Temperatures have been back down around 29 - 30 degrees this week. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be not dripping with perspiration all the time. But we’ve had other problems…

On Monday night, there was a storm. (it did a lot of damage in Ipswich) It rained cats and dogs – well, I don’t know about the dogs, but when I opened my door, three cats rushed in! The heavens opened and dumped 5 inches overnight. I should have realised what that meant, but I didn’t until Mum rang in the morning.

She had been up since 5 am. sweeping water out from the rumpus room under her house. The neighbour on the bottom side had let his drains block up again and the water had backed up under Mum’s house. Luckily, the neighbours on the top side are wonderful. They came over and unblocked the drain and helped clear the water away.

“But I’ll have to get the carpet man to come and get some of the water out of the carpets,” said Mum. “The furniture will have to be moved.”

“I’ll be there soon,” I promised.

The carpet man was already there when I arrived. He had just finished a job and came straight away when Mum phoned him. He even moved most of the furniture. He offered to put it back when he had finished, but Mum said, “No, leave it in case it happens again.”

And it did happen again. The ground was too soggy to absorb the next downpour. And the next.

Part of the problem is all the rain water washing down the hill, until it hits the main problem – which is the concrete barricade the stupid neighbour made to keep the water out of his yard, so of course it all backs up. On top of that, he has no proper guttering on his house and a wall of water washes down from the roof and the makeshift drain he has made can’t cope with it all – specially when it is full of leaves and rubbish.

He told Mum he was sorry, but evidently he wasn’t sorry enough to pay for the carpets to be cleaned. He said the water had got under his house too.

“Good!” said Mum.

Back to school
Miles got a “glow in the dark” cast on his arm this week. “It lights up his room at night,” said Frances. “He doesn’t need the night light on.”

He went back to school next day. One of the boys pushed him over. Miles got up and donged the other boy on the head with his cast.

Oh dear!

Tree problems

The Gastritis bug that is going round caught up with me this week so I didn’t get to our jumble sale. Just as well I was home, because the man who has been going to come and trim my Pine Tree finally turned up. “I couldn’t come before,” he said. “People have been wanting trees lifted off their houses for some reason…”

“Yeah,” I said. “They think they’ve got problems!” (only joking, of course, it must be dreadful for them!)

I got five big branches taken off the Pine Tree. It looks safer and there’s still plenty of shade.

“It’s not likely to fall on your house,” the man reassured me. “Not unless its struck by lightning!”

I don’t want to think about it!

Thirty people in Brisbane died suddenly over the weekend. It’s not known how many of the deaths were caused by the heat, but it certainly would have contributed to most of them. Over 40 degrees it was on Saturday, and 42 degrees on Sunday! (42 Celsius is about 107.6 Fahrenheit) Hundreds were treated for heat exhaustion. Railway lines buckled in the heat. One of my friends parked her car in the sun and the gear stick melted!

I tried to get my cat Olive to stay by the electric fan, but she insisted on lying behind the pot plants on the patio, so I placed ice bricks around her, hoping it would cool the concrete she was lying on. I don’t know where the other two cats spent the day. They didn’t appear till evening.

The temperature had only dropped to 34 degrees at midnight on Saturday, and it was 35 when I woke up on Sunday. Mum and I went to the supermarket to get a few things. I could hardly believe it when I found the one parking spot under a shady tree. Someone must have just vacated it. The air conditioning in the supermarket was a blessed relief. We took our time to do our shopping. “Do you think they’d let us bring our folding chairs next time?” I joked.

As we went back out of the cool air into the heat, our glasses fogged up and we had to pause while we got our bearings.

Arriving back at Mum’s house, it was like stepping into an oven. We took our lunch out to the table by the front window and Mum turned on the fan.

“Ow, that’s just blowing hot air,” I complained.”Let’s see if it’s any cooler downstairs!”

We carried our plates down under the house. It was better there. After lunch we tried to rest in the armchairs and read the paper, but it was too hot to get comfortable. I went to the sink to splash water on my face and decided to pour water all over my head.

“That’s better,” I said.

“You look like a drowned rat!”

After a while, my sister Relle arrived. “Oh, it’s a lot cooler here than my place,” she said.

We got out the Skipbo cards and played a few games to take our minds off the heat.

“I think I’ll put my head under the tap again,” I said.

Relle got the hose and sprayed our legs. “Ooh, that feels good!” Then she sprayed my back.

“I might as well get wet all over now,” I said. Relle and I went around the side of the house and doused each other thoroughly.

“I did bring some other clothes in case I had a shower,” I said. “But I’ll have to drip before I go upstairs.”

“Just strip off round the corner, said Mum. “You can run upstairs in your undies. No one will see you.”

