Rebel Without Claws

Yes, it's sad but true. There's still a bit of rebel in me. Even worse: I'm thoroughly convinced that there will be a bit of a rebel in me right up to the end. Grow old disgracefully is my motto and I intend to stick to it.

I'm thinking about my old motorbike as I write this. It's all fuelled up and ready to go. I love that old bike. It's older than I am, temperamental, hates the rain, has to have the side cover off and oil squirted on everything before each ride, and I spend more time pushing it than riding it, but... yeah! There's nothing like that feeling of riding along a country road, being able to smell the scenery and feel the wind.

There's also the bugs [especially if you have an open face helmet], pot holes in the road and surprised motorists who can't believe what they're seeing...!

I have a 1958 BSA D5 Bantam 175cc. A rare old bird -- like me. There are plenty of Bantams around, but very few D5s ever made it out to Australia. In the 10 years I've been riding mine, I've never seen another one road registered and in fully restored condition.

Now all the classic bike enthusiasts are smiling and nodding. Suddenly it all makes sense: the pushing to make it go in the morning, the cloud of blue smoke, the backfiring and the gear slipping at least three times during each ride.

Yes, classic British bikes. They're all the same. But they have character. I wouldn't swap my little bike for any Harley.

It sulks in the shed all winter and every summer it comes out, gets a good rub down, an oil and off we go.

The only trouble with riding it about town is that it only has 3 gears which makes me have to go too fast and too slow to negotiate some turns without having to drop down the speed and putter around, or race around at a hair-raising speed. Also, it has no modern attachments like indicators. That means I have to ride around with my arm stuck out hoping modern motorists know what that means. Most of them do, but I did come across one younger driver who thought the stop arm signal was a right hand turn signal. Moron! Go back to school and learn your road rules.

All that aside... there's nothing like the smell of two-stroke in the morning.

License Update

I managed to renew my driving license without drama, despite it being overdue. Thank goodness!

Nobody asked any questions at VicRoads. They processed it, I had a new mug shot taken, a few minutes later was given my new plastic license card -- and that was that! All done with no fuss for the next 10 years.

Whew!

I'm so glad I didn't have to do the whole thing again from the start. I would have been made to go for my car license then my motorbike license all over again. The expense of that would have been enormous.

So now I'm really happy. I'm going to crank up the old bike and take her out on the road.

See ya soon...!!

Strange Dream

Last night I dreamed I was in a shop or restaurant type building. I was making a steak sandwich for my husband, Geoff.

Outside, I saw a man wander up to the window. He was an older man, perhaps in his 60s with blonde hair. Even though I didn’t recognise the man, I knew him as my father. He was wearing a very heavy overcoat over a light coloured shirt and beige trousers.

As I watched, he collapsed onto the pavement. A woman who was passing by ran to his aid.

I raced out of the shop leaving the steak on the grill. The door shut behind me.

Outside, I knelt beside the man whom I knew as my father. I knew him as an alcoholic. His face was lined and old before its time. His clothes were old and dirty. It seemed to me that he’d been gone for a long time.

He was dying, and as I held him he tried to tell me he was sorry and that he loved me, but the words wouldn’t come out. I told him I loved him.

His face changed. It lightened. He looked years younger and the lines disappeared. A wonderful, glowing expression of peace came over him and he died smiling.

I turned to one of the male shop assistants. Again this was not someone I knew. He had followed me out of the shop. I said: “Did you see that? Did you see his face? It changed. Did you see it?” I was very excited and full of the wonder of it all. I’m not sure that the assistant had seen what I’d seen.

I seemed to need someone other than myself to have seen the wonderful transformation in the dying man.

We both looked into the shop and saw that the steak was smoking. I tried to get back inside but the door was locked. I turned to the assistant and said: “I can’t get in. The steak is burning.”

He turned the knob and opened the door. It wasn’t locked. I remember thinking that it was strange that I thought the door was locked. I took the steak off the grill and turned it off. The steak was well done but not burnt. I said to the assistant: “Geoff will have that. He likes it well done.”

Then we both went outside to where a crowd was gathering for the man’s funeral.

The shop turned into a small funeral parlour. It was narrow and dark. There were a lot of people sitting close together on the crowded pews. There was a beautiful coffin on a stand at the alter waiting for the man to be placed in it.

Outside there were many grieving relatives. Most of them were elderly people. I didn’t recognise any of their faces. I tried to tell them not to be so sad, that he died in peace with a smile.

When I looked across at the dead man, relatives were trying to put him into an antique wicker baby’s pram or dolls pram. This disturbed me a little as I thought it was a bit disrespectful, but I said nothing. The dead man was still smiling and his face was peaceful, but the wonderful radiance had gone.

