Gand-Agent: Hi, I promised you I’d ring as soon as possible because I know you really want to know the outcome of your offer on the property and I don’t like to keep people in suspense, blah, blah, blah …
Faithful Ham: (thinks) God! Will you just get the fuck on with it?
Gand-Agent: What’s that noise in the background?
Faithful Ham: It’s tango music. We ran away to Argentina. Waiting makes us restless.
Gand-Agent: Really? I’ve always wanted to travel around South America but it certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with all those extremely gorgeous women wearing teeny little skirts, blah, blah, etc …
Faithful Ham: Yeah, so anyway …
Gand-Agent: … blah, blah, congratulations, your bid was successful, blah, blah …
Faithful Ham: (nearly puts fist through window while banging on it to get Frodoboat’s attention, displaces three neck vertebrae due to violence of nodding, then bursts into tears — again.)
Gand-Agent: … blah, blah, papers to sign in the morning so I’ll meet you at the airport when you’re seeing off Frodoboat.
Faithful Ham: (runs back inside and is picked up and whirled around by Frodoboat while David Wenham look-alike barman beams on benevolently.)

The following morning, Frodoboat and Faithful Ham (nursing her throbbing, hung-over head) meet Gand-Agent at the airport.
Gand-Agent: I couldn’t really mention this last night but now that everything’s signed, I thought you should know — the orc rang and made an offer on the property.
Faithful Ham and Frodoboat: (exchange a look that is 38.573% sardonic and 61.427% smug)

It’s right at this moment that a flight arrival is announced. It’s the plane that Frodoboat is due to fly back out on. The luggage is off-loaded … and sure enough, Frodoboat’s missing bag is among it. One of the airport staff takes the bag off the trolley, affixes a new label, and puts it back on.

It would be nice to say that from then on, our victorious couple lived happily ever after.

And so they did … apart from the tiny matter of four hours spent by Faithful Ham in a lawyer’s office later that day because of a misunderstanding (the lawyer’s) over an easement on the property, the subsequent withdrawal and then reinstatement of the offer … not to mention some interesting discussions with Mrs Vend-Or concerning the property’s chattels. But hey, every good story has its Gollums and Shelobs … this one was never going to be any different.

P.S. Hey, it’s 2010. When the hell did that happen?

Before driving back to Nelson, Frodoboat and Hamwise visit the Enchanted Land once more. They’re standing at the gate, filming their surroundings, when a strange chariot covered in symbols pulls up. The driver is an orc.

Orc: Are you the owners?
Faithful Ham: Not yet.

There is a silent passenger in the chariot. He is not an orc. He is merely dull and stupid.

Orc: Not many properties with this amount of land left. What would you do with it?
Faithful Ham: Set it up along permaculture lines … regenerate more native bush … maybe put a B&B on it.
Orc: Well, I build eco-homes. Carve it up and I’ll build all the houses for you. That house there doesn’t look like much. Tear it down, carve up the land, put an eco-village on it … you’d make a fortune. (He uses the phrase ‘carve it up’ twice more in the conversation.)
Faithful Ham: Wow. Your obvious deep love and respect for the land is very touching. Am I going to have to fight you for this place?
Orc: Oh no … my money’s all tied up in properties I’m building in town. I wouldn’t be able to afford it.
(He eventually departs, for which relief Frodoboat and Faithful Ham sacrifice 17 goats, someone’s pet lamb and a crow that got in the way)
Faithful Ham: Babe, if you’re sure about buying this property, we need to ring Gand-Agent right now and make an offer. I don’t trust that guy.

The phone call is made on the shores of Lake Rotoiti, while eating pies. Gand-Agent instructs the pair to meet him in his tower later in the afternoon. When they arrive …

Gand-Agent: Someone else flew in from Hamilton this morning and I’ve taken them to see the property. They’ve already made an offer. I can’t tell you the amount, obviously, but I’ve told them I’ll be presenting yours to Vend-or first. You need to understand that if your offer is unsuccessful, you probably won’t have any come-back.
Frodoboat and Faithful Ham: (shattered)

They put in their very best offer. They’re not optimistic. Gand-Agent doesn’t seem very optimistic either. He tells them he’ll ring them back that evening with Vend-or’s decision. Utterly dejected, they leave Gand-Agent’s tower and look for somewhere to eat.

