My Mother likes reading, rich chocolatey desserts and potato scallops- and not necessarily in that particular order...
She's left-handed, which makes her signature difficult- but not impossible- to forge. She also has the uncanny knack of making me feel guilty about the way I live my life- from how I raise my children and what time I wake up in the morning, to how many cigarettes I smoke each day.
Aren't reformed smokers' the absolute worst kinds of critics?
I can visualise my Mother blinking back the tears reading this story, thinking that I am going to try and blame her for my rotten life or something. I'm not. That would be like blaming a god for my wasted life. I'm the creator of my own shitty life- not god, not my Mother. I did all of this to Myself. And if she ever manages to lay her eyes on this, then She's in luck because I'm in the mood for Disclosure- and as she's been wanting to know all of this shit that goes on in my head for years, I may as well let her know some of the truth. It can be her little reward.
So here goes nothing...
I am home from school This day, as I have tricked my Mother into thinking I am sick by shaking talcum powder over a clump of wet pink toilet paper. I tell her it is vomit, but She doesn't really have a good look at it, she is in too much of a rush to get all the others off to school, so she tells me that if I am sick I had better go back to bed. I am always pretending- about everything- to everybody.
So I go back to bed, with my fake abdominal pains and ice-cream container, and wait until they all leave for work and school. After they've gone I tip-toe around the house, checking the rooms to make sure that everyone's really gone. And then the fun begins.
I search through my Sister's things. I try on bras and put their make-up on- and then reprimand Myself for wanting to look pretty like all the other girls before scrubbing it off roughly with a wet towel. I read the instructions from my Mother's tampon boxes and worry that I'll never be able to insert one properly. I sneak cigarettes from the second-to-last packet in my Mother's carton of Peter Stuyvesants and hope she doesn't notice; to this day just the smell from that brand still gives me a headache- and then vigourously brush my tongue and teeth to rid the smell of smoke from my breath.
I don't breathe the smoke in yet- I blow rather than suck. I don't remember how old I am but I'm guessing I'm about eleven and in fifth class. My teacher's name is Cecily, which belies the fact that she's hard-nosed and tough and drives an olive-coloured Volvo. She wants our class to look up the Mariana's Trench in the Pacific Ocean. I look it up in our Encyclopedia, a single thick blue tome, and find out that it is the deepest spot in all of the oceans and about eleven kilometres deep; like an upside-down Mount Everest. Then I watch Days of Our Lives on Tv, and eagerly search for my Father's one and only Emmanuelle video to watch, and make Myself an egg and lettuce sandwich with one of the leftover boiled eggs out of the fridge.
My Mother sometimes makes them for My school luches, but she is always busy in the mornings- so most of the time we have to make our own cold canned Spaghetti or Baked Bean sandwich, to squish into the square yellow lunch boxes that leak bean juice throughout my brown school port and all over my books- but at least that's a little less bean juice that gets to soak into the bread of my sandwich. I practically have to drink it out of the container as I can no longer pick the bread up, it is so soggy. Why the hell did Veruca Salt want a Bean Feast- that's what I want to know...
It was always my dream to get Devon-and-tomato-sauce-sandwiches for my lunch but I never did- and I always envied the Monkey-Bar Kids because they always seemed to have them. These days; I'll sometimes make them for Myself. Just because they're yum.
And it's no wonder that I have scoliosis of the spine after dragging my heavy school bag up the hill every morning. I can almost see Myself now, walking along with one arm stuck almost straight up in the air; and my bag is like the friendless person sitting all alone on a see-saw, a dead weight on a fulcrum. I begin to know what that Leunig cartoon is all about all of a sudden; the one in particular that my Mother likes, where the woman is grating her fingers, like cheese, and her finger-flakes lie in a pool of her own blood; and she is oblivious as she daydreams about riding a swan that is losing it's feathers as it flies along...
I guess this is how all women feel sometimes. I know I often do- as I am mechanically emptying a shit out of the potty, changing the toilet roll and recycling the used one and simultaneously washing my hands and grabbing a cigarette and the small pair of Spiderman undies that have found their way beneath my fridge. I don't know that women are such great Multi-taskers; maybe we are all just a little bit Schizo-Fucking-Phrenic and merely allot jobs out to each of our Personalities at the beginning of each new day.
That's how I must manage anyway.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Eighteenth August EveryYear...
Like I said to my Son...
It may be your birthday but it's also the day I gave birth day.
It may be your birthday but it's also the day I gave birth day.
Fred...
Growing up with three Sisters meant that there was almost always someone to side with when an argument broke out- but it also meant that, after including my Mother in the tally and discounting the cat, my Father had to share the only bathroom in the house with five females.
Had any of Us really been born boys we were all going to be named Peter, after my Father's youngest brother, who had died when he was only three days old. This might have been a problem if we were all born boys, but we weren't. My paternal Grandmother- who I've never met but who is still alive somewhere out there until a policeman comes knocking on the door to tell us otherwise- gave birth to her second child prematurely and brought my Father's brother home in a shoe box, wrapped up in cotton wool, but he didn't survive very long. Or so I was told.
I've also been told that my Father, who was only five at the time, had been left home alone, and was with the baby when he died, but I don't know if that's factual or not, either- and I've never been game enough to ask my Dad if it were true. They are just some places you can't go with Fred.
That's not my Dad's name, that's just what I call him. One of my Sister's started it when we were younger, but she calls him Freddy- and that is very different.
But because He's so quiet I don't know much about what his Life was like growing up except that he lived with his grandparents after his mum and dad broke up after marrying too young. She was only sixteen when she fell pregnant. We start young in my family I guess...
He went to boarding school and smoked cigarettes and pipes behind the sports shed and could build bolt bombs. He threw one out of a hotel window and blew up a car when he was about twelve, but again- I could be making this all up as I go along. I'm not sure anymore. Then he left school and became a Clerk in the army- he always wanted to be a soldier when he was a little boy- and had to count every single bullet and fork in the store rooms. To escape a drink driving charge he fled across the border to New South Wales and then met and maried Mum six weeks after proposing to her, by writing "How 'bout it?", or something like that, on a cigarette, only a few days after meeting her for the first time. And even though I am the only one of their kids who regularily smokes all of the time- it wasn't Me who smoked it after all those years that they had saved it...
I guess they must have really loved each other once, or else they were just infatuatd or incredibly horny or something, like my Grandparents were. Like my Hubby and me. He told me once that She had really nice long legs, and that was what he first noticed about her...
My Father was a good looking young bloke; in fact he looked a lot like I do now, except that I'm missing the beard and the moustache. No jibes now. I would have made a good looking boy. But at some stage after that he became my Father; a man who always worked hard and provided for his family. He's a moody man who grumbles about prices. He tells us that he's happiest when he's by himself, but I don't usually believe him. A few years ago I asked some of his friends over for Christmas Day- stupidly thinking he might have a Funner Time or something- but he got really cranky at me instead.
His philosophy on life is simple; don't share your wife or your toothbrush. Unfortunately we did just that- for about three months we both thought we owned the same Purple toothbrush. I've never really gotten over it, either...
When we were small-to-medium he'd take us along to the big football stadium near where we live to watch the Soccer. He would wear his yellow, black and red spray jacket that had the KB beer logo on it- and on the way home he'd stop off at the pub for one last beer after the match, while we'd have to sit, on the step outside, drinking red Fire Engines and eating cheese Twisties-but I guess those were the days before beer gardens and Playstation Caves- isn't it funny, though, how nowadays people get upset by seeing a dog tied up outside the pub?
He has always followed AFL and Collingwood but he only gets to see one match a year now that he is north of the Victorian border. He was at the grounds both times the Club have won in his lifetime- for the Grand finals in nineteen fifty eight and again in nineteen ninety- but when it came time for the two-thousand and two final he wasn't able to get any tickets. I wrote about six letters to Eddie McGuire, begging him for tickets for my Father, and told him that if Fred wasn't at the game, preferably starting it off with the coin-toss or delivering the oranges to the players at half-time, then Collingwood had no chance of winning against those Brisbane Bastards. Boo the Lions.
I also told him some of Dad's other football stories; like how he still calls them the Woodsmen- 'Carn the Woodsmen' he'll shout, like he did in the old days with his mate Macca, and like the time he conducted the stand of Collingwood fans at the MCG while they sang the team song, with his goat-skin of plonk slung carelessly over his shoulder; and how he had won two premierships Himself, and had a Mean Left-boot in the old days and had even kicked four tricky goals from the boundary in the last quarter of the final in Sixty-eight...
Well, I did receive a letter back- which now sits in pride of place in Fred's Collingwood Cabinet on the back verandah- but it contained no Final's tickets. And it wasn't written by Eddie himself either- just the schmuck Vice President of the football club. I can't even remember his name now, he's so unimpotant.
And no, as History shows you, the Woodsmen didn't win, just like I said they wouldn't. Boo the Lions.
We watched the game with his friends at their house; the one whose son got the Sprite yoyo that I mentioned I stole from under Kelly's desk when I broke into my primary school all those years ago. I'm beginning to think that stealing that yoyo may have been the start of all of my bad karma- and if I could only pick another one up on Ebay and return it to forty two Springfield Avenue, if that's where he still lives, then maybe my luck might finally change for the better...
Another memory I have of my Dad is of the day he came home with Chinese for tea and Mum bought a takeaway chicken. I thought they were going to get a divorce over that little bungle.
I remember Him emptying all of his clothes into the one and only suitcase we had, while the unused tie-rack that I got from the Father's Day Stall at school for one dollar stays hanging alone in the bare cupboard. It had space for about twenty ties but my Father doesn't need to wear ties to work- blue-collar man that he is; and because he has a beard he didn't need the shaving brush and mug that I had also gotten him for an additional fifty cents. He also packs the large photo album with all the 'nice' studio shots of us kids- the ones where we sit rigidly on stools in our 'best' clothes and gappy-smile our way through the ages. At least he will remember us looking at our best, smiling, and need not think of us with our puffy tear-streaked faces- such as they were that night.
Our Cousin, who happened to be there visiting us that day, is used to such parental displays, and shows us how to delay his progress by unpacking the suitcases and carrying everything back inside off the verandah from where he is loading them into the back of the car. I try to blackmail him. If you leave Daddy- I won't ever ride my horse again; I promise. I'll even sell her if you go- the ultimate sacrifice. He packs the trailer anyway and attaches it to the car and leaves...
But then a little while later he is back. I know how he feels. I've packed up four times and my Hubby doesn't even know about it because I've always managed to unpack everything again before he sees that I've ever left.
I can't leave either.
In the confusion of papers left strewn on the floor the day that my Father almost left Rare Rure (raa-ree-roo-ree)- that's Me and my three Sisters in case you are wondering- my birth certificate got thrown out with all the other rubbish. It felt like I had lost my identity; like that piece of paper was proof of My existance, my True sex, my parentage even; the little bit of paper that you need to get into heaven if it really does exist.
And it wasn't lost- like my Mother still insists- trying to get into nightclubs when I was underage. What would have been the point of showing the Bouncers the truth?
They never would have let me in...
Had any of Us really been born boys we were all going to be named Peter, after my Father's youngest brother, who had died when he was only three days old. This might have been a problem if we were all born boys, but we weren't. My paternal Grandmother- who I've never met but who is still alive somewhere out there until a policeman comes knocking on the door to tell us otherwise- gave birth to her second child prematurely and brought my Father's brother home in a shoe box, wrapped up in cotton wool, but he didn't survive very long. Or so I was told.
I've also been told that my Father, who was only five at the time, had been left home alone, and was with the baby when he died, but I don't know if that's factual or not, either- and I've never been game enough to ask my Dad if it were true. They are just some places you can't go with Fred.
That's not my Dad's name, that's just what I call him. One of my Sister's started it when we were younger, but she calls him Freddy- and that is very different.
But because He's so quiet I don't know much about what his Life was like growing up except that he lived with his grandparents after his mum and dad broke up after marrying too young. She was only sixteen when she fell pregnant. We start young in my family I guess...
He went to boarding school and smoked cigarettes and pipes behind the sports shed and could build bolt bombs. He threw one out of a hotel window and blew up a car when he was about twelve, but again- I could be making this all up as I go along. I'm not sure anymore. Then he left school and became a Clerk in the army- he always wanted to be a soldier when he was a little boy- and had to count every single bullet and fork in the store rooms. To escape a drink driving charge he fled across the border to New South Wales and then met and maried Mum six weeks after proposing to her, by writing "How 'bout it?", or something like that, on a cigarette, only a few days after meeting her for the first time. And even though I am the only one of their kids who regularily smokes all of the time- it wasn't Me who smoked it after all those years that they had saved it...
I guess they must have really loved each other once, or else they were just infatuatd or incredibly horny or something, like my Grandparents were. Like my Hubby and me. He told me once that She had really nice long legs, and that was what he first noticed about her...
My Father was a good looking young bloke; in fact he looked a lot like I do now, except that I'm missing the beard and the moustache. No jibes now. I would have made a good looking boy. But at some stage after that he became my Father; a man who always worked hard and provided for his family. He's a moody man who grumbles about prices. He tells us that he's happiest when he's by himself, but I don't usually believe him. A few years ago I asked some of his friends over for Christmas Day- stupidly thinking he might have a Funner Time or something- but he got really cranky at me instead.
His philosophy on life is simple; don't share your wife or your toothbrush. Unfortunately we did just that- for about three months we both thought we owned the same Purple toothbrush. I've never really gotten over it, either...
When we were small-to-medium he'd take us along to the big football stadium near where we live to watch the Soccer. He would wear his yellow, black and red spray jacket that had the KB beer logo on it- and on the way home he'd stop off at the pub for one last beer after the match, while we'd have to sit, on the step outside, drinking red Fire Engines and eating cheese Twisties-but I guess those were the days before beer gardens and Playstation Caves- isn't it funny, though, how nowadays people get upset by seeing a dog tied up outside the pub?
He has always followed AFL and Collingwood but he only gets to see one match a year now that he is north of the Victorian border. He was at the grounds both times the Club have won in his lifetime- for the Grand finals in nineteen fifty eight and again in nineteen ninety- but when it came time for the two-thousand and two final he wasn't able to get any tickets. I wrote about six letters to Eddie McGuire, begging him for tickets for my Father, and told him that if Fred wasn't at the game, preferably starting it off with the coin-toss or delivering the oranges to the players at half-time, then Collingwood had no chance of winning against those Brisbane Bastards. Boo the Lions.
I also told him some of Dad's other football stories; like how he still calls them the Woodsmen- 'Carn the Woodsmen' he'll shout, like he did in the old days with his mate Macca, and like the time he conducted the stand of Collingwood fans at the MCG while they sang the team song, with his goat-skin of plonk slung carelessly over his shoulder; and how he had won two premierships Himself, and had a Mean Left-boot in the old days and had even kicked four tricky goals from the boundary in the last quarter of the final in Sixty-eight...
Well, I did receive a letter back- which now sits in pride of place in Fred's Collingwood Cabinet on the back verandah- but it contained no Final's tickets. And it wasn't written by Eddie himself either- just the schmuck Vice President of the football club. I can't even remember his name now, he's so unimpotant.
And no, as History shows you, the Woodsmen didn't win, just like I said they wouldn't. Boo the Lions.
We watched the game with his friends at their house; the one whose son got the Sprite yoyo that I mentioned I stole from under Kelly's desk when I broke into my primary school all those years ago. I'm beginning to think that stealing that yoyo may have been the start of all of my bad karma- and if I could only pick another one up on Ebay and return it to forty two Springfield Avenue, if that's where he still lives, then maybe my luck might finally change for the better...
Another memory I have of my Dad is of the day he came home with Chinese for tea and Mum bought a takeaway chicken. I thought they were going to get a divorce over that little bungle.
I remember Him emptying all of his clothes into the one and only suitcase we had, while the unused tie-rack that I got from the Father's Day Stall at school for one dollar stays hanging alone in the bare cupboard. It had space for about twenty ties but my Father doesn't need to wear ties to work- blue-collar man that he is; and because he has a beard he didn't need the shaving brush and mug that I had also gotten him for an additional fifty cents. He also packs the large photo album with all the 'nice' studio shots of us kids- the ones where we sit rigidly on stools in our 'best' clothes and gappy-smile our way through the ages. At least he will remember us looking at our best, smiling, and need not think of us with our puffy tear-streaked faces- such as they were that night.
Our Cousin, who happened to be there visiting us that day, is used to such parental displays, and shows us how to delay his progress by unpacking the suitcases and carrying everything back inside off the verandah from where he is loading them into the back of the car. I try to blackmail him. If you leave Daddy- I won't ever ride my horse again; I promise. I'll even sell her if you go- the ultimate sacrifice. He packs the trailer anyway and attaches it to the car and leaves...
But then a little while later he is back. I know how he feels. I've packed up four times and my Hubby doesn't even know about it because I've always managed to unpack everything again before he sees that I've ever left.
I can't leave either.
In the confusion of papers left strewn on the floor the day that my Father almost left Rare Rure (raa-ree-roo-ree)- that's Me and my three Sisters in case you are wondering- my birth certificate got thrown out with all the other rubbish. It felt like I had lost my identity; like that piece of paper was proof of My existance, my True sex, my parentage even; the little bit of paper that you need to get into heaven if it really does exist.
And it wasn't lost- like my Mother still insists- trying to get into nightclubs when I was underage. What would have been the point of showing the Bouncers the truth?
They never would have let me in...
Carrot And Fish Souffle...
Two days after I found out I was pregnant with my eldest Son I got a phone call from a Swedish lady offering me a job. I had tried out for it about a month before- but had initially been rejected for not being experienced enough for the position; not that this was the first time I got the job after coming second in the interview- but that's another story for another day...
I hadn't told my Parent's- or anybody else for that matter- that I was pregnant yet; and hadn't really decided what I was even going to do about it- so I felt like I didn't have much option but to accept the job and figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my Life afterwards- and so I packed up a few bags of my belongings and moved into the caravan out the back of Her twenty five acre weed field.
There was a double bed that was concealed behind the wall- but I never bothered to put it back up except for the day that I packed up and left. There was a seperate ensuite where there was an itty-bitty shower and Port-a-loo that I was to empty myself- no problem; I wouldn't have had it any other way, actually. I cook my evening meal on the little gas stove that I use while sitting on my bed- and while I am waiting for my can of soup to heat while I play Patience on the bread board I wish I hadn't come here to live at all. And it's only day one. Why was I here, away from my family, and my Hubby, remembering though- he was't even my boyfriend then, just someone that I fucked from time to time. Why am I getting up every morning at a quarter to five just so that She can lay in bed for a few more hours while I get her four horses fed and ready for Her to ride?
