10

The annual herb day, run by the State Herb Society or somesuch, at Fullarton, which I’ve attended three times in the past four years, struck us as a little more pared-down and mundane than usual, with perhaps fewer stalls though some familiar faces. Still unwell but it helped cheer me up. Financially chary, I still bought a few standard items for my fledgling garden, sage, coriander, marjoram and aloe vera, and the slightly more exotic, from my perspective, Echinacea, influenced by its alleged bronchitis-combating qualities. Sarah bought me an alarming fig tree, we’ll have to discuss its location. Apart from the ficus, I’ve already planted the lot, rather willy-nilly, not sure for example, whether Echinacea’s a wet or a dry. I’ve put it in what used to be my wet bed, where the sorrel is, and sprinkled a bit of fertiliser about. The sage I’ve put in with the lemon verbena and aloe vera, a supposedly dry bed, but wet now with all the recent rains. Working in the garden, however briefly and always slap-dashedly, has shaken me from the most depressing thoughts of a coughing spluttering lie-abed, thinking I’ll never be clear of the dreaded tainted sputum, that it’ll kill me one day, and meanwhile gradually make my life a throat-burning hell, but Monday is on its way, and here are the things I must do, make a doctor’s appointment, collect and pay for my car, contact Centrelink re my status, contact Esther regarding Nat and my financial and rent situations, and perhaps contact the vet re the future life of a mildly deformed kitten. There are women dying of breast cancer, there are fourteen thousand motor neurone disease sufferers in the country, I have enjoyed rude health much of my life and I can certainly improve my current situation, not simply by believing or hoping that the most recent coughing fit was my very last. Shakespeare’s life at its height would’ve been interesting, trying to please, trying to forge new things, trying to pick the political winds, juggling different audiences, a bit of magic in the late plays, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, to please the royal author of Daemonology, and succeeding to the point of having the critics raging and raving over the centuries, arguing the point, the purpose of the statue, the reason for Leontes’ jealousy, are we to admire him or loathe him at the end, ditto Coriolanus, why Shakespeare has lasted, the ambiguities and question marks, the foibles of heroes, the strength which is also cruelty, the irony dipping toward callousness, the reckless courageous interventions, the uneasy struggles between classes and sexes, issues we still all struggle with. Focus on such things, anything, not such self-absorption, and soon I’ll be in Edwardstown for a while, in a single bed, in Nat’s home, trying to regulate his PS2 usage. I’m being a very weak carer at the moment. Sarah next door struggles under the burden of her daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend, and her full-on two year old grand-daughter, doing a sterling job.