We were always going to hang him from a tree outside when we had one that was big enough, but he's hung in the window behind the skiff for eight years. He arrived with us from Hobart a week or three before we moved here.
Jenna had flown the coop and gone to live in London on Boxing Day that year, and the Mother in the household wasn't entirely unconcerned for her. To make matters worse, we signed a contract that day and had four weeks to move out of our house.
As we walked out of the real estate agent's office in the formative stages of what could be described as a "flap", I noticed the travel agent across the road was in his shop. As it turned out he wasn't intending to be open for business, just taking advantage of the public holiday to tidy up after the holiday rush but I had other ideas.
"I'm not" said I in my most magnanimous voice,"having you panic about moving house for the next four weeks. I'd rather you only panicked for three," and with that, we wandered in and booked a fare to Tasmania, the only place that we could actually get to departing the next morning.
The fruit bat was a souvenir of that journey, along with Frank and Gil, the wonderful poms we met who did their best to assure us that Jenna probably wouldn't disappear, at least until she started work in Hackney.
The rose? It was plopped there late in the afternoon after Jenna's wedding two years further down the track, and it's been there ever since. It's one of those things that put me back into the exact place and time (well that bit's easy because it's where it happened) but I can see those around me as if it was yesterday.
Will the rose survive the journey it is about to be taken on? Will the fruit bat find his way outdoors?
Perhaps these pages will provide an answer at some time in the future.
1 comment
Can I break the spell you have woven with your words, and tell you the FB looks like Groucho Marx?
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