That's my job; and while I mix the feeds and muck out the stables and groom and saddle Gem and Sheba and Taffy, and put Ruby the Warmblood filly out to graze in the front paddock with her biscuit of hay She's probably still i her warm bed dreaming about her life in South Africa when she owned slaves. She really did. She tells me about these happy memories of hers at lunchtimes, over fish souffle which I can not eat, and plates of rare Swedish beef that is still capable of crawling off the plate and mooing it's way back to the paddock it's so alive and uncooked- Her mashed potato has turned a weak pink colour after soaking up the bloody juices...
And for sixty dollars pay in my packet, a caravan and a hot lunch that I will never eat seven days a week she thinks she has bought herself a new slave. And I suppose She has. I have to dig the trench that buries the chicken wire beneath the ground, so that her orange Bulldog- aptly called Carrot- can't dig his way out of his new dog-run. He likes to run away and chases the chickens. He and Zig Zag, the Dalmation with a crooked tail, are the only company I have that New Year's Eve. The Swedish lady- and her rich South African husband who spoils her- have gone to a big party for the night and left me alone. They have, thoughtfully I suppose, left me behind four cold VB's in the esky and egg salad for my dinner- but I am panicking at the thought of being left behind.
I know that all of my friends are at the night club we go to celebrating- and here I am, with no vehicle or phone, and I'm all alone except for the dogs and the horses. After I finished the beers and picked the eggs from the salad I go back to my caravan and begin packing my clothes. I drape my quilt over my shoulders and figure I can manage carrying the rest- at least if I get to the highway I can flag down a passing car, anything to just get me out of here. Please- let me grow wings like a monkey and let me fly, fly, fly my little Pretties...
But I don't leave, of course. Instead I stand with tears streaking down my face in the small mirror, there in the itty-bitty ensuite, wondering why I am so weak that I want to run away all the time- just like when I was a kid and ran away from Gay's house and how I wanted to run away to the Wild West with Egghead when I was nine- but also knowing that I couldn't stay working for much longer there anyway, even if I had wanted to- because I missed everybody too much, and couldn't handle feeling isolated and alone with My thoughts any longer. And then there was the whole pregnancy thing to consider, and knowing that because I can't sit properly on a horse, and that all that bouncing up and down over jumps isn't going to do the foetus any good. That's how I thought of It at first...
I also knew I was going to have to come home and tell Them All that I had fucked up yet again- and couldn't even keeep my new job that I hated because I was eighteen and up the duff and would need to live at home if I wasn't going to neglect the child to death. That is what They think will happen- that I'm wasting my Life and that I won't cope with having a child; but I still didn't expect my Mother to tell me it would be better to have an abortion or adopt it out. She was too late, though, because by the time she found out I had already made up my mind to have the baby- with or without my Hubby by my side- and besides, if I'd already decided that I wasn't going to have the baby she would have never known anything about it.
The day I definitly decided to keep Him growing inside me was the day I was riding the Swedish lady's horse- Taffy- along the dirt road that leads to the creaky wooden bridge- when I spotted three twenty dollar notes on the side of the road in a rut. They had been there for a while-and through the rain as well by the look of it- judging by the condition of the old paper notes that were still in circulation back those days. I jumped out of the saddle and picked them up and , after making sure that no one had seen me taking them, carefully put them inside my pocket- feeling happy that I could buy something new to wear to my Cousin's wedding.
I defy the Swedish lady's orders and go faster than a trot. She has the horse in training, you see, and I have to 'ride him up the road until I come to the bridge, and then come back- alternating between a fast walk and a medium trot for the length of the road'- which I later judged was around ten kilometres for the journey. I'd never been down the road before, so even though it took me a LONG time to go up and back and I came back sweaty and with a massive stitch from all that trotting- she knows I have broken her 'rules' and cantered or galloped in places- because I have returned quicker than expected.
It wasn't my fault the horse wanted to go fast as well. We had heaps more fun than if we had just walked or trotted the whole way- but She wasn't impressed with me and decided to teach me a lesson...
She's cranky with me and thinks up a cunning plan. At first I think she is just being eccentric and weird, but then she asks me to pull out all of the yellow Fire weeds that are growing on her property. So that every morning while she is out riding, firstly on her Dressage horse, then her Showjumper, and then on her Hunter, she sets me to work with the wheel barrow and gloves- clearing the paddocks. I wonder if I went back now- if my efforts would have been worthwhile- or if the Fire weeds just kept growing back like I thought they would have.
After she taught me how to drive the tractor I thought she might just let me cut the weeds.
Nup.
Why didn't she just buy a house like the one next door- one that didn't have any of these stupid weeds if she hated them so much?
But I could live with doing it- mostly because once she was out of earshot I could mutter bad shit about her under my breath and hold pretend conversations that She even participated in without her knowledge- and know she wasn't going to bust me doing it while I was in the middle of the paddock; but it wasn't until two hours after She had asked me to cut the front lawn with a pair of scissors that the Camel finally had his little back broken by the straw.
I asked her why, suspiciously, why she wanted me to do that- and she said so I wouldn't bruise the green grass and so it could be given to the horses as a Treat. I asked if I could use the scythe that was hanging up in the shed, because by now my fingers were covered in blisters- I know; I don't know why I cut the grass with a pair of scissors for two hours now either- but a scythe was going to bruise the grass too, apparently, so the answer was a resounding 'no'.
Can I hold the horse there for an hour while he eats it himself, then? Another no.
And then after I finish cutting the grass with scissors She wants me to go out into the paddock and cut more fucking Fire weed...
Well- can I just make a quick phone call to my Mother, then, before you serve me up another Swedish fish souffle, so she can come and take me away from here you Crazy Swedish Bitch? I can? Why thank you. She'll be here in an hour to come and get me and my stuff that is still packed after the worst New Year's Eve in living history.
So thanks for the memories- and I've already been paid my sixty dollars this week-and if She ever reads this I just want her to know that it didn't take me very long to get rid of the scabies that I managed to catch from her infested nest of a caravan. It seems the girl who worked there before I did wasn't as nice as She thought she was...
I hadn't told my Parent's- or anybody else for that matter- that I was pregnant yet; and hadn't really decided what I was even going to do about it- so I felt like I didn't have much option but to accept the job and figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my Life afterwards- and so I packed up a few bags of my belongings and moved into the caravan out the back of Her twenty five acre weed field.
There was a double bed that was concealed behind the wall- but I never bothered to put it back up except for the day that I packed up and left. There was a seperate ensuite where there was an itty-bitty shower and Port-a-loo that I was to empty myself- no problem; I wouldn't have had it any other way, actually. I cook my evening meal on the little gas stove that I use while sitting on my bed- and while I am waiting for my can of soup to heat while I play Patience on the bread board I wish I hadn't come here to live at all. And it's only day one. Why was I here, away from my family, and my Hubby, remembering though- he was't even my boyfriend then, just someone that I fucked from time to time. Why am I getting up every morning at a quarter to five just so that She can lay in bed for a few more hours while I get her four horses fed and ready for Her to ride?
That's my job; and while I mix the feeds and muck out the stables and groom and saddle Gem and Sheba and Taffy, and put Ruby the Warmblood filly out to graze in the front paddock with her biscuit of hay She's probably still i her warm bed dreaming about her life in South Africa when she owned slaves. She really did. She tells me about these happy memories of hers at lunchtimes, over fish souffle which I can not eat, and plates of rare Swedish beef that is still capable of crawling off the plate and mooing it's way back to the paddock it's so alive and uncooked- Her mashed potato has turned a weak pink colour after soaking up the bloody juices...
And for sixty dollars pay in my packet, a caravan and a hot lunch that I will never eat seven days a week she thinks she has bought herself a new slave. And I suppose She has. I have to dig the trench that buries the chicken wire beneath the ground, so that her orange Bulldog- aptly called Carrot- can't dig his way out of his new dog-run. He likes to run away and chases the chickens. He and Zig Zag, the Dalmation with a crooked tail, are the only company I have that New Year's Eve. The Swedish lady- and her rich South African husband who spoils her- have gone to a big party for the night and left me alone. They have, thoughtfully I suppose, left me behind four cold VB's in the esky and egg salad for my dinner- but I am panicking at the thought of being left behind.
I know that all of my friends are at the night club we go to celebrating- and here I am, with no vehicle or phone, and I'm all alone except for the dogs and the horses. After I finished the beers and picked the eggs from the salad I go back to my caravan and begin packing my clothes. I drape my quilt over my shoulders and figure I can manage carrying the rest- at least if I get to the highway I can flag down a passing car, anything to just get me out of here. Please- let me grow wings like a monkey and let me fly, fly, fly my little Pretties...
But I don't leave, of course. Instead I stand with tears streaking down my face in the small mirror, there in the itty-bitty ensuite, wondering why I am so weak that I want to run away all the time- just like when I was a kid and ran away from Gay's house and how I wanted to run away to the Wild West with Egghead when I was nine- but also knowing that I couldn't stay working for much longer there anyway, even if I had wanted to- because I missed everybody too much, and couldn't handle feeling isolated and alone with My thoughts any longer. And then there was the whole pregnancy thing to consider, and knowing that because I can't sit properly on a horse, and that all that bouncing up and down over jumps isn't going to do the foetus any good. That's how I thought of It at first...
I also knew I was going to have to come home and tell Them All that I had fucked up yet again- and couldn't even keeep my new job that I hated because I was eighteen and up the duff and would need to live at home if I wasn't going to neglect the child to death. That is what They think will happen- that I'm wasting my Life and that I won't cope with having a child; but I still didn't expect my Mother to tell me it would be better to have an abortion or adopt it out. She was too late, though, because by the time she found out I had already made up my mind to have the baby- with or without my Hubby by my side- and besides, if I'd already decided that I wasn't going to have the baby she would have never known anything about it.
The day I definitly decided to keep Him growing inside me was the day I was riding the Swedish lady's horse- Taffy- along the dirt road that leads to the creaky wooden bridge- when I spotted three twenty dollar notes on the side of the road in a rut. They had been there for a while-and through the rain as well by the look of it- judging by the condition of the old paper notes that were still in circulation back those days. I jumped out of the saddle and picked them up and , after making sure that no one had seen me taking them, carefully put them inside my pocket- feeling happy that I could buy something new to wear to my Cousin's wedding.
I defy the Swedish lady's orders and go faster than a trot. She has the horse in training, you see, and I have to 'ride him up the road until I come to the bridge, and then come back- alternating between a fast walk and a medium trot for the length of the road'- which I later judged was around ten kilometres for the journey. I'd never been down the road before, so even though it took me a LONG time to go up and back and I came back sweaty and with a massive stitch from all that trotting- she knows I have broken her 'rules' and cantered or galloped in places- because I have returned quicker than expected.
It wasn't my fault the horse wanted to go fast as well. We had heaps more fun than if we had just walked or trotted the whole way- but She wasn't impressed with me and decided to teach me a lesson...
She's cranky with me and thinks up a cunning plan. At first I think she is just being eccentric and weird, but then she asks me to pull out all of the yellow Fire weeds that are growing on her property. So that every morning while she is out riding, firstly on her Dressage horse, then her Showjumper, and then on her Hunter, she sets me to work with the wheel barrow and gloves- clearing the paddocks. I wonder if I went back now- if my efforts would have been worthwhile- or if the Fire weeds just kept growing back like I thought they would have.
After she taught me how to drive the tractor I thought she might just let me cut the weeds.
Nup.
Why didn't she just buy a house like the one next door- one that didn't have any of these stupid weeds if she hated them so much?
But I could live with doing it- mostly because once she was out of earshot I could mutter bad shit about her under my breath and hold pretend conversations that She even participated in without her knowledge- and know she wasn't going to bust me doing it while I was in the middle of the paddock; but it wasn't until two hours after She had asked me to cut the front lawn with a pair of scissors that the Camel finally had his little back broken by the straw.
I asked her why, suspiciously, why she wanted me to do that- and she said so I wouldn't bruise the green grass and so it could be given to the horses as a Treat. I asked if I could use the scythe that was hanging up in the shed, because by now my fingers were covered in blisters- I know; I don't know why I cut the grass with a pair of scissors for two hours now either- but a scythe was going to bruise the grass too, apparently, so the answer was a resounding 'no'.
Can I hold the horse there for an hour while he eats it himself, then? Another no.
And then after I finish cutting the grass with scissors She wants me to go out into the paddock and cut more fucking Fire weed...
Well- can I just make a quick phone call to my Mother, then, before you serve me up another Swedish fish souffle, so she can come and take me away from here you Crazy Swedish Bitch? I can? Why thank you. She'll be here in an hour to come and get me and my stuff that is still packed after the worst New Year's Eve in living history.
So thanks for the memories- and I've already been paid my sixty dollars this week-and if She ever reads this I just want her to know that it didn't take me very long to get rid of the scabies that I managed to catch from her infested nest of a caravan. It seems the girl who worked there before I did wasn't as nice as She thought she was...
Greenie...
A small part of Me wants to believe that something worse than molestation occurred in that paddock. I know you probably find it hard to believe that I just said that, but I mean it. At least it would have given me a legitimate reason to have gone mental and cracked into five- if He had dragged me out of the car and repeatedly raped me under the power pylon, say, or if it had happened over a long period of time- or from when I was really young. But I don't have any of those excuses. I cracked under hardly any pressure at all.
Some people might find it hard to understand how only a 'little bit' of child abuse- if there is any such thing as that- can hurt someone and affect their life for a long time- while there are others who face much worse adversities and deal with it and then get over it. They don't continue to let it pervade their thoughts when they are having sex with their husband, for instance, lying still and stiff as a board, because it's Him- again- feeling you, and Him- again- in your brain. Why are the thoughts still in my brain? Why do I lay there like a quiet child still? Why don't I just scream out or thrust his hand away?
I feel like a slut if I am enjoying it now. Shut your legs then, Princess; clamp them tight and twist them twice around together and loop the last little bit of boot around and hook it onto your shin almost for the third time around. Let him try and get in there now that you've locked it...
But Hubby's fingers are strong and persistant and even though I know it is my Hubby who is touching me I resist; even though somewhere inside of Me there is also rn_buffoon, the aspiring porn actress, who tries to push the bad thoughts of that pervert away- but it's harder than you might think when you come to realise that even though the abuse has been over for nineteen years and he's dead now that He's still touching my mind.
At least he didn't put me off horses. After I left school I also left behind my part-time job at the Ice-Creamery. You'll see the connection between the two soon...
I loved this job- it is still the only job I have had that I always enjoyed going to. My bosses were fair and generous and used to give us presents at Christmas time. We could also take home all the left over fruit salad and eat any dropped choc-dips that we'd scoop from the warm chocolate mixture and sneak mouthfuls of when the shop was quiet. I dropped seven in a row one hot day because the soft serve was liquid-soft still. I seriously thought I was going to get the sack- my Boss was so cranky at me he went red and a blue vein pulsed in his temple.
I wasn't too fussed on the uniform we had to wear either; it's much more modern now, but in the early days Wendy's girls wore ankle-length pink skirts with pink polo shirts, which came home sticky and smelling of sour milk- and they weren't flattering- especially when you are almost six feet tall and pencil thin with a flat arse and no chest to speak of...
But when I left school I quit working there- and suddenly, from what I can remember. I don't recall telling them I wouldn't be working there any longer and then I avoided their phonecalls until they got the hint that I wouldn't be coming back in anymore. I'm good like that at avoiding responsibility. After a while I started looking at the red-circled paper that my Father leaves on the kitchen bench each morning that is his little push puSH PUSH- like a balloon blowing up- to get a job or go back to school or tech.
So I go and work for the second-best trainer at the local racetrack.
By this stage I hadn't been around horses for a few years- Star was living at the farm- and I was spending much of my free time chasing my future Hubby around pubs and clubs and drinking and sleeping. The first day that I worked at the stables I got there at three thirty in the freezing morning and spent the entire day in wet shoes and an almost dislocated shoulder from the constant dragging of these eager Thoroughbred babies as we took horse after horse from their stall to the track for their morning exercise.
After they had run around in circles for twenty minutes they are returned to their strappers- and we take them to the wash-bay and hose them with warm water that drips cold into our armpits while we scraper their bodies, the rivulets of water somehow coursing their way beneath three layers of warm clothing.
I found out pretty quickly that there were some horses in the stables that most people preferred not to deal with- and these were alloted out to the Newbies such as myself. One such horse was called Best Benny. He was a two year old chestnut colt, and his was the first stable that I was instructed to clean on my first day of work. After I had closed myself into the box I began to realise why the majority of the young stable guys put down their shit-forks and seem to be watching to see what will happen.
Best Benny loses interest in his feed quickly, and becomes interested in me while I muck out the manure with a three-prong. I doubt the stable has been cleared out since yesterday morning there is so much shit in the wood shavings. He starts nuzzling up to me, almost knocking me off balance as I squat, spreading lime in the corner where it seems he likes to urinate. He's only young but he ain't no baby, and is taller than sixteen hands, strong and in racing condition. And little by little it dawns on me, as he increasingly starts to bite at me and is now whuffling under his breath and trying to mount me- that this horse is turned on by me, somehow, and wants to root me.
The guys are cheering him on and jeering at me, saying loud enough for me to hear that I must be on my period and that is what the horse can smell. I gave the horse a smack in his mouth for his trouble- like I would've done to the boys if they were in range- and Best Benny eventually went back to his feed without too much more trouble- but he tried it on again and again the many times I had to clean his stall- always to the mirth of the lads. This went on until the next new person arrived on the scene and they got to do Best Benny's stall instead of me. The guy who took the job from me just happened to be named Flash, who knew nothing at all about horses when he got the job- he didn't even know how to put on a bridle when he first started. The last I heard of him he was really high up in the Strapper World. Good for him. He was such a deadshit.
I was pretty lucky there were only a few incidents of sexual harrassment at that job because I had heard plenty of stories that were far worse. Like the stories that my friend Greenie told me happened to her. Once she was walking a horse past a stable and Fatt Matt, who was cleaning it out told her to tie the horse up and come in and fuck her. Another time she was also locked in a stall with a horny stallion by the Foreman.
Greenie was a nice kid- only fifteen, sweetly naive yet somehow street smart, and had been living away from home since she was ten, when she had run away from home with her then twenty-two year old boyfriend. I'm not even sure if she used her real name but Greenie boarded in a house that she shared with an old Bookie, who was always hitting her up for sex, even though he was well into his eighties. She told me that she locked her bedroom door every night. She was an overly sexual girl, though, and had been to bed and many other places- with just about all of the stablehands and jockeys at one time or another. I'm not having a go at her. I just felt sad for her when they used to give her a hard time for being 'easy' and for having all sorts of venereal diseases that she didn't have. She couldn't even do that much about it- especially when they Bosses treated her the same as the other boys did- and here she was, a fifteen year old kid supporting herself on a pittance of a pay packet when it was obvious that she just wanted someone to love her and to be given a go.
And no- it was never going to be Me.
She was also very good with the horses, and used to spend a lot of time after work with her favourite black gelding, Charlie. She always led him out in the mounting yard on race days, and was the only one who cleaned his stable...
Blah.