Faithful Ham: There’s a restaurant in town called Plan B. Let’s go there because I have a feeling we’re going to need one.

The restaurant is shut. It’s a miserable, rainy Sunday night. They start hunting for somewhere, anywhere that’s open. Eventually, they find a nicely refurbished pub with a restaurant. The place is called The Verdict*.

They enter to the strains of mournful violins. The local tango club has booked out the restaurant for its weekly get-together. Beautifully-dressed middle-aged people wander in and out, managing to look simultaneously self-conscious and self-important. An apologetic barman who looks a little like David Wenham (happy, Lizz?) informs us we’ll have to sit in the bar and slum it with the rest of the non-tango personnel.

A few drinks later, the snivelling begins …

Frodoboat: (eyes welling but in a manly way) I should’ve offered more …
Faithful Ham: (blubbering openly) I can’t believe we came all this way, just to lose it at the end …
Frodoboat: We don’t know that yet … we have to keep hoping … but I don’t know if I have the strength … (hangs head over beer)
Faithful Ham: Come on, dear Mr Frodoboat. Snap out of it. I can’t carry this burden of worry for you … and I can’t carry you either, you fat bastard.
Frodoboat: (to the David Wenham look-alike barman) What the fuck are you looking at?
Barman: (whimpers)

To be continued …

* I swear I’m not making this up.

This is the story of a great man on a great quest. The man’s name: The Brave Frodoboat. His quest: to fly to NZ with his hottie wife (The Faithful Ham), inspect a 61-acre property in New Zealand, decide whether or not to buy it, and then fly back … all in just one weekend. His first challenge: to get out of Australia. Unfortunately, Immigration officials at Perth Airport seem to think he’s someone else. Someone on their List. Someone not fun.

Every quest, every epic, involves a series of challenges. When we watch the movies or read the books, we know these challenges are designed to test the hero’s resolve. They show his mettle. They are a device to prove to us — viewer, reader, gods, whoever — that the hero has earned the prize. He deserves it. (Because boy, don’t people hate it when someone they deem unworthy gets their mitts on something valuable.)

Tests are all very nice in morality plays but when things go wrong in real life … well, they just piss you off, really. Having finally convinced the Immigration guys that he is indeed who he claims to be, Frodoboat and his Faithful Ham board a plane for Middle Earth. After a sleepless night, they touch down in Auckland and head to the baggage claim area. Upon arriving …

Frodoboat: I can see your suitcase …
Faithful Ham: Yeah, but where’s yours?
Half an hour and a number of conversations with various airport staff later
Frodoboat: How the fuck could Air New Zealand not know where it is? It’s either in Perth or it’s here. How fucking hard is that?
Faithful Ham: Er … what time is the flight to Nelson? I think we’d better go. We’ll have to buy you some clothes when we get there.
Frodoboat: Fucking harrumph.

A couple of hours later, our sleep-deprived heroes are in a Nelson department store …

Frodoboat: (holding up a grey knitted pullover) What do you think?
Faithful Ham: Wow. A silvery chain-mail tunic crafted in the elven fashion. Immensely strong yet strangely weightless and a bargain at only NZ$34.99. I say, buy it!

With suitable raiment procured, the travellers hasten to meet their guide to the Enchanted Land, one who is wise and wizardly in the lore of real estate … the venerable Gand-Agent.

“Follow me,” he beckons from his shiny 4WD chariot. The pair do their best, although their steed is somewhat more modest, being of the hired persuasion and with its indicators on the wrong side of the steering wheel.

After journeying for an hour, they reach their destination. Waiting for them is a grizzled warrior who knows the Enchanted Land intimately and has offered to guide them through it. His name is Vend-or.

Vend-or: Would you like a cup of tea?
Faithful Ham: What miraculous fortifying beverage is this? Warming, yet also thirst-quenching. Surely, it is the product of the ancient healing lore of Rivendell, brewed by Lord Elrond himself, no less!
Frodoboat: Don’t mind her. She’s a bit tired.

