Were staying at a cabin with Nicole and Michael and their twin two-year-olds. Last time we were here, they were both tucked away in Nicole’s large belly. Funny to watch them bounce around now. Talking and feeding themselves. Or talking to demand to be fed –same thing.
Charles and I drove into Kiama for the paper and a peak around. It’s a seaside town with a little Saturday morning farmers market along the shore walk. It’s election season so the local member was down greeting people. His side-kick ignored me as I walked in front of him and caught Charles instead to give him a flyer as he tried to slip around the back.
In the second-hand bookstore, I found a box of old Australian Workmate magazines –a somewhat cheesy collection of do-it yourself tips from the 1980s. The whole set of 100 magazines was $25. In the back were a few repeats so I took them up to the counter and offered them 25¢ each. No, it seems. The single magazines cost $2 each. Whatever. Made me mad for a minute or two. Felt like they were just being greedy.
Later in the mall (I was in search of a birthday cake for Nicole), a small girl approached me to buy a $2 raffle ticket for her school. How could I say no?, I asked Charles when he joined me. I could say no, he said. Yeah right. So when we saw her later in the fruit shop I told her to go ask him. I laughed at him and mentally wrote this post as he dug out his wallet.
Just now I went for a walk in the back of the cabins, up the hill in the woods. It was one of those classic forests with a leafy floor, green ferns and a darkish cover of old growth. And as I walked, I suddenly came upon an old abandoned type-writer, submerged in the dirt and half covered with moss. I don’t generally take things as signs anymore, but this was too much a symbol to ignore. It’s time to get a bit more serious about the writing.
