life

Let me tell ya a little bit about…

strength in numbers, and being taken advantage of.

Ya see, people have tried to take advantage of me a number of times. I have also been threatened by idiots at my former place of work a number of times. Because I worked alone a hell of a lot, I had to learn to stick up for myself. Actually, that’s a lie. I already knew how to look out for myself, and I knew all the stupid, horrible things people would do because they, for some reason, even though they had no idea what the f*** they were doing, thought they could do whatever the f*ck they liked.

They still think they can do whatever the f*ck they like.

This is where I start to get, not mad, not irate, but incredibly f*cking angry. I believe it’s called rage.

I think the angriest I got, was when people did not understand, nor refused to try to understand, that I am also a writer. So, what they’re endeavouring to do now, knowing I’m a writer (and a published author of other books unrelated to the other types of writing I’ve done over the years), is steal my stuff and use it for themselves.

I have a number of extremely succinct words for these types of people. Aside from the fact they think they can do whatever the f*ck they like, they are not particularly bright, in my humble opinion.

Incredibly, people also like to believe other things that are distinctly untrue, circulating around the internet. Things that have come out of other people’s books, and other people’s true stories that certain people have used for themselves. It’s kind of sucky.

My stories, certainly the ones about my family, my husband etc, are actually true. The others may have a lot of truth in them if you look very carefully, but, and here we get to the sticky bit, certain people are a tad naive, easily led, and feed off other people’s misery just for the hell of it.

I had another WordPress site quite some time ago. In it were stories about all sorts of things related to myself, and other people. Stories about wolves, and sheep, about smiles and how much one really needs to pull up a smile sometimes because someone else wants ya to. Stories about eight hours, and the fact that when one is a parent and a wife, one needs to extend one’s own eight hours and add everyone else’s eight hours in there as well.

Now, I know certain people may not believe this, and that’s okay too, but sometimes, just sometimes there are actually nice people out there who may very well have experienced something very similar to myself. Those people may not be in quite the right position to say something, due to “conflicts of interest” in regards to the type of work they do, and the fact they need to make a living. But, it does not give people the right to freely access my writing, or the kind of writing I do.

What they can do, is read this. I do not give people permission to access my work, and never have. I have said, however, if they wished to use certain ideas within my work to help them write their own things, then that’s fine, but that does not include accessing my work illegally. Unfortunately, when someone, not myself, accesses certain things of mine “freely” and “Illegally”, bad things start to happen… And not always to me and mine.

I don’t go to gyms. I can’t afford it. I’ve never gone to a gym. I don’t talk to people who are not my friends very often, unless I get the impression there is something very wrong. When I was working in the fuel industry, for example, the longest conversation I would have with a customer was not particularly long at all. Oh, I had a lot of disagreements with customers, because after all what the hell would I know, I only worked in a servo. Obviously I had never done anything else with my life, aside from, you know, get married and have kids (which is certainly nothing to be ashamed of). My long working life, training, and life experience in general could not in the least have anything to do with the fact I knew what the hell I was talking about.

When I see people have stolen certain photographs from other people’s facebook pages to perhaps boost their own confidence, and when I see certain people think there must be something wrong with someone who is quite comfortable in their own skin, I truly start to wonder if those few, unreliable sources might have something a little skewiff within themselves.

Still, there isn’t much I can do about that, except perhaps try to teach those people about what life is really like. It’s not all romance and flowers. It’s not all hearts and bunnies, and if you knew a little something about where I got the term “hearts and bunnies”, you might think a little deeper about that too. It’s not who I am personally, mind you, but it is certainly a historical fact, not fiction.

Perhaps, some other people might want to learn more about those certain, very important things and stop giving the rest of us a hard f*cking time.

You’re welcome.

The Challenge

I was employed in a roadhouse, many years ago, and had just returned to work. I’d suffered quite a bad injury which had affected my left arm and hand, and I was learning/teaching myself how to get some strength back into it. Some things had to be done slightly differently.

