Monty the Mouth
A little while ago I reconstructed parts of a post I'd composed while soaping myself down and fantasising about ....
I only crammed in some parts of what was an epic that roamed fluently over the wide terrain of my sub-conscious. I don't often think about Weipa and the kookaburras that would come in to land on the hills hoist at sundown and make raucus demands for food.
Actually I got to thinking about Weipa recently because of bananas. I don't like bananas at all. I never have. My mother tried to force feed them to me, but I believe she was genuinely bewildered. I am still the only person I know of who harbours such an intense loathing of the smell, taste and texture of the things.
We had a couple of banana plants in the back garden just beyond the kitchen door (and a paw paw). The second year we were there both the plants produced a hand of bananas. My sister and I watched those damned things grow and grow (some things never change) and waited for them to start to change colour. On someone's recommendation we put bags over the hands when they got pretty big (like I said, some things never change). And we waited for those bananas to change colour. The paw paw turned orange and dropped - they were delicious, but the bananas remained deep green.
And then the cyclone came through and dumped our garden about a mile the other side of town.
We never did produce a crop of ripe bananas. I can't say I'm that sorry. I might have had to eat one.
What really got me started on this was my 'other' list. My first list is the list of things I have to do to get home. My 'other' list is the list of things I have to 'do' when I get home. It starts with mundane stuff like finding a place to live, a job and so forth, but pretty quickly it veers off to stuff that doesn't send me straight to sleep.
The list includes visits to a number of places I want to breathe the air of as well as sounds I need to hear once more.
Periodically I turn the list over in my mind; add, subtract as appropriate taking account of the fact that I have a daughter who requires a crash course in being Australian. That got me thinking about Phillip Island which is another place I associate with the time before Dad died (at 36, way way too young - for the sake of your kids put that sun block on!)
We had access to a holiday flat owned by the company dad worked for, near Cowes. One of the things we had to do every time we went down to the island was take a trip out just before dusk to watch the penguin parade. There are 17 species of penguin in the world . The largest are the Emperors, the smallest (at about 1/4 the size of Emperors) are the Fairy Penguins - they fall out of the surf at dusk onto the beach of Phillip Island and make their way up to their nests.
Back then, and I'm talking about no later than the mid-1970s 'it' was a bit of a free-for-all. Some sign posts directed visitors down an unsealed road to a carpark from which one picked ones way towards the end of the scrub where the dunes began. There were signs about the place warning spectators to 'keep quiet' and 'not disturb the penguins' but there were no barriers or barricades.
Sadly, these days, the place has been boarded over so that visitors are herded into a narrow spectator gallery. It's good for the birds though. Mind you we're not supposed to call them Fairy Penguins anymore - though not, apparently for reasons of political correctness, as explained at the Phillip Island Nature Park web site.
Anyway, there is a theme to all of this and it's birds.
About a week ago I had a bath before going to work, a long luxurious soak. I got dressed and came down stairs and I discovered that Monty the Mouth had brought a friend home to play with.
Monty is the stray cat I don't like but can't get rid of. He's a waif/stray. After our cats died I sealed the cat flap. I put up with the little rat faced bastard hurling himself at the door handle for a week before I relented and undid the lock. Because he's not got an owner, having been abandoned, I feel obliged to provide him with some sustenance. I buy tins and biscuits and make sure he always has something to eat.
Mostly he turns his nose up at the stuff I buy. He's also prone to turning his nose up at the off-cuts I reserve for him, until they've been put in the bin. Monty prefers to slum it and eat his food from the rubbish bin (and drink from stagnant pools rather than the water bowl provided).
He'll get up on the kitchen benches in the night and make sure he's not missed out on something; I'm sick and tired of cleaning the little fleabag's paw prints off my white surfaces. He'll drag left overs from the rubbish bin for me to stand in when I come down for a coffee first thing in the morning.
In general Monty the Mouth is a regular feature on my shit list.
As I said I came down from the bath to find that Monty had brought a friend home to play with. The evidence was all over the place: blood, feathers and corpse. Thankfully the corpse was very, very dead. Dead I can deal with no problem. Twitching makes me very angry at being left to deal with it.
Notwithstanding the jug of cold water that sent the little bastard flying through the cat flap he's been back again in the past couple of days with a newly dead fledgling sparrow. By the time I caught up with the little bastard he'd got to almost precisely the same place he'd dumped the previous corpse. Again, thankfully, this one was dead - and right now Monty's the Fairy on the top of the Christmas Tree that is My Shit List.
