© irene waters 2016
Hello and welcome. Come on in. What would you like today to drink? Tea? Herbal? Coffee? Hot Chocolate? Today I feel like peppermint tea but you can have whatever you like; I’ve got most things hot. I also have some custardy jelly slices that I bought from the Katie Rose stall. That is a sad story that if we were having coffee I’d tell you.
We are? Katie Rose cottage was donated by a benefactor a number of years back as a cottage where the terminally ill could go to die in surroundings that were homelike, their relatives could stay with them and the staff were predominantly volunteers. It was run by two women friends of the benefactor. Several years ago they attempted to get government accreditation so that medicare would pay benefits to them helping to alleviate the costs of running the house. To do this the government made them change the model of operation and put in a committee to oversee the operation. The house, promptly went bankrupt and the committee sold the house, then purchased another but at the other end of the Sunshine Coast where there are already other facilities of this type. The band of volunteers protested and at a special meeting they were turned away by the committee and told that their membership had been cancelled and they were therefore inelligible to vote. The community is up in arms. The benefactor has donated another property and the original model of operation is being returned. Government assistance will not be requested. A lot of slices need to be sold to raise the money (they also operate 3 opportunity shops), so eat up. The more you eat the more I may spend as I really don’t want to eat too much myself. Not with our cruise coming up.
If we were having coffee I’d tell you that I have been trying to work out ways that unlimited food on board will not be disastrous for me but still allow me to try everything. I am going to sit at any smorgasbord so I am not looking at the food. I know my eyes are bigger than my stomach but it doesn’t stop me trying. I am also going to ask for half serves of anything I order. An I plan on promenading on the poop deck during waking hours and dancing in the ballroom of a night. Hopefully that will do it. Only one month before sailing.
If we were having coffee I’d tell you that we went and saw Dylan Thomas’s Undermilk Wood on Friday night. I did it at school and didn’t like it then. I think, in my day at least, schools destroyed much literature for children. Set in the welsh town of Llareggub (bugger all backwards) we learn over a period of 24 hours the lives of the characters who include the blind old seadog Captain Cat who is forever mourning his dead love Rosie Probert, the Rev Eli Jenkins who sees the day in and out with a verse; Polly Garter and her lost lovers, Mr Pugh who dreams of poisoning Mrs Pugh; Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard and her two dead husbands and Mr Bread with his two living wives. It is known as a play for voices and the actors at our local theatre did it very well. What I had disliked as a schoolgirl, I now drank in the poetic melody of the lines. I was going to give you a quote but which one, there are so many, so I started at the beginning and maybe you’ll want to read it til the end.
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows’ weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now. Dylan Thomas Undermilkwood
If we were having coffee I’d tell you I’m filling in my time working on my manuscript, packing boxes, reading a book by Marcel Theroux Paperchase which has great promise, and a bit more blogging that I had been doing. I tried out a new challenge Abecedarian flash and the Weekly Discover Prompt was one that I had no inspiration for but in trying to translate to middle English and get borders around the page (it didn’t work) and try and get it looking like a Chaucer piece whilst in reality it was science fiction with a somewhat strange disturbing piece of art, I spent hours on something that simply did not work.
So that has been my week. What about you? Is it getting cold where you are? We are getting warmer. Have you read any good books or seen any good movies. Thank you Diana for hosting our weekly coffee share.
Reflections and Nightmares- Irene A Waters (writer and memoirist) 