We had a new staff member, an older lady who hadn’t worked for quite some time, and when we were busy I’d kinda take over for a while because I knew how to do things quicker, despite my injury. What I didn’t know, though, was that she had a son.

The first time I spotted him, he was crouched down and peering around the corner of the counter. As I found out later, he was pretending to hide from his mother, thinking she was the one sitting on a stool having a short break. Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t his mother, it was me. I raised an eyebrow at him and he stood up, his face quite red, and went and sat down, or moved away or something. I can’t quite remember. Perhaps he even left the building for a short while before re-entering with some other blokes. I am not really sure. It was a long time ago.

Anyway, I went back into the kitchen and said to the woman I was working with, ‘I think there might be some people here for you,’ as I’d figured out rather quickly from his body language it wasn’t me he was trying to surprise.

We both went out to the counter, where three of them now stood. A little bloke, another bloke, and the one who had been trying, not very well, to surprise his mother. Of course, I didn’t know it was his mother. No one had thought to tell me that.

So, when they left and we went back into the kitchen, I said to my fellow staff member, ‘Who’s the one with the nice arse?’

She thought I was talking about the other bloke, the one not her husband, and the one not her son, so she said another name to me, with a questioning tone behind it. We discussed what he looked like and I said…

‘Nah, not him, the younger one. The one wearing the footy shorts.’

‘Oh.’ She sounded quite surprised. ‘That’s my son.’ And, you know what, there might have been an exclamation mark in that sentence.

‘Oh is it?’ I said. ‘Well, he’s got a nice arse.’

After some thought on my behalf, and not in the least bit sorry about telling the woman her son had a delectable backside, I asked for a little bit more information.

‘Oh he’s very shy,’ she said. ‘He had a bad accident himself, and when he’s at home he doesn’t really go out much.’

‘He’s shy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh well, we can fix that,’ I said, and I wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to his mother, before adding, ‘How old is he?’

He was around four years younger than me. Me, being the practical type, thought well, blokes are meant to die (not always) slightly earlier than their feminine counterparts, so if we got married (yes, I’m laughing) if we were lucky, we’d die around the same time. Now, you must remember this little piece here is a joke, and I do have quite a dark sense of humour, so please do not take that the wrong way.

On the piece of paper I had written my name and phone number, as ya do, but I had also written a short instruction of how he was going to pick me up on a certain day and take me to the movies.

‘I don’t think he’ll take you up on that,’ my fellow employee said, looking at the piece of paper. ‘He really is quite shy.’

‘Okay,’ I said, and added three more words.

‘Do you think that will work?’ she asked.

‘Of course it will,’ I said. ‘No one wants to be beaten by a girl.’

I was right. No bloke in his right mind would back out on a dare. Not one like that, anyway. His mother took the note home, handed it to him, he started laughing and not too much later he picked up the phone and gave me a call.

The rest is history. We were engaged eight months later. There is, of course, a lot more to this story but some things, I think, are nobody else’s business.

So, Brother

Are you willing to travel back to the land before Oz?

Are you willing to learn of the differences and sameness?

Are you willing to survive in the wilderness and discover something older than you? Much older, yes, and the true giver of life, because that is where she begins.

Let it rain, but let it be gentle. A cleansing. A new beginning. The smell is slightly different here, but the outcome after your wandering will be your choice alone.

Time looks to Nature and slowly replies. He thinks through these things, and slowly replies.

‘I have not been kind,’ he says. ‘You are right. This story, although highly amusing and slightly terrifying, and I know you are not pointing the finger at anyone in particular, is the one we should be paying for. I realise, this time, an apology will not suffice. Lead the way.’

The Discovery.

When one is not on foot, and the trees one is trying very hard to avoid are rather close together, trying to get from one place to the next, just to find the sandy track one has finally arrived at is in the wrong place, one might feel slightly peeved.

If it is in the middle of the night though, one might decide to grab the swag, remove one’s boots, and set up camp right there, in the middle of the track.

