environment

It surprises me that as a lifelong social phobic I once organised a party. Or a sort of a party. I remember where it was—the old farmhouse in Bemboka Road—but not why. Maybe just an excuse to smoke some dope. I was 23 or 24 and I say ‘sort of a party’ because I think about four people attended. I tidied up before they left.

“Ah,” says Draff, catching me polishing glasses with a tea-towel. “Re-establishing your environment.”

Seems I’m always establishing or re-establishing my environment. Even as a small boy everything in my room had its place. Still does, except I have a whole house now. It’s not obsessive, although a dog-sitter’s dinner guest refers to my place as the OCD house: it’s orderly.

Leaving my home four years ago to live and work in Bendigo meant leaving the environment I’d painstakingly perfected over eight years at my son’s mercy. Then my son’s and a negligent tenant’s mercy. Then my son’s and his much-younger girlfriend’s mercy. Then my son’s, his girlfriend’s and her sloppy sister’s mercy.

Seven months ago I return to stained and grubby carpets, a hole in the ceiling, mould growing on windows, every surface in the kitchen greasy, rank weeds for a garden, scuff marks in places no shoe could reach, and paint blotches covering a multitude of sins. I heave a leaden heart over the threshold.

A month later I’m glad to be home and seven months later I enjoy every moment here. Rain comes in the hole in the ceiling, but it’s my ceiling and my rain. I steam-clean carpets, scour the windows, acid-wash the kitchen, yank the weeds, buff the walls, and pretend not to see the paint blobs.

  

I resurrect garden beds and plant vegetables. I topiarise the rampant lemon tree to a manageable size and shape and install lime trees to boot. I hack the hardenbergias off my carport and bang it back into shape with a rubber mallet.

  

I replicate, repair, replace and replenish. I rescue, restock, restore and resign myself to what cannot be undone. Ideally I would restump, rewire, and rip out some walls. I would insulate, install rainwater tanks and solar panels, and build a deck with French doors opening onto it. But not while I have a mortgage and no job.

I shuffle furniture every couple of days instead, sometimes setting off chain-reactions. Every couple of days each item is closer to being where it belongs.

Rock on.