It takes all of five minutes for the Enchanted Land to work its magic … the native beech forest, filled with the melodies of tui and bellbird; the strange fungi (Faithful Ham: What marvellous dwelling for pixies is this? Such a brilliant violet hue! Would that I could witness the little woodland folk dance their fairy dances around it of a full moon eve! Frodoboat: Will you shut the fuck up? You’re really starting to freak me out. I mean it.); the swiftly-flowing stream; to the south, the line of snow-capped mountains stretching east to west with the Wairau River at their base; to the north, the forested hills draped in mist; the duck-pond, the vegie garden, the wood-lot, the orchard; the humble little cottage with its verandah that has a larger floor area than the house itself; the ever-changing sky … and the peace.

Frodoboat: Yeah, well, we’ll think about it and let you know.
(they bid Gand-Agent and Vend-or adieu)
Faithful Ham: Oh my God. It’s even more fucking gorgeous than it looked in the picture.
Frodoboat: I want it. I have to have it. I’m going to buy it. We’ll ring Gand-Agent tomorrow and make an offer. But now, I’m going to check up on the missing luggage.

The pair merrily skip arm-in-arm to their chariot and hasten to a warm and welcoming inn, where they spend the night carousing like it’s 1999.

But trouble and more tests are a-brewing … as they discover the next day. And it’s not all about the still-missing luggage.

The Dreamboat heard me. “What is it?”

“Come and take a look at this.”

He walked in, saw the image on the screen and said, “That is fucking gorgeous.”

It was the most encouraging response he’d made to anything I’d shown him to date. He didn’t like this, for example …

I spent months trying to convince him it was the place for us and yet he stubbornly refused to come around … even though it came with this view:

He had his reasons but I couldn’t help being disappointed. The place ticked every box on my wishlist: interesting architecture, built from native timber, on the West Coast of the South Island, stunning views of the ocean, elevated situation, a bit of land as well as the house, not too expensive …

Unfortunately, the place wasn’t finished. It had only been built to the ‘weatherproof shell’ stage and nothing had been done inside. The Dreamboat had looked at the floor plans on the real estate website and fashioned a deep and abiding loathing of them. So … dream over.

The next place to grab my attention was this:

This place was situated in the middle of the Southern Alps, near a small community called Springs Junction. There was a lot of land going with the property but the Dreamboat was concerned at its remoteness. I’d been planning a trip back to NZ and was intending to check out the place anyway. Until that fateful Sunday afternoon when we both lost our hearts to the idyllic snowy scene, that is …

Exactly two weeks later, we were sitting in a real estate office in NZ, completing the paperwork on the offer we’d just made. The trip, the offer and the surreal events that characterised the entire process deserve a post all of their own. They couldn’t have been scripted better in a movie. Stay tuned for tactics, tears and the tango.

After having decided a few months ago that I was over jobs that were slavishly people-focused, I eventually felt ready to start thinking about possible career alternatives:

• Astronomer and discoverer of a new planet which I would name Vitamin Paul
• Test-driver of high fashion-label shoes
• Owner of a multi Michelin-starred underwater restaurant (like this, but better in unspecified ways)
• Electron microscope photographer specialising in subjects that are ugly and boring (unlike these)
• Dominatrix (people-focused but in a beating-them-up sort of way, therefore acceptable)
• Matt Damon
• Inseminator of giant pandas (well, someone’s got to do it)
• A shaman. Any shaman.
• World curling champion (follow this link only if you must)
• Dictator of a small banana republic (see qualifier for Dominatrix)
• A concubine, but a different concubine to the one I’d considered being on 13 August 2003, this one being quite anti-social and not often in the mood

The conclusion: something to do with animals or plants. The latter won; they don’t shit everywhere or make a lot of noise. And I’ve always loved gardening. It’s been years since I’ve been able to have an outdoor garden of my own but I’ve always had houseplants, even though I invariably give them away every time we move.

So then began the long process of sifting through various distance education horticulture courses, weighing up their relative merits and trying to work out if I possessed sufficient funds and discipline to see any of them through. That’s when and how I discovered permaculture.

The absolute conviction that this was something I had to pursue was so immediate and powerful that I feel a little embarrassed talking about it. There were bells, whistles, sirens, fireworks, neon signs, punches to the stomach and a great deal of throttling. This wasn’t revelation or epiphany; this was GBH.

Like every good convert to every path of righteousness in all of history, I immediately looked for someone else to hook in. And there was my beloved Dreamboat … innocent, unaware, just in the door from work, all pleased to see his mental wife.