Anyway, I didn't work there all that long in the end because I got sick of the Tinea I developed from standing around all morning with wet feet in cold dirty shoes- but before I left I almost got the sack anyway...
It was a cold and windy morning- the sun was only just rising- as I was leading out a nice-looking bay mare, named Curtain Time, down to the track for her workout, when she took me by surprise and reared up- pulling me off my feet before galloping off with her lead rein dangling. Even though it was still early there is still a lot of urban traffic in this area and she's heading straight for it- her shoes sending little sparks of fire from the road as she bolts away. I start running after her, and then notice Nigel- his true name- the smug son-of-a-boss, has managed to grab her by her flailing lead rope and has caught her five hundred metres or so down the road. I know I'm still in Shit for not being able to keep a hold of her because she had won more than six hundred thousand dollars in prizemoney- but at least she hasn't fallen down and broken her knees or gone through a windshield of some car.
Luckily the Big Boss had already left for the day with another horse that was racing somewhere in the City, but I still have to face the Foreman, a fat pig-eyed man who still lives at home with his mother...
That was where I went the day I handed him my fake medical certificate that I got my pink-haired friend's father to write me- he was a Paramedic and strapped me up a fake splinted wrist- real professional like- so I could take a week off work; but I had such a good week off that I never went back, so I never really knew what became of Greenie in the end.
I heard on the grapevine, though, a few years later that she married a horse truck driver and moved away and had a baby girl called Simone. And if she ever reads this maybe she will remember who I am, and remember the day we took The Little Count to Canterbury Races and randy Randolph- again, a real name- tried to root her in the washbay before race three...
In front of Me and the horse.
Some people might find it hard to understand how only a 'little bit' of child abuse- if there is any such thing as that- can hurt someone and affect their life for a long time- while there are others who face much worse adversities and deal with it and then get over it. They don't continue to let it pervade their thoughts when they are having sex with their husband, for instance, lying still and stiff as a board, because it's Him- again- feeling you, and Him- again- in your brain. Why are the thoughts still in my brain? Why do I lay there like a quiet child still? Why don't I just scream out or thrust his hand away?
I feel like a slut if I am enjoying it now. Shut your legs then, Princess; clamp them tight and twist them twice around together and loop the last little bit of boot around and hook it onto your shin almost for the third time around. Let him try and get in there now that you've locked it...
But Hubby's fingers are strong and persistant and even though I know it is my Hubby who is touching me I resist; even though somewhere inside of Me there is also rn_buffoon, the aspiring porn actress, who tries to push the bad thoughts of that pervert away- but it's harder than you might think when you come to realise that even though the abuse has been over for nineteen years and he's dead now that He's still touching my mind.
At least he didn't put me off horses. After I left school I also left behind my part-time job at the Ice-Creamery. You'll see the connection between the two soon...
I loved this job- it is still the only job I have had that I always enjoyed going to. My bosses were fair and generous and used to give us presents at Christmas time. We could also take home all the left over fruit salad and eat any dropped choc-dips that we'd scoop from the warm chocolate mixture and sneak mouthfuls of when the shop was quiet. I dropped seven in a row one hot day because the soft serve was liquid-soft still. I seriously thought I was going to get the sack- my Boss was so cranky at me he went red and a blue vein pulsed in his temple.
I wasn't too fussed on the uniform we had to wear either; it's much more modern now, but in the early days Wendy's girls wore ankle-length pink skirts with pink polo shirts, which came home sticky and smelling of sour milk- and they weren't flattering- especially when you are almost six feet tall and pencil thin with a flat arse and no chest to speak of...
But when I left school I quit working there- and suddenly, from what I can remember. I don't recall telling them I wouldn't be working there any longer and then I avoided their phonecalls until they got the hint that I wouldn't be coming back in anymore. I'm good like that at avoiding responsibility. After a while I started looking at the red-circled paper that my Father leaves on the kitchen bench each morning that is his little push puSH PUSH- like a balloon blowing up- to get a job or go back to school or tech.
So I go and work for the second-best trainer at the local racetrack.
By this stage I hadn't been around horses for a few years- Star was living at the farm- and I was spending much of my free time chasing my future Hubby around pubs and clubs and drinking and sleeping. The first day that I worked at the stables I got there at three thirty in the freezing morning and spent the entire day in wet shoes and an almost dislocated shoulder from the constant dragging of these eager Thoroughbred babies as we took horse after horse from their stall to the track for their morning exercise.
After they had run around in circles for twenty minutes they are returned to their strappers- and we take them to the wash-bay and hose them with warm water that drips cold into our armpits while we scraper their bodies, the rivulets of water somehow coursing their way beneath three layers of warm clothing.
I found out pretty quickly that there were some horses in the stables that most people preferred not to deal with- and these were alloted out to the Newbies such as myself. One such horse was called Best Benny. He was a two year old chestnut colt, and his was the first stable that I was instructed to clean on my first day of work. After I had closed myself into the box I began to realise why the majority of the young stable guys put down their shit-forks and seem to be watching to see what will happen.
Best Benny loses interest in his feed quickly, and becomes interested in me while I muck out the manure with a three-prong. I doubt the stable has been cleared out since yesterday morning there is so much shit in the wood shavings. He starts nuzzling up to me, almost knocking me off balance as I squat, spreading lime in the corner where it seems he likes to urinate. He's only young but he ain't no baby, and is taller than sixteen hands, strong and in racing condition. And little by little it dawns on me, as he increasingly starts to bite at me and is now whuffling under his breath and trying to mount me- that this horse is turned on by me, somehow, and wants to root me.
The guys are cheering him on and jeering at me, saying loud enough for me to hear that I must be on my period and that is what the horse can smell. I gave the horse a smack in his mouth for his trouble- like I would've done to the boys if they were in range- and Best Benny eventually went back to his feed without too much more trouble- but he tried it on again and again the many times I had to clean his stall- always to the mirth of the lads. This went on until the next new person arrived on the scene and they got to do Best Benny's stall instead of me. The guy who took the job from me just happened to be named Flash, who knew nothing at all about horses when he got the job- he didn't even know how to put on a bridle when he first started. The last I heard of him he was really high up in the Strapper World. Good for him. He was such a deadshit.
I was pretty lucky there were only a few incidents of sexual harrassment at that job because I had heard plenty of stories that were far worse. Like the stories that my friend Greenie told me happened to her. Once she was walking a horse past a stable and Fatt Matt, who was cleaning it out told her to tie the horse up and come in and fuck her. Another time she was also locked in a stall with a horny stallion by the Foreman.
Greenie was a nice kid- only fifteen, sweetly naive yet somehow street smart, and had been living away from home since she was ten, when she had run away from home with her then twenty-two year old boyfriend. I'm not even sure if she used her real name but Greenie boarded in a house that she shared with an old Bookie, who was always hitting her up for sex, even though he was well into his eighties. She told me that she locked her bedroom door every night. She was an overly sexual girl, though, and had been to bed and many other places- with just about all of the stablehands and jockeys at one time or another. I'm not having a go at her. I just felt sad for her when they used to give her a hard time for being 'easy' and for having all sorts of venereal diseases that she didn't have. She couldn't even do that much about it- especially when they Bosses treated her the same as the other boys did- and here she was, a fifteen year old kid supporting herself on a pittance of a pay packet when it was obvious that she just wanted someone to love her and to be given a go.
And no- it was never going to be Me.
She was also very good with the horses, and used to spend a lot of time after work with her favourite black gelding, Charlie. She always led him out in the mounting yard on race days, and was the only one who cleaned his stable...
Blah.
Anyway, I didn't work there all that long in the end because I got sick of the Tinea I developed from standing around all morning with wet feet in cold dirty shoes- but before I left I almost got the sack anyway...
It was a cold and windy morning- the sun was only just rising- as I was leading out a nice-looking bay mare, named Curtain Time, down to the track for her workout, when she took me by surprise and reared up- pulling me off my feet before galloping off with her lead rein dangling. Even though it was still early there is still a lot of urban traffic in this area and she's heading straight for it- her shoes sending little sparks of fire from the road as she bolts away. I start running after her, and then notice Nigel- his true name- the smug son-of-a-boss, has managed to grab her by her flailing lead rope and has caught her five hundred metres or so down the road. I know I'm still in Shit for not being able to keep a hold of her because she had won more than six hundred thousand dollars in prizemoney- but at least she hasn't fallen down and broken her knees or gone through a windshield of some car.
Luckily the Big Boss had already left for the day with another horse that was racing somewhere in the City, but I still have to face the Foreman, a fat pig-eyed man who still lives at home with his mother...
That was where I went the day I handed him my fake medical certificate that I got my pink-haired friend's father to write me- he was a Paramedic and strapped me up a fake splinted wrist- real professional like- so I could take a week off work; but I had such a good week off that I never went back, so I never really knew what became of Greenie in the end.
I heard on the grapevine, though, a few years later that she married a horse truck driver and moved away and had a baby girl called Simone. And if she ever reads this maybe she will remember who I am, and remember the day we took The Little Count to Canterbury Races and randy Randolph- again, a real name- tried to root her in the washbay before race three...
In front of Me and the horse.
Haveachewbaby...
I've decided to give Myself writer's bloc for the rest of this week- then I won't have to go back to that paddock with Her.
That paddock...
At first glance it appears ordinary enough; there are about a dozen cavelletti set up under the tree and a show jumping course set up on the flat, and the bending and flagging poles are also set up and ready for action. There is a line of parked horses and riders of various ages and abilities, on various mounts of incomparable prices- and then there is Him walking up and down the troop line; inspecting us like cattle. Like meat.
He has his favourites, his star pupils. They are the ones who parents line the fence next to their expensive new cars and shiny new floats, things they've acquired just because Little Jenny mentioned to them Once that she wanted a horse. Their parent's are the ones who do all the work; they get up early to tend the horses before their kids are lifted on like little cripples to showcase their private on-going riding tuition, before fluttering back with yet another blue ribbon around their horse's neck- then they throw their reins to Mummy. These are the people who will get to go to the Olympics if they want to- just to rub it in a little bit further.
Those ones aren't His targets. They are way too visible. He goes more for the ones whose parents weren't there. That's not a slur on my Parent's for not being there, either, it wasn't their fault he was a sick and perverted arsehole- that honour belongs to him alone. And besides, you would think that your kid would be safe from Sicko's if they had a horse to gallop away from danger on, wouldn't you?
It also makes me wonder why I kept going back there every week if my Parent's weren't forcing me to go- but the only answer I can come up with was that I just wanted to ride. And win prizes. I don't believe I encouraged Him, even though my subconcious mind questions this belief relentlessly. I wanted to learn and get better at riding, that's all. I wanted to learn how to control my horse properly for a change and to learn how to make him jump over something bigger than the small logs we could manage. That's why I went; whenever I could spare it- I handed over five dollars, which is how much I paid for him each week to molest me.
He's placed the line of troops far enough away from the other kid's parent's so they don't really see what happens to the skinny boy/girl that nobody takes much notice of. He checks everyone's stirrups while they are mounted and as he passes Me he continues talking to everyone else about giving us a packet of chewing gum- at the end of the lesson instead of at the beginning like usual- because he's left them all in the boot of his car- they're Juicy Fruit today; not PK- but he lingers too long and even though he's ignoring me he's Not. I don't like chewing gum in a riding helmet. It makes your jaw ache and gives you a migraine- but it takes my mind off the fact that He's doing That to Me again and other people can see but no one does anything to stop him.
But it's the way he says haveachewbaby, fluidly like one silky word, while he passes the gum down the line that makes my skin crawl. He's a Parasite. And he's trying to crawl into my pants fingertip by fingertip as he tells the kid on Laddie the Showjumper to ride him forward at the jump, as if he were Clancy of the Overflow, and not to let him get away with any nonsense this time; and even my uncomfortable squirming, my angling away and down from Him, down into the saddle does nothing to stop him. He just ignores it- like I am a toy to be absently played with, and grinds his fingers harder into me, almost pushing my underpants inside Myself, so I think about Something Else...
Today, He explains, we will be playing Cowboys and Indians; where one of the riders begins as the Cowboy- chasing, for want of a better word, a herd- sorry- of Indians. The Cowboy is given a whip and chases the Indians until he 'tags' them, where they also become Cowboys and continue on, rounding up the Indians until none of them are left. I never stayed in very long as my horse is quite slow and lazy without the benefit of expensive oats, so I'm an easy target and get caught quickly. He sees another opportunity to exploit me and offers to let me ride his big grey show jumping mare, because he can tell I've got Real Talent, and if it weren't for the crap horse I'm riding, who is so obviously unsuitable for me and my long long legs that keep going on forever, who knows one day, maybe, I could even go far.
Maybe I should let my Sister ride the horse home today, he is really Her's after all, and I'll drive you home and we can discuss this Show Jumping Opportuniny of a Lifetime...
Fuck I'm stupid.
The bloke's been fiddling with me for weeks and I'm only thirteen years old and I know that's not a good thing, because he's a perverted old man and I don't like him touching my body. Christ. They aren't even breasts yet. More like 'nubs' if you could even call them that. All I know is that it's His fault that my tits are stunted. They stopped growing when his skeletal claws poisoned them with their touch.
Maybe he thought I was a boy, as well. Maybe I was just a mistake.
I don't like thinking these thoughts- thoughts like if he had thought I was a boy the first time he did the wrong thing and tampered with my little kid's body, which was even before he knew my name- which would have given away the fact that I was girl; then I was like a 'surprise' when he felt it for the first evil time that he felt it...
I told you I wanted writer's bloc this week.
I didn't want to remember looking down while I am holding the reins and noticing that the dusty ground was littered in hoof prints and various boot treads. I watch Him thread a hose up the horse's nose before he bends down to pick up a yellow funnel and the two litre bottle of Linseed oil that will be used to flush the horse's gut of worms. The reins need oiling, and are dry in my clenched hand and I fumble with the buckles as I remove the bridle,thinking that it would be better to oil the bridle and not the stomach lining, but he reassures me that the horse will be fine as I try and move away from him and his probing and twisting and tweaking of me; He's relentless when he thinks that no one can see him, so that even after you think it might be finished for the day he'll try and touch me again in places he shouldn't, when ever he gets the opportunity.
I just want to tend to the horse. I want to ride him home to his dirt square; it's almost exactly like the last dirt square that we took our other little horse away from. Why did we go back?
I want to walk up the Galloping Track behind everyone else- spray me with small rocks and dust as you take off in front of Me- I don't care-even if I get back an hour after everyone else, and youive all finished eating lunch and have taken of your dusty boots and cooled your toes already-anything's better than going in the car with Him. I know I shouldn't go with Him- I should walk back with my Sister and the others, even going through the creek if I have to, and if the horse won't tolerate me doubling on his back then I'll walk through it- I don't care- not even if my new riding boots get ruined.
Then the clincher...
If I'm not interested in riding the grey mare then maybe that Sharon chick, the one who is as rough as guts is, she might like to take the opportunity. She doesn't have a horse of her own, either, maybe she deserves it more than me. Maybe she Wants it more than I do. I know the price is my compliance. And as He pointed out- Who would've believed me, especially when he was a pillar of the Horsy Community and even had a Safety House sign on his letter box- and I was just a kid, and didn't you know that the Police issued them out only to Trustworthy and Reliable people - People who aren't trying to finger a child as they drive along a dirt track that is surrounded by bush?
It runs for a quarter mile out towards the highway through un-hewn scrub. Why is it taking forever to drive along this track to where it will be safe? At least then I can leap out of the moving car if I have to, and the traffic will see that I'm in troube and help me...
But I'm still on the track, and my riding helmet is no longer on my lap protecting my groin from his poisoned reach. It's on the floor and his hands are trying to undo my pants and I'm like no, don't do that, really quietly and not forcefully; like it made me feel just a little bit bothered and not totally repulsed and revolted.
Get your dirty old man hands off me, I'm thinking, but I'm still too much of a child to stand up for Myself. Then he stops for a few minutes and I'm starting to think maybe it's over This Time, and we're nearly home at last. Thank god. And then he casually reaches over, again, like I haven't even noticed and like I'm not even there; and he's talking about horses again, of all things, while I squirm again and try and angle my groin away from his touch. Can't he tell I don't like him doing it?
Or did I?
It bothers me being a sexual creature at times. How are we supposed to ignore these sexual feelings when we are sexual beings, even those confused feelings invoked by a sexual predator, and I especially want to know how he knew things and would tell me things about Myself that I hadn't ever told him- things about sex and things I wouldn't have talked about to a man who was old enough to be my Grandfather, and I hadn't, so it was like he had read my mind. Did the arousal eventuate because I was turned on by what he did or said, or because I had a functional clitoris that was merely doing it's job?
That thought bothers me a bit actually- that he aroused me in Any way when I couldn't seem to help it or stop it or stop Myself from feeling that way. It bothers me that the first person to touch me like that was an old man who was in his seventies. Come to think of it- it was also the time that my Grandpa got diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and had to start all of his crazy therapies that were never going to work- so who knows- maybe there's a connection somewhere.
I have often thought about Sharon, and wondered if it had happened for her like it happened for me- and if He had gotten to her too, if she worried that She had encouraged him just because she really wanted to ride as well? She was a girl about two years older than me, so about fourteen or fifteen I suppose, who lived around the corner from the paddock where He taught us to 'ride'. Snort. What a joke.
I always used to think of her as a hanger-on- everyone knew that she only liked you because she wanted to ride your horse. But then maybe she just wanted to be able to sit prettily on a horse like I secretly did...
I'm sure the Creep idly used her too, though I never asked her about it, of course. I knew her well enough over the years to say hello if I ran into her at shows or at Pony Club- because as an adult, as soon as she could really, she saved up and got a horse of her own. Skeeta was a nice looking bay gelding that was pretty quick on his feet, and so she did quite well at the sporting events and at jumping. I always thought that was a fitting end for her- and was pleased that if the Pervert had gotten to her like I suspected he had, then at least he hadn't turned her off riding and horses and relationships and kids. She ended up being a person who wouldve ridden for Life, I reckon, just because she loved it so much, but then she died about two years ago in a terrible car accident- that also took her young Son's life as well.
I sometimes used to think what would have happened if I had ever asked her about Him and if he had abused her as well, and if she would have confirmed the suspicions I had. I used to dream of Us going to the Police with our story and have him arrested and sent to jail to be fucked up the bum like the rock-spider that he was. I also used to fantasise about seeing Him walking along the road in his wig and knocking him down with my bull bar, and I imagine what I will say to the Police, telling them what he did to me, and how I just snapped out of control and lost it.
I can reveal all of this Now, because the opportunity to kill him has passed and I'll never be able to kill him now...
Not that I condone murder. I would've been extremely disappointed in Myself if I had acted on my desires.
But not sorry.
I don't know why I insist on trying to end things on a poignant note all the time. And I don't know why I have to have the final word all of the time either.
