IT WAS HERE THAT I LEARNED HOW MEMORY

Fold, unfold. Unfold, fold. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what book Boris was talking about. And I don't know if I want to know. I thought about looking, but I just keep coming back to the pen and ink. I thought about looking but I just keep coming back. Fold, unfold. Unfold, fold.

He knew immediately that I was watching him, loneliness had sharpened his instincts. Orange trees and jasmine were growing in the courtyard and the arches were covered with vines. If life has no intention of doing you any favors, I’d rather go out where I can’t be expecting any. Selfsufficient and indifferent to the suffering of the rest of the world, with the unquestioning straightforward glance of an animal. She led me on along the littered slopes, past shattered china and bits of wire and broken springs and rusty pipes, all glimmering grotesquely in the moonlight. In a way you look older, and in another way you look younger, first one and then the other. It was here that I learned how memory can keep the diseased heart beating. None of it felt real, and for one paralytic moment I was sure that I was gliding away into another sphere of sensations. I feel a small electrical flash of love go out toward anyone I am in contact with, no matter who it is or where. The real remembrance lies in a momentary fragrance. It’s the thing hiding inside that gives us shivers. I knew he was awake, staring straight ahead as if he were gazing into a mirror, searching for something neither on earth nor in the sky. I began to hate him. Physical uneasiness can instil odd thoughts into the mind, thoughts frilled up in all their elaborateness, in all the bizarre intuitive fullness of a dream. But of course the truth is that intimacy and closeness were all an intricate hoax, an ingenious dream, a subtle but halfhearted mirage. Be fragile, be tender, humiliate yourself, and let the discolouration of dream close in on you. The reality becomes a cruel dream while the dream fades into a tender manmade reality. But all attempts at verbal communication he had surely dismissed as vanity years and years ago. A penetrating yet unseeing gaze, as if he were looking through me as through glass down corridors scarcely human. You remain alone, you can’t get inside the rest, they can’t get inside you. A million little spirits each with its own peculiar tastes, hopelessly far away from one another. But as I was beginning to doze off I heard a sound, a low buzz, steady and quite unexplainably frightening, the sound of time rolling past, and the world turning on its tiny axis. In my dream it appeared, among other things, that the oranges had dried out, had turned hollow and metallic, had changed into little bells.

KEY OF THE DOOR

Boris is dead. I found him. He was sitting in his spotted armchair. Not sleeping. Dead. Appearing to be asleep. But not asleep. Dead. He didn't come to bingo. He said he was going to come to bingo but he didn't come to bingo. We spoke earlier in the afternoon. He was working on another wall. I said it was that time of the month again, come on, let's go have a drink together, and just listen to the numbers as they come up, they might remind us of old phone numbers in our lives, that kind of thing, and bring up associated memories, and what not, who knows. He chuckled at the phone number idea but all the same said he'd come. But he didn't, he didn't come. Numbers were being called. I surreptitiously sank some sauvignon blanc and then snuck out the side entrance between the calling of numbers. There was no answer at his door. Boris, I said, between knocks. Boris, Boris. But still no answer. I knew he wouldn't have been outside, it was getting too late, the sun was setting, the wind was picking up, and history showed that he would have by now called it a day, he would have by now popped a stout bottle open and quietly supped from a glass (in the meanwhile) before his early evening comedy came on. Boris. Boris, come on, open up. So I turned the knob and found it unlocked. And there he was, upright in his armchair. I knew as much then as I ever would. The crux of the matter being that I had to get out. No, not the room necessarily, but the whole place. The retirement village. There was something wrong with the whole set up, the whole idea that these elderly live out their last breaths surrounded by one another, each in a lonely room, with framed photographs on the walls of family and better times. There was just the other day the man in 23 needing a lightbulb changed, and the handyman was away, so I said I'd take care of it. He was a teacher in times past. On the wall were framed photos of his family, as well as framed handwritten poems from his students over the years, and what looked like framed examples from students' exercise books. English composition. Spelling. Comments on Blake's Songs of Innocence. Earlier in the day I'd been talking with the woman in unit number 17 again. She'd mentioned how in Yorkshire during the Second World War she and her co-workers at the bank would take it in turns to go up onto the roof after hours to help keep watch for German planes. I want to fly away. I want to fly again. I want to fly away, Boris. Boris, look at you. In your lap a piece of paper, betwixt thumb and forefinger, unfolded, and the prominent creases reminding me of the streets in a simple well laid out city in which I might like to one day take a casual tram ride around, cold bottle of beer in hand, cute girl by my side, and a conductor checking tickets with the gab of one Harpo Marx. Boris, come on, wake up. But he wouldn't wake up, of course he wouldn't, he was dead. Come on, man, he's dead. Get it together. So I took the piece of paper from his lap and carefully folded it back up, put it inside my inside coat pocket and then went back to the recreation hall to go look for Mrs Shearer and let her know what had happened. She was in between calling out numbers again. I went up and whispered about Boris, and she nodded and then went about calling the next number. Then someone called out bingo. Motioning me with a tilt of her head, I followed her to the head office and she closed the door behind me. Are you sure? she wanted to know. Yes, I'm sure, I replied. They're not supposed to do that here, she said, and which I took to mean to die. They're supposed to be able to look after themselves, she said, they're supposed to be in better health than that, otherwise we would have sent them elsewhere. A hospital, or one of those places where there's a nurse to take care of your needs, feed you, wash you, if necessary, that kind of thing. Then her cheeks suddenly went red and she started crying. I was about to tap her on the shoulder and say 'There there', but something better immediately came along and told me to do otherwise, which meant to do nothing. And I had no idea if she even knew Boris.

