Night-time listening
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A bit more of my Lockdown One sort-of-memoir!
Chapter 14
Day 21
Dear God this pandemic is hard for everyone. My ‘housemate’ was up until the very wee hours playing games online with his buddies and I LOVE that. It’s so great that they can catch up and maintain their friendships, even if they can’t physically see each other at the moment. There was lots of laughing and excited chatter and as much as I wanted to sleep, I was pleased to make the best of it in the knowledge that friendships are as important as sleep, during times like these.
Because I am a nerd I decided to snuggle up and listen to an audio book about poetry. I’d make the most of those wakeful hours, I determined, soaking up some beautiful words and some expert ideas about what made them especially beautiful. (The book is called How A Poem Moves.) There was one particular poem – Stealing Lilacs In The Cemetery – that caught my ear and made a mental note to investigate further.
When I woke I knew more about poetry, but I was also groggy and foggy, trying to shake off that not-enough-sleep grumpiness.
Don’t let anyone tell you those sleepless days with kids end when they grow out of the preschool years, because adolescences and early adulthood throws up a whole bunch of other night-waking challenges.
With just a few hours sleep under my belt I simply felt to tired to walk. My knee hurt, my head ached, I face felt like a marshmallow.
I had a bunch of errands to do today, I reasoned, so I would work on my writing and do some yoga and then get some steps in throughout the day.
Perhaps later I would take my walk, when I would hopefully be feeling less exhausted by the night-waking.
You know by now how much I hate breaking my routine. And yet here I was. Breaking it again. Were these twists and turns boosting my resilience? I wondered. Was learning to be a little less regimented about my days a way of improving my mental health too? Were these glitches in my best laid plans making me less obsessive?
I did not know, but what I did know was that this was a chance to bust out some self-compassion and look at the facts. The facts were.
1. I was tired and a tiny bit injured
2. I had work to do, work that I did best in the morning.
3. It was already 8am and I had about 3 hours of writing to get under my belt.
I decided that the facts dictated it was perfectly okay to just start working for now and to see where the day took me.
I’d learned that walking on a sore knee doesn’t really do it any favours. Perhaps by this afternoon it would be feeling a little better and I could head out.
I knew if I started writing in an hour or two’s time, it wouldn’t flow in quite the same way.
I’d eat, get to work, then have a hot bath and get dressed, I decided.
I’d made some Turkish bread earlier in the week, so I squished a mini-loaf into a sandwich maker stuffed with some ham, cherry tomatoes, cheese and lots of salt and pepper. I made a cup of tea and settled in to do some book-writing with the secondary goal of not burning my mouth on the melty cheese.
The day before I had started researching frogs properly, realising immediately that if I headed out at night time, when it had rained I stood a much better chance of spotting one of those elusive little buggers. That sounded a bit fraught. How could I go out into the wetlands in the dark? I wondered. Would someone go with me? I couldn’t think of anyone who would.
I found out that Melbourne Water were conducting a citizen scientist frog census, complete with phone app, and that there were likely frogs in my own garden, so perhaps I could start there. It wasn’t super likely I would see one, I came to realise, but I would almost definitely be able to hear one, which was something don’t you think?
The app allowed you to record frog calls and helped identify them. You can also log your finds and send them to the scientists at Melbourne Water with the press of a button. Amazing. I definitely wanted to do that.
I’d looked more closely into the lovely perching bird I saw yesterday above the wetlands. The BirdLife website showed that his black feathery trousers indicated he was indeed a Pied Cormorant and not one of the smaller Little Pied Cormorants.
Turns out there are a bunch of different cormorants living in Australia with various colourful rings around their eyes, bill markings, stripes and markings. Some are black, some black and white and some black and tan. The Pied Cormorant I had seen was black and white. I learned he was likely looking for a feast of fish rather than frogs, as I had first thought. Perhaps I would be able to see fish in the water, if I was still and quiet enough, I thought hopefully.
Day 22 – 7023 steps
I dreamt that the aunty I never see gave me a dictionary signed with dedications from my estranged father and my ex-partner. She then tried to make me go to dinner with her and I protested wildly. Then I woke up.
I hadn’t seen my dad in years, various difficulties making us distant and the relationship too difficult for me. His sister popping into my dream was as unexpected as his handwriting on the dreamed-about dictionary. Add to that an equally cheery message from my ex-partner and it was a LOT. Shudder.
I was so glad to wake up and get out of bed. As I put my slippers on I noted that my bedding was a shambles, sheet adrift and quilt in a total bunch. I escaped to the kitchen to make tea, tidying up a little as the kettle boiled, the radio humming quietly away in the background.
