Mistakes were made

 In a class I run, I teach students about passive language. If you can finish a sentence with 'BY ZOMBIES, then it it is passive sentence. Steven King in On Writing goes to town on passive language. Kathy Bates would be hobbling her writerly students but I'm quite nice about it really. 

I write BY ZOMBIES on the whiteboard. "It's at its most insidious when it comes to police statements. They want to cover their arses right? They don't want to say if the perp is male or female so they just say 'the body was carried to the river.'" Then I point to the whiteboard. BY ZOMBIES. "The most insidious reason for passive language when it comes to cops is when they talk about sexual violence against women. By using this language, for example: 'A woman was attacked in Como last night', they are placing the word woman as the actor in that sentence, not the perpetrator." Dismay ripples across my class as this sinks in.

This post has started quite serious when I had funny in mind.  Yes, mistakes were made BY ZOMBIES. 

A handsome cyclist stopped outside my local supermarket. I was at the checkout when he got off his bike outside and stared at me through the window. He looked straight at me. I was buying wine and broccoli and a newspaper and his look was quite intense. Then he smiled at me, this beautiful huge smile. I could see that he knew me, saw me, recognised me. I smiled back. It was a bit weird because I wasn't sure if I even knew this fit, blonde-haired, genetically blessed human. Then he kind of did this thing with his hair, smoothing it down and then ruffling it. He smiled again and pushed his fingers through his hair and I thought, with my broccoli and wine and newspaper at the checkout: Jesus, he's checking out his own reflection in the window.

There are times in life where we think oh dear I think I got that one completely fucking wrong.We can cover it for a little while with the beautiful prevarications of passive language: mistakes were made.

I hadn't seen Brownie for a few weeks.He's been fishing at the inlet for the whole time I've lived here and then I read his funeral notice in the local paper. It was the last few weeks of the commercial season and I hadn't seen him for a while, so when I saw the funeral notice I thought he's died. Brownie has actually died! He'd had a heart attack at my place a few years ago. Maybe that had happened again?

So I logged onto the streaming service of his funeral and watched family members go back and forth like goldfish on the screen: welcoming friends, family, people sitting down in the chapel. Music played, the whole service going forward. Images of Brownie went up on the screen as the celebrant began to talk. 

It was then that I realised I was at someone else's funeral. This was not Brownie. The photographs on the screen showed a complete stranger to me. The ease of being at an online funeral is so weird. I was at the wrong funeral and watching a different family process their grief.

 This felt pretty fucking weird to tell you the truth. It was like I'd crashed a wedding as a bad actor in a romance. I slapped down the lap top lid and took a few breaths. I felt quite creepy. Does that make sense?

 

Notes From The Tower

FAQ

Mount Frankland is part of the DBCA’s tourist trails in the national parks around Walpole, so naturally the fire tower folk meet plenty of people on holidays. Summitting climbers are often surprised to see someone in the tower and here are some of their questions.

 

“Dr Livingston, I presume?”

Yes, and I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you

 

“What are you doing?”

I’m looking for smoke and doing weather reports.

 

“Are they still doing this? I thought that was back in the olden days!”

We’ve been doing fire and weather lookout here since the 1960s. It’s a simple system for early detection of bushfires.

 

“Do you serve ice-cream?”

No. Bring your own ice-cream.

 

“Do you get taken up by helicopter?”

I got up here the same way as you just did.

 

“Great office!”

I know, right?

 

“Do you come up here every day?”

Yes, between December and March.

 

“Don’t you use AI or drones?”

Human eyes and knowledge of the landscape is pretty accurate. AI cameras are getting better at detecting smoke and one day my job will be sitting in front of a computer rather than atop a mountain. At the moment, I can see a smoke hours before it registers on a heat map.

 

“Are you alone the whole time?”

I hope you may be parsing this question wrong but also please don’t be creepy.

 

“How many hours do you do?”

That depends on the fire danger index. My day gets longer as the FDI goes up.

 

“Are you a volunteer?”

(This question always bugs me. Who would volunteer their whole summer when they could be making heaps of money elsewhere. Unless they are retired – and therefore, the insinuation is that I’m old and retired? Whoa, it’s getting personal now.)

No. I’m paid very well, thank you very much.

 

“Do you climb up three times a day like those old tower guys?”

I bring up my lunch.

 

“How many fires have you seen?”

Lots. Christmas Day, New Years Day and I caught that one over near Mt Barker a week ago.

 

“There are no toilets up here. Where do you go to the toilet?”

Bush wees are no problem. Bush poos are horrible and problematic. Would you like me to elaborate?

 

“What do you do with your time?”

I love audio books and podcasts and the radio. I can’t really read books because my eyes are down and I need to be looking up and around, constantly scanning the horizon.