Spring in Canberra
So, we took another slow train back home from Melbourne. After eight hours we got off at Yass Junction — a station of sorts but maybe a mile from the town itself. I’d ordered a wheelchair accessible taxi to take us the last 50 miles or so to Canberra. The alternative was to stay on the train for another hour, north to Goulburn. Wait three more hours for the connecting train (back south to Canberra). And then take a taxi home.
Life is too short.
Two days later Spike came down with some God-awful bug. She had a week from Hell. Then started to get better. We were both relieved and I thought I’d dodged a bullet.
Two days later, however, I came down with Spike’s God-awful bug. I then had my very own week from Hell; except my week was longer because I’m a quadriplegic and my chest muscles are paralysed.
This is another of those things that no-one really explains forty-two years before when you break your neck not swimming well-enough at a beach in Scotland. The ubiquitous ‘they’ tell you after the first few days that you’re not going to die. Weeks later — maybe months — ‘they’ tell you you’ll never walk again or tie your shoelaces or play the piano at Carnegie Hall. But, if I’m honest, that last one was never part of life’s plan (and also not anything anyone actually said to me).
Truth be told, me and musical instruments were never sympatico. I tried the recorder at primary school. I tried a piano lesson once. I tried my older brother’s guitar.
Not … ever … going … to … happen.
But here’s that thing. Back then, no one ever told me that when I caught some God-awful bug after a day-long journey from Melbourne on a very slow train, the absence of functioning chest muscles would come back to bite me on the bum (so to speak). Coughing, sleeping, breathing … all of those and more become a struggle.
It’s hard to find the words to describe just how much of a struggle those automatic, animal actions of a human body can become. Coughing, sleeping, breathing and the rest. They seem so small and simple: so matter of fact. We never consciously think about them. We just do them. Until we can’t.
Unlike playing the piano, no one has to teach us.
It was, I think, around 3:00 a.m. on the third night of next-to-no-sleep, constantly not-quite-coughing; wheezing and sniffling and gurgling like a blocked sewage pipe; aching in all the non-paralysed bits of my body; I hauled myself up in bed to what passes for sitting when you’re a quadriplegic, cleared my throat as best I could then announced angrily to the universe (which was … as usual … paying no attention at all to my insignificant existence) … “this is not how I fucking die!”
Although given my quadriplegia, a God-awful bug from Hell is as likely as any other way to die (for any of us) in these post-COVID days.
But that was then and this is now (thank goodness). We’re both getting better. And spring is here.
Canberra is an odd small city; a somewhat unusual big country town. It’s the Federal capital of the 13th largest national economy on Earth (largely due to mining and agriculture exports). It is, perhaps, the most suburban city I’ve ever been in. It’s so suburban, in fact, there is no true ‘urban’ within it. Just suburb after suburb after suburb. Then lots of kangaroos and sheep.
Some have called it the most boring capital city in the world. But I couldn’t possibly comment. I’ve not been to all of them.
Unlike most of Australia, however, Canberra does have four seasons. Spring and autumn here are real and truly lovely. All around us now, the trees in almost every garden erupt with blossom. The mustard colour wattle breaks out everywhere. Days get longer. Winter’s frost and early-morning ice in bird bowls recede from memory.
If one must catch a bug from Hell, there are few places I can think of more conducive to recuperation and recovery than here and now.
This thought came to me earlier. I'm glad to be home, sitting with Spike in our garden on a spring morning in a quiet suburban town. Life could be much worse. I am grateful mine is not.
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