MAN ALIVE

Maida Vale, Marylebone, Paddington, St John's Wood, Queen's Park, Victoria, Westminster, Paddington, were the libraries most frequented by Boris on his walks around London. It had been a while since he had seen her, and then suddenly there she was again, sitting at a table across from him in Paddington, reading the same edition of the International Herald Tribune. He couldn't help but imagine that she was reading the same page as him, and not just the same page but the same article too, and not just the same article but the same part of the article, the same line, the beginning of the same word. Everything seemed to stop then. The light in the library took on a hue more akin to a dream, or at the very least a balmy dusk, when it was in fact midmorning. He knew he had to act. Now was his chance. He knew, but he did nothing. And he still curses, even now, his behavior that day, although the distance of time has, of course, made it all a lot easier. He can, in fact, actually laugh about it all now, and thereby proceeds to demonstrate. Ha ha. Ha ha. But yes, it still haunts him, like a hungry ghoul sometimes, he says. The ghoul can go get out of here. Go on, ghoul, go on. It's funny, he can remember the girl clearly, he says, and the day that his brother arrived in London too, and even how the city smelled that particular morning, whether at the airport or inside the library, but when it comes to trying to recall that book he was reading, that book whose lines still come to him every now and then, no, he cannot recall the name. At best he can scramble after a line once it appears in his thoughts and try with all his might to hold on to it, reach for a pen, if able, and jot down what he can, before it disappears once again into the aether. Then Boris changes the subject and says he hasn't seen me around much of late. I've been working on the other side of the village, I tell him, ripping up ivy which has overrun the garden beds near the hospital, climbing up and sucking the life from some of the surrounding trees. It's been a monotonous slog. And there's a resident nearby, I tell him, who doesn't appear to approve of me sitting under a conifer tree to eat a sandwich during lunch break. I overheard her the other day hanging out some towels to dry and saying as much to another woman, and that I shouldn't be entitled to a lunch break anyway, but that even if I was legally entitled to one, the least I could do would be to stand and eat my sandwich, if I insisted on being in view, for the residents of the village are, after all, helping pay a percentage of my wages, and by sitting under a tree it makes me look as if I'm lazy, which reflects badly on everyone, don't you know. Boris seems to know the woman in question, laughs, and shakes his head. German she is I'd say. So don't let it worry you. Some of them are still smarting from losing the wars.