I think that when I die, even if I just Think that I have made it to the afterlife- as I slip away and have my Final Thought- even if I just think it and then there is Nothing- that I will be satisfied enough to die quietly. Can we even know that we are having our Final thought as we are having it? I don't know that I will ever be ready to go. I might just want to stick around and let people know that I'm still here. If I'm able to. Shouldn't I try my hardest to give someone absolute proof of the afterlife if there is one?
Hell; I already think that I can astral travel, how difficult could it be to stay behind and become a ghost?
Surely we don't snuff out entirely. I can't conceive not having any more thoughts. Is that what absolute silence is? True Death?
Even when that Arsehole died I went back down to that paddock to have a look around. I drove my car there, putting it into four-wheel drive just to make sure I wouldn't get bogged and be stuck There waiting for ages for a tow. It was different of course, and that's what one would expect after fourteen years, but I thought I might recognise something- a tree or something- or one of the myriad of tracks that used to snake it's way through the bush. But the whole lot was gone- the fence, and the old gate that swung inwards, and all that was there was a rusted out car on it's side in a gully near where the cavelletti used to be, and a lot of tractor tracks burnt into the mud- courtesy of the recent roadworks...
And there was no Scent of him there anymore, no trace of His filth; only that sweet smell of the bush in Summer- and the cicadas were pissing down from the trees, and the breeze is blowing hot in my face once more as I gallop, in My mind, up the track that took Us, years before, on the long track home.
When I heard that the Wiggy Prick had finally carked it last year, sadly of natural causes, I was happier than I'd been in ages- I only wish I knew where he was being kept now so I could go and spit on his grave. Yes- he fucked me up that badly.
But at least I've stopped thinking about him as much as I did before.
I wonder what His Final Thought was? I bet it had nothing to do with being Sorry to any of Us- me and Sharon, and He-only-Knew how many Whoever-Else's...
I don't reckon that we were 'Special' to him at all...
That paddock...
At first glance it appears ordinary enough; there are about a dozen cavelletti set up under the tree and a show jumping course set up on the flat, and the bending and flagging poles are also set up and ready for action. There is a line of parked horses and riders of various ages and abilities, on various mounts of incomparable prices- and then there is Him walking up and down the troop line; inspecting us like cattle. Like meat.
He has his favourites, his star pupils. They are the ones who parents line the fence next to their expensive new cars and shiny new floats, things they've acquired just because Little Jenny mentioned to them Once that she wanted a horse. Their parent's are the ones who do all the work; they get up early to tend the horses before their kids are lifted on like little cripples to showcase their private on-going riding tuition, before fluttering back with yet another blue ribbon around their horse's neck- then they throw their reins to Mummy. These are the people who will get to go to the Olympics if they want to- just to rub it in a little bit further.
Those ones aren't His targets. They are way too visible. He goes more for the ones whose parents weren't there. That's not a slur on my Parent's for not being there, either, it wasn't their fault he was a sick and perverted arsehole- that honour belongs to him alone. And besides, you would think that your kid would be safe from Sicko's if they had a horse to gallop away from danger on, wouldn't you?
It also makes me wonder why I kept going back there every week if my Parent's weren't forcing me to go- but the only answer I can come up with was that I just wanted to ride. And win prizes. I don't believe I encouraged Him, even though my subconcious mind questions this belief relentlessly. I wanted to learn and get better at riding, that's all. I wanted to learn how to control my horse properly for a change and to learn how to make him jump over something bigger than the small logs we could manage. That's why I went; whenever I could spare it- I handed over five dollars, which is how much I paid for him each week to molest me.
He's placed the line of troops far enough away from the other kid's parent's so they don't really see what happens to the skinny boy/girl that nobody takes much notice of. He checks everyone's stirrups while they are mounted and as he passes Me he continues talking to everyone else about giving us a packet of chewing gum- at the end of the lesson instead of at the beginning like usual- because he's left them all in the boot of his car- they're Juicy Fruit today; not PK- but he lingers too long and even though he's ignoring me he's Not. I don't like chewing gum in a riding helmet. It makes your jaw ache and gives you a migraine- but it takes my mind off the fact that He's doing That to Me again and other people can see but no one does anything to stop him.
But it's the way he says haveachewbaby, fluidly like one silky word, while he passes the gum down the line that makes my skin crawl. He's a Parasite. And he's trying to crawl into my pants fingertip by fingertip as he tells the kid on Laddie the Showjumper to ride him forward at the jump, as if he were Clancy of the Overflow, and not to let him get away with any nonsense this time; and even my uncomfortable squirming, my angling away and down from Him, down into the saddle does nothing to stop him. He just ignores it- like I am a toy to be absently played with, and grinds his fingers harder into me, almost pushing my underpants inside Myself, so I think about Something Else...
Today, He explains, we will be playing Cowboys and Indians; where one of the riders begins as the Cowboy- chasing, for want of a better word, a herd- sorry- of Indians. The Cowboy is given a whip and chases the Indians until he 'tags' them, where they also become Cowboys and continue on, rounding up the Indians until none of them are left. I never stayed in very long as my horse is quite slow and lazy without the benefit of expensive oats, so I'm an easy target and get caught quickly. He sees another opportunity to exploit me and offers to let me ride his big grey show jumping mare, because he can tell I've got Real Talent, and if it weren't for the crap horse I'm riding, who is so obviously unsuitable for me and my long long legs that keep going on forever, who knows one day, maybe, I could even go far.
Maybe I should let my Sister ride the horse home today, he is really Her's after all, and I'll drive you home and we can discuss this Show Jumping Opportuniny of a Lifetime...
Fuck I'm stupid.
The bloke's been fiddling with me for weeks and I'm only thirteen years old and I know that's not a good thing, because he's a perverted old man and I don't like him touching my body. Christ. They aren't even breasts yet. More like 'nubs' if you could even call them that. All I know is that it's His fault that my tits are stunted. They stopped growing when his skeletal claws poisoned them with their touch.
Maybe he thought I was a boy, as well. Maybe I was just a mistake.
I don't like thinking these thoughts- thoughts like if he had thought I was a boy the first time he did the wrong thing and tampered with my little kid's body, which was even before he knew my name- which would have given away the fact that I was girl; then I was like a 'surprise' when he felt it for the first evil time that he felt it...
I told you I wanted writer's bloc this week.
I didn't want to remember looking down while I am holding the reins and noticing that the dusty ground was littered in hoof prints and various boot treads. I watch Him thread a hose up the horse's nose before he bends down to pick up a yellow funnel and the two litre bottle of Linseed oil that will be used to flush the horse's gut of worms. The reins need oiling, and are dry in my clenched hand and I fumble with the buckles as I remove the bridle,thinking that it would be better to oil the bridle and not the stomach lining, but he reassures me that the horse will be fine as I try and move away from him and his probing and twisting and tweaking of me; He's relentless when he thinks that no one can see him, so that even after you think it might be finished for the day he'll try and touch me again in places he shouldn't, when ever he gets the opportunity.
I just want to tend to the horse. I want to ride him home to his dirt square; it's almost exactly like the last dirt square that we took our other little horse away from. Why did we go back?
I want to walk up the Galloping Track behind everyone else- spray me with small rocks and dust as you take off in front of Me- I don't care-even if I get back an hour after everyone else, and youive all finished eating lunch and have taken of your dusty boots and cooled your toes already-anything's better than going in the car with Him. I know I shouldn't go with Him- I should walk back with my Sister and the others, even going through the creek if I have to, and if the horse won't tolerate me doubling on his back then I'll walk through it- I don't care- not even if my new riding boots get ruined.
Then the clincher...
If I'm not interested in riding the grey mare then maybe that Sharon chick, the one who is as rough as guts is, she might like to take the opportunity. She doesn't have a horse of her own, either, maybe she deserves it more than me. Maybe she Wants it more than I do. I know the price is my compliance. And as He pointed out- Who would've believed me, especially when he was a pillar of the Horsy Community and even had a Safety House sign on his letter box- and I was just a kid, and didn't you know that the Police issued them out only to Trustworthy and Reliable people - People who aren't trying to finger a child as they drive along a dirt track that is surrounded by bush?
It runs for a quarter mile out towards the highway through un-hewn scrub. Why is it taking forever to drive along this track to where it will be safe? At least then I can leap out of the moving car if I have to, and the traffic will see that I'm in troube and help me...
But I'm still on the track, and my riding helmet is no longer on my lap protecting my groin from his poisoned reach. It's on the floor and his hands are trying to undo my pants and I'm like no, don't do that, really quietly and not forcefully; like it made me feel just a little bit bothered and not totally repulsed and revolted.
Get your dirty old man hands off me, I'm thinking, but I'm still too much of a child to stand up for Myself. Then he stops for a few minutes and I'm starting to think maybe it's over This Time, and we're nearly home at last. Thank god. And then he casually reaches over, again, like I haven't even noticed and like I'm not even there; and he's talking about horses again, of all things, while I squirm again and try and angle my groin away from his touch. Can't he tell I don't like him doing it?
Or did I?
It bothers me being a sexual creature at times. How are we supposed to ignore these sexual feelings when we are sexual beings, even those confused feelings invoked by a sexual predator, and I especially want to know how he knew things and would tell me things about Myself that I hadn't ever told him- things about sex and things I wouldn't have talked about to a man who was old enough to be my Grandfather, and I hadn't, so it was like he had read my mind. Did the arousal eventuate because I was turned on by what he did or said, or because I had a functional clitoris that was merely doing it's job?
That thought bothers me a bit actually- that he aroused me in Any way when I couldn't seem to help it or stop it or stop Myself from feeling that way. It bothers me that the first person to touch me like that was an old man who was in his seventies. Come to think of it- it was also the time that my Grandpa got diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and had to start all of his crazy therapies that were never going to work- so who knows- maybe there's a connection somewhere.
I have often thought about Sharon, and wondered if it had happened for her like it happened for me- and if He had gotten to her too, if she worried that She had encouraged him just because she really wanted to ride as well? She was a girl about two years older than me, so about fourteen or fifteen I suppose, who lived around the corner from the paddock where He taught us to 'ride'. Snort. What a joke.
I always used to think of her as a hanger-on- everyone knew that she only liked you because she wanted to ride your horse. But then maybe she just wanted to be able to sit prettily on a horse like I secretly did...
I'm sure the Creep idly used her too, though I never asked her about it, of course. I knew her well enough over the years to say hello if I ran into her at shows or at Pony Club- because as an adult, as soon as she could really, she saved up and got a horse of her own. Skeeta was a nice looking bay gelding that was pretty quick on his feet, and so she did quite well at the sporting events and at jumping. I always thought that was a fitting end for her- and was pleased that if the Pervert had gotten to her like I suspected he had, then at least he hadn't turned her off riding and horses and relationships and kids. She ended up being a person who wouldve ridden for Life, I reckon, just because she loved it so much, but then she died about two years ago in a terrible car accident- that also took her young Son's life as well.
I sometimes used to think what would have happened if I had ever asked her about Him and if he had abused her as well, and if she would have confirmed the suspicions I had. I used to dream of Us going to the Police with our story and have him arrested and sent to jail to be fucked up the bum like the rock-spider that he was. I also used to fantasise about seeing Him walking along the road in his wig and knocking him down with my bull bar, and I imagine what I will say to the Police, telling them what he did to me, and how I just snapped out of control and lost it.
I can reveal all of this Now, because the opportunity to kill him has passed and I'll never be able to kill him now...
Not that I condone murder. I would've been extremely disappointed in Myself if I had acted on my desires.
But not sorry.
I don't know why I insist on trying to end things on a poignant note all the time. And I don't know why I have to have the final word all of the time either.
I think that when I die, even if I just Think that I have made it to the afterlife- as I slip away and have my Final Thought- even if I just think it and then there is Nothing- that I will be satisfied enough to die quietly. Can we even know that we are having our Final thought as we are having it? I don't know that I will ever be ready to go. I might just want to stick around and let people know that I'm still here. If I'm able to. Shouldn't I try my hardest to give someone absolute proof of the afterlife if there is one?
Hell; I already think that I can astral travel, how difficult could it be to stay behind and become a ghost?
Surely we don't snuff out entirely. I can't conceive not having any more thoughts. Is that what absolute silence is? True Death?
Even when that Arsehole died I went back down to that paddock to have a look around. I drove my car there, putting it into four-wheel drive just to make sure I wouldn't get bogged and be stuck There waiting for ages for a tow. It was different of course, and that's what one would expect after fourteen years, but I thought I might recognise something- a tree or something- or one of the myriad of tracks that used to snake it's way through the bush. But the whole lot was gone- the fence, and the old gate that swung inwards, and all that was there was a rusted out car on it's side in a gully near where the cavelletti used to be, and a lot of tractor tracks burnt into the mud- courtesy of the recent roadworks...
And there was no Scent of him there anymore, no trace of His filth; only that sweet smell of the bush in Summer- and the cicadas were pissing down from the trees, and the breeze is blowing hot in my face once more as I gallop, in My mind, up the track that took Us, years before, on the long track home.
When I heard that the Wiggy Prick had finally carked it last year, sadly of natural causes, I was happier than I'd been in ages- I only wish I knew where he was being kept now so I could go and spit on his grave. Yes- he fucked me up that badly.
But at least I've stopped thinking about him as much as I did before.
I wonder what His Final Thought was? I bet it had nothing to do with being Sorry to any of Us- me and Sharon, and He-only-Knew how many Whoever-Else's...
I don't reckon that we were 'Special' to him at all...
The Paradise Of Flies...
The English Bitch I was telling you about earlier reminded me somewhat of the Wicked Witch of the West- she even, ironically, kept her son's mangy little dog, whose name really was Toto, permanently chained up underneath the house on the flea infested blanket he called home.
Just like a witch would.
She had yellow buck teeth and long oily curly black hair and her unshaven armpits were constantly sweat stained and reeking. Her fingernails are the worst bitten that I have ever seen, even worse than mine- and don't forget that she picks the horse shit up with her bare hands, because that's how they did it in England when she worked at the riding school- yeah right- and doesn't use a glove or bread bag because that's not how it was done in the Motherland. She also tries to save money on groceries by baking her own bread, and funnily enough, or not, the only time her fingernails are ever really clean is after she has finished kneading her world famous Cheese and Burnt Onion-on-Top Rockhard Loaf.
This is especially nice when made into Thick Butter and Bantam Egg Sandwiches, which only seem half-coddled half the the time, which we have collected from the rundown chook house near the pig-sties.
Please...can someone get me a green bucket at the thought of albumen and thick warm butter and hot yellow yolk sandwiches? Yuck. I hope you get the point because it's making me sick just thinking about them. I liked collecting the eggs and collecting snails for the Bantams to peck out of their shells like delacacies. She also had a few quails running around the bottom of the roosting rack, but thank fuck she never got it into her head to use quail eggs in her cooking. I hope...The thought still sends a chill up my spine that I actually ate anything that she ever made for us- the Peas and Corn Pizza is a complete other story, believe me. But you have to remember that I was probably starving at the time.
Whenever we used to stay over on the weekend, which we used to strangely enjoy- in a macabre sort of way- it seemed that she would never feed us very much or often enough, so whatever she did throw our way we usually fell upon like wolves. Just like her poor horses attacked their pittance of a meal. And yes; she should have fed us plenty, and often., because we were the ones who washed her kids horses before Pony Club days and plaited their tails in the chilly dawn. We were the ones who lugged the buckets of water from the tap to fill up the trough while water sloshed into our ill-fitting boots that stretch and warp from being constantly wet or muddy. We were the ones who cleaned their tack on a Saturday afternoon in the kitchen and then deftly pieced the bridles back together after oiling them, surrounded by buckets of hot soapy water soaking the bits of a week's worth of grass-slobber that has hardened to a green crust.
Red Sunset at Night a Shephard's Delight and we're off, like a bucket of prawns in the sun, in the Land Rover that's illegally towing the horse float- they've swapped the number plates off the box trailer again- where upon arrival we will groom and saddle their horses while the kids chase each other with sticks or fight over who gets to use the best whip today. They have different horses now, both are Palomino, their discarded ponies sent off to a horse farm that bought and sold horses to people that didn't care about what sort of people they bought or sold their animals to. According to the English Bitch most people can only dream of owning one Palomino, and they have Two Palominos- have you ever heard the saying that Any Palomino Is A Pal Of Mino? Yeah- well, who the hell is Mino- that's what I want to know.
Her son's mare, Kitty, is so flogged out and skinny that one time she actually laid down when he was riding her and started grazing on the grass. What was worse was that it happened at Pony Club on a Ribbon Day, and that he stayed on her and hit her with his whip until she got up and finished doing the Pony Twist- well out of the placings of course.
His sister was much luckier- and only had one other boy and his foundering grey gelding, Snowy, as her competition, but she still only managed to be Reserve Champion that year in the Under Nine's Pointscore Championship. Cherie is the horse they've replaced the small grey filly who nearly necked herself in the rusty car with. They don't keep her very long either, as they try and get more competetive horses one after the other. Cherie gets swapped for Mindy- the horse who literally stopped traffic one day as she galloped down the main road at peak hour. The problem isn't the horses- not in the beginning anyway. At first, when they are new, they are fat and well-kept. Some of the horse's She bought were even quite promising when she first bought them home. Like Jethro, the black colt who was only about six months old when she got him.
After she had tethered this black baby on a rope for about a year, she put a saddle on him and decided that he was broken in. My Sister had a few rides on him, and I can't remember what he did wrong for her exactly, but after he began rearing up every time her son would get on him I guess she decided that enough was enough and sold him before he really hurt anybody. I know she sold him as a 'broken in gelding' but that poor animal was just broken, especially when I consider now that his life would have turned out very differently if she had never chanced upon him or even if she had known what she was doing with a young horse- which she clearly didn't. That horse should have been in his twenties by now, but instead he's been dead for almost eighteen years- as are the few greyhounds that he ended up being fed to.
The other young life that she ruined- aside from her own kids that is- was that of Penny-Weenie. They bought her home in the back of their Land Rover when she was only six weeks old after paying just ten dollars for her at the Sales. It's not the smartest of ideas- bringing a foal home in the back of a car, and she cuts her leg quite badly as they try and get her out. She is supposed to be fed on milk powder but it gets too expensive for the English Bitch so she puts Penny-Weenie on a tether rope as well. She is a Thoroughbred but her growth is permanently stunted from never getting enough milk as a baby. I don't know who she was sold to, but I doubt Penny-Weenie made it to an old age, either. All of the others; Rocky, Kitty, Cherie, Jethro, Frosty, Candy, Mindy and Shortarse would be dead too, by now- either from old age or because they had gone crazy after being starved and flogged by the English Bitch and her drunk husband and her two abused kids- and would've been sent to the knackery.
My Star must have been one of the lucky ones, because she got to escape the English Bitch from hell and got to live for the rest of her life at my Grandfather's Farm. Well- actually- if I'm going to tell the truth she died in a paddock across the road from his farm, but she should have died there, and maybe even would've if the place hadn't been sold back to the bastard National Parks for a steal of a price...
