Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Breaking news at home

One morning last week, son number four (18) came up from out rear studio type building and sheepishly said I had better go and take a look at something. Uh oh! He and his brother live upstairs and there is a small bathroom downstairs. He had just showered and was towelling off when he knocked a drinking glass off the shelf above the basin. It fell and knocked a neat hole through it. Maybe a couple of hundred dollars hole because it was a special small china basin with a china pedestal to hide the pipework. So now I am tossing up whether to make an insurance claim or let one of my three plumber sons keep their eyes open for a suitable replacement. Did I get cross? Well surprisingly not this time.

Only a couple of days earlier when I was fixing some of the kids bikes I had the bright idea of setting one upside down on a garden table to make things easier. The table was up against our Grecian style wall we built for the Olympics. Well the bike had been there about thirty seconds when it toppled, and knocked a really nice Grecian style ceramic pot containing a really nice zygo cactus. There was a sort of thunk combined with a clunk as it connected with a rock at the back of the wall. Alas the pot was cactus. It had a partner which now sits alone and looking out of place. The nursery where I bought them has no more pots in this style. This is probably just the sort of incident which accounts for the richness of archeological deposits in Greece.

But I should go back to son number four. He has a track record of breaking stuff. A few years ago he was into cricket. Quite a good player. Most ball sports in our back garden are banned, but especially cricket. How well I remember slamming a cricket ball though a window in my parents’ house when I was a kid. Amazingly it just punched a neat round hole in the glass the same size as the ball, and for years after there was simply a small piece of something or other covering it.

Son number four ignored our ban on cricket and tells me of his horror as he watched the ball, seemingly in slow motion, head directly for a beautiful Chinese glazed camel atop one of our garden walls. The camel was quite large – about 14 inches high. It was a reproduction of one of the items that had travelled with an Entombed Warrior exhibition. The impact from the ball must have been spectacular. It would have won first prize in the funniest home video competition had someone been lucky enough to have a camera at hand. Indeed the camel died the death of a thousand pieces, which flew in all directions into the garden. An archaeological dream. Only a couple of months ago I found another piece as I was preparing the footings for our Grecian wall. I recall our son was a bit sheepish then when he told us about his effort.

But wait, there is more! A few days ago he recalled that the basin incident last week was one year to the day since he had wrecked a brother’s mobile phone in the same bathroom. Spooky! The general rule is leave other people’s phones strictly alone, but he was unable to control himself while his older brother was in the shower. Ignoring several remonstrations to leave the phone alone, he answered it, then got a table knife and flicked the bathroom door latch open. As he pushed the phone through, the ever-modest older brother inside shoved on the door and crunch went the screen on the phone. Good one boys. $150 bucks to repair, but not by me.

I have heard on the unofficial grapevine that there was some sort of drama yesterday involving the popcorn machine. Our five year old ratted on an older brother. This older person had been told by his mother not to get it out of the cupboard. I don’t know any accurate details yet, but I expect I will discover them sometime today.

Ah, grapevines. That reminds me of a unsolved crime that occurred over winter. For a couple of years I have been training a new sweet-raisin variety up to an overhead trellis. Last July I discovered it had been slashed off at about half height. It looked it had been done weeks before with a blunt sword. The discovery put me in a dark mood on that day.

But I have done worse myself. About three years ago I was pruning the grape vines above our back verandah and decided one of the thicker knobs needed sawing. So what did muggins do? I got out the chainsaw of course. Now there is a thing about chainsaws and that is they work very fast and there is usually no second chance. And so it was in this case. I immediately cut off the wrong bit. A 50 centimetre thick branch that probably took 15 years to grow to the right shape. Duh!

I am happy to report that both vines are recovering nicely. The raisin has more growth than ever before, but no fruit. The other vine, the chainsawed one, has indicated itis going to have plenty of big lusciousblack grapes this summer – with luck.

© MMIV Paul R. Weaver.

About the writer

Check out the index of my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days. Topical – often humorous – no swearing – no porn – no spam – no soliciting – no religious mania – no smoking – no catches.

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