I settled into the couch flicking on lamps and the switch on my new heated throw blanket (Genius idea!) and turning on the telly with the volume on low. I wrote a few hundred words of my commissioned book and then got up to turn off the lamps and let the day in.
The sky was the prettiest pink when I opened the living room blinds, little twinkles of houses dotting the dawn.
Dark trees were bending and shuddering as what the ABC weatherman warned were gusty winds battered their ancient limbs.
Great.
I put on my shoes and new raincoat and headed out into the bluster.
I made a deal with myself to just walk to the wetlands area and back, passing the café to grab a coffee on the way home.
As I headed along my street I clocked that my knee was still a bit tender. I pushed on regardless, with Simon Armitage’s book in my ears and my raincoat flapping in the gusty breeze.
I spied the black lab ladies in the centre of the field, and trotted along the track feeling glad of their regular-as-clockwork routine. They’re just like me! I thought.
Then a bike sped by a inch or two away from my right elbow. I silently raised my middle finger at him as his bottom raced out of view.
Five minutes later and I was stepping onto the bridge and hoping to see a fish. A swamp hen was not impressed to see me. It skidded away into the vegetation screaming, and I honestly did not blame it. My raincoat WAS rather bright and had I been sploshing about in a pond peacefully only to be confronted with the sight of it I probably would have screamed too.
I spent some time staring into the tree-stained water wondering how deep it was and what was down there.
I remembered staring into the water like this as a kid with the very same aim of finding a fish. It was calm sea water back then. At low tide my brother and I would pluck slow-moving shells out of rock pools, digging the poor creature inside out with our pocket knives. Spearing it on the hook at the end of our fishing rods we’d then sit quietly until we saw a fish and then dangle the hook in front of its mouth. The fish would bite and we’d quickly flip our rod backwards, the now-hooked fish pulled up out of the water and over our heads, landing on the rocks behind us.
There were no such fish to be seen here in these muddy waters, nor would I want to hook any I did see. But for a minute I was back there in the South East coast of Tasmania, grubby and proudly lugging a bucket full of fish back for tea.
I crossed to the other side of the bridge and it was then that I heard it. A frog! I whipped out my phone and opened the Frog Watch app, recording 17 seconds of the croaking before the frog got wise to my surveillance and clammed up.
I logged the frog and walked on, past the now withering toadstools, across the other bridge and then looping back through the wooded area that ran close to the freeway.
It was so noisy here, the wetlands just metres from the multi-lane highway. I tried to imagine what it would have been like before the bulldozers carved the wide expanse through the middle of the bush, but I couldn’t really. I knew that there were orchards here many years ago, bordered by the bushland.
Hopefully the library would reopen soon, I thought, and I could find out more about how things were before ‘progress’ decided to mess things up.
Following two behind-the-ears scratches for two lovely dogs, I headed back towards the café and then home. We’d planned to go to the Queen Victoria Market today so I needed to get back and de-stink myself and wake up my sleepy, night owl housemate.
We headed to the market which was pushing on through the crisis with new distancing measures and card transactions preferred. We bought supplies to make Thai Beef Salad and a tuna salad and some spare ribs. And we stocked up on cheese and salami and crusty bread.
I was keen to get everything back home because I wanted to take the dogs for an adventure walk to a different nearby park.
That same afternoon I found myself on the banks of the Yarra, surrounded by lush grass, massive native trees and playing fields. There was not another soul around. Not walking along the pretty trail that ran by the river, not on the ovals that stretched out before me, not in the playground either.
I let the dogs off the lead and they bounded delightedly through puddles, rolled in the grass, chased the local magpies and investigated the very fast running river.
Tiny flame robins were grazing in the grass and hopping back and forth into the trees. It was idyllic and we spent a long time walking the river banks hearing nothing but birdsong and the water tumbling by.
I instantly resolved to come here as often as possible to give us all a chance to wind down (me) and tear about (them) away from noisy roads, walking packs and too-fast cyclists. It was actually peaceful here. I can’t believe I thought my closest park was peaceful. THIS park, just a kilometre further away was so much more serene.
Not only that, there was nobody about. I could stare up into the trees and listen out for frog noises aand wonder about platypuses without feeling like a twit.
Maybe I’d become a two-walk-a-day person, I mused. What was even happening to me?
“Flame Robins are winter visitors to the lowlands in south-eastern Australia. In the warmer months they breed in upland forests, laying their eggs in finely woven nests, sometimes decorated with lichen. As autumn approaches, most move to lower elevations, where they are often conspicuous in open habitats such as farmland, especially pasture and recently ploughed paddocks. They also occur in other grassy areas, such as golf courses, ovals or parkland in built-up areas. They usually return to breeding areas in the mountains in August or September.” – Bird Life Australia.