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Posts Tagged ‘Danielle de Valera’

A Welcome Christmas Present for a Writer

Posted in Australian authors, Australian writers, Christmas down under, Christmas in Australia, tagged , , , on December 26, 2022| 2 Comments »

Last year, I received a great Christmas present when Kirkus Indie Reviews gave a Starred Review to my latest novel Those Brisbane Romantics.

That was nice. And very unexpected. Only 10% of books reviewed by Kirkus ever receive a Starred Review, and they review thousands annually. Besides, Those Brisbane Romantics is a very Australian novel, and Kirkus Reviews is a US reviewer, possibly the review site for books in the western world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkus_Reviews

This December, I was gobsmacked to learn the novel had been included in Kirkus’s list of 100 Best Indie Books of 2022. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/best-of/2022/indie/books/

What’s going on? The book couldn’t find a publisher in Australia. Why would the US like the book, while it has been largely ignored in Australia?

To be honest, I don’t know. But I’m happy. And grateful.

A great deal of the credit for making the list must surely go to James T Egan of Bookfly Design https://www.bookflydesign.com/ for his beautiful cover, and to Paul Salvette of B B Books http://bbebooksthailand.com/ for his impeccable interior design.     

Thank you, guys, for your help in making the list of 100 Best Indie Books of 2022.

It’s made this old lady very happy.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!   

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A ghost story

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 30, 2021| 2 Comments »

When I was young, I didn’t believe in ghosts. I’d gotten to 27 without ever encountering one, and that was just fine with me. From all the tales I’d read, even if one did appear – and appear seemed to be the main element in the thing: they appeared – they never seemed to tell anyone anything of importance.

So when I went to stay with my favourite aunt in Toowoomba, I didn’t give any thought to the fact that my recently deceased uncle had stayed there not that long ago. I’ll admit to a frisson of relief that I wasn’t in the bedroom he’d used when last he’d visited. My aunt always placed Uncle Arthur as far down the hallway as possible so she wouldn’t be woken in the night by the rattling of his bottles as he sipped on rum, beer, whatever through the night; she was bound to have placed Uncle Charlie there too.

I lay there, that first night, slowly drifting towards sleep, wondering if I would win The Xavier Society Literary Award with my huge, out-of-control first novel, whimsically called, Love the People! I felt I had a good chance and, at twenty-seven, I was impatient for those results, now six months later than the entry form had promised.

I was just falling towards sleep when I felt the presence of something coming up the hallway. It wasn’t a sound, it was a presence. A sense of dread began to fill me. What presence? The thought came into my head: Uncle Charlie. He had been my favourite uncle when he was alive. Why should I be terrified now? But I was.

The presence came up the hallway. Closer. And closer. It stopped in the open doorway to my room, where I lay trembling in my bed. I thought of calling out to my aunt, who was sleeping in the front bedroom across the hall, but what could I say? There was nothing to see. How could I explain my fear to her? I remained silent.

The presence remained paused at my doorway.

I gave way to full-on, atavistic terror. In my head, I began to recite over and over the words, Go away! Go away! I figured if I could just keep on reciting this without pause, nothing of what this thing wished to communicate would be able to get though. (There was no apparition. Nothing appeared; I think I would’ve been less terrified if it had.)

The presence did not go away, in spite of all my mental reciting. In my mind, I kept shouting, Go away! GO AWAY! Then something I can’t properly describe happened. There was a sense of terrible pressure in my mind, as if my brain had been put in a vice. Suddenly I couldn’t keep up my mental shouting anymore. And into this space came a voice saying the word, Rabbit.

Now I had anger mixed with terror. Someone comes back from the dead, terrifies you half to death, and they want to talk to you about Rabbits?

At my reaction, I sensed the presence turning, as if to leave. As it did so, I heard more words in my mind. These words sounded like, “It’s all a load of rubbish anyway.”

