A little post in salute and celebration of the ‘work from home’ opportunities that house-sitting affords (no pun intended, well maybe just a little unintended! 😉 )
It’s just past the witching hour in east coast Australia, which I usually refer to as the Antipodes, which is accurate and a misnomer.
But I like the look and feel of the word; much of my literature and cultural background comes from Mother England or ‘Blighty’, so it fits. And if my ‘mother’ is England, my father is ‘Ireland’, though the older I get, the less I feel those ties unless there’s a pinte of Guinness on offer!
So hands up who knows I’m a cultural communicator! And I run two enterprises being the Bill the Housesitter and my entertainment presentation entity.
Where were we? Just gone midnight.
While most of my Australien compadres, copains et vrienden zijn tucked up in bed, ready for the morning commute, drudgery in a wage slave’s airless office, office politics, squabbles in the tea room, I have the sun and the sand and the clouds and the roads, and the parks and the pubs/clubs/cafes that are my offices.
It was at a quiet moment last week (I choose not to have too much quiet in my life for two mostly physiologically-based reasons. Let’s call them both ‘noise’, as one literally is noise, and the other is something we communications exponents term ‘noise’ to capture the gamut of interferences in what would otherwise be a perfect communication environment. e.g. static on the line, bad reception, visual cues, our cultural biases, distractions, etc.)
And at that time I had a reverie and reaslisation. I fantasised in about 2006 of a time when I could flip around the country and the world, following the festival guide, always living in the festival moment, or going to, just leaving from one.
This lifestyle now allows that dream to become reality. I’ve just rolled out of one and I have two more planned. Come April 2017, some of the shackles that keep me Oz-bound shall be rent and ripped and broken. Free bird.
Ok, now you are all being ‘Quinned’!
The original meaning comes courtesy of my late brother (6.Nov.1971 – 22.Aug.1998) who would just drop a song lyric seamlessly into a conversation, so much so that his now widow got her copy of the Oxford English Dictionary and wrote the word and her meaning into the appropriate place under Q.
Greg was a muso, and he would play at a local Mexican restaurant in Canberra at the pleasure of the owners who saw him busking late one night and really dug his stuff.
And it was 9 o’clock on a Saturday when the regular crowd shuffled in, and there was an old man sitting next to him who was, get this, making….. ok, you got it! #BillyJoel
And I swear I am not making this up, but at this very instant, the Billy Joel mix on @youtube has just flicked up ‘I May Be Crazy’ which I was having great fun sharing with one of the HSW members from…..agh, forgotten which state of the union. But my comments were pure Quinning.
Back to topic.
Hooray for house-sitting. Hooray for facilitating the lifestyle. Hooray for Tim and Lou and Jodie and Nat et al for doing the behind the scenes work, and shepherding/funnelling discussion of a far-flung, disparate group, with many cultures en heel veel talen et beaucoup des langues and even lots of languages. And cultures and perspectives.
“Herding cats” is my go-to phrase for this!
I’ve been a manager most of my life, a manager of volunteers, and a volunteer in (no exaggeration) at least 36 different ways and settings since age four when Dad used to drive around to various houses in the parish after Sundee church and sell Silver Circle tickets. For that, I think my Irish Catholic background – we are relentless volunteers and givers of our own time for worthwhile causes.
It’s not notable or laudable. It just is. It’s how we’re hard-wired.
So as we cruise into the first hour of Wednesday 14 September 2016 in the deep south — happy 48th birthday to my sister; sad five weeks since my benevolent, lovely, stoic, always ALWAYS smiling yet deathly sick mum died just a smidge short of 80 years — I fully intend to kick on through to probably see the sun come up.
Because I can!
Yours in housesitting
Bill Quinn
Capalaba, Redlands Council District, Queensland, Australia
(until 28 September)
P.S. The photo is on point! I might include the reason in the next market day or blog spot! 😉
Overheard Productions 