On Friday, I took this photo over my back fence, looking south-east…ish. About 2.00pm, a fire started about 8 km away as the crow flies. About 37 fire units attended – that’s firetrucks and Country Fire Authority management vehicles. I looked at the trees, stuck my finger in my mouth and held it up to the wind and determined the wind was blowing it away from us. The fire area looked to be in an open grassland, according to the google map, and it wasn’t long until it was under control and the smoke vanished. Friday wasn’t a very hot day. On a scorcher, with a hot north wind, and the fire only 8 km in the opposite direction, I would’ve been packing – literally.

In July last year I said …

I also have to declare this an Awards Free Blog, since I have now been awarded two awards – one by raroto over at Duniya Ku and someone else did too, but for the life of me I cannot remember who! Was it you? Own up!  I stumbled across it. I even clicked on it to make sure it was me.  You’re all very welcome to nominate me for Awards. I’ll carry out the associated task and link to your blog. But I wont make myself pick favourites, sorry.  Anyway, I thought I would be getting ahead of myself if I declared myself award-free beforehand. Enough said.

Because I didn’t get around to putting up a permanent notice, I now have two sets of award questions waiting for answers.  Raroto of  Duniya Ku  got another one in practically right away, and recently another set came via Millie Thom. Raroto passed on the Very Inspiring Blogger Award, and asked me to reveal 7 things about myself.  I declined the award but promised to do the task.

1. I first married at the end of March 1973. Since this was during Lent , I wasn’t allowed to have the Wedding March, nor decorate the pews (something I hadn’t even thought of). My Uncle Keith gave me away, though I kept hoping my dad would turn up. I have no idea what music I ended up choosing and wouldn’t know it if I heard it today.

2. I was about two weeks pregnant . I’d been to the doctor to get a script for The Pill, as we didn’t want children right away. She gave me a prescription and a sample packet to begin taking on my next period. Didn’t happen.

3. I’m not the motherly sort. But my kids are so darned gorgeous and easy to love, no matter what.

4. Fast forward to February 1989, I went to New Zealand with my best girlfriend from school. We went on a Footloose bus tour for two weeks and then we hired a little car for the third week to see other parts of NZ . I’ve told you that, I think, but I haven’t told you I didn’t want to come back.

5.  So it will not surprise you to learn that I quit my marriage early the next year, 1990.              I really had no good cause for leaving, but when you find yourself considering pushing your husband off the side of a mountain, you just know it is really, really time to get out. We were on a ‘patch-it-up’ trip to Tasmania but the hole just kept getting deeper.  We got out of the rental car to admire the view over a gorge. He stepped over the guard rail, having a natural wont to do reckless stuff. I distinctly remember thinking how lucky I hadn’t followed through since the car keys were in his pocket. I was unwilling to make the marriage work, even refusing his huge offer of attending marriage guidance.

6. Even when he replaced me, I did not take half his farm or superannuation. Never even thought about being so nasty. I’d forfeited my rights. I kept the car and what I considered mine. And the iron. And the microwave.

7. At the end of 1990, I left town and my job as a doctors’ receptionist-nurse and moved  in with Mr R . We married mid 1992. Now, Millie’s set of 10 questions.  Blogging Sisterhood Award, I think.

1. What do you like best about blogging? That would be meeting interesting people. I communicate better with my fingers.  😀

2. If you could visit any place in the world, where would that place be and why? The Parish Church, Caldecote, Cambridgeshire, England. Because that is where the ancestor who gave me my maiden surname was baptized on 5 Aug 1792. Smith Parish,  the bastard son of Elizabeth. The original baptism font is still there.

3. If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be? I would never have married at 18, but worked at making my dream of riding a motorbike around Australia happen.

4. List 3 things that you are proud of doing / having done. This is a hard one, and why it has taken me so long to respond to this last award (I had forgotten about the other). I have done so much to demean myself and hurt others in the past, that I find it very hard to drum up any pride at all in my present.  I’m proud that I am basically an honest person – despite becoming a liar, mostly by omission, during  the shameful facets of my past. I’m proud that I was able to stop drinking. I’m not proud of stopping smoking – I had no choice as Mr R simply forbade it. I’m proud of the community work I did in the small rural town in which I lived from 1973 to 1990: mother’s club, school council, single-handedly organizing adult education classes under the Country Education Project for our primary school, and being a founding member of the local art group, volunteer work with the aged, secretary of a rural locality fire brigade, writing millions of letters to politicians to get us a 4 wheel drive firetruck. I blush now to think of those melodramatic letters on file somewhere. Okay, there was a bit there to be proud of.  Phew! Nowadays, I’m just too lazy. My only community input these days consists of using plastic bags to hold my shopping –  the local hospital gets 5 cents for each one. Actually, if I wasn’t deaf, I might go write letters for the old folks, or something.

5. What was your favourite subject at school, and why did it appeal so much? I cannot decide between Art and English. I loved drawing, painting and writing as long as I didn’t have to think up a topic for myself. Left to my own devices, my mind would go blank.

6. Is there any particular environmental issue that causes you concern? I am a global warming skeptic. Data is continually being manipulated to fit agendas. Testing of the atmosphere has not been carried out long enough for anyone to know what is a normal cycle. Say we could lower the carbon – what happens if we lower it too much and we begin to lose our atmosphere? It is the atmosphere that stops us from freezing every time the sun goes down. However, that said, I see no reason to keep shitting in our nest.

7. What is your favourite childhood memory? Meeting cats for the first time! It was a long time before I realised my memory was wrong – they weren’t huge cats at all – I was just small. They were past my knees and head butted me. I could feel, as well as hear, them purring and their fur felt like teddy bear fur. We brought a kitten home. Maybe several kittens, as I think (from what mum said) we were living in some type of shed or an old mud house which had half of it devoted to hay storage. Lots of mice and rats about.

8. Who is your favourite character in a novel or film and why do you like them so much? Childhood: Pollyanna inspired me with her positive attitude. That story warned me that things can change and you have to rise above it. Usually you can’t do that on your own. Okay, maybe it was only the picture of the stained glass in the Little Golden Book. Now: Kahlan, The Mother Confessor, in Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series. She remains positive, determined, thinks things through, and knows when she needs to ask for help. But not all the time, because she isn’t perfect.

9. What is your greatest ambition in life? I want to live to 80. I think that might be do-able, as long as I live a healthier life. I’d like more time, but if that is all I can have, so be it.

10. What is the biggest compliment you have ever had? I still remember my surprise when nominated for the spot as President of a Christian Fellowship group (Uniting Church). I’d been persuaded to attend these social meetings by another young mother. I thought these women must like me. It wasn’t something I had considered possible. Too much?