My head no longer in a vice, now I was really angry – a good feeling after all the fear. I thought Charlie was being disparaging about my novel, saying it was all a load of rubbish. This was how he always described books he didn’t like, irrespective of their real worth.

The presence moved away down the hall. I lay there trembling until I knew for certain it was gone. Why had it come? What had it been trying to tell me? If only I hadn’t been so frightened. Rabbits?

I was none too happy when the second night rolled around, but whatever it was never tried to communicate with me again. Eight months later, the long-awaited results of The Xavier Society’s Award were announced. My manuscript had come second, beaten by published author Hugh Atkinson’s, whose manuscript was entitled The Rabbits. The Women’s Weekly serialised the book after it came out. It wasn’t a load of rubbish, although it was a very light novel. Charlie didn’t like light novels (for my 9th birthday, he’d given me David Copperfield, putting me off Dickens for life). Remembering this, I understood why he’d said what he’d said.

Still, to this day, I can’t explain what happened.

The manuscript of Love the People! eventually became Those Brisbane Romantics. If you’re interested, you can check it out here: https://books2read.com/u/mVapMp

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Old Family Photos

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 23, 2020| 8 Comments »

The last items I unpacked after the move from Byron were the family photos, some of which I knew had broken glass. It was no surprise, I suppose, that I didn’t get around to themuntil now. The glass in a couple had been broken for years, but I’d lacked the motivation to open the bag, let alone do anything about it.

Having unpacked everything else and feeling particularly strong one day, I tackled the family photos. Only two had glass that needed replacing — the large oval one of my grandmother, my mother’s mother, Claire (Donovan) Doyle, and the small A4-sized one of the wedding of Uncle Frank my mother’s younger brother (there were 12 children in that big Irish family) to a lady called Daphne.

Doyle wedding c. 1937
L to R: George Donovan, Mag Doyle, Frank Doyle, Daphne Doyle, Joe Doyle

Looking at the wedding photo of Frank and Daphne Doyle, it suddenly hit me that I had no wedding photo of my parents. There was nothing. Now why was that?

Part of the reason for this was probably because my mother who was, of course, Roman Catholic, was marrying my father, who was not. In 1936, this meant no church wedding. Indeed, it was something of a scandal in which even Archbishop Duhig became involved. Having been heavily involved in the education of Great Uncle Con’s two children after Con dropped dead in the cow yard at the age of 35, Duhig must’ve felt he had the right to a say in my mother’s life as well. And so he sent a special emissary to Toowoomba to state the case against.

Imagine it. My mother had left school at thirteen. She was a young uneducated woman working as a housemaid in a hotel in Toowoomba. But she resisted the pressure.

And so they were married. On Christmas Eve 1936 without a church service, without a proper wedding, just a tiny affair to which my mother, I’m told wore a blue street length dress she could use later. Both were poor and had few if any savings. My father worked on the foundry floor at the Toowoomba Foundry.

In those days, getting your photograph taken was a Big Deal. One booked a session at a photographic studio and that photo would be the only one you had of yourself for that year. When I was a child we knew of rich families (well, we thought they were rich) who could afford to have a family photograph taken every year. Amazing, we thought; we could only manage such a thing for very special occasions. Still, there were street photographers who roamed the city carrying their heavy portable cameras “Take your photo, sir?” and for the poor, these impromptu shots were often the only photographs they possessed.

But my parents were married on Christmas Eve. I imagine there would’ve been plenty of people for the street photographers to capture, and they didn’t hang around the Registry Office as they usually did. And so there are no photos of my parents’ wedding. Nothing. Zilch.

FOOTNOTE: Frank and Daphne lasted only a few years before she took off with someone else. My parents stayed together until my father died in 1972.

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STOP PRESS on Jack the Cat Looking for a Home

Posted in cat lovers, Cat Protection, Cat Refuges, cats, Danielle de Valera, Far North Coast of NSW, Jack the Cat, Patrick de Valera Manuscript Development Services, South Golden Beach, stories about cats, tagged , , , , , on October 31, 2017| 2 Comments »

This is the latest on Jack, whom my friend Sandy could not take with her when she had to move to Woollongong because of ill health.

