Cat on the Bench: Moving on

My mum is in the final stages of moving from the town we grew up in to a tiny studio flat in St Kilda. She has been living in St K for the last few months (under a license agreement in which I inserted a “cat clause” clarifying that she was allowed her cat) and has been spending weekends moving up as much stuff as will fit in her little shoebox and allocating the overflow between her three kids.

It has been quite an effort. Three weeks ago we hired a truck and clad in our wife-beaters, we trucked down the highway with Jimmy pumping, stopping of course for a sausage roll. All went smoothly until we actually got to packing and discovered that it was going to be a lot more difficult to move ‘adult’ furniture than my hard rubbish collection. So my mum went into the pub next door and offered a slab to anyone who wanted to help two women pack a truck. Half the town’s male population put down their beers and we were packed in no time!

There were no probs unpacking in St K after a few hasty text messages to friends with biceps. But the next week my mum had some terracotta pots that she couldn’t carry up the stairs, so she went into the Saint and made the same offer she did the week before. No one would even make eye contact. She ain't in Kansas anymore.

Anyway, yesterday she made the final carload and arrived on my doorstep with a vacuum cleaner, her Kenwood mixer that she used when she ran her breadmaking stall at the local market, and a suitcase full of papers.

I was pretty excited about the first two, but bemused at the third. She said she had had a peek and thought it was my old music and to watch out for spiders.

Once she had left I opened the suitcase and found:

a feckload of sheet music that I had forgotten about
folders in which I had systematically filed school certificates, handwritten recipes and letters from boyfriends (including a pressed corn chip packet that I had shared with a crush - dated to go off in 1993). Destined to be a secretary, some would say.
school reports which I had absolutely no idea that my mum had kept. I had a look through, and the highlight (and requisite food angle of this story) would have to be Mrs Gleeson’s comments for year 8 Food Studies:

“ . . . a very enthusiastic cook but she would get better results if she paid more attention to the recipe and spent less time talking. Her cleaning skills are also below average.”

I'm not sure what to make of that!

Here’s a recipe found within for what I think was an attempt to make non-alcoholic mulled wine.

(Sorry - no idea how to make it any bigger . . . you aren't missing much!).

Comments

What a find. Especially the chip packet :) Too cute!

Posted by: Rubydot | November 08, 2005 at 03:32 PM

It is good to move on the place of St Kilda is a matter of conjecture. The islands' human heritage includes numerous unique architectural features from the historic and prehistoric periods,so about the your mum you told,so the mother is the life and most important personality for the persons,so the things you share about your mum,is absolutely beautiful to read.

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