This house, which I’ve been renting for twenty years, has been sold! Soon my wooden cottage and its lawns and gardens will be replaced by about six townhouses. Maybe more. It is the end of an era for me – and for this suburb.
So for the last few weeks I have been packing, preparing to move. My back and legs are aching. My age is showing (or feeling!)
The house is in a state of organised chaos. In my better moments I know where most things are. Like papers in boxes, particular books, packing tape, scissors, my house keys! . . . I am surrounded by boxes - packed and empty.
My visitors have to pick their way down a lane between the towering piles, a bit like a cardboard version of an English hedge-maze. The move is not until the end of July/beginning of August but I am still teaching and have various other commitments during this time, so I have to start sorting and packing now.
Sorting the papers I’ve accumulated over the twenty years I’ve been here was a daunting job but fascinating at times. I came across things I’d forgotten all about. Like poems published in the paper when I was a child. Then I read an untitled piece of prose and thought, That’s interesting! And realised it was an alternative beginning to the novel I am still/again working on. Lantern Light.
(Yes, I probably said I’d finished it but that publisher didn’t like it and well – here’s a better beginning so . . . I’m working on it again!) It may yet qualify for the Guinness Book of Records for the most rewritten novel in Australia!
(For the record – and to horrify my fellow writers – I only wrote Jodie’s Story once. Not one edit or rewrite. I was younger and perhaps gullible but it was published and sold very well!)
She performed her drama, an excerpt from Dags, beautifully, and came back to her place, wedged between her mother and me. The next minute, another girl stood up and did a different piece from the same play! When we finally reached the end of the section (it was actually good entertainment, with several extremely talented competitors), the adjudicator shuffled through her papers, wrote on a few certificates, and walked out the front. “Highly Commended, competitor No 12 with Dags,” she announced. Emma sat there glued to her seat. It was surely the other girl. I stared at the programme. No 12 was Emma! By now everyone was staring at us. In a daze of surprise, Emma walked out the front and received her certificate. As it turned out, she had beaten several of the well-known Local Talents. I was so proud of her!
I returned home, changed out of my ‘glad rags’ and resumed my attack on my worldly goods.