Jack’s finally going to his new home! I got an email this morning from the big hearted Bailey at the Cat Refuge in Billinudgel this morning. It read:

Hi Dani,

Jack went to his new home yesterday where a 9 year old terrier was waiting for him as he had recently lost his cat.
The new owners had been waiting for builders to finish doing renovations on their house before they picked him up, it took longer than they intended, but all is done now, and I saw Jack off yesterday afternoon. The new owner promised to send photos of Jack and his new dog, so as soon as I get some, I’ll forward them on to you.
I’ve attached some photos of Jack yesterday before he left, and one in cage ready to go.
Have a lovely evening,
Kind regards,
Bailey 
Such a relief. Now all we have to worry about is whether he and the terrier will get on.

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Brush Turkeys Reign supreme on the Far North Coast

Posted in anecdotes, brush turkeys, bush turkeys, Far North Coast of NSW, Fiction writers, gardening, Indie authors, north coast of nsw, south-east Queensland, true stories, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 21, 2017| 2 Comments »

When I first came to the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, brush turnkeys were not protected. Consequently, a sighting of them was a rare thing. Sometimes as we were driving along we’d see one making its way stealthily through the bush. The kids would be excited. “Look, a brush turkey!” Now, with the advent of their protection, all that has changed. Today they stride confidently around the suburbs, chortling to themselves and ripping up domestic gardens. Nothing is safe. They will even hop up into pot plants and rip them up, too — just for the hell of it.

Brush-Turkey-001

Brush turkey

After losing my little vegie patch twice this year to brush turkeys, I went online to see if there was anything, anything, that might deter them. The web was full of the cries of irate gardeners, and not just from areas close to nature reserves and bush. Apparently the birds are striding around city suburbs as well. Fences don’t work; in spite of their heavy, ungainly appearance, the birds can get over fences ten, eleven feet high — ours like to fly up onto the carport port roof and walk about up there, their claws making nerve wracking sounds on the corrugated iron roofing.

Some people tried scarecrows, with differing results. The people across the road from me tried teddies.

Yard 15X8.5@72

Mostly, though, the consensus on the web was that nothing could be done. I liked my little herb and vegie patch; it provided a nice change from sweating over the content editing of my Brisbane novel. I liked to go out there when the going got tough and pull a few weeds, or just admire the silverbeet plants. Eventually I hit upon the idea of covering the patch with pieces of old aluminium fencing, which a neighbour kindly gave me. The turkeys still prowl about, but at least the parsley is looking healthy, poking up through the gaps in the fence, but something (not turkeys) is eating the silverbeet. And the marigolds.

Consensus on the web is that the only way of dealing with brush turkeys is the catch-and-remove method. You catch them and take them many miles away to the bush or a nature reserve, whichever comes first. As I don’t drive, this option is not available to me. Natural predators? They don’t seem to have any. The cat is no use; the birds are too big, you’d need a cougar to bring them down. As I watch them pacing around the garden in the late afternoon, my heart is full of trepidation. These birds breed every year. If we think it’s bad now, what’s it going to be like next year? And the year after that.

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More Snakes, Pay no Attention

Posted in country life, Far North Coast of NSW, Patrick de Valera Manuscript Development Services, posts about cats, Snakes, South Golden Beach, true stories, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 4, 2017| 7 Comments »

 

three-snakes

I had another snake in my little 2-storey apartment the other day. It’s the weirdest thing. For twenty years I’ve lived here and never had a problem with snakes — except for the night the python came looking to make a meal out of my old cat, who was sleeping near the back door. https://danielledevalera.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/quoth-the-raven-nevermore/

To have two in six weeks is strange. See: https://danielledevalera.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/snake/ This one I found at 4 o’clock in the afternoon at the bottom of the internal staircase. I’d locked the cat in with me from 2 -4 to prevent him hunting and bringing them in while I was having my cuppa-tea-and-a-lie-down. I can only conclude that I must have inadvertently locked the snake in with us when I came back from the beach and shut the doors at two.

