Gillian Polack's Blog, page 130
January 10, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-01-11T13:22:00
Nothing to report today, except that I'm terribly sleepy all the time. This is the bushfire smoke and the antihistamines combining. I'm working, but it takes forever to start and I keep taking breaks and dozing.
One good thing about perpetual somnolence, is that I finished The Pillars of the Earth. It wasn't as bad as I had feared, but there were quite a few avoidable stupidities. The thing that got to me most, though, was that most places didn't look right*. Saint-Denis did, and there was more than a hint of Salisbury in the finished cathedral** (a cathedral administering a priory - the smallest diocese outside Rome!), but the village and the fair had the wrong proportions. Maybe it was just me.
I still don't see why the politics were rewritten and ages of characters changed. It made no sense to have Matilda declare herself an Empress rather than admit she was once married to an Emperor, for instance. And Stephen became a one-parent family, as did Matilda. And why murder one of the competing heirs when his actual death made such a nice poetic balance to Henry I's death? I kept thinking, actually, that the changes were due to too much "I, Claudius" informing someone's notion of "This is history."
*This led to a couple of consequential stupidities. The market had no water and no-one to keep the order, so it was far more prey to incoming men-with-swords-and-fire than it should have been. They still would have caused mayhem, but it would be differently shaped mayhem.
**I'm talking subjective sense of proportions for all these places, not precise correctness.
One good thing about perpetual somnolence, is that I finished The Pillars of the Earth. It wasn't as bad as I had feared, but there were quite a few avoidable stupidities. The thing that got to me most, though, was that most places didn't look right*. Saint-Denis did, and there was more than a hint of Salisbury in the finished cathedral** (a cathedral administering a priory - the smallest diocese outside Rome!), but the village and the fair had the wrong proportions. Maybe it was just me.
I still don't see why the politics were rewritten and ages of characters changed. It made no sense to have Matilda declare herself an Empress rather than admit she was once married to an Emperor, for instance. And Stephen became a one-parent family, as did Matilda. And why murder one of the competing heirs when his actual death made such a nice poetic balance to Henry I's death? I kept thinking, actually, that the changes were due to too much "I, Claudius" informing someone's notion of "This is history."
*This led to a couple of consequential stupidities. The market had no water and no-one to keep the order, so it was far more prey to incoming men-with-swords-and-fire than it should have been. They still would have caused mayhem, but it would be differently shaped mayhem.
**I'm talking subjective sense of proportions for all these places, not precise correctness.
January 9, 2013
Updates
I've had some interesting thoughts on my work. As a very small part of the essay I'm writing, I proved that it's better to time travel to the Middle Ages than to live in a world designed for heroic fantasy. It's all to do with effective legal and administrative systems. Not all the Middle ages are better for minor players than heroic fantasy worlds, but a very large proportion of the English Middle ages most certainly is. One day I should do a paper entirely on this. "Why time travel is better than dropping in on your favourite heroic world." You know, it would also make a great panel at a con.
Where are we at with the bushfires? The cool night has helped. In the whole of the ACT and NSW, there are no current emergencies (I'm looking at the incident page for my information) and no major alerts (ie for people who might have to be evacuated should the situation worsen). There are still significantly over 100 (may still be 150 - I'm too lazy to count) fires and smoke is still everywhere. The weekend won't be good, but today's giving the fire people a chance to diminish danger rather than battling to prevent disaster.
On things closer to home (literally), I'm still confined indoors except for the messages Naomi is helping me with (got postponed to today) and I still have bushfire aches. One thing, however, has improved today - I've hopefully the medicine to help my body deal with bushfires and so I got my first full night's sleep since the heatwave began and I'm breathing better. The asthma that nearly sent me running for an ambulance the other night seems to be behaving (it makes such a difference to know the cause of it). As a result, when I eventually woke up, I wrote without any of the torpor that's been plaguing me. Breathing and sleeping make a big difference to one's daily capacity.
