The Best Day.
I had the best day today and all unexpected - and have to thank my longtime friend Carmel for this. Mainly some of my sisters and my daughters are my best friends, but Carmel has been a true friend since we met having our babies way back in 1977. She stuck through it all and understood. She would visit us regularly always phoning before which we appreciated and needed because of the situation. When she came if I was busy helping don she would get in and make the cup of tea or coffee and often bought little treats she shared with us - for no reason at all except that she cared.

She has gone on caring and understanding...all down through the years. Within the decade of the 1990's Carmel's mum and dad, brother and sister all died - and she weathered this as you must do, being the last of her family alive.

When Don went to hospital the last time, she was one of the few visitors who bothered during the whole five long weeks and she stayed for almost a week... sitting beside him, being with me. Being still and not needing any attention as too many do - she came for him and was content to be in the room with him - for hours on end. This type of visitor is especially welcome and needed...at such a time.

Since then she has stuck like glue...and every week or fortnight or so has come out here to my place and spent the evening...having tea, enjoying a glass or three of wine, watching a movie and both of us usually going to sleep like two old diddies. Then the next morning she would come out with me to Wauchope and we'd visit Don's grave - I am a bit olde worlde this way - cemeteries mean something to me - I need a place to go to place flowers and just think...but it was very emotional and sometimes still is. She never said anything much at all when i cried, or whatever - some people just know and maybe its life which has taught them - but some people are just like that from something which is inside them which was there from the beginning.

Today she just said "Lets go up to South West Rocks for a picnic"...and I thought "Why not"
Just being spontaneous like we all did years back. I am still not good at being in gatherings, and usually exhausted when I leave a group of people - wasn't always like this...but one on one with someone decent is good.
See photos (not mine) of South West Rocks NSW Australia,
http://www.southwestrocks.au.com
It had been decades since I made the hour drive there...and as I did it was so beautiful but again so hard as Don and spent a wonderful time in the caravan park at the beach many years ago in about 1975.

He used to install underground petrol tanks for garages all over NSW working for a Newcastle based firm. His boss got sick of his wanting to come home every weekend (Melissa was a new baby and we were very young) so he offered us the use of a large two room (new) caravan if don would work wherever in the state he was needed. it was wonderful - no rent and almost every week a new town to be in...
This shot was taken early 1975 at Mogo creek on the Putty Road NSW ...
we were sort of like gypsies at this time, but it was a time with no money worries (no overheads at all!!!) and every day or week was a new horizon - being a hippie and being paid for it. Don worked hard and sometimes I felt that taking care of the van, cooking and looking after our baby was not equal to the hard work he did - but he said he liked it like this - to be able to come home and be in family - meant so much for him....too many men and women begrudge - he appreciated...lucky me...lucky us.

I know only one other man with the same spirit and love of family as Don had and it was my own Dad...again lucky me. Dad just loved us and life without the burden of an ego.
Don, Melissa (Eczema on her chin only days after first vaccination - she still gets it) and I at the Bathurst Show. he was24 I was 21.


Today as we drove past familiar places I felt like the intervening years were like wisps, nothing, in time - clear as a bell were the things and feelings that happened all those years ago - and sharing this as I did with a true friend who is not afraid to talk about issues like this was just wonderful...

Many of you out there travel a lot and this is wonderful. My blog mates all seem to be cut from the same cloth and enjoy and appreciate but some can not afford to travel anywhere much...we were like this and this time was so precious..because we got to see so much of our own area...which we never would have done otherwise. For the working class - the labourers, the pipe layers, the shop assistants, the cleaners (me), we don't jet off to Dubai, or Fiji, London or New York. We stay out of debt, live not on credit but on what we have and hope its there the next day... we don't think we have a right to the world as our own personal holiday camp. we don't want to experience the "poverty" in other countries. A little trip about our own state is good...a day at the beach with a picnic is good. The wolf is never too far from the door...not because we were careless...or lazy...

I remember once a woman at a political rally saying that of she could afford private health cover why couldn't everybody...the implication being that those who couldn't must be feckless...then I thought of my mum, unskilled apart from the most skilled job in the universe (being the best mum on the planet)...widowed at 42 suddenly (grieving because dad was wonderful) with 4 kids still at home in a town in which she owned her own house but with no employment...how was a good person like this to afford private health insurance? or paint the outside of her house, or install lights in her toilet, or even cover the grocery bill for the family???

So today was a good day...the best day for a while. I was driven through places which were memories. And here I am still standing...much older...older than my own mum was at this time by a decade. No matter the high points and the awfulness it has been well worth it all... today showed me this..


Sadly now because I know there are a couple of sickos daily reading my blog, and sadly they are blood relations (i vant to suck your blood) I have to say again to those of my ex family who i know read my blog for their own sick and vicarious reasons "BUGGER OFF OKAY! This life is short - eternity is eternity - and how you act now matters more - not now but when you mongrels finally face your maggoty faces in the mirror of your eternity - have some ethics and class and piss off okay! Get a life. You have each other and family...such as it is...I hope for you you never need family because you have never helped family...you will be on your bloody own if ever in true need and rightfully so. You still have each other...one day one of you will stand alone. You might like to think about that before you make judgements from your moral high ground...insects"