Now if he'd only focus on mice ...
I only crammed in some parts of what was an epic that roamed fluently over the wide terrain of my sub-conscious. I don't often think about Weipa and the kookaburras that would come in to land on the hills hoist at sundown and make raucus demands for food.
Actually I got to thinking about Weipa recently because of bananas. I don't like bananas at all. I never have. My mother tried to force feed them to me, but I believe she was genuinely bewildered. I am still the only person I know of who harbours such an intense loathing of the smell, taste and texture of the things.
We had a couple of banana plants in the back garden just beyond the kitchen door (and a paw paw). The second year we were there both the plants produced a hand of bananas. My sister and I watched those damned things grow and grow (some things never change) and waited for them to start to change colour. On someone's recommendation we put bags over the hands when they got pretty big (like I said, some things never change). And we waited for those bananas to change colour. The paw paw turned orange and dropped - they were delicious, but the bananas remained deep green.
And then the cyclone came through and dumped our garden about a mile the other side of town.
We never did produce a crop of ripe bananas. I can't say I'm that sorry. I might have had to eat one.
What really got me started on this was my 'other' list. My first list is the list of things I have to do to get home. My 'other' list is the list of things I have to 'do' when I get home. It starts with mundane stuff like finding a place to live, a job and so forth, but pretty quickly it veers off to stuff that doesn't send me straight to sleep.
The list includes visits to a number of places I want to breathe the air of as well as sounds I need to hear once more.
Periodically I turn the list over in my mind; add, subtract as appropriate taking account of the fact that I have a daughter who requires a crash course in being Australian. That got me thinking about Phillip Island which is another place I associate with the time before Dad died (at 36, way way too young - for the sake of your kids put that sun block on!)
We had access to a holiday flat owned by the company dad worked for, near Cowes. One of the things we had to do every time we went down to the island was take a trip out just before dusk to watch the penguin parade. There are 17 species of penguin in the world . The largest are the Emperors, the smallest (at about 1/4 the size of Emperors) are the Fairy Penguins - they fall out of the surf at dusk onto the beach of Phillip Island and make their way up to their nests.
Back then, and I'm talking about no later than the mid-1970s 'it' was a bit of a free-for-all. Some sign posts directed visitors down an unsealed road to a carpark from which one picked ones way towards the end of the scrub where the dunes began. There were signs about the place warning spectators to 'keep quiet' and 'not disturb the penguins' but there were no barriers or barricades.
Sadly, these days, the place has been boarded over so that visitors are herded into a narrow spectator gallery. It's good for the birds though. Mind you we're not supposed to call them Fairy Penguins anymore - though not, apparently for reasons of political correctness, as explained at the Phillip Island Nature Park web site.
Anyway, there is a theme to all of this and it's birds.
About a week ago I had a bath before going to work, a long luxurious soak. I got dressed and came down stairs and I discovered that Monty the Mouth had brought a friend home to play with.
Monty is the stray cat I don't like but can't get rid of. He's a waif/stray. After our cats died I sealed the cat flap. I put up with the little rat faced bastard hurling himself at the door handle for a week before I relented and undid the lock. Because he's not got an owner, having been abandoned, I feel obliged to provide him with some sustenance. I buy tins and biscuits and make sure he always has something to eat.
Mostly he turns his nose up at the stuff I buy. He's also prone to turning his nose up at the off-cuts I reserve for him, until they've been put in the bin. Monty prefers to slum it and eat his food from the rubbish bin (and drink from stagnant pools rather than the water bowl provided).
He'll get up on the kitchen benches in the night and make sure he's not missed out on something; I'm sick and tired of cleaning the little fleabag's paw prints off my white surfaces. He'll drag left overs from the rubbish bin for me to stand in when I come down for a coffee first thing in the morning.
In general Monty the Mouth is a regular feature on my shit list.
As I said I came down from the bath to find that Monty had brought a friend home to play with. The evidence was all over the place: blood, feathers and corpse. Thankfully the corpse was very, very dead. Dead I can deal with no problem. Twitching makes me very angry at being left to deal with it.
Notwithstanding the jug of cold water that sent the little bastard flying through the cat flap he's been back again in the past couple of days with a newly dead fledgling sparrow. By the time I caught up with the little bastard he'd got to almost precisely the same place he'd dumped the previous corpse. Again, thankfully, this one was dead - and right now Monty's the Fairy on the top of the Christmas Tree that is My Shit List.
Now if he'd only focus on mice ...
posted by Enyo @ 10:50 pm
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