I'm still behind on things, but if this keeps up I'll meet my deadlines and then catch up. I have until the middle of next week to have finished all the things I'm in the middle of now. If I'm lucky, I get to see friends next weekend. And now I need to get back to poking Medieval-shaped holes in heroic fantasy.
Where are we at with the bushfires? The cool night has helped. In the whole of the ACT and NSW, there are no current emergencies (I'm looking at the incident page for my information) and no major alerts (ie for people who might have to be evacuated should the situation worsen). There are still significantly over 100 (may still be 150 - I'm too lazy to count) fires and smoke is still everywhere. The weekend won't be good, but today's giving the fire people a chance to diminish danger rather than battling to prevent disaster.
On things closer to home (literally), I'm still confined indoors except for the messages Naomi is helping me with (got postponed to today) and I still have bushfire aches. One thing, however, has improved today - I've hopefully the medicine to help my body deal with bushfires and so I got my first full night's sleep since the heatwave began and I'm breathing better. The asthma that nearly sent me running for an ambulance the other night seems to be behaving (it makes such a difference to know the cause of it). As a result, when I eventually woke up, I wrote without any of the torpor that's been plaguing me. Breathing and sleeping make a big difference to one's daily capacity.
I'm still behind on things, but if this keeps up I'll meet my deadlines and then catch up. I have until the middle of next week to have finished all the things I'm in the middle of now. If I'm lucky, I get to see friends next weekend. And now I need to get back to poking Medieval-shaped holes in heroic fantasy.
January 8, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-01-09T16:22:00
I shall use as an excuse the fact that I'm not used to DW. There is a post about Pillars of the Earth that is not on DW. Here is the link: http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/1129073.html And now this will appear on both LJ and DW and I shall look foolish, which is about right for today.
gillpolack @ 2013-01-09T15:30:00
I tried to take an hour off and watch the first episode of The Pillars of the Earth, truly I did. People have been asking me about it and telling me about the research that went into it and I'm determined to see it. Except... within five minutes the show had made enough egregious errors to make me turn it off. Maybe I'll try again later, when I get used to the thought that Matilda has been stripped of her first marriage and deprived of several years of age (she was an adult when the White Ship went down - young, but an adult) and that Henry didn't extract an oath to back her from those who had the power to support a ruler, but left the throne in doubt.
I shall adjust my mindset to it being a Medieval fantasy (with kings who sit on thrones all the time and wear crowns to hear news) and then I shall do doubt be fine. As long as there are no feast scenes that use the Great Errol Flynn model, I shall be fine. Maybe.
It probably gets better. It has to get better. The series has fine actors and lavish costumes, so if only I can forget names and date and lifestyles and other irrelevancies, it'll be perfectly fine. Maybe.
I shall adjust my mindset to it being a Medieval fantasy (with kings who sit on thrones all the time and wear crowns to hear news) and then I shall do doubt be fine. As long as there are no feast scenes that use the Great Errol Flynn model, I shall be fine. Maybe.
It probably gets better. It has to get better. The series has fine actors and lavish costumes, so if only I can forget names and date and lifestyles and other irrelevancies, it'll be perfectly fine. Maybe.
Mrs Charity
I've finally done what I said I would do. Just now, when a charity person rang me (and interrupted my work, about which I am annoyed, for I was in the middle of a train of thought) and asked for Mrs Polack, I remained calm and friendly and explained politely that I would never give to any cold-calling charity that didn't use a more accurate title.
The young man at the far end stopped and thought and we discussed titles. He couldn't have known that the correct title for me is Dr, we decided, but he could have used Ms, and this is what we agreed was a good idea. He has noticed more and more women irate about titles and when I suggested that maybe it was a good idea to feed it into the system that some of us had this policy of simply not giving to any charity that, when ringing to beg, asked for us by marital status, he thought a bit and decided to do so. Apparently other calls have not been comfortable...
