The day the oil ran out (6)

I kept on my way to the Massey Pony Club, momentarily distracted by the Ranui Library. Well I had to go in, hadn't I? There might be a book to read!

I chained up my bicycle and walked through the doors. Bunny the librarian was at the desk. Seeing I wasn't a child, she didn't buttonhole me. No requests, but I always made sure I looked on the withdrawn trolley. Never know what you would find for 50 cents.

'Wendyl Nissen's granny recipes' hmm, makes a change from 'Bitch and Famous' I remarked to nobody in particular. There was also '50 Shades Darker' and 'The Dangerous Book for Girls'. Another, that looked appealing was called 'The Hunger Pains'.

Why can't there be a book on how to ride horses? I went upstairs to non-fiction.
I kept looking. Sure enough one popped out at me 'Horses for Dummies'. That will do.
I then checked out "I quit sugar!" (for Dad) and "Chinese Cinderella, a tale of an unwanted daughter' (for mum). "How to live off the smell of an oily rag" also looked promising.

I went back downstairs to check my books out when Librarian Linda came up to me and said is your bike the pink bike? I'm afraid it's been stolen. I saw a man riding off with it.

What? I thought I chained it up?!
Sure enough the chains had been chopped clear with bolt cutters. My bicycle was now in the wilds of Ranui with some man joy riding it, illegally.

That was just great. Linda looked at me and shrugged. "Desperate times call for desperate measures", she mused. "Are you ok to get home?"

I sighed, it would just take me longer with these books to carry, but I'll cope.
I guess I could report it to the police.

Linda looked sympathetic. I told her I would just find a horse at the pony club. Maybe they would loan me one in compensation.

Good luck, said Linda.

The day the oil ran out (5)

I peddle my pink bike out of the garage. I didn't deliberately choose this colour, the bike man at the bike shop chose it for me. However on the plus side, it means no boys would dare steal a pink bicycle.

I put on my helmet and face the road, now nearly completely empty of vehicles. Wow. I had never seen it like this before, and it's eerily quiet except for the faint sound of Mr Whippy in the distance.

Massey Pony Club. That's out west. I head in a westerly direction, toward the hills. On the way to Swanson Road I see someone walking along with a huge hat and she calls out to me.

"Hey Selina! Can I be in your story?"

I think to myself, hmm that's weird. How does she know I'm writing a story about this? Have I just broken past the wall? Am I experiencing the twilight zone that all athletes and runners do while running for any length of time before they collapse? But I'm only on Swanson Road! Perhaps I don't have enough water, am dehydrated and what I'm seeing is a mirage...

I peddle closer and see that it's Buffie, my garden tutor. She's smiling at me, but then she's always smiling. I don't have the gift of permanent smiling face expression. I'm wrinkling my brow trying to make my brain cells work.

"Hi Buffie! I'm sorry what did you just say?" I slow down right beside the foot path.
She repeats "Can I be in your story?"

Before I have time to formulate a considered answer I find myself saying "Sure! I'm heading to Massey Pony Club".
"Wow great minds think alike. I need some horse manure for the garden. I was thinking of getting some but its going to be hard yards hauling it without a vehicle"
"Well that's why I'm thinking of finding a job there, perhaps they can lend me a horse and then we could have horse manure all year round".
"Sounds like a good idea to me".
Buffie is still smiling. She then says "Sorry I can't stay chat but let me know and maybe we can sort something out. By the way are you into Game of Thrones monopoly?"

I say.."Uh not really, never heard of it. I'm more of a Scrabble person"
She says "It's an excellent game. You should try it sometime"
And then she waves me goodbye.

Huh. Random!

The day the oil ran out (4)

I won't think about it today. I will think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow...is another day!

Why the lines from Gone with the Wind were popping into my brain I had no idea. WWSOD?
What would Scarlett O'Hara do?
I thought back to the classic 1939 movie (and book) which I had seen about, oh, at least 50 times.
Scarlett, when faced with poverty and needing $500 to pay the taxes on Tara, made a dress out of her ma's portieres and went about trying to seduce Rhett Butler.

However that plan didn't work because Rhett Butler had no money. And was in jail.
As for any of the eligible bachelors I knew they might as well have been in jail with no money, because they all had their own bills to pay. The whole curtain plan was not even feasible since mum's taste in curtains was not likely to yield anything remotely wearable.