“I’ve enrolled in a course,” I told him. “Come and see.”

It was surprisingly easy to convince him. Permaculture design is based on observation and common sense. It also requires knowledge of many different disciplines. The Dreamboat loves all these things. It wasn’t long before he was downloading mini-documentaries and telling people, “It’s the way of the future.”

A lot of things became surprisingly easy after that. They just seemed to start falling into place. A community garden group started in Karratha and I signed up, with the idea of designing the garden for my final assignment. Then I was offered some casual work at a local nursery. I even started dreaming about our settling in Karratha and my starting up some kind of business …

Until this came along …

And we bought it.

Back in February, Your Correspondent lost her marbles. She burnt out, had what amounts to a breakdown, left her job and spent a couple of months hanging out in her living room, gibbering.

Since then, assisted by amazing and supportive husband, The Incredible Dreamboat, she’s been working hard to win back her mental and emotional stability. Her progress towards this has been marked by a series of milestones, which she has chronicled on her blog. She is now rushing to finish off the last few milestones because she’s fucking sick of the whole subject. So, to continue …

Milestone #8 came in the form of an invitation from the Shire of Roebourne (local government) to MC the 2009 Cossack Art Awards — Australia’s richest regional art award and the most isolated art exhibition in the world.

The Shire knew I was no longer working in radio — not a “media personality” anymore — but wanted me anyway. I can’t tell you how much this meant to me.

I had the MC job over two nights: the Sponsors’ evening and the Awards night itself. I worked so hard on my prep and scripts … had my hair styled two days running (ah! the extravagance!) … the Dreamboat bought me a new dress … and when I stood on that stage each night and asked people to take their seats, it was one of the happiest and proudest moments of my life.

I guess because of the abrupt way I’d left my job, I thought of the Awards gig as my “swan song” — my farewell to any kind of public life. On both nights, people walked up to me and said, “Come back to the radio. We miss you!”, which was nice. But what made the Awards job different and special for me was that it was quite obviously all my own work. No-one else could claim it or take credit for it. So when a young woman approached me on the second night, took my hand, squeezed it and said, “Of all the people who got up and spoke tonight, you were my favourite”, I walked on air for days afterward.

You know that revelation thing I mentioned a couple of days ago? That’s next.

That’s why there’s been such a proliferation recently of Dog Whisperers and Supernannies and all those other TV straight talkers — they’re there to sort out the dumb shits who’ve never disciplined their dogs and their kids because they’d rather be “friends” than responsible owners or parents. They’re scared their dog won’t love them any more if they set boundaries. They can’t bear the idea of their sulky four-year-old yelling that she hates them for forbidding her to scribble on the living room walls.

If you’re not sure which camp you fall into, here’s a simple little guide I came up with recently, while drunk:
People who’d rather be liked say “yes” to things they shouldn’t;
People who’d rather be respected say “no” to things they should.

I didn’t enjoy the realisation that I’d been a dumb shit myself, and that working to be liked rather than respected had done me a lot of damage. But I count it as Milestone #7 nonetheless.

So my advice unto ye, oh superheroes is this: go ye now forth and be ye respected, even though thy vengeful hound doth piss on thy footwear and the child of thine loins, upon reaching adulthood, doth sue thee for “mental cruelty”.

So, in order that we can finally begin to think about moving on, here it is … the first of the last of the milestones. Praise Jesus and praise all the cute little ornaments on His holy shelves.

To expedite matters and to atone for being too lazy to sign up for NaNoWriMo this year, I will attempt to post one whole milestone a day until they’re finished. And they will finish.

Yes they will.

Milestone #6:
I’m a bit embarrassed about this one, given how scathing I’ve been in the past about people who believe that “The Universe” gives a shit about them and their lives (I can’t link to any examples because they were written in a blogger format that’s incompatible, so you’ll just have to trust me on this). But here it is anyway:

I was out walking the dog one morning, about six weeks after I’d left work, when I was suddenly overtaken by An Urge. This wasn’t your common, garden-variety urge, like suddenly wanting to play all of your DVDs featuring James McAvoy really, really slowly and imagining what it would be like if it was you he was pashing instead of that skank on the screen. No, this was more along the lines of: The Urge To Address Something Up In The Sky.