All in all, it was very amicable and it will be my new approach whenever I can manage it. Other ways of dealing with charity calls are funnier, or angrier, or sillier, but this one marries my annoyance with my principles: anyone who wants my money has to treat me like the person I am, not the niche in society they expect females at home to fill.
And now, what I was in the middle of, was a careful dissection of the literary qualities of Pine-O-Clean. I'd better retrieve my train of thought.
The young man at the far end stopped and thought and we discussed titles. He couldn't have known that the correct title for me is Dr, we decided, but he could have used Ms, and this is what we agreed was a good idea. He has noticed more and more women irate about titles and when I suggested that maybe it was a good idea to feed it into the system that some of us had this policy of simply not giving to any charity that, when ringing to beg, asked for us by marital status, he thought a bit and decided to do so. Apparently other calls have not been comfortable...
All in all, it was very amicable and it will be my new approach whenever I can manage it. Other ways of dealing with charity calls are funnier, or angrier, or sillier, but this one marries my annoyance with my principles: anyone who wants my money has to treat me like the person I am, not the niche in society they expect females at home to fill.
And now, what I was in the middle of, was a careful dissection of the literary qualities of Pine-O-Clean. I'd better retrieve my train of thought.
Fire and farewells
Today was a trifle surreal. Some of my friends evacuated today, but all of them are safe, as are the ones who didn't evacuate. The Bureau of Meteorology added new colours to the charts, to better show the strangeness of the current climate. Closer to home, two weather changes meant (still mean) that my day has been laced with migraines and our region is going up in smoke. More smoke than fire right at this moment, which is good.
I can't go outside unless I must, for I react to the smoke (and dust! I don't know why we have dust this time round - mind you, I also don't know why the cemetery had to be closed due to the fire). In fact, I declared I wasn't going out at all, for weeks, but I need to get to the chemist tomorrow, and to the library, so I have to dare the rather stupid. Not sensible, but hopefully the smoke will have cleared enough so that I shall deal. And complain. I'm becoming very good at complaining.
Thank to Naomi, I have all the food I need for several weeks, save milk, and she says she'll drop by with that tomorrow, so being confined isn't such a problem (except I've been stupid about the library and the chemist) so things are pretty good. Hot and sore and uncomfortable and occasionally surreal, but good.
Work is slow, so I've had to rearrange some deadlines (they were malleable ones, thankfully) but I'm getting through things.
One big piece of news. BiblioBuffet has had to close. There is one last edition, containing an article by me (among other things) and an explanation of what happened. I can't call it up right now, possibly because it's being moved to a permanent archive. That's the good news, all of the BiblioBuffet columns will be available, even though there will be no new editions. When I can access it, I'll give you direct links.
I shall really miss BiblioBuffet. It as the best writing job ever, in so many important ways. I'll have a farewell blogpost in a little, for I can't let three years of my life and writing go without a proper goodbye.
Watch this space...
ETA: I don't have to walk in the smoke! Naomi (who was going to drop in) is going to pick me up etc. We both have messages to run and they'll take about the same time, and then we'll have coffee and she'll drop me home. Friends just make the biggest difference sometimes.
I can't go outside unless I must, for I react to the smoke (and dust! I don't know why we have dust this time round - mind you, I also don't know why the cemetery had to be closed due to the fire). In fact, I declared I wasn't going out at all, for weeks, but I need to get to the chemist tomorrow, and to the library, so I have to dare the rather stupid. Not sensible, but hopefully the smoke will have cleared enough so that I shall deal. And complain. I'm becoming very good at complaining.
Thank to Naomi, I have all the food I need for several weeks, save milk, and she says she'll drop by with that tomorrow, so being confined isn't such a problem (except I've been stupid about the library and the chemist) so things are pretty good. Hot and sore and uncomfortable and occasionally surreal, but good.
Work is slow, so I've had to rearrange some deadlines (they were malleable ones, thankfully) but I'm getting through things.