‘I’m not particularly fond of this spot,’ he said to his rather tall companion. ‘Can we not go on a little further?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she huffed. ‘I got you here in one piece, and if you want to find it, perhaps staying in one piece is a particularly good idea. Go to sleep, for God’s sake. I’ll film you tomorrow.’

‘Can’t we talk about it now?’ He scratched his beard. He’d never been particularly good at these things, but he knew, he just knew, if he could find the place where the drone had spotted that very interesting, very large, blinking whatever-it-was, his career would sky-rocket.

‘I know where you’re going with this,’ she replied. ‘But many people wouldn’t. There’s no reception there and I think it might take a few missed turnoffs just to reach the right place. According to the map, there’s a little inlet, tributary type thing just up the way a bit, so perhaps when it’s daylight and we can both see where we’re going, we’ll go and check it out.’

‘Excellent.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘I think this would be much better than emptying sewerage tanks for a living.’

‘Yes well. In my experience, being behind the camera instead of in front of it, is what I’d rather do. But, you do you.’

So when we say you…

kill her, you save her arse every time.

This was today’s dream.

The small white bus was cross-axled in the road. On either side of the road was thick scrub and low trees. One side was quite steep, the other side, to our left, had a ditch. My copilot, a tall blonde fella, was doing his damndest to help me stop the bloody thing from falling backwards into that ditch. I didn’t tell him that side had a ditch, I knew it was there, and I was not going to let that bus fall into it. No fucking way.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You can do this mate. We don’t give in, and we don’t give up.’

‘I can’t hold it,’ he said, and I could see him straining to keep it on the track.

I got out and put my shoulder into that metal door and I pushed. ‘Come on. We’ve got this.’

He had the other side. If I didn’t change the position of the back of that stupid fucking bus, it, and all its belongings, were gonna end up in that fucking ditch. So, I pushed her over a few inches so that if she went backwards again, she’d back up into a tree instead. The leaves of the peppermint were hanging over the back of that bus, and I knew it was not going to be easy.

The nose of the bus began to tip down. I could hear her then, the little one. I could hear the agony in her voice.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow,’ she gasped and cried and it was the most awful sound I’d ever heard. But, the whole point was to get this thing up that fucking hill, because there was nowhere else for us to go. The road was washed out further ahead, we couldn’t turn her round, we could only get her to go up.

‘Put your back into it,’ I grunted. ‘It’s not gonna be easy but we’ll save the stupid woman one more bloody time because she needs to get this right.’

If she ever reads this, I hope she finally gets it right. It’s not about what shit looks like, or how it appears to be, it’s about how we are trying to get you to access something you do not think you have, and lady if you do not think you have emotions, that is why you feel so fucking awful in yourself right now.

‘Do we send this to her too,’ asked the little one who had survived the crash of that bus. He was a big lad now, and not a little girl, but it didn’t matter in the long run. In the long run, the whole point was to get that woman to safety, regardless of what she’d fucking done.

‘Nah, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She’ll figure it out.’

Every spring she comes back to a garden…

Let me explain a few things about what happens when a story is shared.

First of all, it goes to an editor, and in one particular case, the editor and the publisher wanted to change the amount of letters in a certain seagull’s name. Instead of it being “AARGH”, which was his original name, it became AAAARGH, which was quite a bit longer.

Then, of course, it went to the illustrator, who had come from a different part of the world entirely, and the illustrator put their own little twist on Ambrosia and Aargh, and all the other creatures added to the story.

You see, when I first wrote about Ambrosia and Aargh, Ambrosia was a ladybug, not a ladybird, and Aargh, as you can see, had far fewer letters to his name.

But, unless we can share really carefully well thought out “why’s” to explain to other people, we do not always get what we want. Sometimes, we just have to go with the flow.

You see, Ambrosia was difficult to sell to my publisher, even though we were friends, because Ambrosia seemed a little too “common”. This is why I made Ambrosia into a Transverse ladybird, because that made her a little more Australian (who could also travel a little further if she needed to). Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, this argument for Ambrosia’s survival in the story industry was not passed on to the artist/illustrator, who made a perfectly good and beautiful ladybug/ladybird that everyone could see.

