Mr Percival All Over Again

Fingerbone: Mr Percival all over again, a bird like him never dies. Stormboy (1964)

Whenever there is a deluge in the outback, Lake Eyre fills with water and birds fly in from everywhere to take advantage of the brief oasis it offers. Pelicans nest and breed, somehow sensing the urgency of the season.

This cycle is a fantastic metaphor for writing. There will be dry spells, even droughts, but, like the Warburton River, the creative inspiration will flow again. When it does, write like your life depends on it!

Surviving

Squinting against the sun, the boy lifted his sand encrusted face.

So thirsty

Slowly, struggling in the heat, he sat up. The ocean that had wrested his fishing boat from him in a gale was now supine, resting itself on the white sand where it had tossed him in its earlier fury. Fragments of his vessel were strewn along the high tide mark; the splintered deck, some coiled rope, a flask.

Seeing the flask, the boy scrabbled across the sand on all fours.

Must drink

Water spilled over his face in his eagerness. It dripped into his tangled hair and onto his chest where it stung scratches he had sustained in the storm. After gulping half the water, he looked around him, taking stock. The beach was small, no more than a dimple in the coastline, and indistinguishable from a dozen others. He felt a momentary panic as he tried to find his bearings.

Lost?

Cliffs, red and ragged, but perhaps offering a foothold, bounded the beach. This meant he had drifted south, well beyond the usual fishing grounds. If he could climb the cliff, he knew it would take him days to walk home.

His belly rumbled and he realised he had not eaten, having fought the storm overnight and then been unconscious all day.

Need food

Rocks on one end of the beach offered the best prospect for foraging, so the boy walked towards the outcrop, collecting any flotsam that he thought useful. When he arrived at the serrated-edged rock-pools he held the rope, his jacket which had been lying under a pile of kelp, some splintered planks that he intended to use for kindling if his tinderbox dried out, and a piece of frayed netting that might be repaired.

Peering into the pools, the boy found them inhabited by crabs, small fish and molluscs.

A feast

The tide was turning, and when the cliff’s shadow fell across his shoulders, the boy began looking for a sheltered place to spend the night. Scrub and heath covered the clifftop, but he thought he saw an indentation, perhaps a cave, partway up. Using the rope, the boy tied together the wood and netting, into which he had placed two small crabs.

Seeking a foothold, his limbs ached as he hung against the cliff face. The pads of his fingers bled where the rocks had cut them and he regretted carrying the net which caught on the spiky shrubs that somehow eked an existence in the cliff’s fissures. Somewhere above him was the cave, although he could no longer see it and doubted he would be able to reach it before dark.

Keep going up

He forced himself to climb further and as he did, he thought about his family. Perhaps they were looking for him. Or they may think him dead.

But I’m not

At last his fingers found a ledge, and hauling himself over it he lay there panting, watching the last of the light fade.

I’ll survive

Five Generations - the Inspiration of a Blanket

The bag contained a red ball of yarn and a partially completed, hand-crocheted blanket. I had been sorting my mother’s possessions, intending to donate her craft items to her friends at the local Craft Club. When I first saw the blanket I considered unraveling the yarn – perhaps someone else would be able to use it?

But when I picked the blanket up, it was warm and soft, and it gave me pause. I saw an image of Mum’s hands holding it as she crocheted. Suddenly the blanket was too personal, almost intimate, and I resolved it had another purpose.

A few days later, I searched for my crochet hook and sat with the blanket on my knees as I worked my way around the edge using a double crochet stitch. I thought about the importance Mum had placed on the simple pleasure of making the blanket, even though she was unwell, and her stitches showed her deterioration. I chose not to unpick those sometimes ragged stitches, instead working them into the final pattern, wrapping my own stitches around them like a hug.

Hooking the yarn, I also thought of my grandmothers who had helped me as I leaned a new crochet stitch or struggled with a doily pattern. I wondered if they knew the skills they taught me would be used on a day such as this?

When I give the blanket to Mum’s great-grand-daughter, my grand-niece, this practical heirloom will wrap together, with knowledge and love, five generations of women.

Review: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

When Harold Fry receives a letter from a former work colleague, Queenie Hennessy, who is seriously ill, he knows that simply posting a reply will not be enough. Without proper equipment, or his mobile phone, Harold leaves his comfortable lounge room to set off on a six hundred mile journey. After a chance encounter in a service station, Harold believes he can keep Queenie alive as long as he keeps walking. Over eighty-seven days he walks from Kingsbridge in the south of England, to Berwick-on-Tweed near the Scottish border hoping he will arrive in time to say thank you for a kindness Queenie once did him.

As Harold makes his pilgrimage he undergoes a transformation, discovering friendship in unlikely places and a capacity he didn’t think he had to confront the memories he carries about his relationship with his wife and his son.

This book deals with the themes of families, ageing, grief, self-reliance, friendship and hope.

It will make you laugh. And it will make you cry. But most of all it will remind you about why random acts of kindness make a difference.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Rachel Joyce, 2012

Black Swan

357 pp.

ISBN 9780552778091