One big piece of news. BiblioBuffet has had to close. There is one last edition, containing an article by me (among other things) and an explanation of what happened. I can't call it up right now, possibly because it's being moved to a permanent archive. That's the good news, all of the BiblioBuffet columns will be available, even though there will be no new editions. When I can access it, I'll give you direct links.
I shall really miss BiblioBuffet. It as the best writing job ever, in so many important ways. I'll have a farewell blogpost in a little, for I can't let three years of my life and writing go without a proper goodbye.
Watch this space...
ETA: I don't have to walk in the smoke! Naomi (who was going to drop in) is going to pick me up etc. We both have messages to run and they'll take about the same time, and then we'll have coffee and she'll drop me home. Friends just make the biggest difference sometimes.
January 7, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-01-08T12:30:00
I'm a bit behind where I ought to be, workwise. I've been doing not-quite-enough ever since this weather hit. Last night, if anyone had been round, they would have seen the reason why: I was migraine-central. Now I'm a bit tired. "A bit" means "Go away NOW, I want to sleep."
The phone keeps ringing and making sure I don't sleep for too long and people keep telling me (oddly) how nice the weather is in Brisbane. The weather isn't at all lovely here, but I've already said that. We have an exact replica of the extremely vile conditions that set-up the fires that burned down 500 homes. Heat, winds, a countryside tinder-dry. The only difference (and it could be an important one) is taht we've had a dry Spring - there may not be quite as much to burn as there was a decade ago.
So far, the fire experts have kept everything under control, but there are fires breaking out all over. We need rain.
The phone keeps ringing and making sure I don't sleep for too long and people keep telling me (oddly) how nice the weather is in Brisbane. The weather isn't at all lovely here, but I've already said that. We have an exact replica of the extremely vile conditions that set-up the fires that burned down 500 homes. Heat, winds, a countryside tinder-dry. The only difference (and it could be an important one) is taht we've had a dry Spring - there may not be quite as much to burn as there was a decade ago.
So far, the fire experts have kept everything under control, but there are fires breaking out all over. We need rain.
gillpolack @ 2013-01-07T21:06:00
The Grump turns out to be my weather sense. So does the big Bushfire rant. The various government authorities have caught up with me. This time I rang Mum when the high state of alert was declared. Ten years ago, I rang her once power had been restored, after the worst was over, telling her "Don't worry."
"About what?" she asked.
"The fires. Me. I have power back and everything."
"I saw them on the news," she said. "They're a long way away. How did you lose power?"
"They're only a long way away if you redefine Mt Taylor as a long way away."
"Remind me which one Mt Taylor is?"
"The one at whose base I reside."
It turned out the news Mum watched had misreported that only the outskirts of Canberra were on fire. It saved Mum a great deal of worry, at least. She knew I was safe when it was too late to worry.
I was thinking about taking time out to see The Hobbit tomorrow, just to get away from the heat. This is now not going to happen. Nor are the parcels I have for people going to be sent quite yet. Anything that takes me outside isn't going to happen. My asthma is my body reminding me it's sensitive to bushfire. I shall stay indoors. I can feel it even here as I gently swell up like a balloon, but I have plenty of medication (now that I know what to medicate for), and if things get too bad, there is the hospital.
When this interesting moment in time is past, if anyone local would like to go to The Hobbit with me, I'd be very pleased to have the company. Also I'd be pleased to have a lift: I may be indoors for a few weeks.
Thank goodness for Naomi - I get a shopping trip (in car!) tomorrow afternoon. Stocking up on all sorts of things will make a difference.
"About what?" she asked.
"The fires. Me. I have power back and everything."
"I saw them on the news," she said. "They're a long way away. How did you lose power?"
"They're only a long way away if you redefine Mt Taylor as a long way away."
"Remind me which one Mt Taylor is?"
"The one at whose base I reside."
It turned out the news Mum watched had misreported that only the outskirts of Canberra were on fire. It saved Mum a great deal of worry, at least. She knew I was safe when it was too late to worry.