RED RAW

He could barely meet her eyes. He was so, so timid then. Terribly timid. Often he'd shed weight in shame, it was really that bad. Such a strange, strange sense of self disgust. Often a run, only a run, a wild silly run, would do the trick. He would, afterwards, feel sort of clean again. So strange. Run run run. But never enough, to ever escape. Are you, Boris wanted to know, aware of the relationship between the word timid and the word intimidate? It was a horribly excruciating time, he said. Do you know what it means to be lonely? I mean lonely. I knew menus better than men, and yet I had nothing to pay. Eventually I forgot how to speak. Women looked at me like an untamed dog. And I never knew that that could be an advantage of sorts, not until it was too late. I was simply hungry, that was all. Clueless, and hungry.

WAS SHE WORTH IT?

One day, at Paddington, Boris spotted a  dark haired beauty, who he guessed must have been an Italian. Yes, she must have been a student of English, an Italian student of English who thought that the best place to learn the English language in all its glory would be the English capital itself. London. Of course. How could she go wrong. Oh. Oh. But he never knew for sure, no, Boris never knew for sure, he simply guessed, yes, she looks Italian, she's Italian, that's what she is, that's what she must be, Italian, yes, Italian, unless proven otherwise. 

MAKE THEM WAIT

I tell Boris he's the first Boris I've ever met, and ask if there's any Russian blood in his lineage. No, nothing at all, he says. Apparently his mother had a fondness for the works of Boris Pasternak. He was also close, he tells me, to being called Leon. Boris is a strong sounding name, I say, and I remember watching as a boy Boris Becker win Wimbledon at the record age of seventeen years old. Yes, he remembers that too, watching the match surrounded by two of his daughters, eating turkey pies and mushy peas. After a tea break, I watch Boris from a distance working on a wall. He's seated on a plastic milk crate, rolling a piece of rock around in his hand. Then he stops and reaches into his shirt pocket and takes out a pen and a piece of paper, which he unfolds carefully, as if it were a treasure map. He jots something down, recaps the pen, and folds up the paper again, and puts it away out of sight. A small smile comes to his lips, and then a slight shake of the head. I finish my tea and think about approaching him to talk, but something in me makes me think to leave him alone, I don't know why exactly, but there's something incredibly private about the way he's sitting, pondering, and wondering, and trying to imagine, I can't help but think, the next place to place his latest piece of rock ... He looks as if he's reminiscing, or in some kind of meditative state more akin to a monk. And then it's like he all of a sudden comes back again, it happens just like that, all of a sudden, from a private world of a dream to the public world of being - just being - and I seize my chance and walk up to him, and as I do so, I can't help but try to think of something suitable to say, and silly thoughts such as how much has he seen since coming here, to these parts, to this retirement home, come to mind, how many different people have come and gone, that kind of thing, and then, as I get closer, he seems lighter, younger, and I say as much, and for some reason add that he looks as if he's just found out that he's picked the right lottery numbers. That's nothing but another tax, he says, the stupid tax I call it. He tells me he's thinking of his brother again, he can't help it, it just comes, just like that. He remembers picking his brother up from the airport, Heathrow, or Gatwick, he can't remember which. And he remembers a book his brother brought with him, a book highly recommended that he should read. But Boris, for the life of him, can't remember the name of the book, no, it just won't come. He can, however, remember, and easily, what his brother was wearing, for instance - brown jacket, white shirt, red scarf - and the bags he brought with him too, just the couple, if he remembers rightly, one beige and leather, the other a dark canvas  ... But no, not the book, not the book at all ... Not the book that Boris can recall reading in one sitting once he had it in his hands, the book he felt as if he'd almost devoured, once it was in his grasp, no, not the book.