Good idea. I ran upstairs and got my dry clothes on. (Don’t worry, it’s an internal staircase!)

Relle stayed wet. She said it was cooler. Perhaps it was. She won the next game of Skipbo .

Playing School

2-year-old Hayley has been talking about Gym Tots all week. It’s an exercise programme for tiny tots, run by the local Police Club. She’s only been a couple of times, but she pretends with her dolls that they are going to Gym Tots to dance and climb and slippery slide.

So Frances took her again this morning, and Miles stayed with me. He hasn’t been back to school yet - not since he broke his arm. He brought the school work the teacher had set for him so he wouldn’t get behind.

“Let’s play school,” I suggested. We set up a class with three of my life size stuffed dolls and I rang the bell.

“You tell them I’m a new kid,” said Miles. “And I’m a bit scared.”

“This is a new boy, children,” I instructed the dolls. “His name is Miles. You’ll have to be nice and not play too rough – he has a broken arm.”

Miles worked on one of his homework sheets. He drew a nest IN the tree, a hat ON the boy, a bird ABOVE the tree, a ball UNDER the slide, a doll NEXT TO the girl… I made some flash cards with the new words IN, ON, ABOVE, UNDER, and NEXT TO. The dolls didn’t know them very well, but Miles got them all correct.

“Now it’s ‘Show and Tell’ time,” said Miles. He delved into his school bag and produced an ugly looking figure with a human body and a duck’s head and showed the class how it’s arm extended menacingly when he pressed a button. The dolls sat speechless in wonder.

“We could do another homework sheet now,” I suggested.

“No,” said Miles firmly. “It’s playtime.”

“Alright,” I said. “I’ll get you a drink of milk.”

When I arrived back at the ‘playground’ with the milk, one of the dolls was lying on the floor with one arm twisted behind its back.

“Christopher fell off the monkey bar and broke his arm,” said Miles. “You’re so stupid Christopher! Meemar, I’ll be the ambulance man and you ring me up. I’ll need a bag and some stuff to put in it.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Oh…big stuff and little stuff…and I’ll need cardboard to put around his arm.”

We made a cardboard splint for Christopher’s arm, lifted into him into a cardboard box ambulance and whisked him off to hospital.

Christopher was made comfortable on the lounge with his arm propped on a cushion and a teddy bear tucked in beside him. “He’ll feel better if he watches T.V. for a while.” Miles suggested.

So Miles and Christopher settled down to watch some children’s programmes on T.V. While I caught up with some housework.

from “Poor Man’s Orange” by Ruth Park

Date presented: February, 2004

Dolour Takes a Bath

“I’m going to take a bath,” decided Dolour….It was an important decision for bathing in the Darcy household was fraught with both danger and adventure. Since they had been using the old tin tub to bathe the baby in, they had been climbing into the wooden washtubs, a difficult business, for the tubs, with their chewed, pitted bottoms and slanting sides were never made for comfortable accommodation of the human body….Sorry, I’ve removed the rest of this extract, as I don’t want to breach Copyright laws. I hope you can read the book, “Poor Man’s Orange” by Ruth Park. It’s very good. Read “The Harp in the South” first, if you can.

Sorry, I’ve removed the rest of this extract, as I don’t want to breach Copyright laws. I hope you can read the book, “Poor Man’s Orange” by Ruth Park. It’s very good. Read “The Harp in the South” first, if you can. 

“Poor Man’s Orange” and it’s forerunner, “The Harp in the South” are among my favourite books. I chose this extract from Chapter 17, because the dialogue provided opportunity for plenty of vocal variety, and was fun to read. Even the judges enjoyed it - I won first place!

It was one of those kind of phone calls you always dread.

Joel was ringing from work. “Miles has broken his arm at school,” he said. “They’re waiting for the ambulance. Frances is there, but she has Hayley with her. Can you go with him in the ambulance?”

I quickly threw on a clean dress, slammed the windows shut, hustled three indignant cats out of the house and raced for the car.

“Please, let me get there before they take him in the ambulance,” I breathed.

I had no idea which part of the school to go to, so I headed for the first building where Joel and Ben had been in Grade 1 when they were kids. Luckily, the first room I came to was Miles’ classroom.

“They’re over at the administration office,” Miles’ teacher told me. She selected two little girls to show me the way. “Miles didn’t even cry,” one of them told me as we hurried across the schoolyard. “He must be very brave!” I found out later that he had fallen from the monkey bar, picked himself up and walked to the classroom to tell the teacher he had hurt his arm.

By now, the ambulance had arrived and they had put Miles’ arm into a splint improvised from a cardboard box. He looked very pale and small. One of the ambulance men picked him up and carried him to the ambulance. “Can you go with him?” asked Frances anxiously. “I’ll bring Hayley in the car.”

