Love’s imperviousness to time

My beloved Great Aunt Nanda in Ferrara has been felled by a stroke. We are all immensely distressed. So many memories, all of them tender. Alex and I were hoping to ship Monkey over for a long visit in a few years, and now it looks as if the two will never meet. In the hurly burly of rearing a young child whilst working, the world slips away. You assume nothing changes, that it all will be there on your return. Instead, people and things vanish – histories lost – making way for our children and their stories. This can be both wonderful (rotten people die) and terrible (good people do, too). John Henshaw, whom I loved as a father. My own father, who was impossible to love. A moment in which time stopped for me: Alex and Monkey the other night, singing, “We love you more than anything!” whilst dancing. This was a song written for me, and involved much ungainly movement, fits of giggling, and the making of heart-shapes with their arms. I was completely overcome.

 

Happy Chinese New Year!

I have, after many disasters, mastered the dark art of the prawn rice paper roll. We said our prayers to the gods, stuffed our faces, and then rolled around on the floor yelping with culinary pleasure. Everything – other than the weather, which was a bit mad – was beautiful today: the garden (almost finished), and the house, which has been turned upside down in the most comprehensive clean of its life. (I love cleaning the house, but never have the time.) Alex has been beavering away at his PC, I am about to start on an edit, and darling Monkey is in tears at the prospect of returning to school next week. To homeschool or not to homeschool? I love Monkey’s PoE, but she wants home home home. Something to be considered in about six months, when time is again my own.

 

Auspicious times

Alex and I have yet to come up for air – an enormous amount on. But we are madly anticipating the Chinese New Year, which we’ve decided will be the beginning proper of 2012. Year of the Water Dragon, as it happens. Good omens everywhere.

 

Iridescence

A fox jogged past the glass doors as I was working on my laptop tonight. This after catching a water dragon (Harry Potter) in the garden this afternoon. I am astounded. A fox! An iridescent moment. Alex, who missed it, suggested we use Gremlin as bait.

 

This is business, not personal

Carmen kicked the door down. And then he stopped.

“What’s with the hedgehog?” he asked.

The female voice sang in reply: “Lily-white and clean, oh! With little frills between, oh! Smooth and hot – red rusty spot … Never here be seen, oh!”

I gasped. “It couldn’t be -”

“It is,” Alex said, shoving Carmen aside.

“Oh, yes, if you please ‘m,” the female voice said. “My name is Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle; I’m an excellent clear starcher!”

“What’s with the hedgehog?” Carmen asked, kicking a chair over.

“It’s all right, Car; he was just having his shirt starched,” I said, fumbling in my handbag for my notepad.

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle waddled out into the darkness.

I cleared my throat. “Would you mind terribly – I mean, if it’s not too much trouble – I’ve been a fan for, God, a THOUSAND years – could I have your -”

“No little dicky shirt-fronts belonging to Tom Tit-mouse?” she enquired, her little black nose sniffing. “Why, he’s most terrible particular!”

“No little dickies around here!” Carmen said. And then, to Alex: “I don’t know about you.”

Alex took my hand. “I’ve missed you.”

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle flared her prickles. “Anyone seen a pair of mittens belonging to Tabby Kitten?”

Turning away, I burst into tears. “I never wanted this for you!”

“What?” Alex implored. “What?”

“Now that my father has passed, God bless his soul, the boys …” I stifled a sob. “They want you to be the new Don, Alex.”

“Don Gambotto-Burke?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Even with the -”

“Don’t mention the Irish thing; you know it will just cause trouble.”

“Don Gambotto-Burke,” Alex whispered.

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle clapped her little hands. “Now I’ve finished my clear starching, so I’m going to soap the curtains!”

“I wanted other things for you,” I said.

“Handkersniffs?” Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle asked. “Little dicky shirt-fronts?”

“I’m talking to him,” I said.