I was thinking about taking time out to see The Hobbit tomorrow, just to get away from the heat. This is now not going to happen. Nor are the parcels I have for people going to be sent quite yet. Anything that takes me outside isn't going to happen. My asthma is my body reminding me it's sensitive to bushfire. I shall stay indoors. I can feel it even here as I gently swell up like a balloon, but I have plenty of medication (now that I know what to medicate for), and if things get too bad, there is the hospital.
When this interesting moment in time is past, if anyone local would like to go to The Hobbit with me, I'd be very pleased to have the company. Also I'd be pleased to have a lift: I may be indoors for a few weeks.
Thank goodness for Naomi - I get a shopping trip (in car!) tomorrow afternoon. Stocking up on all sorts of things will make a difference.
January 6, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-01-07T13:16:00
Today is the day of the Grump. It's when the summer warmth collides with PMT collide with asthma collide with general aches. My solution was to go through my wine cabinet and find out what needs finishing. I have five bottles of very fine red that need finishing. Except I don't want to drink. What this means is that the next five friends to invite me to dinner get to share rather gorgeous reds, for one glass I can manage - a whole bottle is out of the question.
I'm not really a drinker of red wines, even the rather good ones I discovered lurking in my cabinet. This would be why they were lurking. Too good to waste, but still liable to give me headaches if I drink more than a glass. One of the bottles is a Henschke. I want to drink it. I need friends to drink it with. Anyone want a dinner party when the heat wave subsides?
I still have far too much fortified wine, despite several bottles of it being stolen last year. Rutherglen fortifieds have so many memories and so I buy it whenever I'm in the region. It's out of fashion in Canberra, so my friends tend to refuse a glass when I offer it. And I'm not a big drinker. This means it takes a long, long time to finish one bottle, much less the dozen I have lurking. Every kind of fortified, going back over twenty years.
Occasionally I give the very special fortifieds as very special presents. Mostly they sit and mellow.
My oldest bottle is a half-bottle from 1946 (I think it's 1946 - it's definitely the 1940s) and I have (for I counted them) four half-bottles older than I am. They're not part of the twelve. I've been deciding what to do with them for 15 years now. Occasionally, friends get to sample the 1948 white muscat and ooh and ah over its complexity and the sheer concentration of flavour. These wines are meant to add qualities to newer wine, not to be drunk by themselves, however. One sip is really all anyone can drink without being overwhelmed.
I asked my wine-expert sister what they were used for and she said they were from the old stock, used with newer wine of the same type to create something special. For seven years I tried to get together a group of friends to use one of those bottles to create something, but when we calculated the number of bottles of wine we'd end up with, we decided against it. I'm not up to getting a barrel of wine and mixing my own, though, so the half-bottles linger, their fate still undecided.
And now I must stop being undecided, make myself some iced tea, and write 2000 words. Unless I actually drink that wine, I've run out of excuses.
I'm not really a drinker of red wines, even the rather good ones I discovered lurking in my cabinet. This would be why they were lurking. Too good to waste, but still liable to give me headaches if I drink more than a glass. One of the bottles is a Henschke. I want to drink it. I need friends to drink it with. Anyone want a dinner party when the heat wave subsides?
I still have far too much fortified wine, despite several bottles of it being stolen last year. Rutherglen fortifieds have so many memories and so I buy it whenever I'm in the region. It's out of fashion in Canberra, so my friends tend to refuse a glass when I offer it. And I'm not a big drinker. This means it takes a long, long time to finish one bottle, much less the dozen I have lurking. Every kind of fortified, going back over twenty years.
Occasionally I give the very special fortifieds as very special presents. Mostly they sit and mellow.
My oldest bottle is a half-bottle from 1946 (I think it's 1946 - it's definitely the 1940s) and I have (for I counted them) four half-bottles older than I am. They're not part of the twelve. I've been deciding what to do with them for 15 years now. Occasionally, friends get to sample the 1948 white muscat and ooh and ah over its complexity and the sheer concentration of flavour. These wines are meant to add qualities to newer wine, not to be drunk by themselves, however. One sip is really all anyone can drink without being overwhelmed.
