Mamalade

I don’t know what a visitor to Brisbane would think – great heaps of rubbish along the footpaths, and people surreptitiously combing through them. Yep, it was the great City Council Clean-Up in our suburb last week.!It looks pretty awful, but it’s a great source of entertainment. The Council invites residents to leave on their front footpath any thing they want to get rid of, and it is picked up by the big rubbish truck.

It was a bigger event this time than in previous years, probably due to the fact that we didn’t have one last year, and also we had a public holiday during the week for Australia Day, which allowed more time for people to drag out their junk, or to go scavenging. Whatever the reason, junk started appearing on footpaths a week before the pick-up date. I don’t know about the legality of it, but it’s understood that anything left out is free for anyone who wants it. I never saw so many trucks, vans and trailers cruising our streets, slowing down at each pile of junk to see what could be salvaged. I suppose a lot of them were second -hand dealers, then there’s the scrap metal merchants – every piece of metal disappeared. But most are ordinary people who just can’t resist the lure of getting something for nothing.

I feel quite pleased when someone takes something from my pile. My junk is worthy! And its so much better to think it can be reused, rather than having it taken away to be crunched up at the dump.

One night I heard a noise just after midnight. I looked out the window. There was a truck stopped beside my pile of junk and someone was going through it by torchlight!

My neighbour over the back rang me one night. “I’m really sad,” she said. “No one thought any of my stuff was worth taking!” But the next night she happily reported that some pieces had been taken. It’s a matter of prestige to have worthwhile junk! I even heard of someone taking stuff from other people’s piles so they could put it on their own! But I don’t know if that’s true. More likely they took something home and discovered why it had been dumped in the first place, and had to put it on their own pile.

There were a lot of old television sets, and electric fans. It was eerie to see the blades of the fans turning in the breeze, as though they were connected to the electricity! And plastic chairs! The streets were just dotted with white plastic chairs.

There was a set of them up the next street that appeared to be in better condition than the chairs on my patio. I was sorely tempted to take one. I thought it would be good in Mum’s back yard, since her old garden seat had disintegrated and her neighbour put it out on the footpath for her. (It was immediately taken.) I really think she needs one near the clothes line in case she is tired or doesn’t feel well when she hangs out the washing.

Anyway, I stopped my car by the chairs, then I thought, “I can’t do it!” Too close to home. I didn’t want the neighbours saying when I walked past , “There goes the woman who got one of our chairs!”

The chairs were still there the next time I went past. I slowed down. No, I still couldn’t do it! Plastic chairs don’t cost much, I told myself. I can easily buy one. But the next night, I was coming home very late from somewhere, and there, on the edge of the footpath in a quite street, not so close to home, stood a pristine white plastic chair! I stopped, grabbed the chair, and stuffed it into the car.

The next morning I added it to my own pile of junk. I could imagine its former owners looking out next morning and saying, “Why would anyone want a chair with two broken arms!”

“The value of a great book lies in the demands it makes on you, in addition to what the reader can absorb with ease. Reading is a means of thinking with another person’s mind: it forces you to stretch your own. When reading a book by a great mind, you have to stand on tiptoe, so to speak, to grasp the whole of what the person is saying, You must adjust the language of your own thoughts to those of the writer. Inevitably you find your grasp of the language and the quality of your thoughts developed permanently.” Charles Scribner.

A poster I saw recently bore their message, “Birds fly – people read.” It’s true. A good book can make one soar to great heights without the benefit of wings.

I can’t bear to part with a book that I have enjoyed. I read my favourites over and over, discovering something new with each reading. Consequently, my bookshelves are piled high, and more books are stacked up on the floor. There’s never enough places to store them. But that didn’t stop me from attending the Lifeline Bookfest with my friend Meg last week.

“Better visit the ‘Ladies’ first,” I suggested as we got off the train. Both toilet cubicles were “engaged.” We stood and waited. “I don’t think there’s anyone in that one,” whispered Meg after a while. With one accord, we both bent to see if there was a pair of feet visible under the door and bumped heads just as a woman emerged and looked at us curiously.