ALL THE FEATHERS

Unlike Boris and his cockatoos, the sound of a lawnmower, for me, is starting to sound like the end of the world. The upside, apart from the smell of freshly cut grass, is how you notice the slightest sound once the machine is shut off. It is the end of autumn here, some of the last of the fallen leaves get caught in a slight breeze, emitting dry, crunchy whispers as they hit up against and swirl around the corner of a wall. The lawn is mown again, likely one of the last times before the onset of winter and the sleeping of the grass. Hopefully the last. I keep checking the machine but can't figure out why the catcher isn't working properly, the result being that lines of grass are left behind, that remind Boris, he says, of the lanes in a swimming pool in London that he used to frequent, where most mornings he would swim lap after lap after lap. Looking back now, maybe I visited that pool so often in the hope of meeting some pretty girl that I otherwise never would have had the nerve to approach. But now there was an opportunity, we had swimming in common! Strange how such things can suddenly come back to you. He says he was in France for a while too, and starts to speak in French, to which I reply 'Oui. Ca va?' and he laughs like he's heard one of the funniest things in the world. He taps me repeatedly on the shoulder and then says he's going for a beer, before adding: Mind those birds, my boy. Today could be the day. 

GATEWAY TO HEAVEN

Boris has been a resident of the village longer than anyone else. He secured one of the units soon after completion, way back when, he says, around the beginning of the eighties. So he lives in number 2, having been beaten to number 1 by a whisker. A cat's whisker, as it turns out, for pets were forbidden, and it took Boris a little longer than expected to find a home for his moggie, since each of his four children spread around the country were reluctant to receive a fluffy ginger addition to their household, a daughter finally acquiescing on condition of a sufficient monthly financial incentive. She'll ask for it now one way or another. A cheque here and there. That first day just got the ball rolling. And the cat's now been dead for donkey's. But at least I get photos of my grandchildren. One of them could pass for my wife, she really could. Unless the weather is particularly foul, Boris can usually be found somewhere on the grounds, working on one of his dry stone walls. His inherent modesty prevents him from detailing his achievements, but according to Mrs Shearer, whatever wall you come across within the boundaries of the village, chances are Boris built it. He tells me that he was never a builder before coming here, that it was just something he picked up, bit by bit, as he found all kinds of rock left behind following the village's construction. A lot of it he moved too, bit by bit, to the unused space beneath his building. And then, bit by bit, he would start making little walls here and there. Something to accentuate a garden bed perhaps, or to add a little texture, or counter balance the boredom of the tarmac with some nicely arranged stones. It wasn't rocket science, he wanted me to know, but what was, apart from rocket science? Usually he'd just set off anywhere and start fiddling around. He'd pick a piece, roll it around in his hand, get a good feel for it, and then take it from there. He'd familiarize himself with the edges too, and essentially, he said, in the end, it was just like a giant jigsaw puzzle, except that, more often than not, there was always more than one place to go for any particular piece. And so it became second nature after a while, a part of his day as important as washing his face with cold water in the morning, before a strong cup of tea. Besides, he didn't want to agitate himself with the superficialities of the newspapers or the nightly news anymore. The world is always ending. I may as well build a stone wall in the meantime. Often he lets the screeching cockatoos late in the afternoon signal the end of his day. They made him think, he said, of the sky tearing open in two, and he half imagined shiny brass horns to follow, almost as if announcing the final meeting of the world above with the world below. And then we would all be able to see how his walls held up.

BUCKLE MY SHOE

From a flier passed around during the last Friday of the month happy hour by the man in unit number 12.