But Star did get to live at the Farm, with Peter, for quite a few years. I still remember the day that my Sister and Mel Smell and Myself walked her from the English Bitch's paddock to our house where the single horse float with it's haynet stuffed to the brim is waiting to take her to five hundred acres of grass and dams and more bush than we could ever see in a single day. And we're leaving Her as well.
The Bitch.
We never have to go back and see that bitch again if we don't want to.
As we walk to our house we are singing at the tops of our lungs- a song we have made up to commemorate this joyous occasion, called "It's A Long Way To The Farm". It's sung to the tune of "It's A Long Way To Tipperary", but we say "Goodbye (English Bitch's name inserted here), We hate your stinking lies, It's a long long way to the Farm, Away from the Paradise Of Flies". If you are going to try and make sense of that little bit, you'll have to sing along with it, and put your enemie's name in the place where the brackets are; and then you might get a feeling for what our sentiments were like towards this hag at the end.
I often wonder what happened to them all, Her and her husband and the poor messed up kids- but the truth is I wouldn't like to run into them ever again. That's why the day we took Star away from that awful place was one of the best days ever.
So why did I ever go back?
Just like a witch would.
She had yellow buck teeth and long oily curly black hair and her unshaven armpits were constantly sweat stained and reeking. Her fingernails are the worst bitten that I have ever seen, even worse than mine- and don't forget that she picks the horse shit up with her bare hands, because that's how they did it in England when she worked at the riding school- yeah right- and doesn't use a glove or bread bag because that's not how it was done in the Motherland. She also tries to save money on groceries by baking her own bread, and funnily enough, or not, the only time her fingernails are ever really clean is after she has finished kneading her world famous Cheese and Burnt Onion-on-Top Rockhard Loaf.
This is especially nice when made into Thick Butter and Bantam Egg Sandwiches, which only seem half-coddled half the the time, which we have collected from the rundown chook house near the pig-sties.
Please...can someone get me a green bucket at the thought of albumen and thick warm butter and hot yellow yolk sandwiches? Yuck. I hope you get the point because it's making me sick just thinking about them. I liked collecting the eggs and collecting snails for the Bantams to peck out of their shells like delacacies. She also had a few quails running around the bottom of the roosting rack, but thank fuck she never got it into her head to use quail eggs in her cooking. I hope...The thought still sends a chill up my spine that I actually ate anything that she ever made for us- the Peas and Corn Pizza is a complete other story, believe me. But you have to remember that I was probably starving at the time.
Whenever we used to stay over on the weekend, which we used to strangely enjoy- in a macabre sort of way- it seemed that she would never feed us very much or often enough, so whatever she did throw our way we usually fell upon like wolves. Just like her poor horses attacked their pittance of a meal. And yes; she should have fed us plenty, and often., because we were the ones who washed her kids horses before Pony Club days and plaited their tails in the chilly dawn. We were the ones who lugged the buckets of water from the tap to fill up the trough while water sloshed into our ill-fitting boots that stretch and warp from being constantly wet or muddy. We were the ones who cleaned their tack on a Saturday afternoon in the kitchen and then deftly pieced the bridles back together after oiling them, surrounded by buckets of hot soapy water soaking the bits of a week's worth of grass-slobber that has hardened to a green crust.
Red Sunset at Night a Shephard's Delight and we're off, like a bucket of prawns in the sun, in the Land Rover that's illegally towing the horse float- they've swapped the number plates off the box trailer again- where upon arrival we will groom and saddle their horses while the kids chase each other with sticks or fight over who gets to use the best whip today. They have different horses now, both are Palomino, their discarded ponies sent off to a horse farm that bought and sold horses to people that didn't care about what sort of people they bought or sold their animals to. According to the English Bitch most people can only dream of owning one Palomino, and they have Two Palominos- have you ever heard the saying that Any Palomino Is A Pal Of Mino? Yeah- well, who the hell is Mino- that's what I want to know.
Her son's mare, Kitty, is so flogged out and skinny that one time she actually laid down when he was riding her and started grazing on the grass. What was worse was that it happened at Pony Club on a Ribbon Day, and that he stayed on her and hit her with his whip until she got up and finished doing the Pony Twist- well out of the placings of course.
His sister was much luckier- and only had one other boy and his foundering grey gelding, Snowy, as her competition, but she still only managed to be Reserve Champion that year in the Under Nine's Pointscore Championship. Cherie is the horse they've replaced the small grey filly who nearly necked herself in the rusty car with. They don't keep her very long either, as they try and get more competetive horses one after the other. Cherie gets swapped for Mindy- the horse who literally stopped traffic one day as she galloped down the main road at peak hour. The problem isn't the horses- not in the beginning anyway. At first, when they are new, they are fat and well-kept. Some of the horse's She bought were even quite promising when she first bought them home. Like Jethro, the black colt who was only about six months old when she got him.
After she had tethered this black baby on a rope for about a year, she put a saddle on him and decided that he was broken in. My Sister had a few rides on him, and I can't remember what he did wrong for her exactly, but after he began rearing up every time her son would get on him I guess she decided that enough was enough and sold him before he really hurt anybody. I know she sold him as a 'broken in gelding' but that poor animal was just broken, especially when I consider now that his life would have turned out very differently if she had never chanced upon him or even if she had known what she was doing with a young horse- which she clearly didn't. That horse should have been in his twenties by now, but instead he's been dead for almost eighteen years- as are the few greyhounds that he ended up being fed to.
The other young life that she ruined- aside from her own kids that is- was that of Penny-Weenie. They bought her home in the back of their Land Rover when she was only six weeks old after paying just ten dollars for her at the Sales. It's not the smartest of ideas- bringing a foal home in the back of a car, and she cuts her leg quite badly as they try and get her out. She is supposed to be fed on milk powder but it gets too expensive for the English Bitch so she puts Penny-Weenie on a tether rope as well. She is a Thoroughbred but her growth is permanently stunted from never getting enough milk as a baby. I don't know who she was sold to, but I doubt Penny-Weenie made it to an old age, either. All of the others; Rocky, Kitty, Cherie, Jethro, Frosty, Candy, Mindy and Shortarse would be dead too, by now- either from old age or because they had gone crazy after being starved and flogged by the English Bitch and her drunk husband and her two abused kids- and would've been sent to the knackery.
My Star must have been one of the lucky ones, because she got to escape the English Bitch from hell and got to live for the rest of her life at my Grandfather's Farm. Well- actually- if I'm going to tell the truth she died in a paddock across the road from his farm, but she should have died there, and maybe even would've if the place hadn't been sold back to the bastard National Parks for a steal of a price...
But Star did get to live at the Farm, with Peter, for quite a few years. I still remember the day that my Sister and Mel Smell and Myself walked her from the English Bitch's paddock to our house where the single horse float with it's haynet stuffed to the brim is waiting to take her to five hundred acres of grass and dams and more bush than we could ever see in a single day. And we're leaving Her as well.
The Bitch.
We never have to go back and see that bitch again if we don't want to.
As we walk to our house we are singing at the tops of our lungs- a song we have made up to commemorate this joyous occasion, called "It's A Long Way To The Farm". It's sung to the tune of "It's A Long Way To Tipperary", but we say "Goodbye (English Bitch's name inserted here), We hate your stinking lies, It's a long long way to the Farm, Away from the Paradise Of Flies". If you are going to try and make sense of that little bit, you'll have to sing along with it, and put your enemie's name in the place where the brackets are; and then you might get a feeling for what our sentiments were like towards this hag at the end.
I often wonder what happened to them all, Her and her husband and the poor messed up kids- but the truth is I wouldn't like to run into them ever again. That's why the day we took Star away from that awful place was one of the best days ever.
So why did I ever go back?
The Gimp...
Although riding Peter in the school holidays was heaps better than nothing at all, it was still only a holiday thing, and my Sister and I longed to have a horse of our own. Other people had horses in their backyard, we reasoned, so we set about making a stable for the Fifty Dollar Foal- the one that was in the horses, vehicles and livestock column of the classified ads of our newspaper each Saturday-that our Father was going to let me buy for my tenth birthday.
Just you wait and see.
We made the stable, if you could call it that, out of the material that was left over after the above ground pool was pulled down; which we then cut up with Dad's tin snips and nailed with large tacks to the neighbour's fence- which forms one of the walls- as does the small garden shed on the other side, and the virtually impenetratable fern fills in the rear wall. For weeks before the big event we collect the clippings from the lawn mower to save money buying hay, without knowing we would have accidently poisoned an animal by feeding it to them.
Anyway, as history shows I didn't get a foal for my birthday that year, or in fact any other year, but instead got the Little Buckaroo riding lessons that I enjoyed so much. I suppose I should say I did enjoy the lessons; at least I was near horses, which was way preferable to being far away from horses, which was how it was for most of the time. Until fifth class that is.
One of my friend's mother's- Mel Smell's- worked at a supermarket and met an English woman while she was going through the checkout with her children and their shopping. That's the only normal thing They ever did that I know about. I'd love to tell you her name, but for the sake of her kids, who would be in their late twenties if they survived their teens, I won't give away their mother's identity. After all, they know who it was that beat them with the cord from the electric jug and don't need me telling you who she is.
They lived up on top of the hill, near where I live still, in a rented house that had a backyard that ran into a fair whack of bushland. They also lived next door to one of those electricity tower land clearance strips, you know how they connect those really large power pylons together, and all of the nearby trees have to be cleared and a certain distance away from houses- so they had plenty of room to tether their ponies through the day before returning them to the run down pig-sties they utilised as their horse yards at night.
I know what you must be thinking- how could they fit horses into pig-sties? Well, these were very small ponies, let me assure you.
The smallest was a grey filly named Candy, barely ten hands high and three years old, who had almost severed her jugular vein when she got her head stuck in a rusted out car she had been grazing out of. You could still see the thin white scar on her neck.
Then there was the little Palouse mare, Frosty, who was as ugly as all fuck with her mealy face and one blue eye. She was very scared of motorbikes after having been chased by one while out riding with her previous owner- and I had the pleasure of it happening to me one day, too, when she took off while I was on her and was galloping out of control down a narrow rocky track, her ill-shod feet slipping and sliding beneath her as I clung desperately to the cheap pig-skin saddle and a handful of half-hogged mane. Even aged eleven I was far to big for her, and look ridiculous sitting so close to her narrow neck and tiny ears, my feet dangling somewhere near her knees.
That was one of the times that I told you I was scared about going too fast...
Another time was on their third pony after she became mine- a bay mare named Star Lady, who had wonky legs and a mean disposition. She was larger than the Palouse mare by a full hand, I reckon, and was ruined- if in fact she was ever any good, by the English lady's ham-fisted son, who gallops the poor bitch ragged through the Dippers at breakneck speed every afternoon because his mother won't buy the kid the motorcycle that he really wants. It's like a bush track for kids to enjoy on their BMX's and more suited to bikes than horses, but they were fun enough to canter around I suppose.
How he treated Her- and he was only a kid himself in all fairness- wouldn't have affected me in the least unless I hadn't ended up owning the Gimp myself; and I say that with much affection because I loved her for the rest of her life; but because she was never an easy horse to ride- even though she had a nice enough nature when she got older- and would insist on galloping up the same tracks that she had galloped with her last owner, much to my fear and humility. It seems I can't control every horse I ride after all.
But finally, after much begging and pleading, and after having bought all the equipment necessary to own a horse with our scrimped and saved pocket money, my Sister and I convinced our Parents and Grandmother to buy her for us. We had to buy everything else- from the saddle to the mane-comb; and were under no delusions about who would be paying for her up keep. Us. It would be understated but fair to say our Parents weren't enthusiatic about our little hobby- it was to be our responsibility.
So we would eke out our combined pocket money of twelve dollars a week and somehow managed to feed and worm and shoe her. We both secretly laugh, even today, when our other Sisters and Cousin think that they ever had any claim of ownership just because our Grandmother had helped pay for the horse. That didn't mean she suddenly belonged to all of the grandkids. We were the ones who rode the shitty bike up the hill every morning, even in the rain, to feed her. We were the ones she dragged across the peak hour traffic when we crossed the highway to her paddock every afternoon. We were the ones who went without lollies at the shop and did all those extra jobs of theirs just we could have the extra monry for things like riding lessons- because how else are we going to get to the Olympics if we can't sit prettily- and just so the horse has a full belly every night.
Not that she ate particularly well, as that responsibility was left up to the English Bitch who we paid all the money we had to but got very little in return, as she had a habit of using spoons rather than buckets when it came time to feeding her horses. Sadly, but happily, ours was not even the skinniest horse in the paddock- over the years that we knew her she filled those paddocks with an assortment of RSPCA cases- one called Rocky, who was an ex-trotter, even resorted to eating his own shit he was that hungry. True story.
The paddocks were just poorly fenced dirt squares that turned to mud at the mere thought of rain, so every day we would have to pick bags and bags of the lush green grass that grew down at the nearby plaster factory and empty it in with her for a bit extra to eat, but she always remained skinny until we moved her away to the Farm. On weekends we would take her out of her paddock to graze around the the more grassy spots but she had to be put on a tether during the day because we couldn't afford to feed her hay as well as pay for her small daily feed and agistment fee.
We had to take it in turns to ride the ancient bike we have resorted to stealing from our older Sister, but we were quite lucky to have the bike at all, even if that was just because it meant we didn't have to walk. We did that plenty of times too, when the tyre got flat or when there were two of us and the bike rack was taken up with a biscuit of hay or the saddle. Much later on in the piece our Mother would drive us if it were raining or if we were running really late for school, but she certainly never Always did it, as is her recollection.
I would get doubled down the hill by my Sister, and she knew I hated it- but she would always take her hands off the handlebars-and going around corners, downhill, quickly and with no one steering is not my idea of fun. One time I bailed off the back just after the road had been newly gravelled, because she was threatening to do it, and I took off half my chin. A single black hair grows out of the scar...
Not that we minded having to go there every afternoon; I reckon we would have spent even more time with the horses had our Parent's allowed it. I didn't enjoy having to pick up the shit every afternoon but I did it anyway because there was no other choice. I drew the line at handling the shit with my bare hands the way the English Bitch did, though, and would take an empty bread bag for myself to use as a glove.
In a round about way I think I'm trying to tell you the story about the time that I went riding with the girl who used to own the little Palouse mare; the same girl who had been chased by a hoon on his motorbike and given the horse a neurosis about noisy machines on two wheels for the rest of her life...
I organised on the phone to meet her halfway there. In a car the distance is next to nothing, but riding to Horse's Paradise took the whole day, so it was better if you took a backpack with at least a sandwich and an apple and a few plain biscuits to munch on throughout the day- because there would be nothing else until you could get home and gorge yourself on fresh pieces of rock melon and green grapes. And that wasn't going to be until much later. The horses were fine, not eating all day,but if your horse could be easily caught you could take their saddle off and let them loose for an hour while you relaxed in the shade and drank cold lemonade, while the horses roamed nearby in their halters and ate the wild oats that grew all year long at Horse's Paradise. That's how it got it's name- because of the oats- but you had to be careful that your horse didn't eat too many of these wild oats or they just might turn into a nutter on the way home, and bolt.
I was pretty pleased with Myself, actually, for getting as far as I did- for actually getting to go through the gate of Horse's Paradise. The horse had practically behaved herself, almost, for a change on the ride over- but the whole relax and rest while the horses grazed over an easy lunch never eventuated and neither did the cold lemonade part. Before we could even park the horses my mare ran off on me, hurtling faster and faster towards the skinny gate that leads towards home; it's only as wide as a common garden path.
No offence meant to garden paths.
Just as we go through the gate I lose the tenuous grasp that I had of her mane and I fall, swinging beneath her neck and tiny pounding hooves. Somehow, luckily, she manages to come to a dead stop in the middle of the gate while I am still swinging beneath her belly. My friend wants to stay and ride back up the hill, but then again her horse Shannon is safe, in inverted commas, and won't gallop off back down the hill the moment we turn around, and I'm too shaken and afraid after falling off and almost hurting myself really badly- so I go home by myself, leading her back through the gate that takes me away from Horse's Paradise for ever.
I am quickly getting angry at the horse for ruining my afternoon when only a moment before I had been so grateful to her for coming to a stop so suddenly and saving me from being crushed through the tiny gate, so I get back on her, trying to prove to her that I can actually be the one in control for a change. Then, as if she knew I had the shits at her, she decides to gallop for about one kilometre out of control down the side of the road near the golf course, near where my Little Son now goes to pre-school- her hooves surely sending sparks up from the flints of rock on the side of the road that we gallop across, before ducking at the last moment beneath the trees and onto the track that takes us past another sort of riding school, and over the creek towards home.
I could have killed the bitch for running on the road because her shoes are loose; the so-called 'farrier' who put them on-the English Bitch's drunken husband no less- didn't allow for the fact that the walls of her hooves are so thin in places that the nails rip through in days rather than in weeks, and for most of the time they are hanging on only by a thread and two or three nails at best.
It seems thatI have spent my life looking for another Horse's Paradise to visit, where the wild oats are numerous and the grass is softly rolling beneath gently waving branches of trees overhead. My own Horse's Paradise has brown post and rail fencing that runs for miles over the gently undulating green pastures, where mares and their foals graze side by side and frolic in apple orchards. And then there's my massive modern farmhouse on the horizon. I'm moving in right after I win Lotto.
Horse's Paradise certainly wasn't where we agisted our horses for the first five years that we owned them, that's for sure. And at long last I can finally reveal the hidden name of this story is Horse's Paradise- if you hadn't already guessed it by now, that is.
I'm just sorry that you had to wait until it was almost finished to find out...
Just you wait and see.
We made the stable, if you could call it that, out of the material that was left over after the above ground pool was pulled down; which we then cut up with Dad's tin snips and nailed with large tacks to the neighbour's fence- which forms one of the walls- as does the small garden shed on the other side, and the virtually impenetratable fern fills in the rear wall. For weeks before the big event we collect the clippings from the lawn mower to save money buying hay, without knowing we would have accidently poisoned an animal by feeding it to them.
Anyway, as history shows I didn't get a foal for my birthday that year, or in fact any other year, but instead got the Little Buckaroo riding lessons that I enjoyed so much. I suppose I should say I did enjoy the lessons; at least I was near horses, which was way preferable to being far away from horses, which was how it was for most of the time. Until fifth class that is.
One of my friend's mother's- Mel Smell's- worked at a supermarket and met an English woman while she was going through the checkout with her children and their shopping. That's the only normal thing They ever did that I know about. I'd love to tell you her name, but for the sake of her kids, who would be in their late twenties if they survived their teens, I won't give away their mother's identity. After all, they know who it was that beat them with the cord from the electric jug and don't need me telling you who she is.
They lived up on top of the hill, near where I live still, in a rented house that had a backyard that ran into a fair whack of bushland. They also lived next door to one of those electricity tower land clearance strips, you know how they connect those really large power pylons together, and all of the nearby trees have to be cleared and a certain distance away from houses- so they had plenty of room to tether their ponies through the day before returning them to the run down pig-sties they utilised as their horse yards at night.