A sobering thought.

Whether it was the same snake, come looking for more skinks (they live under my stove), I’m not sure. It certainly looked the same. Same size, six feet, same colour, black. Fortunately, he eventually slid out just the way the other one did, sailing out through the front door, which I’d opened wide for him. But I had a few bad moments before that: I’d lost sight of him when I went to look for a bucket to catch him in. That’s the hard bit. You come back, the snake’s disappeared and you don’t know where it is. All I could do was sit on the sofa in my living room and wait, like the woman in Henry Lawson’s short story, “The Drover’s Wife”.

Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson

In that story, which appears in his collection, While the Billy Boils https://www.amazon.com/While-Billy-Boils-Henry-Lawson/dp/141919383X the woman, seeing a large snake go into the slab hut she and the four children live in (her husband is away six to eighteen months at a time, droving), sets down a saucer of milk and waits through the night for the snake to appear so she can kill it.

Compared to the drover’s wife, I had it easy. But I’m faced with a quandary now. I’ll have to start keeping the front door closed when I’m out and keeping the cat flap closed, even when I’m home. The old cat has been coming and going through the front door for fourteen years. It worries me that he might be chased by one of the many loose dogs in South Golden Beach, run for the safety of his door and find it shut. But I don’t like the idea of six-foot black snakes sailing around the place whenever they feel like it, and I hate the idea of encountering one at night. I seem to have no option. The snake repellers on the internet have opponents and proponents. I’ll probably try one. In the meantime, I hope to retrain the cat to use the back door only, but I don’t like my chances.

(For reasons I can’t explain, this post is showing up strangely, even though it’s written as usual in 12 pt TNR in the original document and nothing untoward is showing in the WordPress menu. Another internet mystery. These little things are sent to try us.)

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A Vietnam Vet’s Review of “Remains to be Seen”

Posted in cat lovers, cats, Colonel David H Hackworth, Colonel David Hackworth, Danielle de Valera, Dropping Out: a tree change novel-in-stories, Far North Coast of NSW, fiction editors, post-traumatic stress disorder, Uncategorized, Vietnam veterans, Vietnam war stories, war stories, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 4, 2017| 7 Comments »

I recently had occasion to reread the in-depth review (below) by Paul Smith, and thought his unusual take on the story might be of interest to others.

Paul Smith

Paul Smith

Back in July 2014, he reviewed “Remains to be Seen”, the 3rd story in my linked short story collection entitled Dropping Out: a tree change novel-in-stories. Paul has a blog at  http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com.au/ The unusual title for the blog comes from a cat he once owned, which he and his partner called Two Grey Toes.

Two Grey Toes

Two Grey Toes

Below is Paul’s review of “Remains”, reprinted with his permission.

VIETNAM VETERAN BUCKS THE TREND

REMAINS TO BE SEEN BY Danielle de Valera – Some thoughts

Remains-cream-khaki

What is it about human nature that, no matter how much some blokes get blown off course, their homing instinct swings them back around so that their deepest urgings drive them to have a crack at what evolution made them for. Just being born male is enough to be led in the wrong direction. Peer pressure to transgress for the hell of it is just the start. Being born working class ensures that options that lead to independent success, taken for granted by the privileged few, are rarely considered. Going to war all but seals the fate of too many who take that route, whether voluntarily or by ballot. Existing, even if only briefly, as an agent of human destructiveness all but strips away the tissue of connectivity that makes us human – all BUT! The bond that men form with one another when the life of each depends on the loyalty of others endures more widely than marriage. That bond makes it difficult in some cases to overcome the nearly universal condescension of their gender towards women. Women therefore exist in the lives of such men as a convenience at best or an unavoidable encumbrance. Children, the evolutionary point of there being men and women in the first place, are a fearful and even distasteful prospect. Yet, here’s the story of a bloke and his woman, mired in pitiful relationships with his peers, who choose each other and embrace the prospect of having children – even if the likelihood of failure can’t be ruled out.

