How will you travel today?
Land or Sea?
When your bus escapes to the countryside…
When your moorings break loose…
…and you drift upstream it’s time to head for dry land.
…where you never know who you might meet.
Perhaps a day at the beach would be best…
…but keep an eye on the weather.
Or you may never be seen again…
Featuring Dexter, Josie and Alfie with Antipodean Stripy Stranger.
‘…and the drums did not stop. I can still hear them in my head when I try to sleep. That was how the hunters passed messages safely across the dangerous wild lands; a complex drum language they had created with what means they had. Drums are easy to make with an endless supply of animal skins and pliable green wood from the vast new forests.’
‘Ah, that is interesting, drums have been an important part of many cultures, probably from the very beginnings of social awareness. Actually I play drums, love drumming, I’m in a bhangra band and play the dohl.’
My interviewer certainly seemed to be taking seriously my recounting of my visit to 2099 and he was far from the aloof official I had imagined. Even as he spoke, his fingers were drumming a rhythm on the desk between us.
‘The hunters certainly used them for entertainment as well, but drums also had another important use. A whole group of drummers gathered to escort me back to the bunker. I was put on a horse, clinging on for dear life, but feeling safe surrounded by guards, hunters and drummers. Off we marched, like being in an epic film, the drummers beating to ward off the dangerous animals, the hunters carrying flaming torches, even though it was broad daylight. The drums did not stop and no beast came near us.’
‘It sounds as if you were well cared for by the hunters, even if it was hardly the life style you were used to, so why did they return you to the bunker people?’
‘The leaders were in some sort of negotiation, there is interaction between the two societies. The hunters supply them with fresh meat and what passed as vegetables and fruit. In return I think they got medicines and medical advice … and mushrooms, that was all the bunker people could grow underground. Anyway, Doctor Chowdry needed me for his plan to travel back to 2023 and I agreed, it seemed like my only chance to get back.’
‘Yes I am so excited to be meeting Doctor Chowdry soon and so is my boss.’
‘Can’t you tell me who your boss is?’
‘No, no, protocol and all that. All you need to know is that we both believe your story, or at least we are taking the position that every word is true unless we can prove otherwise. But to be frank, it is going to be nearly impossible to get world leaders and experts to listen to what the doctor has to say, let alone act on it.’
My positive mood evaporated. I liked this chap, even though I had no idea who he was, but it didn’t sound as if he or his boss had much influence in the real world.
Stuck in this beautiful rural hideaway, that apparently belonged to The Boss, we were not prisoners, but nor did we have any means of getting away or accessing the media. We had been here nearly two months with only phone calls with my family. In that time I had learnt a lot about the second half of the 21st century from my time travel companions, Doctor Chowdry and Belinda Billings, but I feared they were not learning much about 2023. They were mesmerised by television and radio; I tried to shield them from programmes that I had previously sneakily enjoyed, but now saw as utter rubbish compared with more important issues.
The doctor had early on realised that time travel was simple compared to the task he had set himself, to persuade people to care for Gaia and live in peace. He could at least understand, from television news and serious documentaries, how countries and their leaders could get so wrapped up in the disasters of the moment and never see the bigger picture. Empty talk he called it, so many summits and meetings, everyone talking and nobody doing anything.
As for me, I had to face the fact that I was as guilty as anyone else of letting humanity sleepwalk to disaster. I had been wrapped in a cosy world of husband, children, work, friends and fun and even when I was able to return to my family it could never be cosy again.
Bored at home – why not go on a trip?
Perhaps something more adventurous…
…or do you prefer comfort?
Careful on deck…
…don’t get left behind.
Perhaps you will be safer on dry land.
Be adventurous, ignore the signs…
Many of us have been watching a new BBC Sunday evening drama, Ten Pound Poms, prompting friends to ask how it compared with my family’s experience. The brief answer is completely different and I have found myself being irritated by some aspects of the series, not enough to stop me watching it though! In the drama it is the 1950s and the characters sail out to arrive in Sydney six weeks later, six seconds later for viewers. They are taken on a bus to a migrant camp, winding through bushland till some Nissan huts hove into view. My first annoyance was we had no idea how far away from Sydney they were, all it takes is for a character to say ‘blimey, a hundred miles from the city…’
Anyway, there they were with Nissan huts, dreadful looking outside ‘dunnies’ ( toilets ) and shower blocks. My running irritation is that one of the main characters, Kate the nurse, has make up more suited to modern reality shows or a girls night out. Her eyebrows are ridiculous and in the Australian heat her makeup would be running down her face, not that matron at the hospital would have allowed her to wear such makeup!
The Australians they meet are mostly awful, but so are some of the migrant characters; there are a lot of running stories packed in to this series. They seem to be in the middle of nowhere, but also near a country town, a hospital, the sea and some very swanky houses. What themes do ring true in this drama are the treatment of the Aborigines, who were not counted as humans in the census till the 1960’s and the fact that English children were sent out to Australia as orphans, but many had parents who didn’t know where they had gone.
Perth, Western Australia in the 1960’s
My family’s story is not as dramatic, for any of you who are watching the television series. It took Mum and Dad only six months from the time of applying to us all getting on a chartered migrant flight at Heathrow in October 1964. They chose Perth, Western Australia and we had a ‘sponsor’ who was a chap Dad knew ‘from the office’, the two families had never met. He met us at Perth airport at 1am and took us to the caravan he had booked for us. A week later my parents had found a house to rent. If we had needed to go to a migrant camp I’m sure my mother would not have stepped on the plane! By Christmas they had bought a house on a quarter acre block in a new suburb. Migrants were told that all houses were built on a quarter acre block, that idea didn’t last, but our house had natural bushland.
