The Saying of It Was Enough

We were out of the car park early, before anything else came up the road, and the going was slow again on the way down. The kangaroos were still about. They generally are at that hour, which is the whole reason we try not to be, and on a morning when there is no choice the answer is simply to crawl and keep crawling.

Thirty five minutes or so brought us down into the bottom of Canberra, to Wanniassa and the school, and the day split three ways from there. Sal went in. Anth did the groceries and then took himself back to the Bunnings car park, which is becoming a fixture of these Mondays. Grammy went to Erindale, where there is coffee and something decent to eat, and spent her day the civilised way.

In the afternoon, with Sal collected, we went to Liz's.

The invitation had come about because Sal had mentioned, in passing and without any particular weight, that we had spent a night the week before in the Erindale shopping centre car park. Liz was appalled. So was Jeff. They live under ten minutes from that car park, and the idea that we had been sitting in it overnight while they were at home with a spare driveway and a kitchen did not sit well with either of them. The driveway was offered on the spot, and a meal from Jeff along with it. We had stayed there once before, at the end of last year, so the offer was not a new one so much as a standing one being renewed with some force.

Grammy met us there. Both vehicles went in off the street, and we went up to the house and ate properly, which is to say sitting at a table with food somebody else had cooked and thought about.

It is worth saying plainly that we had not asked. We would have done the car park again, or found somewhere like it, and thought nothing much of the choice. The offer came because Sal happened to say where we had been, a week after the fact, and the saying of it was enough.

Tuesday ran the same shape as Monday. Anth in the Bunnings car park, five minutes from the school this time rather than half an hour. Grammy went north to Higgins to open up the house sit again, where a second and final week was waiting. At the end of the day Anth collected Sal and we went to Erindale for a coffee before driving anywhere, sitting for a while in the same complex the bus had spent a night in, using it the way it is meant to be used and going home to a house afterwards.

Then north across the city to Higgins. One more week of driveways and hot water, and after that, back to it.Read more