The day starts with the neighbours, Bill and Ted. Think I've heard that one before. They're having their latest big adventure in our garage. They've been checking in on Lionel and Tui for years, a habit that last a lifetime. Bill and Dorothy live across the road. Bill has lost sight in one eye and thinks he won't get his license again. Dorothy can't drive. Ted is a Southland farmer who lives just down the road. Lionel was one of his flock and Ted checks in with his dog. Still. Dianne and Mark arrive to organise stuff they are buying. We send them away with the dryer, some linen and God knows what else. Feels like we are lightening the load. Life revolves around possessions, or so it seems.
I rush out to meet high school friends driving through. We grew up together and the connection is so immediate it feels like no time has passed. We even look the same. The time we spend together is too short. They have to go and so do I. I need to tidy the house for the L.J. Hooker photographer. I rush around wiping surfaces and throwing things in cupboards, straightening beds. I follow her round, taking my own pictures. Of her and the house. It's weird. The space in a house not the home my parents lived in. Their things are tidied away, their presence reduced. But their portrait, taken when they moved to Central in 1985, maintains ownership. A residence flag. I say hi as I pass through.
I'm looking at Frankie's art for my new home and visit her tattoo studio with Lynette. We come to the conclusion I need to show Frankie the space and she'll take it from there. Unpacking and looking around my new house, I've realised that art is the defining element. Worth investing in. Art outlasts trinkets, outshines appliances, and injects essence of the time and space the artist belonged to.
Another house item departs, the small book case, in the stinking heat. Time for a swim.
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