Valentino and viewings

 Happy Valentine's Day - or rather, happy birthday to Uncle Tom. Aunt Ada was an April Fool and Tom a Valentine. The baby was Grandma.

He was named for Thomas, his paternal uncle, the man who would steal how mother away - or was her running Salvation? We will never know.

Hr had the sort of tight curl "the teacher used to pat it every time he walked past" until one day Tom snapped and, without raising his eyes from his work, took a ruler and rapped the annoying insect hard.

Grandma adored her big brother - her tale was she so loved her big brother that she could not bear they part, and ran away TO school at a very young age to be with him.

Which was just as well, because when their mother left their father put them in an orphanage as he could not work and look after three children.

Perhaps he was too proud to turn to his sisters and share his bewilderment. His own paternal example was a man who abandoned his family. (I have just realised that there is a strong history of abandonment in that branch of the family!)

Therefore Tom, aged about five, became the man of the family - one older bossier sister of about seven and the baby aged three.

They lived in various foster situations - but the rest is a story for another day.

Today I went viewing houses. I was so organised. You see, until this week there had been nary an interesting house to see - maybe one a week and generally not so exciting as to go to the extra effort of checking it out. 

I have been to only a handful over the past few weeks.

Today I had five on the list - two between 9 and 9.30, a 9.30, a 10 and a 12.45.

The first not too far from my work. It's near the top of a hill, which after the nearly two decades of the flatlands, is interesting. 

Rooms led to other rooms and no corner was square. You never knew what surprise you would find beyond the next door. I could have loved it there. 20 year old me would have swooned at the potential. Unfortunately 20 year old me wasn't buying houses (how cheap they would have been then) and I wasn't buying for 20 year old me alone.

As there was another house to view in this timeslot and it was across town, I set my phone to navigate and went to see the other.

It is in this little neighbourhood where there is this secret park that about three of four dead end streets end at it. 

I got there with three minutes to spare but the moment that I walked in I knew that it was not me. The agent opened with the fact that there was already a Southern offer on the table. There was a sunken lounge with a balustrade, a tucked away kitchen it was definitely waiting for a different family.

The next was in a different part of town and it is right at the very extreme end of my budget - but there was plenty of bang for that buck.

All of the boxes plus that little bit more. We want 3 bedrooms and maybe an office - this one has 5, an office AND a big-a$$ed media room. Want a pool - one so inviting I could see myself attracting many friends! Walk in wardrobe! Bathtub in BOTH bathrooms.

Way out of our league! Way way WAY!

Cherry on top is - you know The Griswalds? The Christmas themed neighbourhood they lived in? That is what this neighbourhood is renowned for - although doubtful that anyone could throw such a party, as the roads are closed during the peak pedestrian hours every evening.

The fourth house was in the same neighbourhood but the poor relation end. Yes a pool but the clothesline blocked one garage, a rainwater tank didn't attach to the broken gutters and one bedroom had two doors entering it side by side.

I know, picky picky picky.

I abandoned my quest before the fifth. It was in a further part of town near my worst ever workplace. That workplace has now moved but my Spidey senses said "you're not going to live here" and I listened.

Still, one of the blessings of the offer we have accepted is time. So we will keep using that.

The bleak February of 1954

Firstly a note - the story in the previous post was that - a story written for a prompt.

It did not happen. Well, it did but from my mind to your eyes.

This next story is true. And it has turned quite bleak so trigger warnings about death - in the past but still deaths are integral. But there is also other stuff.

Image - all images are screenshots of a local newspapers classifieds section. Call it "a take on modernistic scrapbooking for lazy people"

But it does get heavy.

I can only imagine what it was like for Dad.

Image - all images are screenshots of a local newspapers classifieds section. Call it "a take on modernistic scrapbooking for lazy people"

 You don't really need me to keep saying the image thing do you?

This morning, my Dad mentioned that it was 72 years to the day that his father died. 

My father has always remembered it to be a Black Friday, and folklore told of how he was advised on a school day - but instead I discovered only today (through independent research) it was a Saturday. In fact it was the Saturday that Queen Elizabeth the Second landed in Canberra.