I know what you must be thinking- how could they fit horses into pig-sties? Well, these were very small ponies, let me assure you.
The smallest was a grey filly named Candy, barely ten hands high and three years old, who had almost severed her jugular vein when she got her head stuck in a rusted out car she had been grazing out of. You could still see the thin white scar on her neck.
Then there was the little Palouse mare, Frosty, who was as ugly as all fuck with her mealy face and one blue eye. She was very scared of motorbikes after having been chased by one while out riding with her previous owner- and I had the pleasure of it happening to me one day, too, when she took off while I was on her and was galloping out of control down a narrow rocky track, her ill-shod feet slipping and sliding beneath her as I clung desperately to the cheap pig-skin saddle and a handful of half-hogged mane. Even aged eleven I was far to big for her, and look ridiculous sitting so close to her narrow neck and tiny ears, my feet dangling somewhere near her knees.
That was one of the times that I told you I was scared about going too fast...
Another time was on their third pony after she became mine- a bay mare named Star Lady, who had wonky legs and a mean disposition. She was larger than the Palouse mare by a full hand, I reckon, and was ruined- if in fact she was ever any good, by the English lady's ham-fisted son, who gallops the poor bitch ragged through the Dippers at breakneck speed every afternoon because his mother won't buy the kid the motorcycle that he really wants. It's like a bush track for kids to enjoy on their BMX's and more suited to bikes than horses, but they were fun enough to canter around I suppose.
How he treated Her- and he was only a kid himself in all fairness- wouldn't have affected me in the least unless I hadn't ended up owning the Gimp myself; and I say that with much affection because I loved her for the rest of her life; but because she was never an easy horse to ride- even though she had a nice enough nature when she got older- and would insist on galloping up the same tracks that she had galloped with her last owner, much to my fear and humility. It seems I can't control every horse I ride after all.
But finally, after much begging and pleading, and after having bought all the equipment necessary to own a horse with our scrimped and saved pocket money, my Sister and I convinced our Parents and Grandmother to buy her for us. We had to buy everything else- from the saddle to the mane-comb; and were under no delusions about who would be paying for her up keep. Us. It would be understated but fair to say our Parents weren't enthusiatic about our little hobby- it was to be our responsibility.
So we would eke out our combined pocket money of twelve dollars a week and somehow managed to feed and worm and shoe her. We both secretly laugh, even today, when our other Sisters and Cousin think that they ever had any claim of ownership just because our Grandmother had helped pay for the horse. That didn't mean she suddenly belonged to all of the grandkids. We were the ones who rode the shitty bike up the hill every morning, even in the rain, to feed her. We were the ones she dragged across the peak hour traffic when we crossed the highway to her paddock every afternoon. We were the ones who went without lollies at the shop and did all those extra jobs of theirs just we could have the extra monry for things like riding lessons- because how else are we going to get to the Olympics if we can't sit prettily- and just so the horse has a full belly every night.
Not that she ate particularly well, as that responsibility was left up to the English Bitch who we paid all the money we had to but got very little in return, as she had a habit of using spoons rather than buckets when it came time to feeding her horses. Sadly, but happily, ours was not even the skinniest horse in the paddock- over the years that we knew her she filled those paddocks with an assortment of RSPCA cases- one called Rocky, who was an ex-trotter, even resorted to eating his own shit he was that hungry. True story.
The paddocks were just poorly fenced dirt squares that turned to mud at the mere thought of rain, so every day we would have to pick bags and bags of the lush green grass that grew down at the nearby plaster factory and empty it in with her for a bit extra to eat, but she always remained skinny until we moved her away to the Farm. On weekends we would take her out of her paddock to graze around the the more grassy spots but she had to be put on a tether during the day because we couldn't afford to feed her hay as well as pay for her small daily feed and agistment fee.
We had to take it in turns to ride the ancient bike we have resorted to stealing from our older Sister, but we were quite lucky to have the bike at all, even if that was just because it meant we didn't have to walk. We did that plenty of times too, when the tyre got flat or when there were two of us and the bike rack was taken up with a biscuit of hay or the saddle. Much later on in the piece our Mother would drive us if it were raining or if we were running really late for school, but she certainly never Always did it, as is her recollection.
I would get doubled down the hill by my Sister, and she knew I hated it- but she would always take her hands off the handlebars-and going around corners, downhill, quickly and with no one steering is not my idea of fun. One time I bailed off the back just after the road had been newly gravelled, because she was threatening to do it, and I took off half my chin. A single black hair grows out of the scar...
Not that we minded having to go there every afternoon; I reckon we would have spent even more time with the horses had our Parent's allowed it. I didn't enjoy having to pick up the shit every afternoon but I did it anyway because there was no other choice. I drew the line at handling the shit with my bare hands the way the English Bitch did, though, and would take an empty bread bag for myself to use as a glove.
In a round about way I think I'm trying to tell you the story about the time that I went riding with the girl who used to own the little Palouse mare; the same girl who had been chased by a hoon on his motorbike and given the horse a neurosis about noisy machines on two wheels for the rest of her life...
I organised on the phone to meet her halfway there. In a car the distance is next to nothing, but riding to Horse's Paradise took the whole day, so it was better if you took a backpack with at least a sandwich and an apple and a few plain biscuits to munch on throughout the day- because there would be nothing else until you could get home and gorge yourself on fresh pieces of rock melon and green grapes. And that wasn't going to be until much later. The horses were fine, not eating all day,but if your horse could be easily caught you could take their saddle off and let them loose for an hour while you relaxed in the shade and drank cold lemonade, while the horses roamed nearby in their halters and ate the wild oats that grew all year long at Horse's Paradise. That's how it got it's name- because of the oats- but you had to be careful that your horse didn't eat too many of these wild oats or they just might turn into a nutter on the way home, and bolt.
I was pretty pleased with Myself, actually, for getting as far as I did- for actually getting to go through the gate of Horse's Paradise. The horse had practically behaved herself, almost, for a change on the ride over- but the whole relax and rest while the horses grazed over an easy lunch never eventuated and neither did the cold lemonade part. Before we could even park the horses my mare ran off on me, hurtling faster and faster towards the skinny gate that leads towards home; it's only as wide as a common garden path.
No offence meant to garden paths.
Just as we go through the gate I lose the tenuous grasp that I had of her mane and I fall, swinging beneath her neck and tiny pounding hooves. Somehow, luckily, she manages to come to a dead stop in the middle of the gate while I am still swinging beneath her belly. My friend wants to stay and ride back up the hill, but then again her horse Shannon is safe, in inverted commas, and won't gallop off back down the hill the moment we turn around, and I'm too shaken and afraid after falling off and almost hurting myself really badly- so I go home by myself, leading her back through the gate that takes me away from Horse's Paradise for ever.
I am quickly getting angry at the horse for ruining my afternoon when only a moment before I had been so grateful to her for coming to a stop so suddenly and saving me from being crushed through the tiny gate, so I get back on her, trying to prove to her that I can actually be the one in control for a change. Then, as if she knew I had the shits at her, she decides to gallop for about one kilometre out of control down the side of the road near the golf course, near where my Little Son now goes to pre-school- her hooves surely sending sparks up from the flints of rock on the side of the road that we gallop across, before ducking at the last moment beneath the trees and onto the track that takes us past another sort of riding school, and over the creek towards home.
I could have killed the bitch for running on the road because her shoes are loose; the so-called 'farrier' who put them on-the English Bitch's drunken husband no less- didn't allow for the fact that the walls of her hooves are so thin in places that the nails rip through in days rather than in weeks, and for most of the time they are hanging on only by a thread and two or three nails at best.
It seems thatI have spent my life looking for another Horse's Paradise to visit, where the wild oats are numerous and the grass is softly rolling beneath gently waving branches of trees overhead. My own Horse's Paradise has brown post and rail fencing that runs for miles over the gently undulating green pastures, where mares and their foals graze side by side and frolic in apple orchards. And then there's my massive modern farmhouse on the horizon. I'm moving in right after I win Lotto.
Horse's Paradise certainly wasn't where we agisted our horses for the first five years that we owned them, that's for sure. And at long last I can finally reveal the hidden name of this story is Horse's Paradise- if you hadn't already guessed it by now, that is.
I'm just sorry that you had to wait until it was almost finished to find out...
Hunting Fishing Mates Beer...
When my Sister dropped my Grandfather's stockwhip off the side of his boat and it sank to the bottom of the Lake he didn't even get that angry about it. I had fantasies for years of being the one to find and return it to Grandpa, and could even imagine the look on his face when he saw it again; like a lost stockwhip was so meaningful or something. I know how silly that sounds. Even to me. And I wrote it. Just then.
I don't know why She insisted on bringing the whip with us on the boat in the first place, actually, was she expecting to round us up some fish or something? To be fair, I suppose we all liked receiving His good favour, and liked carrying it around for him, because he just might need it at Any moment, you know; like if Peter were to suddenly charge us into a barbed wire fence or something.
It could have happened...
We were always asking Grandpa about different types of fish or rabbit traps and what to do with the baby joeys that you find in the dead mother's pouches. He was a bit of a Man's man- hunting, fishing, mates, beer. After a successful outing they would line the Cleaning table with skinned Thumpers and plucked ducks- and after fishing the ground would be so thick with scales around the men's feet that it looked like they were standing in a giant pile of toe-nail clippings.
Where did all those men come from anyway? They don't seem to take any notice of us as we run around their feet, swinging plastic bags full of hot roe and fish eyes at each other. They don't see us there, either, sitting in the speed boat that never gets used, dissecting the discarded fish heads- relieving them of their gills- or see us peeling their eyes back, like layers of onions, until there is only a tiny ball of jelly left. This isn't cruel or barbaric; it's all done in the name of science. I'm going to be a vet one day remember, and may have to perform eye surgery on a much loved fish one day. I don't know what my Sister's excuses are; maybe they just thought it was funny chasing people around with bagfuls of guts.
After most of the mess has been cleaned up by one or other of the men's dogs they sit around for hours, drinking longnecks of VB that they then stack against the back wall of the outhouse. We sneak the dregs, sometimes- unluckily-getting a mouthful of cigarette juice in the process. I have no doubt that everyone but the children and my Mother would have been off their heads drunk on nights like this- nights like when my Uncle pulled a shotgun on my Grandfather and my Cousin, who aged about nine, bravely put herself between the gun and her Grandfather- who she regarded as her father.
I don't even know at the moment if that story is even true, it sounds so surreal and far away. Maybe it happened but I wasn't there, which is in fact more likely to be the case. I like to take on other people's stories as mine, in case you haven't noticed yet, especially if they're any good...
But even though our Grandfather was raising my Cousin like a daughter- and in fact raising her better and with more love and kindness than he raised his own daughters, by all accounts- he always seemed to have time for a cuddle with all of us other grandkids- we all felt special when we were with him, and even though he had his favourite, no one ever felt unloved.
We all got to have a turn sitting with him in his rocking chair and have a go at wearing his soft tweed cap, and at carrying the stockwhip around the paddock. Or on the boat. Except for right at the end, when he forgot about everything, I think he knew that he had made us all feel loved and special- so that even when we discovered-as adults- that he wasn't always one of the nicest of men, and that he wasn't a particularly good father or husband, that we will always be able to think of him as the loving Grandfather we knew- and remember him that way.
And who knows; maybe one day I'll remember my Grandmother fondly as well.
Unless she's immortal. Or I die first.
She made nice soup.
I tried.
I don't know why She insisted on bringing the whip with us on the boat in the first place, actually, was she expecting to round us up some fish or something? To be fair, I suppose we all liked receiving His good favour, and liked carrying it around for him, because he just might need it at Any moment, you know; like if Peter were to suddenly charge us into a barbed wire fence or something.
It could have happened...
We were always asking Grandpa about different types of fish or rabbit traps and what to do with the baby joeys that you find in the dead mother's pouches. He was a bit of a Man's man- hunting, fishing, mates, beer. After a successful outing they would line the Cleaning table with skinned Thumpers and plucked ducks- and after fishing the ground would be so thick with scales around the men's feet that it looked like they were standing in a giant pile of toe-nail clippings.
Where did all those men come from anyway? They don't seem to take any notice of us as we run around their feet, swinging plastic bags full of hot roe and fish eyes at each other. They don't see us there, either, sitting in the speed boat that never gets used, dissecting the discarded fish heads- relieving them of their gills- or see us peeling their eyes back, like layers of onions, until there is only a tiny ball of jelly left. This isn't cruel or barbaric; it's all done in the name of science. I'm going to be a vet one day remember, and may have to perform eye surgery on a much loved fish one day. I don't know what my Sister's excuses are; maybe they just thought it was funny chasing people around with bagfuls of guts.
After most of the mess has been cleaned up by one or other of the men's dogs they sit around for hours, drinking longnecks of VB that they then stack against the back wall of the outhouse. We sneak the dregs, sometimes- unluckily-getting a mouthful of cigarette juice in the process. I have no doubt that everyone but the children and my Mother would have been off their heads drunk on nights like this- nights like when my Uncle pulled a shotgun on my Grandfather and my Cousin, who aged about nine, bravely put herself between the gun and her Grandfather- who she regarded as her father.
I don't even know at the moment if that story is even true, it sounds so surreal and far away. Maybe it happened but I wasn't there, which is in fact more likely to be the case. I like to take on other people's stories as mine, in case you haven't noticed yet, especially if they're any good...
But even though our Grandfather was raising my Cousin like a daughter- and in fact raising her better and with more love and kindness than he raised his own daughters, by all accounts- he always seemed to have time for a cuddle with all of us other grandkids- we all felt special when we were with him, and even though he had his favourite, no one ever felt unloved.
We all got to have a turn sitting with him in his rocking chair and have a go at wearing his soft tweed cap, and at carrying the stockwhip around the paddock. Or on the boat. Except for right at the end, when he forgot about everything, I think he knew that he had made us all feel loved and special- so that even when we discovered-as adults- that he wasn't always one of the nicest of men, and that he wasn't a particularly good father or husband, that we will always be able to think of him as the loving Grandfather we knew- and remember him that way.
And who knows; maybe one day I'll remember my Grandmother fondly as well.
Unless she's immortal. Or I die first.
She made nice soup.
I tried.
My Mind's Eye...
If I'm trying to do anything I'm trying to create an impression about my Grandfather's farm that you can somehow actualise for yourself in your own way. Everyone has somewhere special from their childhood that was, to them at least, the most magical place on Eath, a place where everything is beautiful and untainted like a newly broken morning, a place where you longed to be, not just during the school holidays, but during every minute of every day of your life.
In an ideal world my Grandfather would have bought me a pony and I would have lived at the Farm with him and my Parents and Sisters and Cousin- and we would have ridden to the nearest school every morning, just like the Morgan kids who lived just down the road did every day. Just like the old guy who lived up the road had done sixty or more years before, maybe before there was even a school bus known to the area, when all the parents worked at the sawmill or fished the Lake for mullet and bream. I wanted to go to the dairy every morning for fresh warm milk that was still steaming and collect the cow-tusks from the ground after the steers were de-horned. This was the life I was supposed to live; the one I wanted, walking in thigh-high gumboots through a yard full of cow shit- and it is so far removed from where I actually am that it's really quite laughable now that I was so certain, when I was younger, of how exactly my life would turn out- how things were 'going to be' for me. How wrong can one person be? I probably even thought I would deserve a nice life and not deliberatly sabotage the one I had that was perfectly normal and alright, too, but that's another story...
The Farm meant something different to every single one of us, but all of us wanted to live there. Even though it was very easy to get lost there, you seemed to find yourself in the process. I remember thinking one day that I was walking backwards through time because I couldn't find my way back to the farmhouse. I had myself convinced that I had travelled back into the past, to a time where the house had not even been built and there wasn't even a track- let alone a road- to follow. And as there was no house I wandered aimlessly along with the black dog I had chanced upon further and further away from Reality. Maybe what happened next was that I lucked across a rainbow and followed it to the pot of gold- but all the ones I ever chased sprang up on the other side of the Lake all of a sudden, or disappeared from view altogether, so after a while I stopped believing that rainbows had an end to them at all, and then there was no point to following them anymore.
This is what happened to the Farm.
It stopped being beautiful and got very ugly, very quickly. What was once unsullied became corrupt and tainted and choked with weeds and broken cars and other crap. I wouldn't want to go on a holiday there anymore, let alone live there, even if I could. But if I could I would take you back to the place I knew then. I'll try now- if you like.
Imagine, if you can, driving down a somewhat twisted and narrow driveway, splashing occasionally through giant mud-filled puddles. At some point we stop and let the dog out and she runs along behind the car as we continue up towards the farmhouse, her pink tongue lolling out the side of her slobberflecked jaw. You can tell that she's loving it. As we round the final bend and the farmhouse comes into view the four children in the back seat all break into a song that has been sung every time upon arrival in all of living memory. I see the red roof of the house between the trees and can see the hill we gallop up when we ride the horse back for someone else to have a turn on. We knew the horse just wanted to get back as quickly as he could to get his saddle off his back- and there was no holding him back once we'd gotten him in the habit of doing it. Not that I minded. I told you before I liked going fast and I wasn't lying- not that time, anyway.
But when we first arrive and we have thrown our pillow on some creaky piss-stained bed or other, claiming it as ours for the next five nights, or however long we were lucky enough to be here this time. Then all of Us kids would race over to the Little Old House- if we had managed to avoid helping Mother drag all the groceries that are packed into their laundry baskets out of the car, that is. It was actually an old weekender that had also been the original homestead on the property, where the old man from up the road had been born- right there in the tack room that holds Grandfather's stock saddle and the duck decoys and rabbit snares. And we would settle down to cleaning the house up so that it might be habitable for at least part of the time we are here on holidays. Even though there are little bats living in the roof; so we probably Won't.
It's like living in the Little House on the Prairie- we even run down the hill that leads to the Lake like Mary, Laura and Carrie did- even down to me- being the youngest- falling down like Carrie, tumbling over and over, down the hill trying to avoid the many splots of cowshit that pepper the landscape. We're lucky, too, and have a gas stove we can cook pancakes on and a real China cabinet full of crockery and Tupperware containers that have strange sticky substances on their lids. The whole first morning is spent cleaning out the cupboards and washing all the dishes. Then we'd make the beds up with the fresh linen bought from home and pretend for a while that we were going to be brave enough to sleep there, but we rarely did when we were very young.
We'd set up our fish box full of Lake water that we have dragged up the hill to use as our fish tank- that will hold the tiny Mullet babies that we catch in old strainers that we find in the pantry. We'd practice our 'end of Holiday ABBA concert' that we put on for our Mother and Father on the last day of our holiday, on the verandah that overlooks Grandpa's peach trees that are draped in netting to catch the fruit-foxes; how my Parent's loved those ABBA concerts.
