ol’ boot
What’s in a name?
Not much, I hear you say. What’s in the name ‘boot’? Not much, I’d claim.
When I first signed up to Scrine, I thought that I was merely inspired by a colleague’s surname (akin to boot) and a conversation about it with a friend. I even received an envelope addressed to ‘Miss Boot’. I have it somewhere still.
A short time ago I was in our spare room, merrily fossicking.
Ah, let us just linger here a moment and enjoy that word ….. lumpy, bumpy and full of promise, isn’t it?
Fossicking, assessing, discarding and digging up old bits and bobs, including the aforementioned ‘Miss Boot’ envelope.
I uncovered a hidden treasure. A few of my favourite comic books. One I should save for a whole other post. Conchy, by James Childress, is deserving of far more than a mere one or two of my words.
Another comic book rediscovered was The Perishers, by Maurice Dodd, drawn by Dennis Collins. What a romp this book is! Beautifully inked and full of life’s oddities and silliness. Just sighting the cover is amusement enough.
Two of the main characters are an orphaned boy named Wellington, and his faithful, if slightly dotty, sheepdog.
Turning the pages in simple joy, I was stopped mid-reminiscence when I read the name of Wellington’s dear friend. Boot. Boot!
Lo these many years, I believed my name here on Scrine was a random event. A mildly amusing thought, turned into a long-lasting nickname. One that has leapt out of the screen and gone travelling around the world with me. One that has seen my cupboard overflow with boot like shapes. An amusing tickle, but nothing more.
But, no. Here is one of my most beloved characters of pen and ink, nosing his way through the pages, bearing the name of Boot all the way.
How is it that I forgot this? Is it totally unrelated? Or is my boot-obsessed brain playing 20 year tricks on me and messing with my head in unexpected ways.
What else lies in there? Was my name previously Becky or Jane? Perhaps they are long lost sisters? Or, tormentor in the case of the latter.
Just what is my brain trying to tell me? Will boot have future significance? More likely, I’ll cause it to have future significance and think more of it than was ever there.
Ah, heedless of all these rambling thoughts, allow me to raise a glass. A toast to ol’ Boot. A toast to the now deceased Dodd and Collins. A toast to whimsy and adventure.
to Boot.
my heart, in bloom
Late winter may not be the season that many think of as beauty and blooming wonders, but for me, in Europe, that’s what it will always be.
For someone growing up in a country of sun and sometimes rain, snow is a mystical thing. A manifestation of stories and imagination. More real than fairies, but not by much.
Snow - real, white, fall from the sky like magic, snow - is far better than I ever imagined it could be. I imagined some pretty amazing things, but nothing came close to how good it really is.
It’s been a few weeks since we came home, but still my heart is lost here. It’s over there somewhere, with the footprints of the birds, lost in time, between worlds and between places, wandering among the catacombs.
The stories, when I come here to write, to leave a tale of our wondrous wanderings, come out jumbled, tangled up in the feelings that travelled with us.
The one clear picture, the one that I can still feel and touch, is the snow.
And there, if I look, is where I can see my heart. Not lost, after all. Just faraway.
I suspect I may actually have been somewhat lost all my life in this hot, dry country and, for a few glorious weeks, I was home.
Snow.
listen to Paul Kelly’s ‘Adelaide’ as you read this, if you will
[click here] to listen.
Travelling is one thing. Being back in your home city is quite another.
Travelling brings you more stories than you could ever tell, though they are the ones we need to tell around a tall glass of beer or a coffee or two, as I bore you with the photos.
Being back rubs out your senses. It is banal and ordinary. It is full of the modern western trappings. Chemists with chocolates and corner shops with deep fried everything. It has tracks and grooves and ruts. It is the same as it ever was.
It is not perhaps, in itself, a bad place. It is a known place. It suffers from the malaise of non-adventure.
It has places you can reach without even thinking. It requires you not to think.
It has street signs and instructions that need not be understood. It requires no understanding.
It is not special. It is ordinary.
It is not bad.
It just is.
back in 5 minutes
Sorry, we’ve just popped out for 5 minutes. We should be back sometime soon*.
* Say, sometime next month…
hot
Yesterday marked the first cool day following the single worst heat wave in my memory. I’ve been through a few bad ones, many without the gracious gift of air-conditioning, but nothing felt as bad as this one.
It broke so many records that it’s not really worth talking about. It broke our people, across the country it broke our lifelines and our transport. For me, the sight of a buckled trainline is as good a sign as any that we’re in a heat wave.
Sometimes, I try to explain why a heatwave isn’t just a few hot days. I’ve given up trying. It’s a heat storm. It’s chaotic and it’s dangerous. It’s disruptive and it can be deadly. It can too often end in devastating bushfires. And for huge parts of the country it has.
In SA, so far we’ve been relatively lucky. There have been deaths from the heat and a few minor fires, but for those in the East, the bushfires still rage and cause havoc and unbearable losses of life. This country is large and crazy, as while many of us burn, some of the rest are coping with horrendous floods. It isn’t over and I can’t imagine what those in Victoria are going through.
Sometimes when I write these things, I try to finish on a positive note and show the good in even the worst of times. But considering the state of the rest of our country, I’ll leave that for another day.
To an end to all of this. My thoughts are with you.