One of the ambulance men sat with Miles in the back of the ambulance. I climbed into the front. “I haven’t got Morgan with me,” lamented Miles. I wished I’d had time to detour to their house to get Miles’ special bear. Apart from Morgan’s absence, Miles didn’t seem too upset. He talked all the way to the ambulance man – about school, his little sister, his pets, and how he was going to be an ambulance man and a policeman and a fireman…”

“He’d talk the leg off an iron pot!” commented the ambulance man.

Frances followed in her car and arrived at the hospital at the same time as we did. “Hayley was funny,” she told me as they wheeled Miles inside. “When I put her in the car, she held her arm and went “Ow, ow, ow!” Then she put a piece of paper on it and said, “That’s better!”

Joel arrived from work to be with his boy. The long long wait in the casualty ward was relieved by the frequent attention of the nurses. When they heard Miles was missing his favourite bear, they found a teddy for him to hold. “You’ll need to think carefully what colour you’d like,” one of them told Miles. “You’ll get a white cast on your arm today, but when you come back next week, you can choose blue, green or purple…or there’s glow in the dark…”

A couple of clowns came along and introduced themselves as Dr Reddy and Dr Gizmo. Miles looked at them dubiously, but they soon had both him and Hayley chuckling as they blew bubbles and tried to bat them with a ukulele and became entangled in sticky tape. They presented Miles with a balloon they had made out of a surgical glove.

Hayley was so good – though she must have been the loudest child in the hospital. She sang lustily over and over “Twinkle, twinkle little star” and “Seesaw, margarine door.”

Finally, about 4 hours later, Miles was taken to the operating theatre amid reassurances that he wouldn’t feel any needles because they had put something on his hand to make it numb.

It was a nasty break. He had broken two bones in his forearm. He had to stay in the children’s ward overnight. Frances was allowed to stay with him, but probably didn’t get much sleep. A little disabled boy in the opposite bed had two broken legs and cried continually. His mother had been with him round the clock for the past few days and had gone out for a much needed break.

I went home with Joel and Hayley. Joel assured me he could manage Hayley on his own and he could have, too, but I talked him into letting me stay the night just in case. I thought Hayley might feel upset with half her family suddenly missing. I slept in Miles’ bed with Buzz Lightyear and Morgan.

Miles came home next day with a temporary cast on his arm. It’s split, to allow for swelling. Next week, he’ll get one that glows in the dark.

Hot, hot, hot!

The heat wave continues. We had a couple of mild days early this month, then the heat returned. It is the hottest February on record. Tomorrow is predicted to reach 41 degrees Celsius – that’s about 105 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m not looking forward to it!

Wild Weather

Scary weather! Six storms in six days last week! And they were all bad ones, causing damage in various suburbs. Friday’s storm was the most widespread and the most violent. I knew it was going to be bad when I saw the green sky. The clouds came up fast and I think they must have blown over us before they dropped their hailstones, because our area was one of only a few that were relatively unscathed.

The cats dashed inside as the storm broke. There were some terrible flashes and crashes that sent Olive and Oscar scuttling for hiding places. Dear old Ingrid just sat there looking slightly bemused. I don’t think she could hear the thunder.

I left the front door open so we could escape if the house started to collapse. Not that I really expected it to, but that huge pine tree in my back yard makes me feel uneasy in storms.

I listened to my transistor. People from all over the city were phoning in to report the damage in their area. Tornadoes had damaged houses in many suburbs. Fallen trees had blocked roads and brought down power lines. A tree at the University had fallen on a group of people and injured two children. The damage seemed to be all over the city and up the North coast, and yet miraculously, our area escaped. Phew!

I hope that’s the end of the wild weather. And the heat. The weekend was hellishly hot, but this afternoon it started to rain steadily, and I have actually put on a light cardigan.

Off to School

My grandson Miles started school last week.

“I’m not going to school tomorrow,” he announced the day before. “It’s my birthday!”

“No it’s not.” said Frances.

“But I have to be six before I go to school,” said Miles.

“You’ll be six this year,” explained Frances. “They’ll let you start school before you have your birthday.”

“Cool!” said Miles.

Once that was sorted out, he was happy to go to school. “Do I look bigger?” he asked me when I went round to stay with Hayley while Frances took him to school.

“You certainly do!” I told him, “And you look great in your uniform!”

We took some photos to commemorate his special day and he went off looking very important.

“It was great!” he told me, when he returned that afternoon.

My nephew Matthew has also started school and likes it. After a year at kindy and another year at pre- school, most kids take it in their stride these days.