Window Wednesday - Bedroom, Macclesfield, Australia
Writer’s Block. Macclesfield, Australia 2022.
Thud.
“They’re playing bocce again,” I said, both of us sprawled out on the softened leather sofa.
“Who?” he asked, shifting his legs over my lap.
“The parrots. With the chestnuts on the roof.”
The red brick cottage was surrounded by chestnut trees. Leaves turning gold. With the weight of the recent rain, gravity, and help of the green and red King Parrots, chestnuts were falling on the roof at quite a rate.
Our cheeks pink from the heat of the wood-burner, we stared at the flames taking hold of last weeks’ newspaper and listened for another thud above. Thud. Then in quick succession, thud, thud, thud.
Chestnuts falling and the crackling of the fire were the only sounds. On the other side of our four walls and stained glass windows were just paddocks and horses and a valley that stretched further than I could see.
Inside, I wondered what stories the walls held. Pondered the pattern of darker bricks next to red. I walked slowly around the living room, my sheepskin boots padding over rugs scattered on the grey stone floor. So much to look at. Ceramic and wooden bowls. Paintings — big and small. I ran my fingers over the spines of novels on shelves. Opened a couple of the books, read their first few pages, then carefully placed them back. Lots of time for reading, but that’s not why we’d come.
Instead, we played board games and drank red wine. Cooked tiramisù, splashing whipped egg whites over the kitchen’s wooden bench tops and the wild rosemary in a ceramic vase. We skewered marshmallows — white for him, pink for me — and fed the puffy lumps to the flames of the fire until their outsides were black and bubbling. We bit into the charcoaled mounds, our mouths filling with luxurious sticky goop. If you closed your eyes, could you really taste the difference between white and pink? I made him watch ‘Dirty Dancing’. Didn’t make him act it out. Two days and two nights of rain, on and off. What a shame. We’d have to stay in.
On the third day we woke to sun streaming in through the round window above the bed. A thin layer of mist on the hill, the horses wearing muddied coats. We poked our heads out from under the warmth of the feather duvet and reluctantly agreed we now had no excuse. We’d have to leave our little brick bunker, at least for a while.
Hiking boots, thermals, and waterproof jackets on. Follow the hand-written directions. Follow the signs. Follow Google Maps. And still we miss the turn. No matter. Follow the horse trails back along the main road, turn left, up the hill, past the vineyards and down the bush track. Our hands full of sticks we’ve collected for kindling, we make our way back up the gravel drive, the cottage in sight. A good time to harvest chestnuts when we’re wearing boots. The grass is strewn with spiky burrs, each holding precious goods. I decide to follow what the parrots do and crush the burrs under my feet until smooth brown chestnuts pop out onto the ground. I gingerly pick the nuts out of their prickly cases. If only I too had a nut crushing beak.
The best bit about going for long walks in the fresh air was coming back in for food. And a hot shower. And getting into pyjamas in time for afternoon tea. We did a lot of that — eating, bathing, sleeping, daydreaming. We did a lot of not much at all. But it’s tiring — all that relaxing and unwinding.
“Cup of tea?” one of us would ask the other, yawning away.
We’d return to the sofa, steaming mugs in our hands, then cover ourselves with a blanket, and stare out the window at the parrots in the chestnut trees. All in glorious, comfortable, silence.
That is, of course, until the parrots started their next round of bocce.