Image - all images are screenshots of a local newspapers classifieds section. Call it "a take on modernistic scrapbooking for blah blah blah"

His recollection could indeed be true. He had been deposited at boarding school for the first time a week before. Perhaps he was notified when they knew that his father would not make it. Maybe they delayed telling it until after to soften the blow. Maybe they had Saturday prep. Anything is possible. The only one who could possibly answer that question is Dad.

Less than a month later, Dad and his box brownie were in the throng lining the street as Her Royal Majesty and Prince Phillip were driven past in an open car. The mythology of the subsequent photo is another we grew up with. It is no doubt in one of their boxes. Perhaps there are boxes that I have never opened.

Image - all images are screenshots of a local yokel tidbits of life.

In my research tonight, I discovered that the flood that Dad and his family travelled through to bury his father one week later was the same flood that his second cousin, a boy of seven, was one of

 "between 26 to 30 people died as a result of the flooding, severe winds and storm surges."

When I asked the internet about this relative by name (for I am currently "saving money avoiding ancestry" as it's new homes I need to hunt, not dead relatives - see how well that's going!), internet helpfully offered me his namesake on the other side of the world spotting trains on Facebook.

Image - all images are screenshots of a time and place that no longer exists.

Which I think is my sign from the universe that I need to sleep then hunt.

Sorry for the downer.

On the upside, houses have only risen a squidge.

Image

Night all.

Wednesdays Words on a Friday - Garden Centre Gnomes

River prompted me with her Wednesday's Words on a Friday

Apparently (and this is lifted directly from River's blog) this month the words/prompts are supplied by Lissa and can be found at her blog

This week's words/prompts are:

1.heartbreak 2.cheeseburger 3.postcard 4.afterlife 5.beachcomb

Charlotte's colour of the month is Electric Rose



So -

He was chewing heartily when he began to berate me out of the blue - that's right, a total stranger, no pause to swallow, just multi-tasking his way through cheeseburger whilst in the queue at the garden centre.

"Do you know what happens to people like you in the afterlife?  Its not a picnic, you know.  Its not a postcard from Sydney, its not find pearls when you beachcomb - you would find dog turds." He ranted on.

 I had tuned out at people like me.  I was wondering what bucket of human I had been scooped from in his mind to be worthy of this diatribe.  I began to meander through the corridors of people who would make up the halls of the afterlife with me.

And then I wondered about the colours of his damnation.  No doubt rainbow.  Perhaps all greens.  Scarlet, definitely - but what about pinks?  From Fuchsia through Electric Rose - but Blush - would that also be damnable?  And the Sunset Yellow in the tin that I was buying - I would have heartbreak if that was the colour of my slippery slope.

Luckily the line moved forward and he slurped his soft drink and found another target. 

A Quick 11pm post

 Oh goodness. I just went back to this day (ish) 17 years ago.

Breath-taking

I had been going to post about how different this 11 o'clock would have been been way back when.

And then 18 years ago - Always looking on the bright side

And then I went to 15 years ago - (nearly) teenagers and (nearly) toddlers

Oh! 10 years ago and A Yarn from 1982 - or why my mother didn't have a breakdown then, I will never know.

 

Has anyone else done a drift back in time?

Give me a blog post from your past.

Poet's Garret in Paradise

Given the proximal habits of garret, poet and poor in everyday life, it is no small wonder that my need to send a concise response to a proposed real estate transaction has me tongue- (or is it thumb-? (in these days of using the keyboard on the phone)) tied.

Image: 7.40am view of the Pacific Ocean with the sun glaring off the water and the white bonnet of the car. For full context, invoke McDonalds breakfast bribe for both of us, an inadequate coffee reinforcing the stark realisation that you no longer know how to order adequate coffee - and Paris is this side of the frame, too)

I have visions of being so rich that I could employ someone to do it all - find a house, sell a house, be a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a niece, an aunt, a friend, a poet, a blogger, a cook, a driving instructor, a volunteer it support and hold down a full-time job while I read books and researched dead people and be me - whoever that might be.

Image: the beautiful "house panther" Gangsterrr.

Maybe that will all change.

Image - sunset view from the balcony taken (and shared here on this blog some years ago)

The ball, it doth roll.

No image as I found no balls...