Do you remember when

Water trickled down the butcher shop window

The postman blew a whistle

Petrol was sold on the curbside

The night cart never failed to wake us in the morning

Police on point duty wore a white summer helmet

A bag full of broken biscuits could be had for a tuppence

Bread was sold from a basket

Clothes were lifted from boiling water with a copper stick

STUCK IN THE TREE

Before the handyman leaves for the pastures of working in a state prison, I help him build a railing above an embankment, in case car passengers get confused, disembark on the wrong side and take a tumble down to the road. Then he's off to be trained in a life behind bars and I'm left to plant out a flower bed. At lunch I check out the library in town and make enquiries at the local nursery to see what would suit planting. Back at work again, and beginning to turn the soil, I hear a voice and turn to see a short old woman looking down from her balcony, the number 17 stenciled on the balcony base. I said now at least I'll get to see some colour from behind these dreaded iron grills. There are no restraints on her windows as far as I can tell, just the bars of the balcony that I can see, so maybe she's shrinking, I've heard that happening to women as they get older, yes, she's maybe shrinking and her view is starting to resemble more and more a prison cell. Then she says: I'll give you a thousand dollars if you break me out of here. It's tempting, but I decide not to act on it right away, in case it's needed further down the line. At least you're trying to make something beautiful. That's the very least we can do while we're here. But unfortunately your flower bed will be a small part on an otherwise enormous canvas irreparably damaged by an onslaught of grey. She calls me a sweetheart and says it wouldn't be so bad were the house she'd lived in for the past thirty years not six minutes drive away. Once her husband had died, her sons decided that she was in no fit state to be living alone anymore, and so arranged for her to be moved into this: old people's home. That's what it is. Why don't they just say it? You look like you need a whiskey. I tell her maybe later, and mean it. Alone. My sons don't know what alone is. I lived alone the last few years with Otto anyway. Otto? Her husband. Apparently he'd retreated more more the last few years of his life into the machinations of his increasingly muddled mind. She first noticed the change in him when he would suddenly burst out laughing for no particular reason. Then he started dancing in the middle of the street, usually dressed, and she ended up having to lock the front gate, but it never stopped him from trying to climb over. Often she would find him passed out from exhaustion under a nearby tree, impossible to wake, and far too large for her to move. So she would sit there with him, whatever the weather, and look at the tree stump which they had oiled together all those years ago, to preserve the rings, for they knew the rings would outlast them all, and it was the first tree they felled when they came to these parts to raise a family.

TROMBONES

From what I can tell, the majority of the residents appear to be female. And of the men, there are only a few with wives, the rest either widowers, or bachelors from the very beginning (as it's said, a bachelor knows a woman better than anyone - that's why he's a bachelor). I meet one of the couples when asked to deliver a repaired kitchen drawer. They're in unit 15. A white haired woman with glasses half the size of her head lets me in, and the moment I step inside I'm struck by heat and a wave of eucalyptus oil mixed with the unmistakable aroma of recently fried eggs and bacon. My eyes are soon stinging and I can only comfortably see when I squint. Across the room, a giant of a man sits in an armchair. A blanket covers his lap. A ventilator sits on the ground beside him. He waves me over with a hand the size of a bear paw. He used to run a winery, he says, almost single handedly. And then he makes me promise that I will look after my knees, in fact he makes me swear that I will look after my knees. Closer, closer, he says, I want to see the whites of your eyes when you swear to me. But I'm not sure there's any white left after the aromatic onslaught, but I lean in closer anyway and look at him, and yes swear that I will look after my knees. His wife reminisces about running their small farm, the children who would be running beneath her feet, the roast chickens, neighbors, friends and family who'd come round for Sunday dinner, their own proudly produced wine freely available, the bottles they'd leave for guests to take home. As she tells me this, he interjects every now and then to provide some names, and with some names would come an associated memory, a particular tractor or axe perhaps, the time they all built that barn together, him and his brother in law, his brother in law's best friend, Jeffery something, he may have just been passing by, passing by, why would someone just be passing by like that, right there and then, it doesn't make sense. The man and woman's sentences often overlap, seem to blend in to one and the same. Or else they simply speak as if the other is not speaking. Then he asks me to help him up, so I take hold of his forearms, gradually lean back, and pull him to his feet. His shoulders are stooped, and yet he's still a head and a half taller than I am. She smiles, speaks as if he's not even in the room with us anymore. He was the strongest man I'd ever known. The absolute strongest. And the kindest man too you'd ever likely come across. I've a photo of him somewhere holding our four children up in the air, one in each arm, one on each shoulder. The strongest. Without a doubt the strongest.