Aargh also nearly got left out of the story. Who’d have thunk it! Being “just a seagull” made Aargh a little common too, you see, so we made sure to make him an Australian Silver Gull (which he actually was).

Unfortunately, this little piece of information may not have been picked up by the illustrator either, being a Canadian, and the illustrator may have very well put her own twist as to what Aargh looked like.

Despite it looking like a dastardly plan to go international, it actually wasn’t. It was simply a conglomeration of several minds hard at work with their own ideas, which resulted in the final, slightly mixed up version of the original story of Ambrosia Honeybun Polka Dot. 

I’ll tell you a secret, too. One of the pages of writing in the book is not quite in the right place. It’s actually also a little bit mixed up, and that had nothing to do with me. In fact, quite a lot of the final story was not much like the original story at all, which was quite a bit shorter.

In saying this, and also looking at other editing mistakes in another book I wrote, even though it annoyed the bejeebers out of me at the time, I let it go. You see, it was already printed, copyrighted and all the other wonderful things that go with creating a story, and sometimes, just sometimes, there’s not much one can do about it at all except collect the royalties.

And sometimes, the royalties for writing books are not very much at all.

(I’ll give you a round number of what I receive for those two books over a quarterly period. It’s around $200 AU every three months. That’s not very much at all, is it. Not for someone who is fifty five years old and doesn’t get any other income. I’ll leave that with you to think about.)

Kate Capewell

Dear Toodles

She wrote. ‘Good to see your English is improving.’

‘My English has always been rather good,’ he said. ‘It just wasn’t your English, which is weird and Australian.’

‘There is nothing wrong with being weird and Australian, and this is meant to be my letter to you, so please be quiet.’

‘I am being quiet. I am sleeping peacefully because that is what is required of me at this time of the morning.’

‘Well then, perhaps you can just listen rather than talk.’

Toodles thought about that for a short while and decided it was possibly a good idea to listen, rather than talk. He listened.

‘If you are very well behaved, something wonderful is going to happen for your birthday. I’ve already written it down, and I know you want to change one little thing in it to make yourself appear a little more… hmmm, how shall I put it?’ She tapped her lip thoughtfully. ‘Blokey. You can talk,’ she added.

‘No, it’s okay,’ he replied airily. ‘It’s just, you know, some things we can’t be absolutely sure of.’

‘This is true, and I have amended one small thing. The other thing I see you were a little concerned about was what we call “A saying”.’

‘A saying? What’s a saying?’

‘It’s a little like,’ and she grinned as the little whispering friend in her ear offered up a particular well thought out saying. ‘A conversational art-piece.’

‘Is that what you do? Offer up little conversational art-pieces for people to ponder over and wonder about their meanings?’

‘That’s what I’m doing here, yes. In the past, I may have written that down regarding the Australian language and put it in a book, but here I’m offering these little snippets on this page only for you to work on and look at and perhaps wonder to yourself, “What If”…’

‘I think you are doing good things today,’ said Toodles. ‘Can I change me name then, so I can stop saying good bye?’

‘I think you can. You can change it to the greeting of someone being polite and friendly, and perhaps add a little bit of good manners in there, you know, just for fun.’

‘And what about the silly things the silly ones have done all over the internet because they were bored and didn’t have anything better to do?’

‘I believe there might be a certain gentleman wayyyyy over the other side of the world who is thinking about this right now, as we speak, and he has decided that maybe, just one last time, he’s going to think of some wonderful ways he can get them to fix it all up and make it nice again.’

‘You believe that?’

‘I do. Sometimes, believing in something is the most important thing of all.’

I’d say it’s high time he did.

See Me Now

One magpie comes to the fence and he asks. I watch him and chitter to him, and he asks. I watch him and I chitter-chat to him, and he asks.

I laugh to myself without any sound, and stand.

‘Oh no,’ he thinks and flies. He has heard me laugh and stand.

