary McKillop. A just recognition for over 5 years of work (and worth money as well!).

For those who don’t know, Mary McKillop is the nearest thing Australia has to a saint. She has been beatified (or, as the tabloids would have it, beautified) making her officially the Blessed Mary McKillop. Sainthood is the next step.

Mary McKillop is an interesting character – one of the strong women of Australia’s 19th century history. She founded an educational order of nuns (the Josephites or, in the vernacular, the Joeys), committed to the education of children in far flung areas. She was always in trouble with the Establishment of the church. One bishop even went so far as to excommunicate her for a while.

The formative years of her childhood are fascinating. But don’t just take my word for it – go buy the book and read it.

The Black Dress: Mary McKillop’s Early Years by Pamela Freeman, Black Dog Press 2005

Awards and Commendations

Shortlisted for NSW Premier’s History Award
Children’s Book Council Notable Book 2006

Reviews

The Catholic Leader
Catholic Voice
Catholic Weekly
Compass
Good Reading
Inside a dog
Read Alert

Interviews

Catholic Weekly: Conversation with Pamela Freeman

Bookshop Notes and Reviews

Abbeys 50 Best Books of 2005
Abbeys Review
Credo
Dymocks

Publishing Stuff

Publishers(Black Dog Books) (includes teachers’ notes)
Australian Licensing Corporation

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Cirque du Soleil

Thanks to some of Pamela’s relatives being unable to go to the Cirque du Soleil the other night, we ended up with some free tickets. In the past, we have decided that the Cirque du Soleil was just too expensive. Having seen one, we have changed our mind. We will go and see them when they come back next time.

For those who live on another planet, the Cirque du Soleil is the quintessential modern circus. It has no animals but has the traditional human acts – acrobats, trapeze artists, jugglers, clowns and so forth.

The clowns, I thank the lord, do not use baggy trousers, oversize shoes or red noses. They are comedians – not of the stand-up type but rather with mostly non-verbal business. One example had the comedian trying to sing while the spotlight kept moving as he tried to keep up with it. It doesn’t sound worth more than a small giggle but I nearly killed myself laughing. You had to be there.

Which is the whole point of a good circus – you have to be there. There is something about a troop of acrobats being propelled off a swing to do a triple somersault with twist and land on the shoulders of two other people which has an immediacy unavailable on film or television. Indeed, you can never be sure on film that anything is real. It surely is as you sit in front of it.

I had a similar sensation at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. I wouldn’t have gone myself but I had recently met Pamela and she already had tickets. It was great. I’d go again although possibly not if I had to travel halfway across the world. Nevertheless, it was vastly superior to watching it on the TV.

Sometimes you have to experience the world directly.

I find that rather comforting.

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Bundeena. Not a synonym for Cowabunga but a small place south of Sydney, between the National Park and the sea. It is an odd place. Cronulla is only a twenty minute ferry ride away but to get there by road there is a long drive along windy roads through the National Park. Thus it feels incredibly isolated but is in fact quite close to Sydney. Being on the edge of the park it cannot expand and so retains a village-like feel.

It has been ‘discovered’ fairly recently so we have 2.5 million dollar waterside mansions mixing it with old fibro shacks. Some friends of Pamela own one of the latter and it was available for a week so we took advantage of the opportunity. School holidays made it simple for Robert to be with us.

For anyone in the northern hemisphere it is worth noting that it is the middle of winter here so swimming and sandcastles were right out. Fibro provides a less than perfect insulator as well so the nights were a bit chilly. Fortunately the owners of the place had provided electric blankets. These are usually unnecessary in Sydney but they were very welcome.

The weather was most fine so we had plenty of nice walks in the National Park and visited a few local places of interest. The Symbio animal centre is not, as you might imagine, a place where exotic animal biosynthesis occurs but rather a small zoo where you can get close to the animals.

Robert got to pat a barking owl (again not a biosynthetic dog-bird). I got to stare at some freshwater crocodiles. It was a cold and miserable day so I had some fellow feeling with them. Lying in a warm place and snapping at anyone coming close sounded good to me.
There was no internet. In fact there wasn’t even a phone. Add to that hot water on tap and not going to work and you have civilisation. Of course, mobile phones mean you can never get away completely but you can always turn them off.

I had loaded the laptop up with games. There was a television. We had monopoly with us (almost obligatory when travelling with children) so even on the wet days (Friday and Saturday) we were occupied. Could have taken more of it really.

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