We would set up an old ironing board with the stock saddle on it, on the front verandah, with the bridle hanging from the front like it was on a horse's head, with the reins draped over the elephant-ears of the saddle- and yes- we did take turns in riding it. We even have photographic proof that is still pulled out sometimes when We are all together and remembering some of the happier times. This was something we all looked forward to each year, being here at the Farm, seemingly in a whole other world aside and apart from what we usually knew every day.
Before every holiday I would write myself a list to take with me to the Farm, the list being a complete itinerary of activities that will be performed for however many days we were staying, as well as the list of every article of clothing or object taken that I wanted o take was also duly noted. Like on Day One we will visit Slippery Log after we have a swim in the Lake, for which I shall require my swimmers, two pairs, and towels, both beach and bath- and in the afternoon we will go and catch some Beakies down at the boatshed, for which I shall need my Other shoes that can go squelch in the mud without Mother having a fit and asking anyone for a glass of Arsenic. We're fresh out of that today, Mother; how about a glass of Chardonnay instead?
And then on Day Two we will wake up at six in the morning and go out on the Lake and pull in the fishing nets with Grandpa in his little Outboard and come back and gut the fish and then Grandmother might make us some fishcakes if we are being good little children and keeping mostly out of the way. Then we'll catch the horse and take him for a swim in the Lake, if we can convince him to go in there this year- if the Bran-Person is doing their job properly. And then our Father will cook that chicken dish with tomato and corn that he can never remember how to make before we sit around on the verandah, cleaning the saddle and bridle with Joseph Liddy saddlesoap and plenty of Elbow Grease because we're holding our own gymkhana in the morning and we all want to win the Turnout class and get the Supreme Champion Sash that my Sister has sewn with red white and blue silk for the occasion.
Gasp for breath.
The poor horse is still soapy in most places from where we've had to skimp on water from the rainwater tank- washing his mane and tail so they can be plaited without revealing too much of the dirt and scurve- and after we have picked out the hundreds of bush ticks that he is literally covered in; the little blood-suckers are in his mane and tail, in his ears, even down the crack of his arse and behind his tail.
You know what I mean...This is real tank water and fresh air stuff I'm talking about; this is the smell of rain on clean dirt and the heat of the bush in Summer and the relentless drone of the cicadas above us in the tall Scribbly Gums. This is drinking cold water that is somehow still alive from the dam- and thinking that it was good for you because the Farm's water is somehow purer.
Can't you hear it when the only sounds at dusk are the mighty Magpies warbling to each other as we all sit on the verandah that goes almost all the way around it? Or the feathery wisp of the Swallow as it swoops past you and darts up to his gummy nest up there in the rafters? Can't you still see the murky green underworld of the Lake weed garden as you realise for the first time that you can open your eyes and the water won't sting? Can't you still feel the rush in your stomach as you jump off the roof of the houseboat that is anchored near the Point? Can you still taste the wild blackberries that we'd pick from around the warren-riddled dams, or feel the tiny fingerlings gently nipping at you as you sit silently among the tall reeds?
I can. And if I really think about it, I can still see, in my mind's eye, the view from top of Grayer's Hill on a still and cloudless morning- how the Lake shimmered like a flat plate of steely white-grey glass, liquid and velvety as Mercury, and seemingly as dense- as it bounced mirrored reflections of the hills deep below the shoreline of Mangroves. I have pictures of it in my mind which are far more valuable than a thousand polished words. I only wish that I could show them to you.
And you know, I have always wondered what Everyone thought of us when they looked down the paddock and across to the hills and saw us, from a distance, as we tramped for hours through the paddocks and disappeared in and out of the bush, and if we really looked how I felt we looked...
Five Little Specks-as seen from the farmhouse.
In an ideal world my Grandfather would have bought me a pony and I would have lived at the Farm with him and my Parents and Sisters and Cousin- and we would have ridden to the nearest school every morning, just like the Morgan kids who lived just down the road did every day. Just like the old guy who lived up the road had done sixty or more years before, maybe before there was even a school bus known to the area, when all the parents worked at the sawmill or fished the Lake for mullet and bream. I wanted to go to the dairy every morning for fresh warm milk that was still steaming and collect the cow-tusks from the ground after the steers were de-horned. This was the life I was supposed to live; the one I wanted, walking in thigh-high gumboots through a yard full of cow shit- and it is so far removed from where I actually am that it's really quite laughable now that I was so certain, when I was younger, of how exactly my life would turn out- how things were 'going to be' for me. How wrong can one person be? I probably even thought I would deserve a nice life and not deliberatly sabotage the one I had that was perfectly normal and alright, too, but that's another story...
The Farm meant something different to every single one of us, but all of us wanted to live there. Even though it was very easy to get lost there, you seemed to find yourself in the process. I remember thinking one day that I was walking backwards through time because I couldn't find my way back to the farmhouse. I had myself convinced that I had travelled back into the past, to a time where the house had not even been built and there wasn't even a track- let alone a road- to follow. And as there was no house I wandered aimlessly along with the black dog I had chanced upon further and further away from Reality. Maybe what happened next was that I lucked across a rainbow and followed it to the pot of gold- but all the ones I ever chased sprang up on the other side of the Lake all of a sudden, or disappeared from view altogether, so after a while I stopped believing that rainbows had an end to them at all, and then there was no point to following them anymore.
This is what happened to the Farm.
It stopped being beautiful and got very ugly, very quickly. What was once unsullied became corrupt and tainted and choked with weeds and broken cars and other crap. I wouldn't want to go on a holiday there anymore, let alone live there, even if I could. But if I could I would take you back to the place I knew then. I'll try now- if you like.
Imagine, if you can, driving down a somewhat twisted and narrow driveway, splashing occasionally through giant mud-filled puddles. At some point we stop and let the dog out and she runs along behind the car as we continue up towards the farmhouse, her pink tongue lolling out the side of her slobberflecked jaw. You can tell that she's loving it. As we round the final bend and the farmhouse comes into view the four children in the back seat all break into a song that has been sung every time upon arrival in all of living memory. I see the red roof of the house between the trees and can see the hill we gallop up when we ride the horse back for someone else to have a turn on. We knew the horse just wanted to get back as quickly as he could to get his saddle off his back- and there was no holding him back once we'd gotten him in the habit of doing it. Not that I minded. I told you before I liked going fast and I wasn't lying- not that time, anyway.
But when we first arrive and we have thrown our pillow on some creaky piss-stained bed or other, claiming it as ours for the next five nights, or however long we were lucky enough to be here this time. Then all of Us kids would race over to the Little Old House- if we had managed to avoid helping Mother drag all the groceries that are packed into their laundry baskets out of the car, that is. It was actually an old weekender that had also been the original homestead on the property, where the old man from up the road had been born- right there in the tack room that holds Grandfather's stock saddle and the duck decoys and rabbit snares. And we would settle down to cleaning the house up so that it might be habitable for at least part of the time we are here on holidays. Even though there are little bats living in the roof; so we probably Won't.
It's like living in the Little House on the Prairie- we even run down the hill that leads to the Lake like Mary, Laura and Carrie did- even down to me- being the youngest- falling down like Carrie, tumbling over and over, down the hill trying to avoid the many splots of cowshit that pepper the landscape. We're lucky, too, and have a gas stove we can cook pancakes on and a real China cabinet full of crockery and Tupperware containers that have strange sticky substances on their lids. The whole first morning is spent cleaning out the cupboards and washing all the dishes. Then we'd make the beds up with the fresh linen bought from home and pretend for a while that we were going to be brave enough to sleep there, but we rarely did when we were very young.
We'd set up our fish box full of Lake water that we have dragged up the hill to use as our fish tank- that will hold the tiny Mullet babies that we catch in old strainers that we find in the pantry. We'd practice our 'end of Holiday ABBA concert' that we put on for our Mother and Father on the last day of our holiday, on the verandah that overlooks Grandpa's peach trees that are draped in netting to catch the fruit-foxes; how my Parent's loved those ABBA concerts.
We would set up an old ironing board with the stock saddle on it, on the front verandah, with the bridle hanging from the front like it was on a horse's head, with the reins draped over the elephant-ears of the saddle- and yes- we did take turns in riding it. We even have photographic proof that is still pulled out sometimes when We are all together and remembering some of the happier times. This was something we all looked forward to each year, being here at the Farm, seemingly in a whole other world aside and apart from what we usually knew every day.
Before every holiday I would write myself a list to take with me to the Farm, the list being a complete itinerary of activities that will be performed for however many days we were staying, as well as the list of every article of clothing or object taken that I wanted o take was also duly noted. Like on Day One we will visit Slippery Log after we have a swim in the Lake, for which I shall require my swimmers, two pairs, and towels, both beach and bath- and in the afternoon we will go and catch some Beakies down at the boatshed, for which I shall need my Other shoes that can go squelch in the mud without Mother having a fit and asking anyone for a glass of Arsenic. We're fresh out of that today, Mother; how about a glass of Chardonnay instead?
And then on Day Two we will wake up at six in the morning and go out on the Lake and pull in the fishing nets with Grandpa in his little Outboard and come back and gut the fish and then Grandmother might make us some fishcakes if we are being good little children and keeping mostly out of the way. Then we'll catch the horse and take him for a swim in the Lake, if we can convince him to go in there this year- if the Bran-Person is doing their job properly. And then our Father will cook that chicken dish with tomato and corn that he can never remember how to make before we sit around on the verandah, cleaning the saddle and bridle with Joseph Liddy saddlesoap and plenty of Elbow Grease because we're holding our own gymkhana in the morning and we all want to win the Turnout class and get the Supreme Champion Sash that my Sister has sewn with red white and blue silk for the occasion.
Gasp for breath.
The poor horse is still soapy in most places from where we've had to skimp on water from the rainwater tank- washing his mane and tail so they can be plaited without revealing too much of the dirt and scurve- and after we have picked out the hundreds of bush ticks that he is literally covered in; the little blood-suckers are in his mane and tail, in his ears, even down the crack of his arse and behind his tail.
You know what I mean...This is real tank water and fresh air stuff I'm talking about; this is the smell of rain on clean dirt and the heat of the bush in Summer and the relentless drone of the cicadas above us in the tall Scribbly Gums. This is drinking cold water that is somehow still alive from the dam- and thinking that it was good for you because the Farm's water is somehow purer.
Can't you hear it when the only sounds at dusk are the mighty Magpies warbling to each other as we all sit on the verandah that goes almost all the way around it? Or the feathery wisp of the Swallow as it swoops past you and darts up to his gummy nest up there in the rafters? Can't you still see the murky green underworld of the Lake weed garden as you realise for the first time that you can open your eyes and the water won't sting? Can't you still feel the rush in your stomach as you jump off the roof of the houseboat that is anchored near the Point? Can you still taste the wild blackberries that we'd pick from around the warren-riddled dams, or feel the tiny fingerlings gently nipping at you as you sit silently among the tall reeds?
I can. And if I really think about it, I can still see, in my mind's eye, the view from top of Grayer's Hill on a still and cloudless morning- how the Lake shimmered like a flat plate of steely white-grey glass, liquid and velvety as Mercury, and seemingly as dense- as it bounced mirrored reflections of the hills deep below the shoreline of Mangroves. I have pictures of it in my mind which are far more valuable than a thousand polished words. I only wish that I could show them to you.
And you know, I have always wondered what Everyone thought of us when they looked down the paddock and across to the hills and saw us, from a distance, as we tramped for hours through the paddocks and disappeared in and out of the bush, and if we really looked how I felt we looked...
Five Little Specks-as seen from the farmhouse.
My Mind's Eye...
If I'm trying to do anything I'm trying to create an impression about my Grandfather's farm that you can somehow actualise for yourself in your own way. Everyone has somewhere special from their childhood that was, to them at least, the most magical place on Eath, a place where everything is beautiful and untainted like a newly broken morning, a place where you longed to be, not just during the school holidays, but during every minute of every day of your life.
In an ideal world my Grandfather would have bought me a pony and I would have lived at the Farm with him and my Parents and Sisters and Cousin- and we would have ridden to the nearest school every morning, just like the Morgan kids who lived just down the road did every day. Just like the old guy who lived up the road had done sixty or more years before, maybe before there was even a school bus known to the area, when all the parents worked at the sawmill or fished the Lake for mullet and bream. I wanted to go to the dairy every morning for fresh warm milk that was still steaming and collect the cow-tusks from the ground after the steers were de-horned. This was the life I was supposed to live; the one I wanted, walking in thigh-high gumboots through a yard full of cow shit- and it is so far removed from where I actually am that it's really quite laughable now that I was so certain, when I was younger, of how exactly my life would turn out- how things were 'going to be' for me. How wrong can one person be? I probably even thought I would deserve a nice life and not deliberatly sabotage the one I had that was perfectly normal and alright, too, but that's another story...
The Farm meant something different to every single one of us, but all of us wanted to live there. Even though it was very easy to get lost there, you seemed to find yourself in the process. I remember thinking one day that I was walking backwards through time because I couldn't find my way back to the farmhouse. I had myself convinced that I had travelled back into the past, to a time where the house had not even been built and there wasn't even a track- let alone a road- to follow. And as there was no house I wandered aimlessly along with the black dog I had chanced upon further and further away from Reality. Maybe what happened next was that I lucked across a rainbow and followed it to the pot of gold- but all the ones I ever chased sprang up on the other side of the Lake all of a sudden, or disappeared from view altogether, so after a while I stopped believing that rainbows had an end to them at all, and then there was no point to following them anymore.
This is what happened to the Farm.
It stopped being beautiful and got very ugly, very quickly. What was once unsullied became corrupt and tainted and choked with weeds and broken cars and other crap. I wouldn't want to go on a holiday there anymore, let alone live there, even if I could. But if I could I would take you back to the place I knew then. I'll try now- if you like.
Imagine, if you can, driving down a somewhat twisted and narrow driveway, splashing occasionally through giant mud-filled puddles. At some point we stop and let the dog out and she runs along behind the car as we continue up towards the farmhouse, her pink tongue lolling out the side of her slobberflecked jaw. You can tell that she's loving it. As we round the final bend and the farmhouse comes into view the four children in the back seat all break into a song that has been sung every time upon arrival in all of living memory. I see the red roof of the house between the trees and can see the hill we gallop up when we ride the horse back for someone else to have a turn on. We knew the horse just wanted to get back as quickly as he could to get his saddle off his back- and there was no holding him back once we'd gotten him in the habit of doing it. Not that I minded. I told you before I liked going fast and I wasn't lying- not that time, anyway.
But when we first arrive and we have thrown our pillow on some creaky piss-stained bed or other, claiming it as ours for the next five nights, or however long we were lucky enough to be here this time. Then all of Us kids would race over to the Little Old House- if we had managed to avoid helping Mother drag all the groceries that are packed into their laundry baskets out of the car, that is. It was actually an old weekender that had also been the original homestead on the property, where the old man from up the road had been born- right there in the tack room that holds Grandfather's stock saddle and the duck decoys and rabbit snares. And we would settle down to cleaning the house up so that it might be habitable for at least part of the time we are here on holidays. Even though there are little bats living in the roof; so we probably Won't.
It's like living in the Little House on the Prairie- we even run down the hill that leads to the Lake like Mary, Laura and Carrie did- even down to me- being the youngest- falling down like Carrie, tumbling over and over, down the hill trying to avoid the many splots of cowshit that pepper the landscape. We're lucky, too, and have a gas stove we can cook pancakes on and a real China cabinet full of crockery and Tupperware containers that have strange sticky substances on their lids. The whole first morning is spent cleaning out the cupboards and washing all the dishes. Then we'd make the beds up with the fresh linen bought from home and pretend for a while that we were going to be brave enough to sleep there, but we rarely did when we were very young.
We'd set up our fish box full of Lake water that we have dragged up the hill to use as our fish tank- that will hold the tiny Mullet babies that we catch in old strainers that we find in the pantry. We'd practice our 'end of Holiday ABBA concert' that we put on for our Mother and Father on the last day of our holiday, on the verandah that overlooks Grandpa's peach trees that are draped in netting to catch the fruit-foxes; how my Parent's loved those ABBA concerts.
We would set up an old ironing board with the stock saddle on it, on the front verandah, with the bridle hanging from the front like it was on a horse's head, with the reins draped over the elephant-ears of the saddle- and yes- we did take turns in riding it. We even have photographic proof that is still pulled out sometimes when We are all together and remembering some of the happier times. This was something we all looked forward to each year, being here at the Farm, seemingly in a whole other world aside and apart from what we usually knew every day.
Before every holiday I would write myself a list to take with me to the Farm, the list being a complete itinerary of activities that will be performed for however many days we were staying, as well as the list of every article of clothing or object taken that I wanted o take was also duly noted. Like on Day One we will visit Slippery Log after we have a swim in the Lake, for which I shall require my swimmers, two pairs, and towels, both beach and bath- and in the afternoon we will go and catch some Beakies down at the boatshed, for which I shall need my Other shoes that can go squelch in the mud without Mother having a fit and asking anyone for a glass of Arsenic. We're fresh out of that today, Mother; how about a glass of Chardonnay instead?
And then on Day Two we will wake up at six in the morning and go out on the Lake and pull in the fishing nets with Grandpa in his little Outboard and come back and gut the fish and then Grandmother might make us some fishcakes if we are being good little children and keeping mostly out of the way. Then we'll catch the horse and take him for a swim in the Lake, if we can convince him to go in there this year- if the Bran-Person is doing their job properly. And then our Father will cook that chicken dish with tomato and corn that he can never remember how to make before we sit around on the verandah, cleaning the saddle and bridle with Joseph Liddy saddlesoap and plenty of Elbow Grease because we're holding our own gymkhana in the morning and we all want to win the Turnout class and get the Supreme Champion Sash that my Sister has sewn with red white and blue silk for the occasion.
Gasp for breath.
The poor horse is still soapy in most places from where we've had to skimp on water from the rainwater tank- washing his mane and tail so they can be plaited without revealing too much of the dirt and scurve- and after we have picked out the hundreds of bush ticks that he is literally covered in; the little blood-suckers are in his mane and tail, in his ears, even down the crack of his arse and behind his tail.
You know what I mean...This is real tank water and fresh air stuff I'm talking about; this is the smell of rain on clean dirt and the heat of the bush in Summer and the relentless drone of the cicadas above us in the tall Scribbly Gums. This is drinking cold water that is somehow still alive from the dam- and thinking that it was good for you because the Farm's water is somehow purer.
Can't you hear it when the only sounds at dusk are the mighty Magpies warbling to each other as we all sit on the verandah that goes almost all the way around it? Or the feathery wisp of the Swallow as it swoops past you and darts up to his gummy nest up there in the rafters? Can't you still see the murky green underworld of the Lake weed garden as you realise for the first time that you can open your eyes and the water won't sting? Can't you still feel the rush in your stomach as you jump off the roof of the houseboat that is anchored near the Point? Can you still taste the wild blackberries that we'd pick from around the warren-riddled dams, or feel the tiny fingerlings gently nipping at you as you sit silently among the tall reeds?