WOBBLY WOBBLY

They covered me in yellow plastic so as to help keep me dry, or so that I could be more easily located if lost somewhere in the wind and sideways rain, or so that I was not mistaken for an apparition of doom if any of the village residents decided to go for a drive and saw me blocking their path. Needless to say, it was important to stay alert. Inflated pride kept me on my toes, as even in an afterlife I could picture an overflowing well of shame due to some pill popping geriatric somehow stumbling across my death in a car far too powerful for such bony hands. Alert, I had to stay alert, be especially on the lookout for any self defeating distractions of thought, petty things really, such as how to stay warm and dry, or what the hell I was doing working three days a week in a retirement village of all places, as a groundsman, as a gardener, or whatever the hell they were calling me today. Working for peanuts, for watery, tasteless peanuts, that someone had forgotten to roast, or even partially salt. Yes, it was definitely time for a tea break, and a peanut butter sandwich too perhaps. Until I remembered I'd forgotten to prepare any food in the morning, more concerned as to why a family of mice had recently decided to move in to my house. And besides, I'd forgotten to buy any peanut butter. The tea would have to do, flowing from the urn in the staff room as if released from prison, or as if the pressure was getting too much and my cold shriveled hand turning the tap to fill my cup had somehow saved the day.

DOCTOR'S ORDERS

The hospital is beside the retirement village and the cemetery is beside the hospital. Maybe you could complete the circle with the introduction of a child care centre somewhere. Beside the retirement village perhaps. That way the elderly can experience the circle of existence for themselves, right up front, and meanwhile get a good dose of energy from spritely infants without having to wait for a visit from the great-grandchildren, which I've yet to witness. It makes me think of Barcelona, where we went for our honeymoon, way back when. And even then we were saying give us a good mix of generations any day, it's better for everyone.

 

Evenings wandering Barcelona streets. That one place where we were told there were often four generations at once savoring the sumptuous hospitality, kids snaking through legs, under the feet of unhurried waiters. That one place, I forget the name. Jesus, I forget the owner's name too. That's not good. It was only seven years ago. I'm tempted to call him Juan Sebastian, but something about it just doesn't sit right. It could be close though. What does it matter now anyway? It'll come back to me. It'll come back.

 

The hospital cafeteria, I'm told, is the place to get a quick bite to eat, if you didn't bring anything with you and you don't want to go in to town on your lunch break. I order a sandwich to go, sit down and wait. At the next table, a white haired woman comes in and joins two others, one of whom she knows, the other she's introduced to. She orders a salad sandwich and a flat white, takes off her coat, sits down. The place is small so you can pretty much hear any voice that's above a whisper, and so three women together poses no problem, or even offers any other option but to hear what they talk about. The woman says she came up to Katoomba to attend to some business, and once done she wanted nothing more than a good coffee and something light to eat. But none of the choices on offer in town held any appeal to her, so she came to the hospital, as she remembered they served good coffee there. She said that once upon a time she used to sit right at this table and sip a cup of coffee, maybe nibble a cheese sandwich, or a slice of cake if something caught her eye, three, four, five, sometimes every day of the week. This was when, she said, her husband used to be a patient here. He's now no longer with us. And she didn't say if he's buried in the cemetery next door or not.

CLEAN THE FLOOR

I watch as the ladies in unit numbers 27 and 28 argue about the feeding of the cockatoos which come most afternoons, perching on a nearby railing. Number 27 (supposedly with a penchant for psychic predictions, one of which includes the premature passing of Mrs Shearer: I give her two years at best) takes the position of vehemently opposing the feeding of the birds, citing repeatedly the appropriate passage in the handbook of rules and regulations. Number 28, on the other hand, who has a fondness for Finnish vodka and the piano sonatas of one Mr Ludvig van Beethoven darling, is strongly in favor of the free distribution of birdseed in any amount she deems suitable. And she feigns retching each time at the mere mention of the stipulated rules.

DOWN ON YOUR KNEES

In unit number 12 lives a man who sees fit to trim the lawn edges outside his front door with a pair of craft scissors and a purple plastic ruler, when he thinks I'm not looking. It shall not be surprising in the slightest to find any successive attempts to meet his exacting standards inevitably ending in failure.

