Avocado Rememberings (1)
Vic was an astrologer.
We met her when we had our market hairwrap stall in Freemantle in
western Australia. She used to stop by and chat with us, and in time
we hung out with her and during a rather difficult phase in which
Malou's mad boyfriend Danny had disappeared with his pitbull in his
pick up truck and several hundred stolen dollars and the Homicide
squad turned up looking for him but to no avail as we had no
forwarding address and due to the illegal substances in our house
that the police knew about we needed to leave rather quickly – so –
Vic said we could stay with her.
It all went well at
first and Vic made amazing salads and introduced us to eating
avocados with a dash of soy sauce. But the first hints that our move
could have been in error occurred when our Colombian asyulm seeker
friends Paco and Lluis were round for a few beers and Paco went to
the bathroom and Vic said she was going to get some more drinks and
after about 20mins they both reappeared and Vic told us all that they
had had sex in the hallway. It all seemed a little icky and random
and Paco sat silently whilst Luis nearly coughed his drink up and
then the guys left.
We knew Vic and her
mother were both seeing a therapist for sex addiction and she told us
about how they had both slept with this 'professional' as part of
their therapy. I met her mother once and she was wearing a huge
clear quartz stone tied to her forehead.
Anyway the end came
when one day, during an afternoon, Malou and I arrived home and Vic
was in the kitchen wearing a baby doll type nightie with her hair in
bunches and clutching a teddybear. This woman was in her 40s and not
sylph-like. She was also crying a lot. We asked her what was wrong
and she said that the therapist had told her she needed to contact
her inner child – it seemed she was taking it to its limit and
spent the next days playing with toys, dancing and twirling, crying
and wailing and wearing the oddest of clothes. It was during this
period that she decided to throw all our things out onto the street
as she suddenly felt that they held bad karma and so we got back from
the markets one evening to find everything in bags (some things
strewn on the pavement) and a crying Vic locked inside the house and
not opening the door.
We never did see her
again, but I always remember her soy sauce avocados.
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Avocado Rememberings (2)
The staff called him
FB. It was short for Fat Bastard. We had ended up there, 325
kilometres from civilisation, in Kakadu National Park, Australia –
because we were on limited options and needed money. FB was hiring;
me as a chambermaid and my errant boyfriend as an odd jobs man. Of
course it all soon went wrong.
Nick was unable to do
any jobs and as a stoner and an alcoholic his only goal was getting
high – so a lot of time was spent with him 'going walkabout' –
whereabouts unknown - and me and others trying to cover for him.
I will always remember
our little shack and our bed with a circle of ants which I kept at
bay by a ring of salt around the circumference of the bed base. It
could have been a simple but happy experience, living deep in the
north western rainforest and bush but of course so much depends on
company.
I had the pleasure
however of befriending Noni and Marianne; 91 and 87 respectively –
they were two beautiful old school friends who had been separated by
marriages and then refound each other after their husbands' deaths.
Noni had been the first ever woman to be invited to join the
veterinary university in Sydney but it was during the Great
Depression and she had to look after her family farm instead. She
had also been a crocodile hunter and after her father and brother's
deaths she gave half of her family land to the aboriginals who she
said it had been stolen from and she lived with a community of
aboriginal women thereafter. In the winter of their years Noni had
sold up her farm and taken Marianne who was pretty much blind and off
they had gone in a campervan around Australia; picking flowers for
money when they could. They had found themselves under FBs
employment as washerwomen – and given food and a cabin only – but
they were content to sit on the veranda by the hanging clothes and
sheets and drink their tea. I found out that the cook, or the person
employed as a cook (as she was evidently not such a cook) had refused
to make them anything soft enough for their old mouths and teeth and
so they had hardly been eating for some time. I told them I would
cook for them if they would be happy enough with my vegetarian diet,
they were delighted by the idea and so we found ourselves in a happy
little daily dinner club and became good friends.
FB was a large and
cumbersome man; and had an ape-like walk and a face that looked like
several squashed cushions. He preferred to wear beige khakis –
like a colonialist – which essentially he was, and one that still
supported the genocide of the aboriginal people whilst running his
safari company offering tours such as 'The Dreamtime Tour' which he
sold for X amounts of dollars to soft hearted artistic types who
wanted to experience an authentic Australia. What the guests didn't
know was that all his tours were actually the same tour with
different names, lengths and prices – and FB made it my job to stop
guests from different tours from speaking to each other at the dinner
table. I cannot tell you how difficult that was but I was on threat
of being fired and a terrible anger if he heard any guest speak to
another from a different group.
It also became my job
to accompany him on some of the safari excursions. One might think
this would be fun; but FB suffered from narcolepsy and would fall
asleep at the wheel about every five minutes. Being an angry,
controlling nutcase he wouldn't allow anyone else to drive – so you
can imagine that the outcome of the scenario was horrendous every
time. It was literally my job to sit next to him up front and hit
him on the leg everytime he fell asleep; then he would wake for a
while, pull the giant OKA back into the road (from where it had
started trailing off) and then sleep again. Guests, apart from being
terrified, were rightly angry and so I found myself on a few
occasions having to talk him out of the driving seat and driving the
OKA myself (a huge, huge vehicle resembling an army truck or tank).
Then we had Hans the
autistic bush tour leader with OCD. Hans was another huge man, like
a bear, a very angry bear with a big beard – he was also obsessed
by the colour blue and had to have his safari hampers and all
equipment in that colour. He once left all the guests in the middle
of the rainforest at nighttime whilst he drove 250 kilometres back to
the safari base to get his blue tupperware that someone had either
forgotten or purposefully not packed and then he drove 250 kilometres
back; he literally kicked the back door of the kitchen in and began
shouting wildly about someone having put a yellow beaker in his bag.
Nick took one of the
safari vehicles once but he crashed it into a vicar's car and it
resulted in the man of God starting a police case. That and the fact
that Nick managed to shut down the entire farm generator meant that
we were going to have to make a move from the place. Before we left
we had various other challenges such as me nearly killing FBs father
by feeding him and his wife vegetarian chilli one evening whilst as
he was spooning the kidney bean dinner into his mouth he was
recounting his allergy to kidney beans that had seen him in intensive
care. It was a very tense affair. And Noni and Marianne tried not
to laugh or wince whilst I sweated out the decision options of
telling him or not telling him about the ingredients of the dish. I
didn't tell him. But he did not die.
On our last days there
a huge bush fire overtook the land; we could hear the wild animals
screaming and we were told that we had 30 minutes to get out if we
were going to leave. I sat with Noni and Marianne on the veranda and
Noni said that she knew the wind was about to change. I chose to
believe them and took a cup of tea with them watching the huge flames
devour the forests and sure enough, the wind changed and the fire
receded. Nick had hidden himself somewhere with a bottle of
something; 'That boy of yours is a liability' said Noni. He sure
was.
On one of my last work
missions FB took me to the supermarket to get huge amounts of food
for incoming guests. Apart from his ongoing racist and generally
misanthropic statements I recall him having a one off almost divinely
chanelled moment about avocados. In the midst of the crowded
shopping lanes, the clamour of the supermarket and in amongst the
tins, plastic, and packaging, as I was hunched over the burgeoned
trolley, he began to extol on the virtue of the green fruit and
almost approached a spitting rant about its use instead of butter in
sandwiches.
It was like a monster,
talking about love.
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