My novel Quarter Acre Block is inspired and informed by our family’s experience, but not autobiographical. It is told from the point of view of the daughter, who may have some similarities to me… and of the mother. Mum helped me with the adult experience point of view. In the rented house in an older suburb Mum said the only neighbour who talked to her was Dutch, but at our new house we quickly became friends with our new neighbours, who were dinky di Aussies from the goldfields of Kalgoorlie.
The lifestyle migrants looked forward to..
We knew little about Aborigines, I guess we assumed they were enjoying their lifestyle out in ‘the bush.’ We knew nothing about migrant children and stolen Aboriginal children being abused in orphanages.
‘In the nineteen sixties many ‘ten pound pommies’ had never left England before and most expected never to return or see loved ones again. George Palmer saw Australia as a land of opportunities for his four children, his wife longed for warmth and space and their daughter’s ambition was to swim in the sea and own a dog. For migrant children it was a big adventure, for fathers the daunting challenge of finding work and providing for their family, but for the wives the loneliness of settling in a strange place.’
Only 99 pence to download to Kindle or buy the paperback for ten pounds.
Have you been watching Ten Pound Poms, or have you or your family had experience of migrating to another country?
Feeling too hot?
Take a trip to the seaside.
Don’t forget to turn the sea off before you leave.
Time to retreat to the shade.
Sun or shade, which do you prefer?
Far from people not talking about cancer, I have found people are happy to talk about it if they know you have joined the club.
Someone I don’t know very well asked me to stay behind after a club Zoom meeting, personal not club business. I was puzzled and everyone else felt obliged to leave. I have noticed at paid for Zoom meetings, not the free sort where you get timed out after forty minutes, there are people who just disappear, others who wave goodbye the moment it officially ends and then there are ‘only the sad and lonely’ left, reluctant to leave, keen to squeeze out a last bit of conversation or gossip about those who have already left…
Anyway, it turned out her husband had been diagnosed with prostate caner and was due to have radiotherapy. The fact that he was having it in a totally different place, body and hospital, did not put her off asking about my experiences.
In the middle of our busy local little Sainsbury on a Saturday morning I bumped into one of my neighbours who had an update. It was only falling off his bike and breaking his pelvis, that resulted in hospital blood tests revealing a rare blood cancer. We had a long chat about chemotherapy between the chocolate biscuits and the food bank.
Apart from the daily tiny anastrozole tablet and the twice daily huge adcal tablets, fortunately chewable, I have to have six infusions at six monthly intervals of Zoledronic acid. A week before is the blood test and booking that is wonderfully efficient at my hospital. Phone up oncology outpatients blood test line. They answer straight away and book you an appointment with no fuss.
The same nurse does blood tests all day long and soon calls you in. I feel like I know her and assume she knows why I’m there…
‘Have you got a blood form.’
’ No, I thought it was all on the computer.’
‘Who’s your consultant?’
My mind goes completely blank.
‘What are your ailments?’
‘Ailments? I haven’t got any ailments.’
‘Where was your cancer?’
‘Oh.. that.. breast.’
She narrowed the choice of consultant down to two and I recognised the name. A quick phone call and she knew what was being tested. We lay people think ‘a blood test’ will miraculously reveal all possible medical problems and presume there are at most three different kinds of tests, because they usually take three phials of blood.
The following week I headed confidently to Yellow Zone A, where I had the previous two infusions, only to find the waiting room in darkness and the desk deserted. There was a note pinned to the window. TIU unit moved to Purple Zone Level Two Cardiology Department. I don’t know what TIU actually stands for or why it would be in cardiology. Back down the corridor, back past Costa coffee, WH Smith and the toilets, down another corridor, up two flights of stairs. There were signs along the way, but once you leave stairwells and main corridors you are confronted with a series of swinging double doors and are not sure how far to go without ending up in an operating theatre or resuscitation room. I found a waiting area that said ‘wait here till called’, but how would they know I was here and what I was here for? I pushed some more doors and found a large room with an island in the middle and a person.
I was in the right place and had a nice young male nurse, who unfortunately couldn’t get the needle in. That always happens and I feel guilty for putting them under stress, you can’t go away and leave them in peace to concentrate. If you have had all your lymph nodes taken out, you are not allowed to use that arm ever again for anything, needles, even blood pressure band. So I only have one arm for them to use and my hand is the only part they can get into. Eventually he had to ask one of the other nurses who took a few tries. I wonder if it’s universal among the medical profession that patients are always told we will just ‘feel a little prick’ whatever is going in or coming out of our veins. I asked her if they are ever defeated and she said ‘No, well hardly ever…’ I suggested a scenario where the desperate nurse can’t find anywhere to put the needle except… ‘I’m just going to pop the needle into your jugular, just a tiny prick…’
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What better accolade could a blogger ask for?
This was our book club book this month and it was really interesting and an enjoyable read. Apart from learning a lot about Antarctic and Arctic exploring the many human snippets were fascinating. One of the leading officers would stay up writing till 2am , though he had to rise at 5am. As well as keeping his official journal he had promised a good friend he would keep a personal journal. Writers and insomniacs will empathise. I have enough trouble packing for a week’s holiday, imagine packing supplies for four years including live bullocks… I bet they did not worry about catering for the crew’s dietary requirements and allergies. It’s also of note that many serving in the navy had gone to sea at thirteen or fourteen, no snow flakes on board…
When at last you get that Tonka truck you always longed for.
Missing No Mow May? Let it Bloom June is here.
Or perhaps you would prefer Jurassic June.
How about Meandering Monday.
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 