This word, where I live, had taken on a new meaning. We have telephone scammers who ask your name when you answer the phone, and when you say yes, they hang up.
It doesn’t take much imagination how they can use that recording.
So, I now answer the phone with maybe, which confuses the real callers who want to know if it is you.
Of course, maybe is one of those words that have so many meaning, but the best one is to use it while you have time to think of a proper answer.
For example, did you get the potatoes? You haven’t been out, it slipped your mind, or you just plain forgot, but run with a ‘maybe’ so you can judge the reaction.
Angry face, you know no matter what, you’re in trouble.
Genial face, you know that it didn’t really matter and all is forgiven.
Then there’s the person who doesn’t know you and comes up to you in a crowded room. Are you [put name here]?
Maybe. We want to know if we’re in trouble, or if it for something good.
Using ‘maybe’ in writing probably isn’t the best word to us, but I like defying the experts. You can always find a maybe or two in any of my books.
I remeber once being told that if you shoot for the moon, you’ll land in the clouds, if you shoot for the tree tops, you’ll finish up back where you started from.
It was a silly analogy, but I always remembered it when I looked up at the sky and saw clouds.
That was back in those hazy carefree days just after you were finished with school and you had your whole life in front of you. Your parents were there as the safety net, and were still proud of your scholastic achievements, and were not in too much of a hurry to hustle you out of the house.
But what happened when there’s a recession that came upon everyone without any warning.
Stocks plummeted, people lost their life’s savings, those with mortgages and loans suddenly finding that along with unemployment came no income, no ability to pay the bills, and therefore lost everything.
Although I never said it, I was thinking what good was an education when the whole world had gone to hell in a handbasket.
Two things I remember from back then, which in the context of disaster, wasn’t all that long ago. Firstly, my father making us children go camping from before we could walk, and with it, to survive with nothing but the clothes on our backs, and our wits.
It had happened to him, as a member of am expedition in Africa in his younger days, thinking that he might become the next great explorer, or archeologist, and finishing up getting lost, even though he asserted the other members had deliberately left him behind.
And secondly, that it was essential that we forge working relationships with any and all those who were like minded, such as those who wanted to be saved, not those who expected everyone else to so the work. It was obvious he had met a lot of those type of people too.
It served us well.
When nations began turning on each other, when essential resources like electricity and fuel stopped being distributed and rationed, when food suddenly became scarce, that’s when the real trouble started. My father said, at the outset, what would happen, and was glad our mother was not there to see it.
Then, when neighbours attacked neighbours once food became scarce, it was time to leave. The pity of it was, he died defending us, even after offering up some of the food we had stored away, but that had not appeased a hungry or angry mob.
His last words, “Go to where we said we would go, and remember everything I’ve taught you” were etched in my brain, and my brother and I did as he asked.
But, even knowing where we had to go, and how to get there, a plan of action made many years before, and trialled in recent years with success, nothing in the past could have prepared us for the journey.
I remeber once being told that if you shoot for the moon, you’ll land in the clouds, if you shoot for the tree tops, you’ll finish up back where you started from.
It was a silly analogy, but I always remembered it when I looked up at the sky and saw clouds.
That was back in those hazy carefree days just after you were finished with school and you had your whole life in front of you. Your parents were there as the safety net, and were still proud of your scholastic achievements, and were not in too much of a hurry to hustle you out of the house.
But what happened when there’s a recession that came upon everyone without any warning.
Stocks plummeted, people lost their life’s savings, those with mortgages and loans suddenly finding that along with unemployment came no income, no ability to pay the bills, and therefore lost everything.
Although I never said it, I was thinking what good was an education when the whole world had gone to hell in a handbasket.
Two things I remember from back then, which in the context of disaster, wasn’t all that long ago. Firstly, my father making us children go camping from before we could walk, and with it, to survive with nothing but the clothes on our backs, and our wits.
It had happened to him, as a member of am expedition in Africa in his younger days, thinking that he might become the next great explorer, or archeologist, and finishing up getting lost, even though he asserted the other members had deliberately left him behind.
And secondly, that it was essential that we forge working relationships with any and all those who were like minded, such as those who wanted to be saved, not those who expected everyone else to so the work. It was obvious he had met a lot of those type of people too.
It served us well.
When nations began turning on each other, when essential resources like electricity and fuel stopped being distributed and rationed, when food suddenly became scarce, that’s when the real trouble started. My father said, at the outset, what would happen, and was glad our mother was not there to see it.
