Thursday, January 30, 2014

As Home As A Home Can Be For Me.

I went up to the shop this morning to buy vegies so soft my finger went through one of the sweet potatoes when I put it on the counter, despite it costing as much as an organic vegie grown in Gwyneth Paltrow’s garden. A kid in just a nappy, sitting on top of the check out counter screwed up her nose and said “yuk one” when it happened. There was a camp dog roaming around inside and two women yelling at each other about to box on.  Calls of “Annaleeeeeeea!” followed me. A strange kid gave me a high five. It took me an hour in the stifling heat to go 300 meters and back because of the chit chat each way.

The end of last year, when I was helping my friend clean out her wardrobe as she packed to leave the island, I came across a pair of gumboots. They weren’t hers so she figured they must have belonged to the previous inhabitant. Lucky for me, they were my size. Since living up here I have often thought about buying some but never got around to it. So later today, when the rain had kicked in and I was embarking on the long, 100 metre trek to school, I popped on my wellies and searched through my boxes of crap for my brolly and took off through the rain and puddles and mud. One of the puddles was so deep I was worried I wouldn’t make it through – it had tadpoles so big I thought at first glance they were fish. But gumboots make sloshing fun - why have I sloshed through mud puddles in sandals for 2 years?

The rain is heavy and incessant, it has been a big wet. The frogs’ croaking reverberates through the yard and into my bedroom window. We have to keep turning the music up to hear over the rain and then we yell over the top of it. I got hot and sweaty and then had a shower and then got muddy and chilled from getting stuck in the rain. My mattress smells of mold and kept waking me up when I rolled over last night. And apparently a dog spewed on it last year – “Just grass though”.. My beautiful bed cover from the hill tribes in Northern Thailand that I heaved across the country is damp and I can’t shut the louvers properly. The sheets feel like sweat. My clothes are in vacuum sealed bags under my bed because I have a wardrobe the size of a tissue box, and my towel won’t dry. The plates in the kitchen cupboard have mouse and/or gecko shit on them. My hair hasn’t been dry in 4 days, it’s so wet and humid my eyebrows have gone curly. I have 7 mozzie bites on my back (my house mate counted them). I am sharing a house again, once again a third. One of my house mates bought us all Nerf guns and I feel unnerved that a) I am playing war at my age and b) I enjoy being shot randomly – hanging out the washing, brushing my teeth, making a cup of tea.. And of course I love to shoot in a sneak attack but I get too excited to aim properly. It was so wet last night we had to move the gas BBQ inside for our Australia Day roo burgers (“It’s just not the same cooking in a frypan”..)– thank god for a long, open entrance-way with a hundred louvers that don’t shut. Worked a treat.


I have been a little worried about my return this year, a lot of my friends have left the island and I feel like I should be making moves and settling down somewhere.  I feel scared that I’ve been out of the real world too long. But as the frogs compete with the rain and the Jezables and my house mate singing I feel pretty happy to be home.

1 comment:

  1. Curly eyebrows now that is a first. Thinking of you adventure girl trust the year goes well. Janine

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