“You are like me,” Alex murmured, his mouth against my ear. “We refuse to be fools, to be puppets dancing on a string pulled by other men. I hoped the time for guns and killing and massacres was over. That was my misfortune. That was your misfortune. I was hunted on the streets of Glebe when I was twelve years old because of who my uncle was. I had no choice.”

“A man has to choose what he will be,” I said. “I believe that.”

“What else do you believe in?” Alex asked.

I handed Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle my Montblanc writing instrument and my notebook. She signed. Her autograph was beautiful.

“I don’t get it,” Carmen said. “What’s with the hedgehog??”

“I believe in Beatrix Potter,” I said. “I believe in Harry Potter. I believe in Joris-Karl Huysmans. But most of all, I believe in you.”

We watched as Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle curtsied before Alex. “Don Gambotto-Burke, if you please ‘m. Your scarlet waist-coat is ready!”

Carmen reverently kissed Alex’s pinkie ring. “Don Gambotto-Burke,” he said.

I squeezed Alex’s hand. “Let’s go. The water dragons will be getting hungry.”

 

The malicious hypocrite

The academic posted some of the malicious material on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, which should tell you just about everything you need to know about this individual’s full and happy personal life.

Stay tuned.

 

Defamation and the malicious hypocrite

Malicious, untrue and defamatory material about me has been posted online – in related cases, repeatedly – during the past two or so weeks. The poster, who was in England at the time the material was posted, used a tertiary education service for students, post-graduate students, teaching staff and other academic staff.

My husband and I are now in touch with the tertiary education service’s CEO, and have been liaising with both local and British police regarding this matter.

The connection to tertiary education is interesting.

Over the past six months, a reasonably high-profile academic with a reputation for vindictiveness and sustained public campaigns against institutions and people they do not like has repeatedly intruded on this family’s life. Alex and I now have a very interesting statement about the academic from one of the academic’s close associates about the academic’s long-term enmity toward this family.

This academic made a number of threats last year concerning us that were relayed to Alex by a relative. Curiously, the threats in question conform – and rather perfectly, it must be said – not only to the material posted online, but to our experience of this academic and their history and reputation.

There is so much more I want to say but cannot … at this point.

Stay tuned.

 

Closing in

Last night, I was missing my husband so much I couldn’t even finish the 654th chapter of my fifth book, The Godmother. So I called my father’s oldest friends, Tommy No-Ears and Carmen the Cannoli, who had mistakenly abducted the Elizabeth Street Myer “Summer Fun!” mannequin Alex had cleverly planted in his place.

“We gotta find him, because I miss him,” I said.

And so we drove out into the moonless night.

“Hey, look at dose white rocks!” Tommy No-Ears cried out.

Carmen and I looked out. There before us, gleaming white pebbles snaked their way into the forest, seemingly leading all the way to England and back.

“I’d recognize those pebbles anywhere!” I screamed. “Alex stole them from the neighbour’s Japanese rock garden!”

With a screech, the car turned into the forest. We followed the pebbles until they stopped at a hollowed tree. We could see the glow of firelight from under the door carved into the tree. A female voice was saying, “Yes, if you please ‘m!”

Carmen the Cannoli and I looked at each other, shocked.

 

On the lam, by Antonella’s husband

Can’t write much now – being followed by psychotic pizza chefs. Will hopefully have more info tomorrow. (If I’m still here.) This Wifi connection is terrible.

 

Red alert

My husband has been missing since late this afternoon. His wallet, iPad, JOHN PAUL GEORGE RINGO t-shirt and the chocolates he stole from Monkey’s Christmas cracker are still on his desk, and there are scratch marks across his leather-bound copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The nosy neighbors, they told the cops that they heard shouts and scuffles, and, when they peered out from between their blinds, saw a wriggling sharkskin sack being rolled into the boot of a car by two men with slicked-back hair and pinkie rings. But I told the cops same as I tell you now: I don’t got nothing to do with any of it. Last thing I know, my husband was feeding grapes to the water dragons.

And then I called my German-Irish lawyer, Klaus Maria O’Malley, who told me that I had the right to remain silent, a right I am unlikely to exploit anytime soon.