I asked my wine-expert sister what they were used for and she said they were from the old stock, used with newer wine of the same type to create something special. For seven years I tried to get together a group of friends to use one of those bottles to create something, but when we calculated the number of bottles of wine we'd end up with, we decided against it. I'm not up to getting a barrel of wine and mixing my own, though, so the half-bottles linger, their fate still undecided.
And now I must stop being undecided, make myself some iced tea, and write 2000 words. Unless I actually drink that wine, I've run out of excuses.
Fire time, memory time
The heat has now baked into the ground and even the cool breeze is warm by the time it reaches me. This is bushfire weather, and the news reminds me of that every other minute. I'm avoiding the news, not just because the Tassie situation is so worrying, but because it's almost ten years since I was enclosed in this flat, without power, not knowing what would happen.
The worst happened and Canberra burned, but the wind changed direction and my bit of Canberra got through almost unscathed. On the other side of that wind, however, a friend lost everything, several other friends lost almost everything, a church a friend had built burned down just metres away from a plastic playground that wasn't even warped. I have pictures of some of this and they make me weep, every time. I didn't take pictures of the kangaroos by the side of the road, blackened and hurt, but still alive, looking for water and safety.
The only bird near me to get through fire was the evil magpie who swooped us every Spring. Right now I can hear mostly cicadas, but we have a bell bird, and mudlarks and galahs, and various rosellas and I swear I saw a silver-eye the other day. There's a big black raven that caws like a baby crying and reminds us who's boss. There's a huge flock of sulphur-cresteds two blocks down. What there aren't are many European birds: they never repopulated after the fire. Pigeons are finally coming back (lots of crested pigeons, for some reason) but I haven't seen a sparrow here for ten years.
He finally died of old age, that magpie, but he was the toughest bird I've ever met. He survived conditions that killed every other bird in twenty miles. Every time he dive-bombed me after the fire I didn't know whether to celebrate his survival or to wish that fairy tales were true and that the wicked got their comeuppance: he wasn't a nice magpie. He was determined to get me in particular because I was friends with the neighbour who had fed him, and I refused to take on that role.
His replacement looked me up and down on Thursday and kindly hopped aside to let me pass. The new magpie never knew Bev and so doesn't bear me a grudge. I hope he's as much of a survivor as his predecessor. He deserves to be, for his courtesy and because he doesn't sing strongly at unholy hours. The tough bird was a beautiful songster and knew it. The only sound for months after the fires was his spectacular performance. It was unsettling. As if all humans had been destroyed except for a single soprano, determined to fill the emptiness of the world.
Even I didn't escape entirely unscathed. The big evils didn't happen to me, but I developed a nasty series of illnesses because of my allergies.
I'm coming out the far end of my down payment for still being alive and having all my possessions, and it's bushfire season again. It's also Les's yahrzeit. I took my sick self (doubly sick, for I was at the second worst stage of the whole shebang by that time and also had a raging fever) on a day exactly like today, and had to work out how to get from the airport to the hospital where Les was in a coma. Public transport and much asking for directions worked, and my brother was there to take me inside.
I said my goodbyes and we stood vigil. I missed Les's actual death, because Mum sent me home to rest (which shows how ill I was) but I stayed for his funeral and for mourning (until Mum sent me back to Canberra, for people insisted on bringing fish into the house as part of traditional mourning and Mum didn't want to remind them of my allergies and she didn't want to lose me to them, so she packed me up and sent me home - that was a hard week for all of us).
