Sunday, January 27, 2013

You shall not pass


You can tell it’s January when bushfires rage, floods rise, thunderstorms lash and Channel 7 decide to promote every single ridiculous program that we have to look forward to ‘after the tennis’. Now even if you are bored watching Jokeavic strutting and scream queens squealing and a wee Scotsman struggling to contain his tourettes, you would want the tennis to continue. Because when it ends, what looms could be a whole season of Koshie’s Got Talent and Revenge of the Cooks. An impending trip overseas is thus even more fortuitous.

January has been, in comparison to those of recent past, hot and steamy. Because of impending trips (more of which later), I haven’t actually been anywhere significantly of note. And days have been a slight weird hybrid of work and leisure. One moment I can be trawling the depths of an ABS pivot table, the next, bobbing lazily entwined in a rubber ring in the pool. Fiddling with PowerPoint text boxes can be interrupted by shopping for fire extinguishers. Coffee breaks around the corner are most welcome and habitual.

Of course, walks here and there are almost a daily occurrence, to the point that I’m struggling to find anything different, anything new. Not that that’s a bad thing given what is around: from blistering dryness on Red Hill to shady lakeside ambles, Botanic Garden circles and Mount Ainslie fire trail combos. The late evenings that linger are perfect for little forays around the streets of my neighbourhood, where status is judged on the quality of your Agapanthus and sophistication of your sprinkler system. It is a world I have somehow ended up in, somewhat surreptitiously, and while I am very happy to embrace it, I cannot get over the feeling that, as I wander the streets, I am regarded with suspicion; a young hoodlum scoping out the next million dollar mansion to break into. Not that you could get past some of these heritage hedgerows mind you.

And so change, or at least temporary transition of an indecisive nature, is around the corner. On Thursday I head to New Zealand for three weeks. I am looking forward to it immensely, like a hobbit venturing out of his hobbit hole and onto an unknown road. I just hope that, having lived in Australia for six years, I can politely keep a straight face when confronted with Kiwi accents. And if you think this blog is pretty, well, uneventful, New Zealand should rectify that and provide a few contenders for Christmas presents.
And after that, a bigger undertaking, a three volume set to the prequel. Australia or parts thereof and parts not too burnt / damp / dug up by corpulence. It’s still fairly indeterminate but from east to west, across to Perth with detours and pauses. There and possibly back again. We shall see. The exciting news is that I have a machine for the job...a change of car and, after a little bit of tinkering, I am slowly becoming endeared with my twelve year old Subaru Outback. We have good times ahead.
Which finally brings me to pay homage to a former car that has sadly passed to the oil baths of the sky. Not my ex-Magna, which is doing well with its new owner, but the Renault Scenic of 2012. It buzzed around the French countryside with loyalty and commitment, even when its brother was lost. It terrorised the lanes of Dartmoor in pursuit of cream tea, and made it to the Cornish coast for staple ingredients of pasty and fudge. And it never complained when I drove it through storms and rain pummelling Devon from south to north, poking out into the sunshine along the north Devon coast. Even though you are French, I commend you V787 LBO.

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