I just needed to escape to an even richer country and marry some gullible man there. Like mother, like daughter? Noo I did NOT want to be like my mum, who once confided in me that the worst thing she ever did was marry dad. Dad, was thankfully not around to hear because he had his headphones on listening to Vinyl Revival.

Well nothing for it, I was going to have to find a job. I opened up trademe and began looking for a job that would pay..at least 25K a year considering these bills. Hmm make it 30K because I hadn't included food. Or plants. No make it 40K.  But before I could type in the pay scale the internet froze up  and I couldn't make it work. Huh. 

Surely I could find a job by the end of the day before the debt collectors came? Or maybe I could sell something. My car for scrap? Since there wasn't going to be any oil I couldn't run it anymore. I'd just have to bike or learn how to ride a horse.

Yes. With that in mind, I thought were the nearest horses would be. Massey Pony Club?
It might take me half an hour or more by bike.

Dad! I'm going to the pony club. Be back when I've found a job!
Dad said ok. I will close the gate. Can't have the dogs coming in and eating our last chicken!

The day the oil ran out (3)

Power $63
Water $26
Sky Subscription $37
Rates $598
Insurance $327
AA Membership $89
Car registration $215
Dental $180
Radio fee $92
School $350
Broadband $80

The bills were piling up. I did a quick calculation and saw I owed... $2057 this month and then I did another quick calculation and saw I had nothing in the bank. Because I had no job. Or income. And therefore, no money.

Dad didn't seem to worry though because he  was over 65 and on the pension, I was under 65 and on..nothing.

Dad, why are these bills in my name?
Dad looked at me blankly and said, didn't you know, you now have power of attorney.
I what?
Dad said, you sort it out. Your mum said I was going senile and couldn't be responsible anymore for the house, and its now in your name. So all the bills are too.

Since when?
Since she decided to leave us and go back to Hong Kong.
Hold on, she said she was only going for a week or so.
Dad said, that my annoyingness had got to her and she decided to abdicate responsibility of being a mother, and since I objected to selling the house, bulldozing it to make into a block of flats and selling it to the highest bidder, she had run away to some rich friends in Hong Kong.

You're kidding me.
Dad said gravely no it's very true.

Huh. I sat down. Well this is just dandy.
And then I wondered what rich friends in Hong Kong mum could possibly have. She always told me she grew up in poverty in a 40 storey government building and ate bread crusts for dinner and gave anything she earned to her mother while slaving away in a sweatshirt factory. Or sweatshop. I forget which. While simultaneously looking after her seven brothers and sisters. Could it be she was lying to me about the sweatshirt factory?

The day the oil ran out (2)

Dad headed toward the gate at the sound of Greensleeves. I watched him as he had a conversation with the man in the truck, and then returned to the house laden with a tub of icecream and two packets of potato chips. 

Got some more, he announced, as he laid these staples on the kitchen bench.

It was Copper Kettle salt flavour for the potato chips, and Vanilla for the icecream.  

Then Dad went back to his computer.

I sighed. How were we going to live on potato chips and icecream? Maybe he could, but I was starving! I estimated how long the ice cream would last, but since our fresh milk supplies had run out and Dad hadn’t been driving to the dairy anymore, he  now seemed to be relying on Mr Whippy for delivery and had now hit on the idea of using  ice cream instead to melt and use as milk for his coffee. Which made it extra sweet, but that was how he liked it. Also, the coffee, he said, helped him sleep at night. 

The chips, would last forever, as long as the foil packets were unopened. 

All my attempts for our household to be self-sufficient had fallen on deaf ears. Solar energy was too expensive to install, it wasn’t worth investing in a rain tank, and the energy companies were just dying for our custom, judging by the number of telemarketers who rang and door knockers who knocked on our door. Dad liked his lawn and wasn't about to give it up so I could grow food on it instead.  I figured having no petrol for the car would put a damper on things but Dad used as much electricity as before and seemed to have a she’ll be right attitude that suggested the recent news of NO MORE OIL was a temporary glitch and we would soon have the gushers back on again, or the Antarctica ice shelf would suddenly melt, revealing the black gold underneath just waiting to be tapped. 

