AMAZING TIMES WE LIVE IN

So it’s early evening and I am waiting to collect my tribe of friend, neighbour and eldest son from the Peter Singer Lecture at State Library, when I notice this young girl sitting cross legged, in a deserted courtyard area, on her laptop.

Looking a little more closely, I note that she has her mobile phone, and what looks like a mini modem? Perhaps it was an ipod thingy, not sure. She also has on bright green headset with a microphone, and she’s laughing and nodding and looking into her laptop, at her friend’s image.

“She’s on a live video chat” I think to myself, and I slowly turn and take her photo with my mobile. The image is quickly emailed to my home computer, and I know it will be waiting for my in my Inbox when I return soon.

Gone are the days when people wrote on postcards, and kissed them before popping them in the letterbox, destination unknown. Now collectors find new homes for old cards found in antique shops. I have a collection myself, sewn and embroidered war cards, fading inked writing pleading:
“Where are you and why don’t you write back to me?”
“Leave tomorrow for the Front, I wish it would stop snowing, I am so cold.”
“Please give my love to mum and dad and tell them I miss them.”

Gone are the days when you would buy a small block of airline paper; usually blue, and thin and fragile, to be filled with delicate handwriting before licking and sealing the glued edge. I wrote to my older sister in London for years using these. We were always impressed she would receive them within three weeks.
Three weeks!

My friend’s father collects stamps; he has done for years and his collection fills an entire spare bedroom of his home. Neither sons nor his daughter are interested in the collection, but it’s this man’s life and love.

What will happened to it I wonder? It’s in the past, the future is digital and no stamps are needed.

Having just closed my own website of 10 years, I now find myself Twittering at random times during the day. If not Twittering, then there’s Facebook, and a host of other applications I haven’t bothered or had the time to learn.

We can only do so much, and learn new applications or sink in the mess of humanity.

Interesting times indeed.

MY GIRLFRIENDS' PANTRY

My pantry is full of girlfriends’ food.

Each son has brought home women who love food: to eat, or look at, or both, and they have stocked up our pantry with my money for their dietary preferences.

I have three bottles of vanilla essence from Hannah, who loved her cakes. Mention cupcakes and she would squeal. Seriously! Hannah also bought three large packets of sugar. I haven’t bought sugar for 12 years, and at this rate, I won’t be buying sugar until I am an octagarian! I don’t eat it, I don’t cook with it, I don’t put it in my tea, but I could bath in this. And that’s just white sugar.

I also now have brown sugar, castor sugar, three packets (you guessed it!) of icing sugar, and sugar cubes, for goodness sake. There are three bottles of balsamic vinegar on the high shelf, and two bottles of sweet chilli sauce. *faints.

In my ‘plastic cupboard’ (more like a morgue for Tupperware and takeaway containers of chicken and almonds) I can count 8 vanilla ice-cream buckets. There are only 8 because I threw away the other 14, in various colours. Blue (Pauls) white (Streets) and green (extra creamy). The brown ones were Sara Lee and cardboard, so out they went.

Hannah grew from a size 10 skinny girl to a size 18 making her own clothes. I have lost count of the number of safety pins I gave her as her waistband/zip/buttons all pooped with her increasing girth.

I tried not to show judgement, but my teeth were gritted. She should have tried the same trick.

Beth – my youngest son’s friend is on a heath kick. So far she has stayed the same weight, but it’s early days.

She’s very much like my son; intelligent and nice, but serious, studies too much and thinks a great day is laying in a darkened bedroom for eight hours watching tv shows downloaded onto his computer. *So that’s where my bandwidth went.

Beth’s donation to the world’s growing food shortage is to stockpile it in my fridge. High up, on the shelf I used to keep my eggs and pate, there are blocks of Haloumi cheese, feta and tofu.

I have two containers of rice milk. Rice milk! There are two packets of oats and three packets of natural muesli.

Can’t these women buy in singular units?

Regularly she buys mangoes/peaches/avocadoes and soy bread. My possums have never eaten so well! I must tap her on the shoulder and remind her to eat the food she brings. No wonder she’s skinny.

My fridge too, is groaning with fresh mushrooms, (hey, I am not complaining, I love fresh mushrooms) and sad little herbs in plastic. It’s always fascinating to watch them turn into slime, I never tire of it. I have a complete science lab and evolution in my crisper drawer. Did I mention the fish sauce?

My pantry - and fridge - are full of girlfriends’ food.

Pity they don’t cook for me. Dinner anyone?

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent but the ingredients stay the same.

GARDEN SEAT

I have a seat in my garden that’s so old, it is rotten. I bought it to sit with my friends and family in the garden, 14 years ago.

My husband wouldn’t sit with me; he was too busy.

My two sons didn’t sit with me; they were too embarrassed to be seen with their mother.

My friends couldn’t sit with me; they had their own families to raise.
I sat there each week, regardless; watering my plants and watching them die in the endless drought.

Hosing off the white ants.
Washing off fallen leaves.
Watering my plants in the heat of summer.

Sitting there in spring smelling my rose I managed to grow in a pot, one year.When that died, I planted pink petunias.

Occasionally, usually my birthday, or such, my friends would come and we would gather and laugh and play and take photos.

I have a seat in the garden, that’s so old, it’s rotten.

Now that our children have grown, and our husbands are still busy with work, I now find time to sit with my friends and we prop ourselves on our elbows.

Just don't rock the bench too much. It's rotten.

Short story #2

Even though it was broad daylight, she felt she must keep the shutters closed, at least for the next hour, just in case. Brian, her toddler, was upset at the darkness, it confused him, and he stood crying softly to himself.

They’ll hear him, she thought, so she gently rocked him backwards and forwards, ever so softly, to comfort him.

Against her better nature, she turned the lights on. He must not cry, she thought.

Shh, shhh darling, shhh, it won’t be long now.

He continued to squirm in his mother’s arms, her sweat made his skin itchy, and he wriggled with the determination of a child that age.

When she thought it was safe, when she thought they had gone, she cautiously stood and tiptoed to the windows. Quietly, she opened the shutters, one, two.

Nothing.

The odd car going past, and a dog in the distance, barking in time.
Relieved, and now shaking with adrenaline, she threw open the curtains, and let the light in.


Photo by Peter Mirolo
Story by Patty Beecham

Smoke in my eyes

It wasn’t like she had planned it, not yet; anyway. Sure, one day she’d like kids, but now? It was too soon, they were both fresh out of school, and the future was speeding towards them.

He was agitated, worried what his dad would say. He could picture his father, scowling and shouting behind him “You stupid idiot”, and the words echoed in his mind. His brain raced ahead.

I need to think. I need to plan. I need a ciggie, he thought.

She waited, the wind caught his match again and again, till finally she gave him her cigarette lighter she had bought from a secondhand shop. It was silver, inscribed “To my Darling, always”.

A cheapish imitation, she still loved the writing on it. No one spoke to each other like that any more.

She waited for his next response to her question.

“What now?”

He lit his cigarette, and drew back deeply.