Danielle de Valera has done something I once thought I would never tolerate: writing in the first person about the life of a Vietnam Veteran. I first encountered this phenomenon in a writing course. One of the other students wrote about an incident in Vietnam, not only as though it had happened, but as though he’d been part of the action. I was incensed! In that moment I understood the outrage of indigenous people when a non-indigenous person writes (or paints etc.) as though they are indigenous. Anyone remember Wanda Koolmatrie? Or Eddie Burrup? Well, Ms de Valera has cured me of my possessiveness. (Yep, I am a VV.) I think what made the difference was that, in her use of first person narration, she does not come across as a “wannabe”. Her extensive knowledge of David Hackworth, one of the most acclaimed Vietnam Veterans certainly helps her achieve an authentic sense of “being there” without intending to claim as much. She also strikes the right tone in narrating events in Mullumbimby in the mid eighties – not as they actually happened, but as they would have, given the cast of characters in her story. There can be little doubt that she was there – as participant and as observer.

Ms de Valera’s story alternates between events in Mullumbimby in post-Vietnam war times and moments in the thick of it in-country, as we used to say. Each episode is a panel of an unfolding mural. The first combines inconsistent messages about the Japanese – as a former enemy on the one hand, and as purveyors of the stuff of our prosperity on the other. Being denied entry to the Ex-Services Club provokes cynicism and confirms the sense and fact of isolation for the two Vietnam Vets. This commonplace episode resonates with the animosity of Second World War Returned Servicemen towards Vietnam Veterans until 1987 or thereabouts. As they drive away in the slashing rain the story segues to an operation in Vietnam, as chopper-borne Diggers are dropping through the rain into a clearing for a rendezvous with US forces for what was to be a joint operation. Not for the last time in this story would the Diggers be let down, and worse, by their so called allies. Do we hear the voice of David Hackworth, disillusioned with his own country’s military, in this story? It wasn’t just the Diggers who questioned the professionalism of their overlords. Each of the alternating snapshots has such issues embedded in the narrative.

This is a story that can be re-read numerous times without exhausting all that is hidden between the lines. It is a Coming Home story that, in this and other works by Ms de Valera, unfolds over a number of years. That thought suggests a link with the film that bears the name of its genre. Is Michael O’Neill an Aussie version of Luke Martin – emotionally rather than physically disabled– who decides that the best way to help his mates is to escape the horror of their post-war life (for its destructive nature is every bit as horrific as their experience in Vietnam) is to throw himself into something resembling a “normal” life? Does Azure thus have her Lucky Out in Michael’s self administered “cleansing”?

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Snake!

Posted in anecdotes, cats, Danielle de Valera, Far North Coast of NSW, Humour, north coast of nsw, Snakes, South Golden Beach, stories about cats, tagged , , , , , , , on January 11, 2017| 12 Comments »

Here in the sub-tropics, a mile from the Queensland border, it’s all pretty laid-back. Flouting council laws, many denizens of my suburb like to let their dogs run loose — I’ve had to cut a hole in the front and back screen doors so my cats can get inside when the dogs chase them. For the same reason, I can’t lock the glass doors when I’m out during the day. Last week, I’d just come home from town and changed into my everyday rags when it oozed out from under the fridge.

Three feet. Four feet. Five feet. Six.

A black snake.

black-snake

I was barefooted, as I always am in summer. The snake was three feet away. Fortunately, it was only 1 o’clock in the afternoon, noon if you’re not on Daylight Saving Time. What you don’t want is to find yourself with a snake loose in the house when night comes down. The electric lights throw shadows, and it’s much harder to see under furniture etc.