The Book Sale was in the Convention Centre, just around the corner from Roma Street station.

I was glad I had taken my shopping trolley, to put books in. At first I thought it was going to be a nuisance, ’specially when I managed to run it into the back of my heels on the way to the station (I still have the scar) and when we got on the train I ran it over some poor woman’s toe. (How to make friends and influence people!)

The huge hall was divided into 3 sections. Good quality books (for more than we were prepared to pay for second hand books) , medium priced books ($2 – $4,) and unpriced cheap (tatty) books for about 50 cents.

We started browsing in the quality section, but quickly realised we were in the wrong place, so we made a beeline for the middle section. What a feast!

I didn’t bother with children’s books, because Joel and Frances had already been there the day before and stocked up on books for the kids. “And its just as well we both hate cooking,” I said. “That’s another section we don’t have to worry about.!”

By midday, my trolley was full and we were exhausted. We were glad to find an area where we could sit and have lunch without having to go through the checkout first. The food on sale looked tempting, but expensive. “I’d rather spend the money on more books,” I said. We compromised, buying one pack of sandwiches between us, and supplemented them with a couple of very flat vegemite sandwiches I produced from the bottom of my trolley – under the books.

After we’d eaten, we piled our books onto the table and compared our selections – mostly reference books. Then the culling began.

“I don’t really need this.”

“I’ll have it if you don’t want it!”

“I think I’ll put this one back.”

“No it’s a good book. You really want it!”

We finally reduced our pile very slightly, but had swapped most of it with each other. By now we were rested and ready for the next onslaught.

“Look, there’s even a section on penguins! Oh…. of course, penguin paperbacks.” It proved to be a goldmine. “ Oh, Thea Astley!” I whooped. It was Thea Astley’s “A Descant for Gossips,” a book I’d read many years ago, and is now out of print. It was THE book that had started me in the habit of writing down colorful phrases and unusual descriptive words as I come across them. I still have my old notebook that I had copied Thea Astley’s phrases into as I read that book. It is so full of picuresque phrases, such as:

“ellipsoid vowels.”

“leprously stained mirror.

“limelight of 5 o’clock.”

“rhomboids of windscreen glow.”

“tensed to such a peak of enjoyment, she seemed brittle with pleasure.”

“his voice vanished into an innuendo of silence.”

“she has nothing to say and she says it over and over and over.”

Another find (in a different section) was “The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plasse.” It is such a funny book. And Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” which I’d read ages ago. Come to think of it, I bought quite a few that I’ve already read, but as I said before, I love rereading old favourites.

It was time to sit and do some more sorting. We culled out most of the books we had selected earlier and replaced them with our new finds.

“I really don’t need this,” I said, looking at “The Poisonwood Bible. “It’s more expensive than the rest. I just thought I might read it because someone at Toastmasters once did a book review on it and it sounded interesting.”

“Go on, treat yourself!” said Meg.

I’m so glad I bought it. It is a brilliant book. I just finished it yesterday. No I haven’t copied down all the wonderful phrases yet. I just got swept along in the story, but I’ll read it again sometime. And again and again.

We were still there when they started asking people to start making their way to the checkouts because it was closing time.

The train was full of people returning from work. Standing room only. “It doesn’t matter,” I said “We have to get off and change trains at the next station, anyway.” Someone offered Meg a seat. 10 minutes later, the train was still standing at the station.

“This is where we get off,” announced Meg.

“Why?” I asked. “We just got on here!”

“Oh, I thought we were at the next station.”

“No, the train didn’t move – you did!”

We were tired after our big day. “I’m going to sleep in tomorrow,” I said.

When I arrived home found someone had been and left a great pile of bags of stuff for our jumble sales on my patio. And the phone was ringing as I opened the door. It was someone else who wanted me to pick up 20 bags of clothes first thing next morning because they were moving.

So that’s the end of our Christmas break. The jumble sales have started again.