Then, when neighbours attacked neighbours once food became scarce, it was time to leave. The pity of it was, he died defending us, even after offering up some of the food we had stored away, but that had not appeased a hungry or angry mob.
His last words, “Go to where we said we would go, and remember everything I’ve taught you” were etched in my brain, and my brother and I did as he asked.
But, even knowing where we had to go, and how to get there, a plan of action made many years before, and trialled in recent years with success, nothing in the past could have prepared us for the journey.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
A picture can paint a thousand words, or more, or less, but…
…
The interesting thing about a place in the dark, in the distance, and behind a chain wire fence usually means something. Especially when there are mysterious lights involved.
We were at a night sports event, watching over a thousand screaming and yelling kids from five to eighteen pretending to compete in a variety of athletic events.
I was there to nominally to support my granddaughter in her endeavours, but right at that moment, on the far side of the track, what I was really there to see was what was behind the wire fence
“Are you watching, Poppy?”
Well, at that moment I wasn’t, but I did turn just in time to see her clear a meter high high jump and execute an elegent backflip, a result no doubt of the ballet training she had since the age of four. Seven years later those lessons had transformed into a high jumper with a great future.
Except, she couldn’t really care less. It was more about the parents and athletic organisers expectations, than hers. I was there, she told me in a secretive tone, to tell everyone to back off.
if you think spying was a dangerous occupation, then let me tell you trying to navigate a safe path between child and parents, and then the rest of the word, forget it.
So, with my trusty phone camera, slightly modified, I was pretending to take pictures of surrounding trees in the high density lighting for the athletics oval, whilst zooming in on the real target.
And, about to take the money shot, I could feel a tugging on the side of my jacket.
I looked down to see the petulant face of a child not happy.
“You said you were coming to see me perform.”
I had. I looked over at the woman the boss had assigned as my ‘date’, Nancy, and whom I’d introduced as a long time friend who deigned to suffer my invitation so she could meet the girl I was always talking about.
“Yes, Poppy,” she said with an evil undertone. “You said you wanted to see her high jumps. You’d better get over there, while I take some pictures of the trees for you.”
“Why do you want pictures of dumb old trees?” That was a question I would have asked myself, and I didn’t quite have an answer for it.
Nancy did. “Because he’s odd like that. It’s one of the quirks I like about him.” She took the camera out of my hand and shooed us off.
And, heading back to the high jump, she asked, “What’s a quirk?”
“Just ask your father later. He knows all about quirks.”
A sleigh ride wasn’t the first activity that came to mind, but that first day we saw the sleighs lining up and thought it might be a bit of a lark.
It was New Year’s Eve and we booked a 2pm sleigh ride. I figured any later we’d probably freeze to death. The ride was for about 45 minutes, out around the edge of the lake and back.
Rides were on the hour and sometimes run at night.
We arrived at the departure point about 15 minutes before the ride and watched those who had been on the ride before come back looking somewhat frozen. The only covering you had provided was a red blanket.
Wisely we put on many layers of clothing, hats, and gloves.
We managed to get a seat for ourselves where the maximum per seat was three. The blanket wasn’t the thickest.
It was cold, and according to my phone, about minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. You could feel it, and it was lucky we were not moving fast.
At the halfway point, we went out onto the lake to turn around. It gave us a chance to take a photo of the sleigh, and the horses pulling it. I felt sorry for the horses out in the cold.
As we turned around, we got to see a frozen waterfall.
A picture can paint a thousand words, or more, or less, but…
…
The interesting thing about a place in the dark, in the distance, and behind a chain wire fence usually means something. Especially when there are mysterious lights involved.
We were at a night sports event, watching over a thousand screaming and yelling kids from five to eighteen pretending to compete in a variety of athletic events.
I was there to nominally to support my granddaughter in her endeavours, but right at that moment, on the far side of the track, what I was really there to see was what was behind the wire fence
“Are you watching, Poppy?”
Well, at that moment I wasn’t, but I did turn just in time to see her clear a meter high high jump and execute an elegent backflip, a result no doubt of the ballet training she had since the age of four. Seven years later those lessons had transformed into a high jumper with a great future.
Except, she couldn’t really care less. It was more about the parents and athletic organisers expectations, than hers. I was there, she told me in a secretive tone, to tell everyone to back off.
if you think spying was a dangerous occupation, then let me tell you trying to navigate a safe path between child and parents, and then the rest of the word, forget it.