‘Tricky thing,’ I think and say in my head, ‘You have been seen. I pinpoint him and know I have done this before. This is and will be new.’

I send an old memory, by listening to it myself and all of a sudden there they are.

‘That sounds like my mum and dad,’ says the middle bird. ‘I know that sound. Listen!’

‘Are they not new then,’ says the first bird. He is very young.

‘Are you sure,’ says the third bird.

‘I know what I’m talking about,’ replies the middle bird. ‘That’s why I’m here. We need to start singing now. It is time to start singing.’

And, off they go to the trees and wait until I am listening. In the distance, I can hear them.

They have begun to sing.

Sentinel

“Is it an African Elephant or an Indian Elephant?”

When I was a kid and interested in all sorts of things, I learnt a little bit about two types of elephants. Back then, the above is what they were called. I assume the names have changed now, but there was one very clear way to tell the difference.

The size of its ears.

The Indian elephant has much smaller ears.

I guess, if one looked at the map of the world online, or were lucky enough to own an Atlas, like we did when I was a kid, one would see that reflected in the size and shape of the two different areas. One is bigger, one is smaller. Unsurprisingly, as in the size of the elephants ears, India is smaller.

Now, as I was not born in either of those countries, rather one of quite a unique shape and size, I can’t compare my smaller ears to someone else’s. I also do not pretend to be African or Indian. I’m Australian.

I have a little voice in my head saying, ‘Just remember to keep calm.’ I’d say that would be a reflection of a certain amount of my heritage, but not all of it. You see, I’m not quite sure where the other side comes from.

As I have said many times in the past though, ‘Now is not the time to go jumping on your white charger and go galloping off into the sunset. People may get hurt.’ Life is a jigsaw, and sometimes parts of the jigsaw are missing. It is just the way of it.

When someone, or something, has passed away, it takes a very long time to get over it, if at all. The memories still linger, and occasionally we still allow ourselves to grieve. What we choose to do with those memories, though, is up to us. I don’t feel I need to repeat other things written in the past over and over again, if it has already been said.

What I do like to do, though, is have the opportunity to hone my skills. If that opportunity is taken away, the skills remain, not fresh, but struggling. Some people are particularly good at choosing words immediately. Some people like to carefully pick their words so the exact thoughts and ideas are presented in such a fashion no one gets the wrong idea.

I prefer to be methodical in my approach to things, personally. When I “fly by the seat of my pants”, I do it through using all my previous experiences. I do not believe I have ever jumped into something without first checking the depth.

Of course, when one is not given a depth, and one is pushed, issues arise. Problems can occur. Accidents can happen. ‘Sink, or swim’ is not an adage in my book. ‘Watch, and learn,’ is.

When I write, ‘The only way to do it is to fly,’ I am not referring to leaping off a cliff with no thought for my personal safety. I’m talking about hard work, and determination, and the wish to make sure things are done properly. If I were to ‘jump off a cliff’ in any way, shape, or form, I would be making sure I had numerous safety measures in place, I will have double-checked and triple checked things myself, and not simply relied on other people’s say so.

This is often not the case when one is surfing the internet.

There is so much misinformation on the internet, so many different points of view and unhinged, unreliable personal opinions not based on fact, it becomes extremely difficult for someone (or something) with no experience to navigate. What is truth? What is fact? Do I rely on the amount of things that say the same thing? Are they from different places in the world? Different sources? What does history say about these things?

If that isn’t working for me, the only thing I can rely upon is experience. If I am unable to have the experience, I then need to rely on a source who has had the experience. Then, I must assume they aren’t telling me lies. How do I do that? I don’t know. How do I discern the difference between fact and fiction for the fun of it? I don’t know.

So, what I do, is draw upon my own personal experience and hope that not too much has changed. I carefully weigh up my options, check and double check my safety gear, and then decide if I am going to fly. I will not let myself be weighed down by indecision once I have made this choice. My choice does not change. I see it through, because I am the one to have made this choice.