I went back inside and was talking to the relatives. I was very sad for the loss of this man. I comforted one older woman and told her that I was leaving now. I told her that I was with him when he died and I’d said my goodbyes already. I didn’t need to stay for the funeral.

They all looked around and smiled and nodded. They were happy for me to leave.

I left.

That was the end of the dream. Very weird. Very disturbing. This dream is significant in some way, but I can’t quite grasp the meaning of it. I know that dreaming of funerals of people you don’t recognise sometimes means the loss of a relative that you’re not particularly close to, and could mean good luck or an unexpected inheritance. Seeing a coffin in a dream sometimes means good luck as well. I’m not sure if seeing the baby’s pram in the dream means anything at all. It was strange and out of tune with the rest of the dream. It felt wrong to me in the dream but I said nothing. I didn’t appear to have the right to say anything. I seemed to be a part of this dream family, and yet not a part of it. They all knew me and cared about me, but there was a feeling of time, distance… something.

There was such a feeling of sorrow and loss about this dream. It concerns me a bit. The connection and disconnection to the grieving relatives could mean my natural family who I don’t really know all that well. It could also mean my adopted family of which I’m a part and yet not a part of.

My guess is that some relative of mine will die soon. It seems to be an older person. I’m not sure which family this will be from. It could be either.

I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

Licence Woes

Yesterday [Friday] I received my driver licence renewal notice. Unfortunately, to my horror, I discovered that it is a month too late. My licence expired a month ago.

As I renew my licence every 10 years, I need a little reminder when it gets near the time for renewal. Usually, VicRoads sends out a notice about a month before your licence is due, to let you know.

How come I didn’t get one? How come my “due notice” is a month late?

Now I have to wait until Monday to see if I can just renew it, or whether I have to go right through the whole process again.

This is such a nuisance and I’m so angry.

Had I been pulled over by the police for a spot licence check, I could have ended up in court and with a hefty fine for driving unlicenced. Grrrrrrrr!

Did they send a notice and good old Australia Post lost it? Or did VicRoads stuff up?

Unfortunately for me I now have to spend the entire weekend worrying about it.

Thanks ever so much!

Tradesmen!

Enough is enough!

I'm actually a tradesman myself. Yes tradesMAN, not WOMAN or PERSON. I completed my apprenticeship with the printing industry before political correctness took hold. So... I'm a tradesman and proud of it.

But I certainly never treated customers the way the young electrician treated me yesterday. It was considered, way back in the old days, that common courtesy was the rule not the exception.

The electricians came to wire up our new [second hand] airconditioner.

The electrician in charge, a nice looking, rather tall young man, bitched, moaned, complained and derided absolutely everything about our "old" airconditioner, our "old" house, the "old" wiring [which was completely rewired when we first moved in here 6 years ago], and anything and everything he could think of.

He was very derisive and condescending when talking to me - I should say: at me. There was no respect or consideration at all in his manner. Even less did I appreciate the snide comments he was making to his young apprentice [a very nice young man] when he thought I was out of earshot.

I went out of my way to provide everything they needed, including a big umbrella when he was working on the roof. No, I'm not joking. We went through every umbrella in the place until we found one he deigned to work under.

After they'd finished, he sneeringly informed me that the airconditioner probably would only work for a couple of weeks anyway because it was so old.

Now, I am very blonde [naturally], and yes, I am a woman... BUT...!!!!!

The entire afternoon was horrendous! And after all that, Geoff had to spend two hours on the roof, after he got home from work, fixing the airconditioner so it wouldn't short out and burn the house down.

They hadn't connected the water properly. It was spraying down over the electric components of the motor. In fact, they hadn't turned the water on at all. When Geoff turned it on, the "on/off" lever was in such a position as to almost cut through the electric wiring.

What is the matter with these people? They are being paid good money to do these jobs. It shouldn't matter whether they have to wire up a brand new appliance or an old one. It shouldn't matter whether the house is old or new and it certainly shouldn't matter what sex the customer is.

If I'd been an elderly woman living alone and had nobody to check their work, I could have found my house burnt down around me the next day.

Oh yeah, you bet I'll have a word or two to their boss!

But the point is... I shouldn't have to!

Already Gone

I wake to late afternoon sun; there should be moonlight.
Outside, the air is still and warm but the leaves have turned gold.
As in a dream I walk around - looking at things, touching things,
and gradually, I come to know that I’m not really here.
The house feels empty and silent.

The things that I love and use, are all here.
The chairs, the table, the lamps, the incomplete tapestry in the corner.
All stand as though waiting for me to pick them up.
Everything looks exactly the same, but everything feels different.
There is a smell of age, of dust, of sadness.