I can. And if I really think about it, I can still see, in my mind's eye, the view from top of Grayer's Hill on a still and cloudless morning- how the Lake shimmered like a flat plate of steely white-grey glass, liquid and velvety as Mercury, and seemingly as dense- as it bounced mirrored reflections of the hills deep below the shoreline of Mangroves. I have pictures of it in my mind which are far more valuable than a thousand polished words. I only wish that I could show them to you.
And you know, I have always wondered what Everyone thought of us when they looked down the paddock and across to the hills and saw us, from a distance, as we tramped for hours through the paddocks and disappeared in and out of the bush, and if we really looked how I felt we looked...
Five Little Specks-as seen from the farmhouse.
In an ideal world my Grandfather would have bought me a pony and I would have lived at the Farm with him and my Parents and Sisters and Cousin- and we would have ridden to the nearest school every morning, just like the Morgan kids who lived just down the road did every day. Just like the old guy who lived up the road had done sixty or more years before, maybe before there was even a school bus known to the area, when all the parents worked at the sawmill or fished the Lake for mullet and bream. I wanted to go to the dairy every morning for fresh warm milk that was still steaming and collect the cow-tusks from the ground after the steers were de-horned. This was the life I was supposed to live; the one I wanted, walking in thigh-high gumboots through a yard full of cow shit- and it is so far removed from where I actually am that it's really quite laughable now that I was so certain, when I was younger, of how exactly my life would turn out- how things were 'going to be' for me. How wrong can one person be? I probably even thought I would deserve a nice life and not deliberatly sabotage the one I had that was perfectly normal and alright, too, but that's another story...
The Farm meant something different to every single one of us, but all of us wanted to live there. Even though it was very easy to get lost there, you seemed to find yourself in the process. I remember thinking one day that I was walking backwards through time because I couldn't find my way back to the farmhouse. I had myself convinced that I had travelled back into the past, to a time where the house had not even been built and there wasn't even a track- let alone a road- to follow. And as there was no house I wandered aimlessly along with the black dog I had chanced upon further and further away from Reality. Maybe what happened next was that I lucked across a rainbow and followed it to the pot of gold- but all the ones I ever chased sprang up on the other side of the Lake all of a sudden, or disappeared from view altogether, so after a while I stopped believing that rainbows had an end to them at all, and then there was no point to following them anymore.
This is what happened to the Farm.
It stopped being beautiful and got very ugly, very quickly. What was once unsullied became corrupt and tainted and choked with weeds and broken cars and other crap. I wouldn't want to go on a holiday there anymore, let alone live there, even if I could. But if I could I would take you back to the place I knew then. I'll try now- if you like.
Imagine, if you can, driving down a somewhat twisted and narrow driveway, splashing occasionally through giant mud-filled puddles. At some point we stop and let the dog out and she runs along behind the car as we continue up towards the farmhouse, her pink tongue lolling out the side of her slobberflecked jaw. You can tell that she's loving it. As we round the final bend and the farmhouse comes into view the four children in the back seat all break into a song that has been sung every time upon arrival in all of living memory. I see the red roof of the house between the trees and can see the hill we gallop up when we ride the horse back for someone else to have a turn on. We knew the horse just wanted to get back as quickly as he could to get his saddle off his back- and there was no holding him back once we'd gotten him in the habit of doing it. Not that I minded. I told you before I liked going fast and I wasn't lying- not that time, anyway.
But when we first arrive and we have thrown our pillow on some creaky piss-stained bed or other, claiming it as ours for the next five nights, or however long we were lucky enough to be here this time. Then all of Us kids would race over to the Little Old House- if we had managed to avoid helping Mother drag all the groceries that are packed into their laundry baskets out of the car, that is. It was actually an old weekender that had also been the original homestead on the property, where the old man from up the road had been born- right there in the tack room that holds Grandfather's stock saddle and the duck decoys and rabbit snares. And we would settle down to cleaning the house up so that it might be habitable for at least part of the time we are here on holidays. Even though there are little bats living in the roof; so we probably Won't.
It's like living in the Little House on the Prairie- we even run down the hill that leads to the Lake like Mary, Laura and Carrie did- even down to me- being the youngest- falling down like Carrie, tumbling over and over, down the hill trying to avoid the many splots of cowshit that pepper the landscape. We're lucky, too, and have a gas stove we can cook pancakes on and a real China cabinet full of crockery and Tupperware containers that have strange sticky substances on their lids. The whole first morning is spent cleaning out the cupboards and washing all the dishes. Then we'd make the beds up with the fresh linen bought from home and pretend for a while that we were going to be brave enough to sleep there, but we rarely did when we were very young.
We'd set up our fish box full of Lake water that we have dragged up the hill to use as our fish tank- that will hold the tiny Mullet babies that we catch in old strainers that we find in the pantry. We'd practice our 'end of Holiday ABBA concert' that we put on for our Mother and Father on the last day of our holiday, on the verandah that overlooks Grandpa's peach trees that are draped in netting to catch the fruit-foxes; how my Parent's loved those ABBA concerts.
We would set up an old ironing board with the stock saddle on it, on the front verandah, with the bridle hanging from the front like it was on a horse's head, with the reins draped over the elephant-ears of the saddle- and yes- we did take turns in riding it. We even have photographic proof that is still pulled out sometimes when We are all together and remembering some of the happier times. This was something we all looked forward to each year, being here at the Farm, seemingly in a whole other world aside and apart from what we usually knew every day.
Before every holiday I would write myself a list to take with me to the Farm, the list being a complete itinerary of activities that will be performed for however many days we were staying, as well as the list of every article of clothing or object taken that I wanted o take was also duly noted. Like on Day One we will visit Slippery Log after we have a swim in the Lake, for which I shall require my swimmers, two pairs, and towels, both beach and bath- and in the afternoon we will go and catch some Beakies down at the boatshed, for which I shall need my Other shoes that can go squelch in the mud without Mother having a fit and asking anyone for a glass of Arsenic. We're fresh out of that today, Mother; how about a glass of Chardonnay instead?
And then on Day Two we will wake up at six in the morning and go out on the Lake and pull in the fishing nets with Grandpa in his little Outboard and come back and gut the fish and then Grandmother might make us some fishcakes if we are being good little children and keeping mostly out of the way. Then we'll catch the horse and take him for a swim in the Lake, if we can convince him to go in there this year- if the Bran-Person is doing their job properly. And then our Father will cook that chicken dish with tomato and corn that he can never remember how to make before we sit around on the verandah, cleaning the saddle and bridle with Joseph Liddy saddlesoap and plenty of Elbow Grease because we're holding our own gymkhana in the morning and we all want to win the Turnout class and get the Supreme Champion Sash that my Sister has sewn with red white and blue silk for the occasion.
Gasp for breath.
The poor horse is still soapy in most places from where we've had to skimp on water from the rainwater tank- washing his mane and tail so they can be plaited without revealing too much of the dirt and scurve- and after we have picked out the hundreds of bush ticks that he is literally covered in; the little blood-suckers are in his mane and tail, in his ears, even down the crack of his arse and behind his tail.
You know what I mean...This is real tank water and fresh air stuff I'm talking about; this is the smell of rain on clean dirt and the heat of the bush in Summer and the relentless drone of the cicadas above us in the tall Scribbly Gums. This is drinking cold water that is somehow still alive from the dam- and thinking that it was good for you because the Farm's water is somehow purer.
Can't you hear it when the only sounds at dusk are the mighty Magpies warbling to each other as we all sit on the verandah that goes almost all the way around it? Or the feathery wisp of the Swallow as it swoops past you and darts up to his gummy nest up there in the rafters? Can't you still see the murky green underworld of the Lake weed garden as you realise for the first time that you can open your eyes and the water won't sting? Can't you still feel the rush in your stomach as you jump off the roof of the houseboat that is anchored near the Point? Can you still taste the wild blackberries that we'd pick from around the warren-riddled dams, or feel the tiny fingerlings gently nipping at you as you sit silently among the tall reeds?
I can. And if I really think about it, I can still see, in my mind's eye, the view from top of Grayer's Hill on a still and cloudless morning- how the Lake shimmered like a flat plate of steely white-grey glass, liquid and velvety as Mercury, and seemingly as dense- as it bounced mirrored reflections of the hills deep below the shoreline of Mangroves. I have pictures of it in my mind which are far more valuable than a thousand polished words. I only wish that I could show them to you.
And you know, I have always wondered what Everyone thought of us when they looked down the paddock and across to the hills and saw us, from a distance, as we tramped for hours through the paddocks and disappeared in and out of the bush, and if we really looked how I felt we looked...
Five Little Specks-as seen from the farmhouse.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Another Fantasy Of Mine...
I wish I had a photo of White Sox.
He was Beetlebombs's last foal- his Father had run off and left them after conception so I can't tell you for certain who the cad was- but his son as a leggy chestnut with four white stockings that stretched beyond his hocks. We still have a photo of Beetlebomb;she is a skinny-looking flea-bitten grey mare and is being led around the front yard , unsaddled, by my Uncle. He looked drunk. He probably was.
I remember one day I was out walking in the paddock with my little dog and I came across White Sox and Stripe- another chestnut Thoroughbred who wasn't fast enough to race; and Pinto, who was a Pinto but that's all I can tell you about him/her; who all being pretty much unbroken and unhandled, were all pretty wary of humans.
I stood stock still in the middle of the paddock and talked to them as they came closer and closer- until the golden moment that White Sox approached me and sniffed my out-stretched palm, snorted , and then turned and galloped off with Stripe and Pinto at his heels. I was so happy that he had trusted me enough to be the first person who had ever touched him- another fantasy of mine-that I raced back to the farmhouse with my little dog bounding through the grass beside me, just like Toto did in the Wizard of Oz, and told my Sister's and Cousin about it- but none of them believed me, of course, because it had never happened to any of them, and now they probably forget it ever happened at all.
Our Grandfather had promised us that he would have White Sox broken in -one day- for us to ride but he never did, of course. I think, like Jack and Beetlebomb and Stripe and Pinto- and even eventually Peter- he ended up at the Glue Factory like poor Boxer did out of Animal Farm after he had re-built the windmill for the third time. I don't know where I got the impression from that my Grandfather was overly sentimental about the beasts he owned; I mean, he didn't treat his animals like pets- if you get my meaning- so if an animal wasn't any good you either got rid of it or shot it, which is the 'country way' I suppose.
He had a tack room just like Farmer Jones' too, with assorted traps and empty red rifle shot casings strewn throughout the netting and fish boxes and rolls of cruel barbed wire. Surely he wouldn't have felt saddened by Jack's death, but for some reason I thought that he would have been when I was four or five. And that is how old I am, I think, when I am allowed to travel in the back of Granpa's Ute, asleep and on a foam mattress...
The drive to the Farm took just over two hours in those days but I've never understood why, to this day, why our Mother let us do it in the first place; did she just want a weekend off that badly that she didn't care that there weren't any seatbelts; or did it seem safe to her somehow just because it wasn't illegal in those days- even when that sort of an accident would have made national headlines if Grandpa had crashed the car with us lot in the back of the Ute?
Four children under ten- dead- after car rolls down mountainside.
Didn't they want us or something? Were they trying to kill us off? First one to sleep wins two bob and you won't even feel it when you're asleep.
Even if it wasn't illegal I wouldn't let my Father drive my kids around twisted mountainsides in the dark under a rainsheet while his chilly bin full of longnecks of VB rides safely in the passenger seat beside him. But that's just me.
When we arrived Grandpa would carry us in out of the car into the relative safety of the house- after locating the house keys that are on the curled leather key ring under the front step- while we are all still fast asleep. He puts us into bed, all four of Us together, three Sisters and one Cousin. There aren't five of us because the littlest Sister is still at home with Mummy because She is still to precious to ride around in the back of a Ute unrestrained. Maybe my Mother just didn't trust her baby around her big brother. I wouldn't blame her, by the way, if that were the reason. Sue Me Boof- see if I care. Now there's a name for my Mother's book when she gets around to writing it. Get ready to LOL, you all. Her book can be about how her brother used to lynch her kittens on the clothesline and how her parents could do nothing to stop their son- who had won a Most Beautiful Baby competition in nineteen fourty six no less- from being a cruel and sadistic bastard. Man- have I got some stories about Him. Another day...
We wake up early in the morning and my Sisters and Cousin make sugary tea while we check Grandpa's overlarge gumboots for spiders. It's almost an unspoken rule- when you are at the Farm you have to wear gumboots because you are on a farm; even when the boots are so big they seem to be as long as your thigh and every step you take feels like it was taken inside a giant sack made of strong rubber. Just as dawn is breaking we set out across the paddocks, clomping through the cloying mud, to go mushrooming for the Adults breakfast with a saucepan and a butter-knife; or to look for the Faeries that live in the small spider-webs on the ground that are bejeweled with hundreds of tiny dewdrops. It's quite impossible to avoid stepping on them- and when we look back we can see our footsteps clearly, like a meandering trail aross the well-grazed pastures.
Grandpa had a herd of around one hundred head of cows, steers and heifers that he sells to the abattoirs for good prices that justify his hobby nicely. So long, Black-and-White-Face. Maybe next year I'll be able to save someone like you from going on that butcher's truck and we'll get that pet calf that we always dreamt of having- and that keeps getting promised to us and then sold for someone to eat because that's what happens in the Real World.
When we were little we would worry about coming across the Bull in the paddock- if we weren't with Grandpa that is- who easily stood six foot six at the shoulder- and so we would avoid wearing red clothes in the paddock- we even worried over some shades of pink- lest we should come across the Bull and he would charge at us. It's funny; but that big old red bull couldn't even be arsed shifting his bulk from under the same dead crooked tree that he carked it beneath many years later.
But that didn't mean that it was impossible that he might have attacked us one day when we least expected it...
He was Beetlebombs's last foal- his Father had run off and left them after conception so I can't tell you for certain who the cad was- but his son as a leggy chestnut with four white stockings that stretched beyond his hocks. We still have a photo of Beetlebomb;she is a skinny-looking flea-bitten grey mare and is being led around the front yard , unsaddled, by my Uncle. He looked drunk. He probably was.
I remember one day I was out walking in the paddock with my little dog and I came across White Sox and Stripe- another chestnut Thoroughbred who wasn't fast enough to race; and Pinto, who was a Pinto but that's all I can tell you about him/her; who all being pretty much unbroken and unhandled, were all pretty wary of humans.
I stood stock still in the middle of the paddock and talked to them as they came closer and closer- until the golden moment that White Sox approached me and sniffed my out-stretched palm, snorted , and then turned and galloped off with Stripe and Pinto at his heels. I was so happy that he had trusted me enough to be the first person who had ever touched him- another fantasy of mine-that I raced back to the farmhouse with my little dog bounding through the grass beside me, just like Toto did in the Wizard of Oz, and told my Sister's and Cousin about it- but none of them believed me, of course, because it had never happened to any of them, and now they probably forget it ever happened at all.
Our Grandfather had promised us that he would have White Sox broken in -one day- for us to ride but he never did, of course. I think, like Jack and Beetlebomb and Stripe and Pinto- and even eventually Peter- he ended up at the Glue Factory like poor Boxer did out of Animal Farm after he had re-built the windmill for the third time. I don't know where I got the impression from that my Grandfather was overly sentimental about the beasts he owned; I mean, he didn't treat his animals like pets- if you get my meaning- so if an animal wasn't any good you either got rid of it or shot it, which is the 'country way' I suppose.
He had a tack room just like Farmer Jones' too, with assorted traps and empty red rifle shot casings strewn throughout the netting and fish boxes and rolls of cruel barbed wire. Surely he wouldn't have felt saddened by Jack's death, but for some reason I thought that he would have been when I was four or five. And that is how old I am, I think, when I am allowed to travel in the back of Granpa's Ute, asleep and on a foam mattress...
The drive to the Farm took just over two hours in those days but I've never understood why, to this day, why our Mother let us do it in the first place; did she just want a weekend off that badly that she didn't care that there weren't any seatbelts; or did it seem safe to her somehow just because it wasn't illegal in those days- even when that sort of an accident would have made national headlines if Grandpa had crashed the car with us lot in the back of the Ute?
Four children under ten- dead- after car rolls down mountainside.
Didn't they want us or something? Were they trying to kill us off? First one to sleep wins two bob and you won't even feel it when you're asleep.
Even if it wasn't illegal I wouldn't let my Father drive my kids around twisted mountainsides in the dark under a rainsheet while his chilly bin full of longnecks of VB rides safely in the passenger seat beside him. But that's just me.
When we arrived Grandpa would carry us in out of the car into the relative safety of the house- after locating the house keys that are on the curled leather key ring under the front step- while we are all still fast asleep. He puts us into bed, all four of Us together, three Sisters and one Cousin. There aren't five of us because the littlest Sister is still at home with Mummy because She is still to precious to ride around in the back of a Ute unrestrained. Maybe my Mother just didn't trust her baby around her big brother. I wouldn't blame her, by the way, if that were the reason. Sue Me Boof- see if I care. Now there's a name for my Mother's book when she gets around to writing it. Get ready to LOL, you all. Her book can be about how her brother used to lynch her kittens on the clothesline and how her parents could do nothing to stop their son- who had won a Most Beautiful Baby competition in nineteen fourty six no less- from being a cruel and sadistic bastard. Man- have I got some stories about Him. Another day...
We wake up early in the morning and my Sisters and Cousin make sugary tea while we check Grandpa's overlarge gumboots for spiders. It's almost an unspoken rule- when you are at the Farm you have to wear gumboots because you are on a farm; even when the boots are so big they seem to be as long as your thigh and every step you take feels like it was taken inside a giant sack made of strong rubber. Just as dawn is breaking we set out across the paddocks, clomping through the cloying mud, to go mushrooming for the Adults breakfast with a saucepan and a butter-knife; or to look for the Faeries that live in the small spider-webs on the ground that are bejeweled with hundreds of tiny dewdrops. It's quite impossible to avoid stepping on them- and when we look back we can see our footsteps clearly, like a meandering trail aross the well-grazed pastures.
Grandpa had a herd of around one hundred head of cows, steers and heifers that he sells to the abattoirs for good prices that justify his hobby nicely. So long, Black-and-White-Face. Maybe next year I'll be able to save someone like you from going on that butcher's truck and we'll get that pet calf that we always dreamt of having- and that keeps getting promised to us and then sold for someone to eat because that's what happens in the Real World.
When we were little we would worry about coming across the Bull in the paddock- if we weren't with Grandpa that is- who easily stood six foot six at the shoulder- and so we would avoid wearing red clothes in the paddock- we even worried over some shades of pink- lest we should come across the Bull and he would charge at us. It's funny; but that big old red bull couldn't even be arsed shifting his bulk from under the same dead crooked tree that he carked it beneath many years later.
But that didn't mean that it was impossible that he might have attacked us one day when we least expected it...
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