I don’t know what the Something Up In The Sky that I wanted to address actually was. I only know what it wasn’t. It wasn’t a cloud or a bird or a plane or argon (my favourite inert gas). It wasn’t God, The Universe or any dead people I know. It wasn’t one of those floaty things on my eyes that I see when I look at a white wall. It was just a Something, and instinctively I knew that for one-sided conversation purposes, it was to be found Up In The Sky.

So I raised mine eyes to the heavens and said (out loud, because you can get away with that when you’re mental), “Well, that’s it. Everything’s totally up in the air now, so it’s up to you how it all falls  … because I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m supposed to do next.”

Maybe my conscious was talking to my subconscious, I dunno. The obvious answer would be to shoot me up with a shit-load of LSD and dump me into a sensory-deprivation tank monitored by a barking-mad scientiest so that I can find out, just like they did to that blonde chick in every second episode of Season One of Fringe. Standard practice whenever there’s a niggling little question in the back of one’s mind, I would’ve thought.

Anyway, that’s it, really. Nothing happened. I didn’t get any kind of revelation from the process; just felt a bit stupid and embarrassed …

Until a fortnight later, when the revelation did come. And nothing’s been the same since.

Til tomorrow.

It was those bloody radio awards that changed everything. (Didn’t win, didn’t expect to, wasn’t bothered.) Just when I was starting to feel I was calming down and getting a measure of control back over my state of mind, the finalists were announced and I went immediately into an epic tail-spin. I wanted to be back at work. All my symptoms returned, including the awful, debilitating grief at leaving. In the end, I thought, You really need to do something about this. It’s doing your head in. You’ll end up in even more of a mess unless you can find a way to think about everything that’s happened and put it into some sort of context.

That’s how I found myself on a phone, pouring out my story to a Psychologist Called Keith.

The Psychologist Called Keith was a very nice man with some very interesting things to say. Here are a couple:

PCK:  Do you know why this has happened to you?
Niki: Um … because I’m a headcase?
PCK: Because you went back to work too soon after your cancer treatment. You didn’t give yourself any time to deal with the physical and emotional trauma that goes with it. If I was your oncologist, I would’ve hit the roof when I found out how quickly you went back. I think the only reason you got away with it was that he’s in Perth and you’re 1600 kilometres away in Karratha and you only see each other every six months. As for your former employer, in my opinion, you’ve got a good case against the organisation for negligence.
Niki: Whoa, hang on a minute. No-one held a gun to my head. It was my decision to go back when I did.
PCK: Oh, and you were thinking clearly at the time, were you? I don’t think so.

I’m not the litigious type. Ask my ex-husbands. But I have since pondered those words. Organisations are very quick to demand medical certificates for sick leave but how many of them ask for medical certification that you’re fit to return … particularly when you’ve had a serious illness?

The Psychologist Called Keith went on to say that in view of the circumstances, it was inevitable I would crash; it was just a matter of when. He voiced surprise that I held it together for as long as I did. He said many people wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of my job on its own, let alone everything else that had gone on in the last three years. He reminded me that despite the other stuff going on my life, I’d still put myself at the top of my game, as evidenced by the radio award finals. He explained what was behind some puzzling behaviour from other people. He finished by telling me I was going to be fine, that I should turn around any negative feelings I had and use them for something positive and the most important thing I could do was:

PCK: Hold on to that wonderful sense of humour you’ve got. That sense of humour will save your life.

He surprised me. I wasn’t expecting him to be so supportive. I thought he was going to point out everything about my thought processes and my psyche that made me weak and pathetic and unable to function. I didn’t expect him to be on my side. And, for the record, I didn’t make myself out to be any sort of hero or better than I am. If you’re wanting someone’s help, you don’t fuck around with the facts.

I’m glad I spoke to the Psychologist Called Keith. He gave me some perspective. I don’t know if I’ll ever need to talk to someone like him again but if I do, I won’t hesitate. And you shouldn’t either, if you need to.

As for Milestone #4 … well, you know about that one. You might’ve read it. It was the “Breaking up is hard to do” post.

I’d had a few weeks to digest everything the Psychologist Called Keith said and decided it was time to write it all down and see what I really thought. I was quite proud of that post, in the end. I thought it showed I was taking responsibility for my own actions and facing up to the consequences.