Before I even got out the door, Victoria was on fire. Les's emergency care bed was occupied by a series of burn victims. The young counsellor who had been so good to us worked long, long hours while his home was entirely burnt out. He delivered his own child as he and his wife were fleeing the fires. I don't know what happened next, for my life became more difficult than I tend to admit. It wasn't until a year later, when I got back from Melbourne again, after the consecration of my stepfather's grave, that my body decided it had been through enough and I went to hospital and and the real healing finally began. The treatment to my eye this year is a part of that, hopefully the end of a long cycle.
When I write it out, and see the candle flickering in memory of Les, it makes me realise what an epic journey it's been. It also makes me realise why I hate the news right now and worry about everyone in bushfire territory. Bushfire are always with those of us who live in this part of the world.
The worst happened and Canberra burned, but the wind changed direction and my bit of Canberra got through almost unscathed. On the other side of that wind, however, a friend lost everything, several other friends lost almost everything, a church a friend had built burned down just metres away from a plastic playground that wasn't even warped. I have pictures of some of this and they make me weep, every time. I didn't take pictures of the kangaroos by the side of the road, blackened and hurt, but still alive, looking for water and safety.
The only bird near me to get through fire was the evil magpie who swooped us every Spring. Right now I can hear mostly cicadas, but we have a bell bird, and mudlarks and galahs, and various rosellas and I swear I saw a silver-eye the other day. There's a big black raven that caws like a baby crying and reminds us who's boss. There's a huge flock of sulphur-cresteds two blocks down. What there aren't are many European birds: they never repopulated after the fire. Pigeons are finally coming back (lots of crested pigeons, for some reason) but I haven't seen a sparrow here for ten years.
He finally died of old age, that magpie, but he was the toughest bird I've ever met. He survived conditions that killed every other bird in twenty miles. Every time he dive-bombed me after the fire I didn't know whether to celebrate his survival or to wish that fairy tales were true and that the wicked got their comeuppance: he wasn't a nice magpie. He was determined to get me in particular because I was friends with the neighbour who had fed him, and I refused to take on that role.
His replacement looked me up and down on Thursday and kindly hopped aside to let me pass. The new magpie never knew Bev and so doesn't bear me a grudge. I hope he's as much of a survivor as his predecessor. He deserves to be, for his courtesy and because he doesn't sing strongly at unholy hours. The tough bird was a beautiful songster and knew it. The only sound for months after the fires was his spectacular performance. It was unsettling. As if all humans had been destroyed except for a single soprano, determined to fill the emptiness of the world.
Even I didn't escape entirely unscathed. The big evils didn't happen to me, but I developed a nasty series of illnesses because of my allergies.
I'm coming out the far end of my down payment for still being alive and having all my possessions, and it's bushfire season again. It's also Les's yahrzeit. I took my sick self (doubly sick, for I was at the second worst stage of the whole shebang by that time and also had a raging fever) on a day exactly like today, and had to work out how to get from the airport to the hospital where Les was in a coma. Public transport and much asking for directions worked, and my brother was there to take me inside.
I said my goodbyes and we stood vigil. I missed Les's actual death, because Mum sent me home to rest (which shows how ill I was) but I stayed for his funeral and for mourning (until Mum sent me back to Canberra, for people insisted on bringing fish into the house as part of traditional mourning and Mum didn't want to remind them of my allergies and she didn't want to lose me to them, so she packed me up and sent me home - that was a hard week for all of us).
Before I even got out the door, Victoria was on fire. Les's emergency care bed was occupied by a series of burn victims. The young counsellor who had been so good to us worked long, long hours while his home was entirely burnt out. He delivered his own child as he and his wife were fleeing the fires. I don't know what happened next, for my life became more difficult than I tend to admit. It wasn't until a year later, when I got back from Melbourne again, after the consecration of my stepfather's grave, that my body decided it had been through enough and I went to hospital and and the real healing finally began. The treatment to my eye this year is a part of that, hopefully the end of a long cycle.
When I write it out, and see the candle flickering in memory of Les, it makes me realise what an epic journey it's been. It also makes me realise why I hate the news right now and worry about everyone in bushfire territory. Bushfire are always with those of us who live in this part of the world.