What to do? I’d had snakes in the house before. My now-old cat used to bring them in when he was young. Once on a visit my daughter inadvertently took a shower with a yellow-bellied black. Apparently, the cat had brought him in, taken him upstairs and lost him. The snake had then concealed himself behind a pot plant in the shower recess. My daughter’s screams when she saw him halfway through her shower could’ve woken heaven. All these snakes I’ve managed to catch by upending an empty bucket over them, sliding an unwanted  vinyl record in its cover under the bucket, inverting it, and placing a weight over it. After that, it’s a simple matter of walking to the nature reserve with the snake in the bucket and releasing it.

As luck would have it, all the buckets were outside, full of water. I nicked out thru the front door, leaving the sliding door open and rushed back with an emptied bucket. If I could just get it over the snake, I figured, I could take my time after that.

I returned just in time to see the last foot of black tail disappearing into a rolled-up hall runner lying on the living room floor. Well, I thought, if I could block the ends, that would give me time to think how to get him into the bucket from there. And maybe get some help — though on the three occasions in the past I’ve had snakes in the house, I’ve dealt with them alone; my neighbours are mostly women.

Fortunately, black snakes are more obliging than browns, one variety of which, the tigers, will attack you if you disturb them during the mating season. While I was trying to block one end of the hall runner with books, I noticed a snake sliding under the bookcase and slithering out the wide-open front door.

Was it the same snake? It looked like the same snake. As Gertrude Stein would have said, “A snake is a snake, is a snake.”

gertrude-stein Gertrude Stein

Or were there two, and I still had the other in the hall runner? I dragged the hall runner out of the apartment, all the while wondering if another snake was going to appear from the unplugged end. But there was nothing.

Why it happened took me a while to figure out. In twenty years of living here, I’ve never had a snake come in of its own volition, except for the python that came in thru the back door one night a couple of years ago, see: https://danielledevalera.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/quoth-the-raven-nevermore/

Apparently, snakes eat skinks, and I had a family of these striped lizards living under my refrigerator. (When you can’t have proper screen doors, these things happen.)

skink

They’re very handsome, and quite intelligent, and they like to eat the food the cat leaves behind, a form of al fresco dining. Perhaps the snake came across the skink when it was outside taking the air after lunch and, when it fled to the safety of the refrigerator, the snake followed it inside. That’s all I can figure.

Getting rid of the skinks will not be easy; I don’t want to kill them. Now, whenever I return from somewhere, I always do a check of the apartment. However, I’m very aware that these checks can only go so far. I’m keeping a wary eye on the floor at all times.

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Celebrating the Winter Solstice in Summer down under

Posted in Australian authors, Australian writers, books about cats, cat lovers, cats, Christmas, Christmas down under, Danielle de Valera, Dropping Out: a tree change novel-in-stories, e-books, Far North Coast of NSW, Fiction writers, hippies, Indie authors, MagnifiCat the novel, north coast of nsw, posts about cats, Short stories, stories about cats, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 22, 2016| 7 Comments »

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found it strange celebrating a winter solstice festival in the middle of summer. As Christmas approaches and we swelter here in Australia, praying for rain on Christmas Day so we won’t be bathed in sweat while eating the Christmas dinner, we find ourselves looking longingly at pictures like this.

christmas-roomOh, how we wish …

All’s fine with me, up here on the Far North Coast of New South Wales. To anyone who bought Dropping Out, the collection of linked short stories I put out in early October at https://www.amazon.com/Dropping-Out-change-novel-stories-ebook/dp/B01LXF9QEB I’d like to say thank you.

droppingout_e-cover

And so I currently have a little cat fairy tale called “Perversity” going free at: http://www.catsstories.com/perversity.html If you’re in the mood for a cat fairy tale, this 700 word story could be for you. The story’s zany illustration (below) was done by my daughter Tara Sariban.

taras-cat

While all’s well with me, my old cat seems to be failing.

timmy-p-72

He’s fourteen, and for some months now, he’s been losing weight. I know animals tend to lose weight as they grow older; a device nature has to lessen the load on the heart, but his weight loss came on suddenly (since the end of August), so it’s a cause for concern. I’ve had various tests done on him, and he’s due for a blood test for FIV (feline HIV) and feline leukemia on 3 January. He’s seems well and happy, and he’s eating well, so at this point, it’s a bit of an unknown.

