Season’s greetings one and all. With any luck you have received this electronically. Last year I vowed to can Australia Post because of its price gouging but have relented to a small degree. If you aren't techno-savy the letters will continue but this is it for the rest of you - we go fully eFestive from 2015 so please ensure I have your email address. We have donated what we would have spent on postage to people who live life without the choices we take for granted. Next year we’d like to spend more on them - glenn-cawthorne@rocketmail.com
Well, what a
year it’s been! After far too many
delays the new house at Hornsby Heights was finally nearing completion so we
put Newington on the market in February.
If you’ve ever sold a house you know what sort of work that
entails. Now I have to tell you, Peter
and I are hoarders, that’s all there is to it.
Newington looked neat enough most of the time provided you didn’t open
cupboards, go into the garage or look beyond the study door. Sorting, packing and moving was an ordeal –
even with packers and movers on board – but we did it. And Newington pulled more than we
expected so that covered the major budget blow-outs on the build at Hornsby
Heights.
Moving “home”
to Hornsby felt right. We were in a
house of our own design which we had watched evolve and all was briefly right
with the world, in fact wonderfully right.
Then a fucking big tree fell on our new house! I’m sorry but it has to be said exactly that
way. It crushed a $25,000 Vergola which
had only been up for two weeks; took out a chunk of roof and a couple of our
custom made sets of floor to ceiling louvre windows which sent glass shrapnel
flying into the big room at such a pace that it peppered the leather lounges
and had to be dug out. One of the two
newly completed ponds was damaged; the new chook yard flattened; outdoor
furniture took on bizarre new forms and many of the plants that were safely
stored awaiting planting became very expensive compost as the extremely solid 30m
scribbly gum crashed to earth ripping up our four day old lawn as it went. In short it was a shocker! But here comes the Universal Reality Check…
1.
We
weren’t home – hallelujah!
2.
Our
amazing landscapers, Ray and Jacob, left the site just minutes before the tree
came down. Had they not done so they
would have been killed.
3.
It
smashed our house, not next door where our lovely neighbour Sal was just two
metres away with both of her young kids.
4.
Kevin
was locked safely in the front of the house – surprised but unscathed.
It’s not always easy to put on your Pollyanna hat, or to even find it midst the rubble, branches and leaf litter, but that’s what we did. There are millions of people on this planet who don’t have homes; billions who don’t have one that’s within coo-ee of what we are fortunate enough enjoy – even with a hole in it. There was only one thing to do and that was release a primal yell then suck it up and call the insurance company.
The Youi
assessor showed promise at first but then rapidly demonstrated that he was effectively
incapable of arranging even a simple copulatory experience in a house of
ill-repute. It took two months to
appoint a repairer and then things ground to a halt yet again. We are still a work-in-progress as I prepare
this draft in late-November. Ray the
Amazing Landscaper repaired all his work in no time at all and we also have a
brand new Vergola named Lazarus.
Bizarrely enough, Laz was up before the roof was properly fixed which
speaks volumes about the Vergola people but not Bay Building. The tarpaulins were becoming both a fixture
and a major distraction just as the plywood outlook from the sitting area of
the big room was until last week but I need to reflect upon my Universal
Reality Check and the millions of poor souls who live life under plastic or worse.
The major
bright spot of 2014 was a reunion with two friends I hadn’t seen for 36 years. It’s a long story but I when I fed three US
quarters into a map machine at the Los Angeles Greyhound Terminal in 1978 two
maps came out so I chased after some people I’d met on the airport bus and gave
them the spare. That set in train a magical
chain of events which has enriched both our lives in so many ways. Lin, from Durham, England; and Carol, from
Boston, Massachusetts; have been a major part of that process.
Peter and I
flew up to Cairns to meet them in August.
Lin flew in from the UK via Hong Kong and Carol arrived via just about
every airport between Boston and Far North Queensland a few hours later. It was wonderful beyond everyone’s
expectations and we had the most amazing time in and around Cairns; on Green
Island out on the rapidly failing Great Barrier Reef (see what’s left very quickly);
and then back finally in Sydney.
As the year
wore on and Pinocchio Abbott’s nose grew longer and longer we began to wonder
what happened to the Murdoch gutter press and radio shock jocks who so
mercilessly crucified Julia Gillard just 12 month earlier. A male prime minister can apparently lie his arse
off with absolute impunity - especially if he’s a bullyboy thug – but let a
woman try to call the nation’s biggest polluters to order and it’s another
story. Sadly, truth and justice count
for little in our brave new Australia and equity is just as fanciful a concept as
John Howard’s myth of mateship.
To end, I borrow
from the Thanksgiving tradition of our Canadian and American friends.
I am thankful
for my sister and brother-in-law, Jan and Tony, without whom our lives would
simply not work. I am thankful for my
parents, Ruth and Neville, whose bequest of land made our retirement home a
reality. I am thankful for our
friends and remaining family who pick us up, dust us off and give us love. I am thankful for Kevin, our indulged
cat-shaped-being, who provides us with immense joy. I am thankful for the social service and
medical safety nets we still enjoy in this nation – rights we must all fight to
preserve! I am thankful for the
healthcare professionals who saved Peter’s life and who still offer us great
support in what has become a diminished and all-too-narrow life experience. And finally, I am thankful for this planet
which sustains us all.
Tread gently upon the Earth this
coming rotation and return the blessings you’ve received.
Do something kind for someone you’ll never ever meet.
Do something kind for someone you’ll never ever meet.
Glenn, Peter Lyle, Kevin Osama, Fluffy, Uranus, Baby Blue & the Significant Women
Updates
Yes, the
Significant Woman have arrived – five chooks named for our amazing late friend,
Sylvia Cross; great Australian, Hazel Hawke; the magnificent Margaret Whitlam; Indigenous
poet and activist, Ooodgeroo Noonuccal; and Truganini, last of the full-blood
Tasmanian Aboriginals. If you haven’t
already guessed, Oodgeroo and Truganini are black.
After yet
another trades failure I lost it big time and sprayed like a tomcat. As a result, five trades and two supervisors
arrived on one day and all repairs bar the sliding security screen are now
complete. We’re blinded by the light at
the end of the tunnel.
