Today is Show Day down here in Hobart, a public holiday and the day when, traditionally, many people take their families to visit The Royal Hobart Show. Usually we locals joke about “show weather” because, again traditionally, it’s often blowing a gale or pouring with rain for Show Day. Today though, we were blessed with balmy, spring weather, a day when it felt good to be alive. Not that we went to the Show! I have to confess I have never been nor taken my children, I’m really hoping they haven’t grown up feeling too deprived! I am not a lover of crowds and, as we lived on a hobby farm when they were growing up, cuddling farm animals was no novelty for them. No, far from romping off to the Show, Louisa was strutting her stuff in glorious sunshine today with a lovely sized group of eight.
On the way home in the car I asked Chris if he had heard of that old Jewish story the one about the man who can’t bear all the noise in his house so he goes to ask the Rabbi for advice? Do you know it? The Rabbi tells him to import a flock of chickens. He returns the following week complaining that his household is even worse. The Rabbi nods sagely and tells him to import a goat. So it goes on, till there is a veritable menagerie living with the man and his family. He returns to the Rabbi virtually tearing out his hair, the noise is so unbearable! Week by week and one by one, the Rabbi tells him to reduce the animals in the household until (you guessed it) he has returned to the original size of his family. “Thank you Rabbi” the man says, “I now have peace again”! Good isn’t it?
Why am I relating this story? Louisa’s Walk has been a bit like this lately. If you read some of my latest blog posts you will read of the wind and the rain and the plovers. Sometimes it has just seemed too hard a way to earn a living. Today, though, perfect weather conditions and the plovers eggs have been re-located by Parks and Wildlife. It is such bliss to enter the Female Factory Yard One with no wheeling, diving, screeching birds (poor things only trying to protect their young). Yesterday, two council workers were operating two brush cutters around the memorial seat opposite the Female Factory, it’s where Louisa shows her quilt to her fellow “convicts”. The noise was deafening and I could hardly make myself heard.
Today all was quiet. Thank you Rabbi!
