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Tag: reading

When we were at the caravan park, all this happened

The Book Keeper3 Comments on When we were at the caravan park, all this happened

It was the same as every caravan park we go to; that micro-village, micro-home-place where it’s possible to get to the end of what you need to do and then just sit and look at things. Like your feet in thongs, which are suddenly kind of interesting.

You can look at anything; even the toilet block and the bin area become interesting because they’re so busy and necessary.

You can watch all those kids running past or riding past, first singly and then in clots, and then in  teams because all the kids start to clump together and form underworld games that go all evening and then disperse as soon as the first kid gets called back for tea.

Then, after tea, the kids clang together again and the game goes on even though no one actually said anything. They just come out into the road, still chewing, and look to see if any other kids are done yet. As soon as someone rides past they just join in.

It’s good that things haven’t really changed.

When we got there it was evening:

  • People still driving in were going slowly to get their bearings, find the toilet block and look with frowning faces at all the sites in case someone is on their site by mistake. There it is. That’s ours. It’ll do.
  • Some arrivals were already setting up with tense faces in case something’s wrong with the tent or they discover something’s been left at home. Like all the beer.
  • Settlers were at the point where they could sit back in camping chairs and look at their feet in thongs and check the ice in the esky and listen to the idea of chops for tea.
  • Young people stand around their sites next to little tents and huge eskies and open cans and nod to each other, agreeing with everything because life is good.
  • Young parents look exhausted no matter what time of day it is. Their heads swing from side to side scanning every angle of the park, the road, their tent, the world. The mind of the young parent remains on high alert. They examine the air and the temperature and look for bees. They think about nutrition and air mattresses. They think they might have a drink but never actually get to it.

We are grandparents and so can set our stuff up free of all that now. Nothing goes wrong. We brought everything we needed. The grandchildren’s faces light up in amazement to see us there even though they knew we were coming. We set out all our stuff carefully and look at the sky and the sea. We examine the camp kitchen and note the recycling faculties. We compare everything to What We’ve Seen Before.

At our camp:

  • We eat whatever there is. First night doesn’t matter.
  • There is a book and a drink stuck in the side of every camp chair.
  • The sun goes down and the mossies come out.
  • The grandchildren won’t go to sleep.
  • The park kids buzz past with purposeful faces.
  • The sky is orange on the horizon and black ink up high. The stars came out. The tidal beach breathes seaweed and sand.
  • Families argue and caravan doors slam everywhere.
  • Esky lids bang up and down all evening.

When I wake up it is morning but still dark:

  • The air is one long fresh drink of water
  • Some people are already up and sitting in camping chairs looking at their relaxed crossed feet in thongs.
  • The toilets are warm and comforting.
  • A few kids are out riding bikes
  • There are already kids on the jumping pillow.
  • Magpies everywhere
  • An old couple across the little road are packing up
  • A man down the row is asleep on the ground half in and half out of a little tent.

People come out of tents and caravans slowly and stand there yawning and scratching at bites and with no need to hurry.

There are bottles and cans on the floor of the outside kitchen and a small crate of dishes and a bottle of detergent left there. There are two jumpers and a towel slung over the swimming pool gate. A little terrier is waiting outside the ladies toilets.

Three kids walk past the toilets side by side still in pyjamas and one says, ‘Wait, I’ll ask my mum.’  When I walk through the caravans to our camp, a man calls out, ‘Who left the lid off the esky?’ And someone inside the caravan says, ‘It’s busted’. And the man sits back down in his camping chair and looks down at his thongs. It’s good to be able to do these important things in good places where we are safe. From war.

A dish cloth was all that was needed

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Parked outside the shop is a car with a trailer holding a red air compressor, which is secured with broad yellow straps. There is a vinyl square cushion strapped against its flank. This cushion is a square the colour of caramel and is covered in dust.

We once had this lounge suite; the seat was three cushions side by side and the back was one long rectangular slab. A dish cloth was all that was needed to remove jam or drawings in chalk, or blood. Under the cushions there were broad straps webbed from end to end and that gradually sank over the years. The arms were made of wood with thick wrists and carved hard elbows. When we got rid of ours, there were matchbox cars and marbles caught in the webbing.  

It was a good couch for reading.

Home alone, or where everything is

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There’s a pair of gumboots on the floor. There’s a fruit bowl with the ends of three bananas just seeing over the edge. And a stack of paperbacks placed by me yesterday right there with care. Carpentaria is on the top with the bookmark in page 22, place by me this morning right there with bliss with coffee and toast.