This month (February) has many meanings to many people. To myself personally, it is pretty important. A lot of very special things happened for myself and my family in February. I am here to make sure it all goes correctly, as much as I am able.

After all, as a mum, that’s my job.

“I’ve got three weeks to go…”

.’…until I get married, and three years to go until I’ve finished my studies.’

The handwritten note had been tossed onto the bed in front of him and he stared at it for quite some time. He hadn’t quite figured out why these things were all happening, yet, but knew he was partly to blame.

‘I didn’t take those pictures,’ he muttered. ‘I just look at them from time to time and wonder who these people are.’ Up until now, he hadn’t questioned why he’d stolen them from the lady’s page. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. He was beginning to regret that now, though. Now, he was starting to wonder if he might have made a terrible mistake.

‘Did you get much for those stolen scenes?’ asked the little voice in his head, conversationally.

‘I didn’t steal them. You said you weren’t doing anything with them, so I took them, that’s all.’

‘That’s considered stealing, in my book.’

‘I didn’t let them take it… you did… I did… I didn’t… Just let me think about it, you’d said.’ He was grasping at straws now, and he knew it. Breaking into other people’s laptops was pretty easy when you knew how, especially when one was an ugly little weasel who had run out of ideas for scripts. ‘I obviously didn’t think this through,’ he added. ‘But now, I think I might have made a terrible mistake.’

‘How many other times have you stolen script ideas and writing over the years? What other things have you nicked from people’s laptops? I find this very interesting.’ The person in his head was definitely not him, he knew that now, and he was beginning to regret many, many things he had tried to do over the last twelve months.

‘I was told you were offered a controlling portion of great and wonderful things,’ he cried.

‘I think you might be wrong there. I, personally, haven’t been offered anything. At all. Ever.’

‘Oh just let me get something out of my drawer,’ He wasn’t going to be getting anything out of his drawer today though, was he.

‘That’s not how it goes, buddy. No one says, “Just let me get something out of my drawer.” That is very badly written. I know where you’re heading with it, but you know, why waste a perfectly good scene on badly written scripts, when one could just say, “I have made a terrible mistake, and I apologise for taking several key parts of a story written on the internet quite some time ago, and putting it all into one shambling episode that ended up making not much sense at all”.’

‘Nobody watches it anymore, anyway, you said that.’ The producer had wet his pants, again. ‘ Free to air TV just doesn’t get the viewers it used to, and my boss dolled it up, and I think I am dreaming of something but I know we all get paid, so I just don’t understand why no one went and paid the lady we got these things off, because we didn’t think it was a good idea either. How do we get hold of someone we owe a great deal of money to, when I thought she was dead? Why didn’t anyone fly out west and offer her something at least?’

‘Like I said, someone else did it, not me,’ said the sad kid. ‘I just went along for the ride and stayed up all night watching the kids getting better, cos that’s what it’s all about, right?’

‘Right. It’s also about not getting greedy and taking other people’s things because you’re trying to “Save a show”. I guess you mob have only got two choices now. You can’t exactly say it’s iconic anymore, anyway, and, although I am very sure it is very close to some older actors hearts, I am also quite sure they would be as equally disgusted as I am, that someone, or several someone’s, have sunk to such an incredible new low.’

‘Look, we just forgot you guys were on the other side of the country, that’s all. No one goes there anyway.’

A number of people who had lived in a certain part of the world until just recently, raised their eyebrows at their eastern states counterparts. It wasn’t like they could say much, not really. They had forgotten about this place themselves.

‘I guess the more of it I see appearing, on that show in particular, the higher the compensation will be,’ the frequent flyer from one side to the country to the other nodded his head. ‘No one should be making money out of other people’s misery, should they? Especially when the entire story, except for just a few little snippets on the end, was written at least ten years ago, and the lady in question is not doing too well, not really. You see, someone thought it would be a great joke to break into her laptop and steal all the things she’d been writing, and other things besides, and despite the fact she spoke with several people, no one did a fucking thing about it. So, here we are holding out a very empty hand full of nothing, and suggesting perhaps you put something in it.’