I plan to spend the first six months of next year putting the scenes for the sequel to MagnifiCat (https://www.amazon.com/MagnifiCat-Animal-Fantasy-Danielle-Valera-ebook/dp/B00H0ORWQY) into the right order.

 

mcat-cover-300

After that, I’d like to spend some time finding a title and cover for the Brisbane novel I hope to put out in 2018. Because it’s a long work (108,000 words, at present), I’ll start content editing it in the second half of ’17. That way I’ll have plenty of time to pull the whole thing together, line edited, copy-edited and proofed by September ’18. I’m a tortoise at everything I do, I need all that time just to get all the various processes right.

For the rest of this year, though, I’m not planning to do much at all, except catch up with a lot of things I’ve been avoiding doing on the internet. If you’ve been working hard all year, I hope you too find time to kick back and take it easy.

time-to-recharge

Merry Christmas, everyone! And a safe and happy New Year.

Dani

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The Dropping Out Book Launch and Other Disasters

Posted in alcohol, Book launches, cats, chance, e-books, fiction authors, Humour, Indie authors, north coast of nsw, posts about cats, tagged , , , , , , on October 28, 2016| 10 Comments »

droppingout_e-cover

Sitting here waiting for my son and his wife and kids to wake up. They leave to return to the UK today. I hadn’t seen my son for ten years, and I’d never seen my grandchildren, who are nine and five. They’ve been here for three weeks, on and off when they weren’t exploring the countryside in their rented campervan, and it’s going to be a wrench, I know.

I sit here sipping coffee, trying to fortify myself for the ordeal to come. Fortunately, my daughter, who’s up from Melbourne, will be here until Monday, so I won’t have to lose them all at once.

Attachment. The Buddhist masters have always talked of the evils of attachment. Not that it’s evil in itself, but that it causes us humans so much pain from loss, or even the fear of it. But then, I wonder, how would we care properly for our young if we weren’t attached to them? Attachment seems to be hardwired into us, with all that it entails.

There’s one being in my household who won’t be sad to see the whole caravan go. That’s my cat Tim, who’s spent the past 14 years in the peace and quiet of my solitary existence, and who’s never had to deal up close with little people.

timmy-p-72

He had to be taken to the vet yesterday afternoon with nervous exhaustion. The vet gave him a B shot. I could’ve done with a B shot myself.

I’m still recovering from the book launch last night, which turned out to be a comedy of errors. The first night I chose at the hotel for drinks turned out to be too close to my daughter’s arrival from Melbourne. So I moved the night from Wednesday to Thursday — usually a quiet night for pubs. To my horror, after I’d notified all the people concerned, I discovered that the pub was holding a huge band night with a $30.00 cover charge that Thursday. So I moved the night to Friday.

I had envisaged a nice quiet book launch on a quiet night in a peaceful garden setting. Some food, some drinks, nice conversation; a good way to put a full stop to the book I’d just completed.

loud-singer

We could hear the music blocks away as we parked the car. After that, it was all shouting, as we tried to make ourselves heard over the din. More than half of us were well over sixty, and we had a particularly hard time. “What was that?” we kept saying to one another. “Say that again.” I envied the cat, at home watching TV and enjoying his newfound B status, nerves all nicely taken care of.

Anyone reading this who was invited but couldn’t come, you didn’t miss anything. But as they say, it’s all part of growing up and being human. And these things have a habit of being funny later on.

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