So, with my trusty phone camera, slightly modified, I was pretending to take pictures of surrounding trees in the high density lighting for the athletics oval, whilst zooming in on the real target.
And, about to take the money shot, I could feel a tugging on the side of my jacket.
I looked down to see the petulant face of a child not happy.
“You said you were coming to see me perform.”
I had. I looked over at the woman the boss had assigned as my ‘date’, Nancy, and whom I’d introduced as a long time friend who deigned to suffer my invitation so she could meet the girl I was always talking about.
“Yes, Poppy,” she said with an evil undertone. “You said you wanted to see her high jumps. You’d better get over there, while I take some pictures of the trees for you.”
“Why do you want pictures of dumb old trees?” That was a question I would have asked myself, and I didn’t quite have an answer for it.
Nancy did. “Because he’s odd like that. It’s one of the quirks I like about him.” She took the camera out of my hand and shooed us off.
And, heading back to the high jump, she asked, “What’s a quirk?”
“Just ask your father later. He knows all about quirks.”
Yes, I’m drawing a blank, which means I have no idea
It seems that I do this a lot these days, perhaps one of the perils of being a writer
But…
Using blank in a story doesn’t necessarily convey the antagonist is clueless, more likely he or she just used one in a gun, put there by a person who didn’t want to get shot.
No, still drawing a blank on this one.
A blank space means there’s nothing in it, and you see a lot of these in crosswords and sudoku, even when the user has been toiling for hours
I’m thinking anyone who met me might misinterpret my blank expression, well, it’s not too expressive in the first place
Perhaps before the coin becomes a coin; it is a piece of blank metal to begin with. How good would it be to get a one-sided coin, that’d be worth a lot?
And the very worst description of blank; having a blank piece of paper in front of you, and you really are drawing a blank!
If there is one thing I cannot resist is walking into a book store wherever it might be.
It usually elicits a groan from everyone I’m with because for them, watching grass grow is a more fascinating exercise.
But…
The best bookshops are the pop-up ones that appear in various shopping centres where there are empty spaces, and these have a wide variety of books for just $7 each.
And there are lots of bargains…
As you can see, I have been on a few bargain hunts lately and like any writer’s room, tucked away with the boxes of drinks, gardening equipment and everything else that just doesn’t fit in the house, are the piles of books awaiting being put into the shelves
As you can see, the shelves are almost full so it’s going to be an uphill battle to find spaces for them.
By the way, there are eight such book cases on the surrounding walls, as well as a new one, recently discarded from the lounge room, to house the reference books
Along with a few stuffed bears.
The job of putting books on shelves falls to the grandchildren, whom I am trying to convince that when they get older, they should too embrace the idea of having a reading room, which my writing room will also be when I eventually get to throw out the accumulation of years of discarded homewares.
For those who are wondering what this is a photograph of, it is a tree bordered stream that runs along a long valley that runs from outside Canungra, in Queensland, to the Lamington National Park.
It’s near a place we like to stay for a few days when we want to get away from everything, and I mean everything. There is no television, and cell phone reception is awful if not non existent.
So, you can see the benefits.
Sitting at the table on the veranda overlooking the fields, and this stream, you have time to just think, or not, about what it might have been like before the settlers came.
What is was like when the explorers we seeking new places to live, and they chanced upon this valley. It it was me back then, I would have followed the stream.
But, as for a story…
I have read a great many stories for the explorers of this country, and the hazardous nature of their treks.
What seemed to be the most common theme was crossing from south to north, that is from Melbourne to the Northern most tip of Queensland, or from Adelaide to the Northern Territory. In both cases they would have to traverse a very dry, very hot outback where the sight of a stream, or river, like above, would have been very welcome.
For some, it became an impossible quest, and stuck in the desert, they eventually perished. That in itself, the trials and tribulations of an early explorer would make a great story.
Australia is a very fertile country around the coastal regions, but one you start venturing inland, it is dry, dusty and almost uninhabitable. Unless there’s water from rivers, streams, or underground, or mining settlements, there is very little else to see.
The exceptions to this are Uluru and Kakadu National Park, in the Northern Territory, Shark Bay and The Pinnacles in Western Australia, MacKenzie Falls in Victoria, The Simpson Desert, the Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park, and the Carnarvon Gorge in Queensland, to name a few.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 