Blog 15 - Sunday January 14th - Windmills of Your Mind

We meet for breakfast. I pour tea from the cat teapot that Moley gave Mum. I don’t strain the tea and Mum says, in general, people don’t like tea leaves.

She says it is good to be busy. I tell her Leo, my old boyfriend in Melbourne, used to call me Mrs Busy, but not in a positive way. He sent me a video to the tune of Windmills of Your Mind with Miss Piggy (ak a me) going round and round in a wheel like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel.

I ask Mum if she heard the dog barking all night. "Darling, I heard nothing. Sleep is a gift from God for me.” This is not comforting. I say, “Mum, I am a gift for you! You’re sleeping soundly because you’re so exhausted from looking after me. ”Mum doesn’t like this sort of nonsense and says, “Well, enough about our sleeping patterns.”

Another of Mum’s gifts is finding a car park, a gift she shares with her fire-dancing granddaughter who lives in Ibiza, where I imagine the gift is wasted as the locals like to clamber about in high boots and bikinis on the rocky terrain.

She tells me that French cooking is rich because of the butter and cheese, and that they add bouquet garni to all their meat dishes, and bouquet garni is faggots in English. “You should make your bouquet garni yourself,” she says, although I have never in my life caught Mum in the act of making a bouquet garni.

Bouquet Garni is 1 bay leaf, 3 or 4 sprigs of parsley, 2 of fresh thyme, 2 cloves of garlic which you stick in a bit of celery in a small bag and put in your meat dish 5 minutes before the end of cooking. “The charm of the meal,” Mum says, “lies in the freshness of the bouquet garni.”

Mum says she will read our French book to Simone. I feel oddly possessive of our book but try to rise above such churlish feelings as I know they are not worthy. Mum reads an article about Freeview which says the best things in life are gratis. “That means free,” she explains. Mum did a degree in Latin and is prone to tossing Latin phrases about; a favourite being sine qua non, meaning without which nothing exists, which I guess could be translated as “Without me, child, you would not be here.”

A small fly alights on my arm gently. Mum shakes her head sadly, looking at the fly. “There are so few flies here. They haven’t honoured my house.”

Mum says all kids have a goody-goody two-shoes mentality. I say I am not sure about this, as I have witnessed a favourite child of a friend of Mum’s squash ants. Mum says people automatically squash ants, but I know for a fact that for all their faults my children and children of my children do not squash ants!

Lynnie texts to say Gus has left for Wellington without fixing my wardrobe. Gus sends me a picture of Bella swimming in Lake Taupo and I don’t like to say, “Gus, why haven’t you fixed the rail in the wardrobe?” when they’re having such a good time.

“Mum, I’m off,” I announce, as I’m going to track down the barking dog. I leave a note on the great fence of the great house that lives beside us, asking the owners to ring me.

At the next-door apartment block I press all the buttons, saying, “Did you hear a barking dog?” and a thin, harassed woman rushes out terribly excited, saying, “I know the barking dog, his name is Rufus.” She takes me into her depressing dark house, which smells of loneliness. I sit on her uncomfortable Queen Anne couch; the Queen who had marshmallow Easter eggs and sad furniture named after her. My new friend is packing to move into a retirement home, telling me she’s doing this because she got so lonely during Covid, even though she walked 5 miles a day.

I want to escape the crushing darkness so I invite my new friend to our bright house. Mum is unnaturally circumspect when she sees this invitee. We sit down in Mum’s sunny room on our small armchairs and our guest tells us that one of her sons is a doctor and she can get a CAT scan anytime she feels like it.

I imagine their conversation: “Hi John, I’m feeling like a CAT scan today.” \

“Sure Mum, what time and where?”

I am busy relegating my new friend to status of neighbour and when she says the dog barks at her when she is on the balcony I feel like barking at her too. She seems, despite her not inconsiderable age, only interested in who we know and what school we went to, seemingly unaware that you can be a crushing bore no matter what school you went to.

Richard, whose gate I left a note in, rings and apologises for his barking dog, saying the dog won’t bark anymore as he’s off to Queenstown for 3 weeks. I tell Mum and neighbour the good news. “Oh, they’ve got a great set-up in Queenstown,” says neighbour, who admits she’s never actually been there.

My friend Barb is coming for dinner. Barb and I have a bond as strong as Dyneema, a rope that is 15 times stronger than steel and impervious to rot. She and I met on the tip of despair in Wellington when both our husbands had discarded us, simultaneously although not choreographed. Moo Hefner left me for Lizard, a failed real estate photographer whose photos made houses look so terrible that prospective buyers were always pleasantly surprised when they saw the actual house. Barb’s ex ran away with his theatre nurse, whom he must have winked at over his surgical mask, and they now have 10 dogs. Barb is elegantly quaint, papers her house with books, and works terribly hard so she can afford a beautiful but small parquet floor. Her house lives just round the corner from mine and every time she walks by I am so pleased, but her small dog Freddie and I do not get on at all.

Barb arrives with Meals on Wheels in 2 large dark green Le Creuset pots. As her diminutive little self stands in the door bending with the weight of the pots, I insist on showing her my scar to prove I have a ticket for such kindness.

Mum and Barb go on to the balcony to look at a cruise ship cruising by, but I am not too interested in views. Mum doesn’t know if the island beyond Rangitoto is Great Barrier or not, and I know where I get my appalling place identification from and suspect Mum would be as hopeless at quiz nights as I am.

Barb and Mum are not dissimilar in many ways. They both have a keen sense of what is right and wrong and like to direct conversation. I feel like a lone sheep with 2 sheepdogs.

We talk about the role of television, which although Mum sees as a portender of doom still has one. Barb, however, does not have one at all and listens instead to the positive news on the radio which tells you how many trees have been planted and how many charitable donations have been made.

Mum asks why on earth Barb married a man with 4 children. “Have you no sense of self-preservation?”

Barb suddenly jumps up to cook and Mum asks how my swim group are.

Over chicken Maryland, Barb tells us about her daughter Rose, who is training to be a doctor. She says Rose has to buy her own clothes or Barb has to buy Rose’s clothes, as doctors aren’t allowed to wear white coats anymore but cleaners and nurses can wear uniforms. Mum says there is something nonsensical about this conversation.

Barb says that she likes being back at work as it means she can’t pick up Rose’s dry cleaning. I know this feeling, when retirement doesn’t include retiring from being a mother of a working child.

Barb leaves to return to our neighborhood where my little house is waiting patiently for me.

It has been a busy day and Mum and I pull down the blinds together in the big lounge. Mum will pull these up in the morning but alas not the ones in my room any more.