It seemed a simple enough thing, a picnic.
But I have got out of the way of them. The picnic paraphernalia, the folding chairs, the plastic plates, the knives and forks, the complicated Esky content (cold chicken; cold drinks; cold ants).
I had forgotten the lining up at the ice self-serve with all the sandaled and T-shirted fraternity who were already giving off strong fumes of anti-perspirant.
All the trailer-sailer people; the station wagon with three dogs and four children; the caravan with its owner inspecting the vehicle like some captain rowing around his ship’s hull.
They were all lined up at our service station waiting to spread out over the landscape.
Surely. I told myself, I would be better home in my armchair watching Viv Richards, even if I only watched him briefly like flashing quicksilver.
You must get out of yourself (my family told me). You are becoming fossilised in your armchair. We will have to chip you out like archaeologists do. You must get out. We must air you; see whether your legs still work, your lungs want to inhale something else besides the electronic breath of Richie Benaud. It’s a picnic for you: salad, watery mayonnaise, like melting ice; lettuce making one last strand. Come away to Clare; go north, old man.
Let the harvested fields of Tarlee speak to you, be rivetted by Riverton, nip across to Auburn; C. J. Dennis was born there: another bard. Go, go, you fat recluse.
How could one resist. So we took station on the road behind the station wagon with the four children and three dogs. There were no trailer boats towards Clare because the rivers are too shallow.
Perhaps we could nip across to Port Broughton and the crabs at Fisherman’s Bay would nip back. We could sit in the shadow of the silos of Wallaroo and watch the frolics on North Beach.
We could fish. I stirred and signs of returning life were evident in me.
No, we are on a picnic, said my wife. We will spread our plastic tablecloth and decollapse our chairs. We will have dark cake left from Christmas
Surely, I said. A picnic. I must say the cold chicken seemed more wrinkled than usual. It had had a hard year. Now it was just a drum- stick, a small pathetic peninsula among the mayonnaise. Life goes on.
No, you are not bringing out the radio. Cricket is depriving men of their senses. Sit down. We have a vacuum flask of tea. When a vacuum meets a vacuum. See, we are jolly picnickers.
I sat in my collapsible chair and I noticed how nice the sky looked. Blue, in fact. The ceiling of the television room is dull grey. It made a change. The sky filled all the spaces between the gnarled old arms of the trees. A small parrot sat looking down at me.
Parrots have their hard times. It’s the survival of the beakiest. I can imagine the hen parrot hustling this poor bird off and leaving it out on a limb.
“Go out and get yourself a good healthy tree. All you do is sit around and screech.”
Nearer, on a small bush, a hent wren bounced in a ball of feathers.
We’ve brought the bird book, said my wife. Now we’ll see.
She is a bird watcher. She’s into wrens and birds of prey. She’s very strong on birds of prey.
Can’t you let the wren be, dear? No, don’t give it a few crumbs of your Christmas cake. It will never get off the ground.
I noticed the white clouds dotting the sky and that the nearby ridge had a group of trees conversing in the wind. There were some low bushes near the car and I began. creeping on my hands and knees, using the cover well. My wife was still in the bird book.
Only a few more paces to the Test score.
“Caught you, didn’t I?” My daughter was there wearing her Christmas slacks and scrolled jumper “Can’t keep away from the cricket then?”
She locked the car and removed my keys.
I went back to my chair because my wife had found a honey-eater. How remarkable.
And I found a galah.
It was obviously a male the way it looked down at me.
Its mate had been screeching:
“Get out and get a bit of flying time for a change, you great galah.”
But now the chicken was finished. The Christmas cake still fretted my oesophagus. A hot breeze from the coast whispered of harvested barley and fishing farmers.
Permission to visit the kiosk. Permission granted. When you come back we’ll look for birds of prey. (Thinks) We won’t have to look far.
At the kiosk I met the man and his three dogs. The dogs closed around me, ankling me and turning over in their minds whether I was worth a saluting leg.
“Don’t move too suddenly,” said the man.
“Have you heard the scores?” I asked. He looked at me strangely and slightly bared his teeth.
I held my low calorie can to me and went off not too suddenly.
When I returned to the careless rapture of our picnic site my daughter was dozing.
I immediately dropped to my stomach and assumed a watchful position.
I wormed my way towards her handbag and the car keys. She opened one eye as cats do at a poor trapped mouse.
“Mother has found another bird of prey, Daddy,” she said.
I looked at a tired hawk up on the branch and the hawk looked down. I suppose its mate had been saying. “Now don’t hang around. You’re a bird of prey. Go out and start preying”
One thing was certain. It didn’t have the cricket scores.
Max Fatchen