There’s washing not folded.

There washing folded not put away. Not mine.

There’s a lego model lying about in tiny crystal pieces. This model, an ice-cream van, even has tiny lego coins and tiny green lego iceblocks made of clear green plastic that looks like glass. There’s a boy with a skateboard and a dog, all part of the ice cream van, left there on the cupboard not quite put together.

There’s a set of MASH, The Recovery Collection, every season, pulled out and begun. Cups and plates on the sink, tin cans and jars, a chopping board, unread letters, a lemon.

Some fabric cooling in a coffee dye that’s mine another project not another one says my mother but it is: another one. My mother in law, Mary, left a bag of stuff that she never finished. I took a bit of wool out of it. I’m going to do something with it.

There’s a puzzle left on the floor, not finished because one letter is missing. So it’s always going to be unfinished. Still, the grandsons pull it out and fiddle. Encouraging any letter to soothe the blank space, but nothing will agree. So it’s left there again. Undone. What’s not there outranks what’s there. We won’t part with what we don’t have.

There’s a box of wood shavings that smell like wine and a computer chord abandoned next to the fireplace. There are three toilet rolls and a cork with a pin in it, treasure for a later game. A doll’s house my grandfather made me, now filled with mostly matchbox cars and stones.

There’s a series of windows looking out at cold hopeful August.

There’s a stack of photos everyone’s been looking through because the person who took them is lost to us now, and because what’s not here outranks what’s here.

Unsquared again! And the boy who bought his sister a bookmark

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A big old straggling family come into the shop. Lots of them and stretched across a few generations. It was raining outside, the wind blowing it against the door. All of them had rain on their shoulders. One man was wiping if off his glasses. A girl texted on her phone with the rain misted all over it. They were lively and unorganized, so I gave them Dave Brubeck’s Unsquare Dance (on my Boombox speaker hidden away behind a pile of Dickens).

‘Oh my God, remember this song? Remember this movie?’ A young man elbowed an older man, an uncle maybe, who didn’t respond; he was looking at a biography of Mao.

The young man moved into a small private dance.

The family began to disperse. Some back outside, some into Classics, some into their phones. The dancing man continued on next to me. He used just two soft square feet of carpet, eyes closed, one hand still holding a copy of Treasure Island, the volume he had picked up just as Brubeck began his idea.

The family talked in small groups. Rotated and change their gestures. Head to head; an argument about tall ships, chin and eyes showing authority. There is whispering, hissing, and then pushing. Family member are on phones, on knees. The dancing man still scratching the beat in the air. An old lady, a grandmother maybe, looked at him over the top of her glasses. She has a copy of Wolf Hall. Later she puts it back. The music ends, and the young man straightens up unconcerned and moves into the front room. My playlist moves to Pavlov Stelar’s Hit me Like a Drum. The old lady suddenly becomes mobile and warm and strong. She dances three steps, one after the other. Then she stops and looks at me sternly. She moves into another room.

I play Alexis Ffrench’s At Last, and a lady in Gardening sighs and puts her head on one side. Who is she? Is she with them?

There’s another argument. What’s the capital of Romania? ‘You wouldn’t know, Graham.’

‘Look, mum, it’s a bunch of breeds of cats. You don’t want that, mum. Look at this. Get it. Get it for your shelf.’ Mum shakes her head.

Someone reads out loud three times, ‘The Cats of Dipping Dell’.

‘Found anything of interest, Margaret?’

‘Well. No.’

A boy buys a bookmark for his sister. He says, ‘Quick, before she comes back.’

The all stream out, and on the way Papa purchases a copy of Pinocchio for Lilly, who says, ‘Yes, I’ll read it. Stop asking me that all the time.’

The boy who bought the bookmark is last. He looks back at me. His face is a lit lamp.

They’re gone.

Illustration by Sarah Jane

Checking in

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Everybody’s fluent entry into the shop is checked now. The door is darkened with hopefuls doing their phone. They are, without exception, patient and kind.

‘Shall we check in?’

‘It’s not working.’ A lady swayed and bent over her phone, but her group were looking into the windows, faces on the glass, eyes screwed up.

‘Look at this.’

‘MARK TWAIN.’ Said in a scream.

‘Weird guy him.’

‘For sure,’

‘This isn’t working. The lady on the glass is turning her phone around and around.

‘Turn it this way. What are you doing? Turn it this way.’

‘No good.’

‘God. Government probably changed it.’

‘It’s worked.’