Slowly I wander, remembering the springs and summers of my time.
Somebody still lives here; I feel the emptiness in him as well.
And yet there is peace here. It emanates from everywhere and makes me smile.
I wonder if he smiles any more.
Does he remember what it was like when I was here?

All is as if I am still here.
But I am already gone.

Brittany Kingston
© Monday, January 30, 2006

Write, Write, Write

That's all there is to it really. If you're a writer, you write... and write... and write.

You slave away over a hot keyboard, cutting, pasting, rewording, checking spelling and grammar... Practicing and perfecting your art in the hope that one day you'll become a recognised, well-loved author. Computers are wonderful creatures, aren't they? We work with whole blocks of text now, instead of just one line. Whole pages appear, disappear [sometimes without our permission], and reappear in other parts of our novels in the blink of an eye -- or the click of a finger.

I remember my old typewriter days. I wrote a complete novel on one. Tedious. Laborious. Frustrating. Those are just a few words that come to mind. However, those were the days I was thanking my lucky stars that I had a typewriter. It was state-of-the-art. It was electric. It had a correction tape. Yippeee! I could correct my errors as I went. I thought those days were heaven.

The alternative was pen and paper. Ugh! Just the thought of putting pen to paper in the mechanical, muscle cramping, medieval ways of old gives me the shivers. We've come a long way.

Now, writers talk about disks, cds, dvds, memory sticks. We email our work all over the world and keep in touch with people we never see in person.

But the one thing that has never changed is that writers write. They don't just put words on paper. They create worlds, people, feelings, emotions. And they are driven to keep writing against all adversity.

Can a writer stop writing? No. It's always there. Even if it's lurking beneath the surface, it's still there -- that urge to create, that urge to get the words onto the page.

By that definition, I am a writer. So are a lot of my friends. None of us are household names yet, but we're hanging in there, writing, writing, writing...

8.08 p.m.

No writing done today. The storms were too bad. I ran around all day cleaning the house, vacuuming up after the tradesmen had finished putting the air conditioner on the roof and installing the ducting. Great! A wasted day.

At least it cooled down a little.

Can someone pleeeeeeeeeze explain to me how a fridge – something we only put clean food in – can get so grotty and disgusting!!! I cleaned out the bottom of my fridge today. Yuk. It was revolting. It was full of water and slimy stuff. How on earth does it get that way? It’s nice and clean now, but I bet it won’t stay that way for long. [sigh]

Another One?

I had an idea for a short story. No, not another short story that turns into a novel like “Mark of the Condemned”. A real short story. I should keep plugging away at the other three novels I’m working on.

Susan and I have decided to drop “The Half Burnt Bridge”. It’s very 1970s and 1980s. A bit dated. Parts of it are really well written, and other parts need a complete overhaul. We’ve decided to shelve it for now. The stuff we’re writing now is much better. Perhaps we’ll find a market for it some time and that will give us a reason to rewrite it. It’s not a bad story. It just isn’t quite there yet. So... into the archives goes “The Half Burnt Bridge” and our beloved characters Jason and Brant.

I haven’t had much luck getting my short stories published yet. I had a “near miss” with one magazine and my “Sword of Anubis” vampire story. They even wrote a comment for me which I thanked them for. They said they seriously considered publishing the story but the point of view swapped too many times for them. They said the rest of the story was very strong and they liked it. I’m going to have a good read to see what I can do about that. A bit of rewriting can fix those POV problems. I like to write in third person omniscient which a lot of magazine publishers don’t like. They prefer third person subjective. But I like to get inside all the characters’ heads. Back to the drawing board for “Sword of Anubis”. If I’ve been sloppy with my POV, I can easily fix that. If not, then it’s ready for a new market. Wish me luck.

OK. It’s back to Ranger and Jaxxlar the Shadow Runners now.

Writing Day At Last

Yay! Geoff is back at work today. I can now spend all day writing, if I want to.

I just finished talking to Maureen [friend at Ararat] on the phone. Only a two-hour phone call this time. Quite short really. I was catching up on the fire situation. Very scary over Halls Gap way. This hot, windy weather doesn’t help either.

Today is supposed to be another 37 degree day. It looks really stormy. I wonder if we’ll get any rain. Probably not.

The workmen are still up on the roof, in the roof, all over the roof... installing our air conditioner. At long last we’ll have cooling for this house. I don’t mind the heat – as you know – but last night wasn’t pleasant. It was 32 inside the house and it didn’t cool off. It will be nice to just turn on the cooling and get a good night’s sleep. I usually don’t have any trouble sleeping in the heat, but last night there wasn’t even a breath of air moving anywhere. The fan was only moving hot air about. Hmmmmm. Must be getting soft in my old age.