“I’m a little bit tired of fearing that I’ll be the bad fruit
Nobody buys.”
- Missy Higgins, Scar, 2004
Mood: still miserable. It ebbs and flows – perhaps the less said the better, as it makes boring reading. Let’s take it for granted that until I say otherwise, I’m still miserable, okay? Check the song snips as a barometer of my state of mind, if you like.
Thank you for overcome the grinding embarassment and being kind enough to email, telephone, e-post etc. to share some comiserations. Believe me I welcome your empathy and friendship. I’m sorry if I sound like a terse, grouchy scrag or conversely, a breezy, devil-may-care slattern, or even – gross social lapse – don’t reply quickly. Unless you’re one of the blessed, you likely have some idea of the pain-and-rage-filled, epithet-and-object-throwing, manic-depressive-extrovert-recluse I seem to have morphed into. Not that I’m implying you have ever sunk to such a level, mind. This is a long way of saying, thank you for sparing a thought for me. I love you dearly for it.
Enough already, let’s move on.
Hobart’s northern suburbs started burning on Wednesday, and after 33 degrees C on Thursday the eastern shore was well alight in an awesome and frightening display of the dry season. I mean, it’s October, for Ford’s sake. Authorities reckon they haven’t seen the like of it before in their lives at this time of year. I know it was bad in most other states as well, but you tend to think most of the situation at hand. Besides, there was a surreal quality to the fires here, considering that less than a week earlier it had been twenty degrees cooler, snowing on Mt Wellington and sleeting in town.
Both days were late ones at work, and if you’ve seen the pictures, you’d know why. My view from the shoebox on the hill is ho-hum compared to what some have in this town (when I get round to poisoning the neighbour’s radiata pine the view should improve markedly) but when I finally got home from the pickle factory late on Thursday night I could see at least some of what was happening in the suburbs across the Derwent. The Divine Miss M, a Sydney-based friend with Slobart connections, sent me this, and it’s absolutely true to what I saw out of my loungeroom window:
What invokes the fight-or-flight response for you? I have learned that for me, it’s bushfire. When I was living in Tamworse a few years ago when the fires got going in the Moonbi Ranges and the smoke blew down into town, I found I couldn’t sleep. I just wanted to run away to somewhere safe. It was a primal urge. What repose I did snatch was punctuated by nightmares; I actually packed some irreplaceable items* in my rucksack by the door, just in case my crumbling stucco horror residence (which was at no time in any danger) caught alight and I had to run.
I had forgotten all about that until on Thursday I was walking into the newsroom to consult with colleagues and a camera crew came in wearing charcoal-smudged yellow helmets and safety gear, back fresh from shooting vision at one of the fire fronts. One whiff as they passed and I wanted to run screaming out of the building and straight to Constitution Dock where I could throw my miserable carcass into some water. I imagined I could smell roasting pork.
As in any greater-than-ordinary event, there are strange spin off short stories. I heard one news reporter relating how he stood at one part of the firefront, talking with some locals and firies, when without warning three young men materialised out of the smoke. Each carried a stubby, and it appeared had several more under their belts. The three fellows described how they had been fighting the fire to save their “games room” – they felt the shed housing their pool table was too valuable to lose to the flames. They fought the fire (rehydrating with beer as they went) until they began vomiting with the smoke (they said). They looked up and noticed the flames had grown to thirty metres, at which point they decided a temporary retreat was prudent. The three young men stayed and chatted for a short while, finished their beers, and then decided it was time to “get back to it”. And with that, they disappeared back into the smoke.
Today, three days later, it’s showery and freezing gale force winds are threatening to tear the roof off again. Go figure.
* irreplaceable items: my undergraduate degree (still in its tube, but figured I'd never earn another one); some photos; a knitted soft toy and a jade pig (presents from my Mum & Dad); and signed CDs by Jeff Buckley, Disposable Heroes, Ben Harper and Mick Thomas. I kid you not. I must not have been quite rational.
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