However, not everyone liked it as much as I did. About a week after I published it, I had a phone call from someone in the organisation where I used to work. Let’s just say that this call wasn’t motivated by any concern for my welfare and it certainly didn’t speed up my recovery. After the initial shock, I got quite upset. And after that, I got angry. Very angry indeed. For a long time.

But who wants to be continuously angry? It’s poisonous. You have no idea the relief I felt when one day, I found myself thinking, Fuck it. Who gives a shit? It’s all bollocks. I understood that I was over it. Simple as that. So I moved on. As Tim Winton says in Breath: People are fools, not monsters.

Maybe that was Milestone #5.

Anyway, not much more to go. There are only two or three milestones left and they’re good ones.  Then let’s see if I can still make us laugh. I’m looking forward to that.

The cancer thing got a bit more blog coverage. Not because it was an easier process; far from it. But I wanted to put something down about it because I was scared I was going to die. I thought I should make some effort to show how brave and full of raffish good humour I was, despite being terrified by my own mortality. Something for posterity. For the record.

So, the fact that this is only the third post since my “breakdown” back in February should give you some idea of what it’s been like.

For the first month, I was basically suicidal. Or part of me was. Every morning, I’d wake up freaking out at the thought of the radio show I didn’t have any stories lined up for. Then, once I remembered that I no longer worked there, the voice would kick in:

What are you bothering to get up for? You’ll never do anything again in your life as cool as talking on the radio. You may as well end it right here and now because that was as good as it’s ever going to get. You’d be better off dead … 

It was nasty and persuasive. It sat on my chest and pinned me to the bed. It was so loud I couldn’t concentrate on formulating rebuttals. Obviously, I didn’t act on it. But this dark part of my psyche wasn’t going to give up easily.

One of the worst aspects of having a panic attack is the fear you’ll have another one. It’s very fucking frightening to feel that something else has complete control of your body. After my experience on the day I left work, I was afraid of going anywhere because the compulsion to drive into oncoming traffic was so strong. It wasn’t quite a voice but it was more than just an urge. It was something in between and it went like this:

It: Go on, just steer over to the right a bit.
Me: But I’ll kill myself.
It: (playfully, wheedling) Doesn’t matter.

On and on and on … for the whole journey.

Then there were the arguments when approaching roundabouts:

It: No, don’t slow down. Speed up!
Me: But if I don’t give way, I”ll get hit.
It: Just speed up a little. Nothing too serious. Just enough to land up in hospital and have a rest for a while. Then you won’t be in trouble for anything and people will have to be nice to you.

It sounds simplistic but I got through all this by filling up every minute of every day with things to do: walk the dog, do the housework, cook up and freeze lunches for the Dreamboat, bake, iron, knit, work out. I’d make long lists and then cross off each task when I completed it. I only drove twice a week to the supermarket, early in the morning when there weren’t many vehicles about.

Finally, there came the morning when I challenged the “you’ll never do anything that cool again” voice.

Me: Cool in whose eyes?
It: Everyone else’s.
Me: No-one else gives a shit. Cool in whose eyes?
It: Your own.
Me: Yeah. My own. Exactly.

That was the day I began to get better. It was my first milestone.

The second milestone came a couple of days later, during a phone conversation with a friend. I had this sudden realisation; a literal bolt from the blue. I knew I no longer needed an audience. It didn’t matter any more. I didn’t care if no-one knows who I am or what I think about or how I spend my time.

Anyone who’s ever had a front-line job in the media will tell you how hard it is to leave the limelight. I’ve known people who’ve done it and never got over it. You’re a performer and an authority and a personality and, if you’re lucky, more people like you and respect you and look up to you than not, and it’s all very satisfying for the ego. So realising that you’ve let it go and you’ll no longer actively seek it out is a very big deal.

That was when I nearly shut down hot water for good. But hey … even though this blog initially started out as something I did for whoever was interested in reading it, that’s changed over time too. Now, I write it first and foremost for me. And while I appreciate you loyal and long-suffering superheroes who persist in coming back every time I update and who give me so much encouragement and kind thoughts, I’d still blog even if there was no-one coming to visit.

So, now you know a little of what went on in the first couple of months. There are more milestones. There could be a happy ending. Maybe, somewhere down the track,  there might even be a return to humour. I think so. Just bear with me. There are a few other bits to get through first.