THOSE FAMOUS STEPS

In unit number 21 lives a statuesque woman who comes out and exuberantly expresses her gratitude at my weeding the garden bed outside her bedroom window, as well as shaping with shears the unruly bay tree to a far more agreeable size. With both hands she blows me kisses. She bows and calls me a darling. Later on a tea break I'm told she used to tread the boards in theatres across cities such as London and Edinburgh.

STAYING ALIVE

If there's any doubt about the importance of the lawns in the minds of those who live here, they'll likely be removed with each encounter, however brief. Some of the residents speak about the abilities of my predecessors as if they're comparing the technique of their favorite tennis players. And yet the qualities of my immediate predecessor, it soon becomes clear, shall not be too difficult to surpass. Apparently, rather than regularly attend to the grounds, he preferred the more solitary pursuit of weightlifting in the privacy of the garden shed. This, no doubt, goes to explain the presence of a full length mirror leaning up against one of the walls, as well as an abandoned dumbbell bar, and a small tube of oil that features the imprint of an overly developed headless torso. Rather than have time on his hands, my predecessor, it seems, had weights in them. Perhaps the proximity of so many near the end of their lives reminded my unknown gardening brother of his own mortality, likely encouraging him all the more to push on harder through another set of repetitions, maybe even with some added weight. Either that, or he was merely vain.

TWEAK OF THE THUMB

In the warmer months the lawns are to be cut at least once every ten days and maybe even more during the peak season, depending on the rain. Any stray grass cuttings (the rules of employment stipulate) that are not caught by the catcher are to be carefully raked and properly disposed of atop the compost heap, which needs to be turned through at least once a week with a pitchfork. And it's important never to forget to go back and trim the lawn edges and afterwards use the leaf blower to blow all the paths clear again. Until seeing it for myself in the shed, I never realized a leaf blower was an actual machine, nor a lawn edger for that matter, either. Up till now they would have sounded like some unfortunate, ill paid position a desperate father might have to undertake most weekends to earn enough to sufficiently feed his brood of eight. As for what Mrs Shearer called a whipper-snipper, a process of elimination helps identify that particular contraption. Fortunately the manuals for each device are neatly piled in an oil stained wooden box, beside a large enough collection of chemicals that look as if they could do serious damage to a herd of elephants.

DUCK AND DIVE

Monday morning and Mrs Shearer's walking me around the grounds. We're gone almost an hour.

Remembering Sol's tip, I stop at random places and pick weeds from garden beds, as if I can't help myself, whipping out now and then some recently acquired secateurs and snipping off here and there the heads from dead or dying flowers. Also on occasion I rub some earth between my fingers as if to show that I'm trying to determine soil condition. Then, before lunch, I take Sol's advice and concentrate firstly on the state of the garden bed directly outside the manager's office, weeding, feeding, mulching it, and afterwards noting Mrs Shearer's nods of appreciation, just as Sol had predicted.

She then takes me into her office and stresses the absolute importance of regularly maintaining and manicuring every lawn on the property, for inattention in that department, she says, is something the residents will never fail to notice.

MONKEY'S COUSIN

When I first came to these parts I started counting different things all the while on the drive up, only ceasing upon reaching the sign that stated I was now a thousand steps higher than the sea. Pulling in to fill up the car, I caught sight of the light on my hand still holding the steering wheel, shining on the sunless ring around my finger where an engraved band of silver used to be.

I was so far from home.

We had called the car Gloria on account of the song, filling the background as our bodies were first starting to get to know each other. Now though, no naked legs were catching the last of the summer's light on the front passenger seat. Instead there was a bag of clothes there, a couple of books, and a spare pair of boots in place of her feet.

Sol called ahead to get my foot in the manager's door at the retirement village. The manager, a Mrs Doreen Shearer, hastily explained the relevant duties to be undertaken around the grounds, in between calling out bingo numbers for the gathered residents. For the most part, the duties consisted largely of mowing the lawns and weeding and pruning the various garden beds around the place. 'It's Friday,' she said, after calling out another number, 'so why don't you come back Monday and show me what you can do.' So on Saturday morning I was scanning the library shelves for any volumes on basic gardening techniques, which at the very least added a few extra words to my vocabulary, such as mulch, and secateurs.