I have no experience of mad dogs, but I do of Englishmen (being married to one) – and it’s simply not true that they go out in the midday sun. Not often, anyway, and certainly not by choice.
It was too early to check into the Wave Rock Motel in the town of Hyden (population 400), so, in 36-degree noonday heat, Roy drove straight through to the site of the famous rock itself, 4km further on.
Despite my being equipped with the latest, updated and fully revised Western Australia map book, Roy utterly disrespects my map-reading skills. He sneers when I turn maps sideways or upside–down, and rudely calls me Henrietta The Navigator.
After three weeks with the family in Perth, I was itching to shake off suburbia and make a beeline for the bush.
In order to make this happen, I started speaking, in deeply wistful terms, about the simple joys of camping – how pleasurable it would be to travel self-sufficiently, to be able to stop on a whim, to cook over open fires as our forefathers did, to be at one with the glorious outdoors!
Nowadays, my regular morning run finds me on a stunningly beautiful trail along the southernmost part of Western Australia’s Coral Coast. So distinctively itself, it has an unforgettable sense of place and reminds me of absolutely nowhere else I’ve been or seen.
It’s been many years since I last spent the better part of a day at the beach, swimming and picnicking. Sand-fringed Lake Leschenaultia is located in Chidlow, in the Perth Hills, in the Shire of Mundaring (sounds distinctly hobbity, doesn’t it?), only a 45-minute drive from the city of Perth.
In case you were wondering what the excuse was to drag Roy out of his comfort zone, it was granddaughter Holly’s third birthday today.
Of course, Christmas is all about celebrating family. (Unless you happen to be a Christian, in which case it might be about celebrating something else.)
So here I am with Roy, appropriately ensconced in the bosom of our family for the next month and more. We have our own self-contained guest suite – sounds a bit better than granny-flat, doesn’t it? – in the house of son Carl and his wife Carrie in Iluka, 30km north of central Perth, Western Australia.
How many Christmas cards did you get this year? I mean the genuine analogue kind: a festive card sealed in an envelope and delivered by the postman/person. Fewer than last year, I’d guess – and maybe a lot fewer than five or 10 years ago.
If you received one from Roy and Verne, custom-designed and postmarked Singapore, I must confess it had little to do with me. I would have joined the rest of the world and given up on this particular chore a long time ago. Roy, however, is not only CEO of household administration, but also a staunch traditionalist*.
* A jolly good thing when it comes to platinum wedding anniversaries and such. Roy has never forgotten our anniversary. When I did, once – around 15 years ago? – I was allowed to live, perhaps only so as to rue that dark day for the rest of my life.