I went back to my container plants which were growing silently as they did and waving their leafy greenness at me. It was only a matter of time. I snipped some parsley and went about making fritters of what was left of the Woodside harvest from the weekend. Thank goodness Mum was away and couldn’t see the mess I was making of the kitchen. But looking after Dad when he refused to be looked after and continuing to eat a rebellious teenagers diet that would probably be the death of him I felt was too much of a responsibility for me. Since when did I become the mum around here?

Or the breadwinner, for that matter? Because now it seemed all the bills were coming to my name.

The day the oil ran out

We had known it for a long time but Dad lived in a time-warp where it was always the fifties. In his mind everything was like it was back when you listened to the radio waiting for the top ten hits of the day when Beach Boys sang how ‘Fun Fun Fun’ it was and you could just hop in your Daddy’s t-bird, skip the library and drive anywhere you pleased.

Well, for me those days were long gone and my employment at the library had shuddered to a halt, in fact some of them did not even call themselves libraries anymore but ‘information centres’ as if everyone was now a tourist and no longer read any books, but hooked up to some intravenous machine that downloaded everything directly into your brain. Of course, I rallied against this preferring even dead trees rustling on dead tree book shelves, so I suppose I was in a time warp myself, but I figured at least I would not get radiation poisoning and alzheimers from so much exposure to dangerous electromagnetic rays. 

Dad still did his soduku puzzles which you could now even get printed on toilet paper but we weren’t that desperate, however he was now starting to despair that he couldn’t drive anywhere now the petrol stations were all closed. And we weren’t getting any more oil 

No Dad, you will have to take the train and use your legs to walk to the station. Dad looked at me like I had gone nuts as he’d never had to walk anywhere before. Dad said, I still have petrol in the lawnmower, I will just use that to fire up the car. 

I wondered how that was going to work and could just envisage him attaching the car to the lawnmower and trundling up to Sturges Road train station on that when I heard something that sounded like Mr Whippy ice cream truck music sound out on the road. 

It was playing ‘Greensleeves’ and I wondered if by miracle the petrol stations had made a special exemption for Mr Whippy. 
After all, isn’t ice cream an essential part of the kiwi diet? 

The music wafted over the neighbourhood and drew closer to our house...

Adamant and Evil

God is furious.
He has seen Adam and his woman doing something they shouldn’t be doing.
Especially when he gave Adam strict instructions not to do so.
He has caught them red handed.

What happened?!
Well the story goes like this.

The tree in the garden, all set apart from the rest, is God’s special tree of knowledge of good and evil. The woman doesn’t like that this tree is all by itself. She feels kinda sorry for it. She asks Adam, why is that tree by itself? Adam tells her what the tree is. He says God doesn’t want her to know about it, but he tells her anyway. Don’t eat the fruit of it, or you will die. Well, says the woman, probably doesn’t taste very nice anyway, I won’t even touch it.

No more is said about the tree.
Adam is very happy with his helper. She pretty much does everything for him. When he wants something to eat, she brings him fruit. When he’s tired, she prepares the bed of poppy flowers for him to lie down. She helps him identify more animals he hasn’t named. She sings him songs and makes him laugh. Also she talks non-stop. He likes to hear the sound of her voice.

There is one animal though he hasn’t named or identified. And it is this one that talks to the woman.
She is taken aback. No animal has ever talked to her in her own language before that she can understand. They all make funny noises, but none speak the way they do.
This animal is very peculiar. She has never seen it before. It has wings. It has scales. It is shiny and iridescent. It looks like it has sharp claws on the ends of its feet. It looks kind of like a bat, but also like a man. It walks upright like a bird, on two feet. She says, and what did Adam call you? The creature ignores her question. Instead, it says..come here, I want to show you something. It flies around, showing off its wings. It is wearing a cape like thing on its back.
The woman, fascinated, follows this creature.

Adam is taking a snooze in the sun. He is satisfied after eating a big meal of fruit salad. The woman looks at Adam, stretched out on the poppy bed. She doesn’t really want to leave him, but this new creature is fascinating. Somebody else to talk to! Don’t worry about him, says the creature. Let’s go for a walk.

The woman follows this creature off the beaten track.