‘Get in then.’

‘I think that lady at the counter’s going to give me a dirty look if I try and take this coffee inside, so I’ll wait out here.’

I heard her say it, as I pretended not to hear her say it.

Then she crept in. ‘Can I have this?’

I said, oh yes, drinking my own.

They all stood and whispered. The rain banging away outside. Everything dark. I couldn’t place them, family or friends, hard to tell; a kind of magical people, especially the lady with the orange coat because the others all gathered about her, and they held up books for her to see, but she only wanted Charlotte’s Web; I heard her say it.

‘These are good.’

‘So are these.’

‘Look here.’

Are you getting that Twain?

‘Nope.’

‘Charlotte’s Web?’

‘Yes.’

And they all laughed.

Illustration by Outcrowd

How many books do you read at once…

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I am always asked this. And told the answer.

The answer ranges between one and fifty million.

I, myself, have ranged between one and fifty million. This is because I am surrounded by bookshelves at home. If I can’t find my current, I just pick up another. So, Edith Wharton in there, Margaret Atwood here, and Gerald Murnane on the windowsill because he was too difficult, and Helen Garner waiting because I look at her Yellow Notebook and feel happy. These authors speak to each other.

But when I was younger, they were simply all in my schoolbag.

Now, I allow one or two. Ancient Rome here, and Radclyffe Hall there, and Inga Clendinnen in the car, and Spike Milligan in my bag, and Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun right here, so that’s more than one or two. And Ayn Rand.

It was a child told me about one and fifty million. Said serenely, as if telling me the date.

Illustration by Pablo Auladell

Gargantua and Pantagruel

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A man bought Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais from me. It was a heavy book, and old. An oblong.

 He and his wife and another man stood outside the door on the footpath and looked down at it.

She said, ‘Good heavens, are you going to read that?’

‘He said, ‘It’s very good, it’s funny. It was banned once; in France where it was published in the 16th century. It was banned. Said it was obscene.’

The other man said, ‘Is that the one about the giants?’

‘This is it.’

‘Hilarious.’

They walked away.

Now I want a copy.

I didn’t expect anyone today

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It’s dark and dull. There’s a car parked outside the shop, a rich apricot Renault Clio, plentiful enough to be the sun. It’s the first day of winter. The car glows. Who owns that?

Inside, a young man with a hessian backpack and earphones hanging from one ear is kneeling with the classics. He has four books clamped under one arm. Other people have to go around him. He doesn’t notice.

In front of me a man in a royal green jumper is looking at the cover of Salt in Our Blood. Then he puts it down and looks at me reproachfully. Not me that wrote it!   

Outside a horn goes on and on. But it’s not an argument. A man in a grey beanie, leaning against a fence across the road suddenly realizes it’s him they want. The small truck, still blaring its disappearance, is off down the road. An arm like a stalk waving madly from it. I am outside hanging up my balloons again. The man in the beanie walks to the middle of the road and stands with both arms up, both thumbs up, his smile up and over and crashing down onto the occupants of the truck. The truck, now in the distance, lurches briefly as if catching something.

Inside, a man, who looks like a retired sea captain, looks at a copy of Sailing Alone Around the World which is about a retired sea captain.

A couple argue over buying my wooden cat, which isn’t for sale. He carries his bag and her bag. She carries the cat which I will have to take back at some time.

She sways back and forth in her imagined new cat ownership.

The young man with the earphones buys Treasure Island and Kidnapped and The Hobbit. I look at him approvingly.

Outside the bus takes ages to let two people off. They stand on the footpath as if wondering what to do next. The bus takes off in a roar so that they can’t get back on. A group pass the window of my shop; a man is saying, ‘he places his bets all wrong, he doesn’t understand the track,’ and the listener, a lady, nods while looking down at her phone. The Renault Clio drives away. The retired sea captain buys the book about the retired sea captain. He pays with pieces of gold, stolen probably.

I take my cat off the swaying lady who blames her husband for it.

Three young women look at a copy of Boy Swallows Universe. Apparently one of them has lost their friend’s copy of this book. The friend is there. They exchange looks. They don’t buy anything. That’s ok, I get it. I lost my sister’s copy of Cranford in 2002. Luckily she doesn’t know yet.

It’s the first day of winter. Later the school kids will pass by still dressed for summer and not notice it.

Later, the school kids pass my window in shorts and T shirts, shouting at each other and shoving their best friend into my window like they always do, and which is how I know it’s 3.30. One boy screams, ‘Let’s get chips.’