Another big dreamer with small pockets

 

For the full advertisement, click here

 

Having saved your images of the verandah to my phone some time ago, and revisiting the listing this week, I’d be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t enquire about the advertised property. I’ve sat staring over the front gate from my car more times than I care to admit."

Another dreamer having fallen under the spell of "Riverbend". It once again vindicates my preference for cutting out the middle-man, as a real estate agent would already have brought her out to the property as a "pre-qualified buyer" (whatever that means; a beating heart?), preparatory to which we would have spent several hour doing some decluttering and cleaning up the kitchen etc. - none of which we still do; it's been "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" since the last agent left.

I replied, "As mentioned in the advertisement, the eventual selling price - which is negotiable - is set by the land value of more than $2.5 million (already seven years old), with the balance determined by the perceived value of the two-storey brick residence and a host of improvements, giving it a likely total of $3 million-plus (how much "plus" is left to be decided by the person with the cheque-book). So, before we proceed beyond this email exchange, here is the $3-million-PLUS question: do you have the funds or finance arranged?"

Predictably, she replied, "Straight off the bat it’s out of my price range. I am actively looking for a family home for myself with two teen boys, one into archery and the other loves camping, along with my soon to be 80 year old Mum. We’ve lived together on the Far South Coast for four years. I’m an artist and I’ve outgrown my small studio here as my art sales have been very steady, and am looking for somewhere near the water to live and paint, build a larger art studio (around 8x6m) and hold occasional art workshops over the holiday seasons. My eldest paddled from Shallow Crossing to the Bay with a night on Little Island with two mates not long ago, and loved it (but not the blisters). The boys said it would be an awesome spot to live, kayaks straight off the bank. I’m staring at the screen wondering why I’m saying all this instead of just saying sorry it’s way over my budget. In any case, I’ll buy a lotto ticket, and keep selling paintings!"

Another big dreamer with small pockets! But there was more: "Maybe I could possibly visit please to do some preliminary sketches for paintings of the river and surrounds? I’m just so drawn to Riverbend, and the magnificent trees on your property." I might have relented, if she had boxed in the 'please' with two commas, but, on second thoughts, I can't see myself sharing my treasured privacy with an arty lady and her two teenage boys shooting arrows and lighting camp fires all over the place.

 

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The pedants' revolt

 

 

We first got to know each other through letters. Then, quite a few letters later, she wrote, "Your adorable!" "No," I replied, "YOU'RE adorable!" She must've thought I found her adorable when all I had been doing was point out to her a grammatical mistake.

That was twenty-five years ago. We are still married but I am no longer pedantic about her grammar (I reserve my pedantry to her cooking).

Not that I've given up the fight when it comes to what I read. The apostrophe is being killed by the internet. No one knows where commas belong — is it Oxford? Texting has led to words being shortened in ways tht are guaranteed to annoy. How much effort did the missing “a” require? Worse still, entire words are replaced by single letters. Mercifully, not everything is lost when even the youngest texters still know that all sentences have to end with an exclamation mark!

I am still irritated by the sight of a “who” where a “whom” should be, and I am also still drawn towards the correct placing of the word "only", except on those occasions when I am not. There is something pleasantly jarring about insisting you are here only for the beer, rather than only here for the beer. In the more common and incorrect variant, the word 'only' is qualifying not beer but here, which could lead people to think that you are only here and indifferent to the libation.

Does it really matter when no one is really confused? Should I switch to oral pedantry and rage at the persistent interjection of "like" into sentences, and the contraction of "could have", "should have", and "would have" into "could of", "would of", and "should of"?

I guess I shall always remain pedantic about those phrases that irk me. Or is it phrases which irk me? Or maybe phrases by which I am irked?

 

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Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa ...

 

 

 

War es der Roman des Erich Maria Remarques oder die Kurzgeschichte vom Heinrich Böll, die aus mir einen Auswanderer machten? Ich las sie als Klassenkameraden noch die Abenteuergeschichten des Karl Mays lasen.

Obwohl ich jetzt vergessen habe, welches von den beiden ich zuerst las, habe ich beide Bücher noch vor meinen Augen: "Im Westen Nichts Neues" war ein Buch vom Bertelsmann und Heinrich Bölls Geschichte "Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa ..." war in einem rororo-Taschenbuch.

Selbst die frühere 1930 Verfilmung von "Im Westen Nichts Neues" trug nichts dazu bei den Aufstieg dieser Charlie-Chaplin-Figur und einen neuen Krieg zu verhindern. Somit wurde ich ein Wehrdienstverweiderer und sagte ihnen wo sie sich ihren Wehrpass stecken können.

Und seither lebe ich in Frieden auf der südlichen Halbkugel der Welt.

 

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The Book of Puka-Puka

 

Read it online here

 

The Book of Puka-Puka is not about travel; it is about staying in one place. It is about living as a conspicuous stranger and slowly allowing yourself to become absorbed into the strange ways of an ancient, indigenous community.

 

 

This book was not composed by a colonial administrator, a missionary or an anthropologist, but by a hedonistic South Sea trader - a young American who fishes, picnics, swims, sleeps and falls in love but fortunately also has an ear for good stories.

Robert Dean Frisbie was born in Ohio in 1896 but his health was crippled after fighting in the First World War and a doctor informed him that another North American winter would be his last. In 1920, he sailed for the Southern Pacific with a library of books, a desire to live and an ambition to write. His first job, aged 24, was managing a plantation in Tahiti from where he began to explore the scattered islands. In 1924 he travelled to isolated and lonely Puka-Puka, where he ran a store for A.B. Macdonald. Click here for GOOGLE Map.

Over the next four years he wrote a series of twenty-nine articles for Atlantic Monthly, which were later gathered together to create "The Book of Puka-Puka", a book long out of print and sinfully expensive to buy but, thanks to modern technology, available online by clicking here.

Enjoy!

 

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Wearing out old memories

 

 

Remember those funny t-shirts that read, "My [insert name] went to [insert location] and all I got was this lousy t-shirt"?

Well, for twenty years I lived all over the world, working in several dozen locations in some fifteen countries, and all I finished up with is a collection of old t-shirts.

 

Penang Port Commission, 1978
Selangor Club, Kuala Lumpur
Cambridge University, Summer School 1983
Saudi Arabia, 1982-1985
Air Niugini, Port Moresby, 1974
still with laundry mark "15" for my room in the Pilots' Mess at Six-Mile
Sid Deeky is my friend

 

I am sure you don't want to see the other fifty-or-so, do you? ☺

 

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