Singular Scene

So Singular in Each Particular

A Tale of Three Elfs (Elves?)

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‘Mark’ I

I was slow to ‘get’ driving (back in the days when you had a full license the minute you sat your test at age 16). I learned to drive in an E30 Corolla but failed to my test twice. As a consequence l gave up for a bit until I could improve my skill and confidence.

In the end, at age 18 I ended up owning a car before I even had that license. I remember buying her, Mum and I together at the sales yard, parting I think with $1500 and in return receiving papers for ‘Olive’ a 1965 Mk II ‘Riley Elf.’ It was in her I finally passed the driving test, the police officer disparaging the car as soon as he climbed in, commenting along the lines of ‘Wind her up, get her going…’ as if it was a rubber band responsible for her power. The ensuing giggle enough to relax me into a (finally) successful test.

We had adventures Olive and I. Late night phone calls to dad after a rear ender in the rain outside the service station in Victoria Rd necessitated embarrassed collection from town; the now infamous blowout on the Northern Motorway headed downhill on the way to meeting friends at Rainbows End, my 11 year old brother and I trying to get her tyre changed and us moving again lest we miss out on any of the fun. Taking judder bars (speed humps) too fast and getting airborne, or taking corners too tight on the way to the airport and driving over traffic islands. I like to think, now that I am a more experienced driver, these kinds of incidents are a thing of the past. 

Olive and I parted company July of 1988 when I sold her to a friend for $1950.00 and was rather proud to have made money on her. I was young, headed off overseas, a car an encumbrance and cash an important thing when going off into the great beyond. It was a mistake; damn I loved that car and ever since her subsequent owner sold her on to a collector in Japan I have been disappointed I couldn’t buy her back.

I’ve had a dream to own one again ever since.

1965 Riley Elf Mk 2
Olive and me (circa 1986 or 1987)

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‘Mark’ II

‘I’m sorry, I hope you don’t mind but I need to go chat to that guy for a sec’ I said to my friend over coffee one early morning while I was on vacation on the Gold Coast.’ The object of my attention an ‘Elf’ being parked across the road, the first I’d seen in the flesh since I’d sold mine.

I introduced myself to M, her owner and he laughed, every time he takes her out he gets stopped for a chat. He delivered his Mrs to her hair appointment and joined us at the cafe. We spent delightful half hour reminiscing about his early days also spent in NZ, the Elfs (Elves?) and minis he’s owned and the modifications he’s made to ‘Elf’ pictured below.

We stayed in touch. I introduced him to trademe.co.nz and before I could turn around he’d bought two of them, one in good running order that his grandson now owns, the other in pieces that he has since restored and which is currently for sale.

I’ve visited him on the Gold Coast a couple of times and on last visit we took ‘Elf’ (with me driving) off for a jaunt around town, turning heads and (for me) getting inspired to take the idea of getting my own seriously.

Showing off the Alfa Romeo wheel rims
M, her proud owner

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‘Mark’ III

Trade Me is apparently a treasure trove of ‘Elves.’ In the almost 2 years since I met M I’ve been watching them come and go for sale, and the timing has never quite been right for me to indulge this desire to own one again. However, this time as I was preparing to visit family across the ditch I happened to check out the trademe listings for Rileys and noticed that alongside the listing for M’s ‘Snow White‘ was this wee blue specimen which completely caught my eye.

I emailed the vendor to find out what sort of interest there had been in her. He replied lots, which was a bit far fetched as her price had been coming down consistently in the time I was watching… so I kept his details to follow up when I was actually in NZ as well.

I won’t bore you with the intervening details of the story, the end result is of course that after going to sit in her, turn her engine over and, (after some convincing to move the barricade of other classic vehicles in her way) taking her for a drive, the offer was made, accepted and once the finance transferred from Australia to NZ (gosh they can move money fast when they want to, it took less than 24hrs) she has become my very own.

I can scarcely believe it… I own another Elf and the number one slot on my bucket list is vacant.

Currently she is in storage in Auckland until such a time as I can get her transported over to Melbourne. I have some travel planned between now and when collecting her is going to be feasible, so for now she’s tucked away safely in a storage unit until I can bring her home.

She needs a name. I want to call her Elfaba (after Elphaba the witch in Wicked) but honestly her colour lends itself more to ‘Smurfette’ which I can’t bring myself to commit to yet. So, I’ll save the formal christening until she’s here and we’ve had time to get acquainted…

Until then, I shall flick through the photos below and count my blessings the opportunity to undo a big regret didn’t pass me by.

With her garage mates
998cc engine
Riley Elf Mk III Walnut veneer dashboard
The red leather interior could use some work
Riley Elf Mk III red leather interior
Riley Elf Mk III brand new paint job
Riley Elf Mk III Mini with a Boot
Riley Elf Mk III New paint, new chrome

Strangers on a Train

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As I got on the train yesterday heading into the city, seats were few and far between. They often are on a Saturday morning as people head into market to get their weekly groceries.

A little old Asian lady sits on a seat, bags at her feet, bags beside her and while my first thought was a sigh at people taking up more room than they should, my second was a polite request to see if I may sit alongside her.

She apologised, and mid cough, removed her bag so I could sit.

We travelled along quietly, I, like most of my fellow passengers staring at my phone, playing games, clearing email, killing time.

She watches me and remarks on how clever phones are, how everyone seems to be on them and so I put mine down, smile at her, engaged, and listening.

It’s funny just how much ground you can cover in a 15minute train ride. We talked about the markets, the trains being replaced by buses, and about technology and about family.

She has two sisters living in France.

I asked her how it was possible for her to have come to Australia, and her two sisters to be living in France and so she told me…

About the Thai refugee camps.

About the waiting..,

With tears in her eyes, about seeing a person be shot and killed in front of her.

About only being aware of France and America as options of other places to go for safety and how it felt when it came time for HER choice that the doors to those places were closed, and how her sisters couldn’t sponsor her.

So she waited until they told her “You’re going to Australia”.

A place she’d never heard of.

A place she knew nothing about.

And she thanks her god every day that she ended up here.

With nod and a big smile she says, “Lucky, very Lucky!”

 

Yesterday talking to a stranger on the train.

I felt like the lucky one.

A Funny thing Happened on the Way to a Meeting

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There are things that happen that in life are so out of the ‘norm’ that you really have to document them before they disappear into the vortex that is your past; ephemeral and on the edge of your memory, almost as if they were way to weird to have been true.  This has been one of those moments…

I flew from Melbourne to Sydney on Wednesday. It was uneventful at that time, but I should already have been in New South Wales that day, having had my flight cancelled the evening before due to unseasonable (and frankly, unreasonable) fog.  Given that I was meant to be in a meeting at 10am and didn’t actually touch down in Sydney till 12.30 I ended up with a couple of hours to kill before the rescheduled meeting could occur at 2.30. (There’s the context, it’s probably too much detail really, but to perserve my memory, there it is.)

I went to Starbucks to wait. (I KNOW, sorry, it really was awful, the coffee is ghastly, and I still can’t believe there were as many people in there as there were.  But hey, free wifi.)

So, I unpacked the laptop for half an hour to get a bit of prep done for the meeting and as I worked, was generally in my own little world as I usually am when I’m head down over the computer. (Stay with me, it’s about to get good).

When I was done with what I needed to do, I started to pack up my kit ready to head around the corner to my meeting and as I did, I was approached from the left by a not unattractive guy who said, “I just had to stop and tell you, you’re stunning!”

My internal reaction was… “Is he trying to distract me, do I now need to go and change all my passwords, is he standing here cloning my laptop, is my wallet safe, did I log into anything that needs protecting while I was on open wifi?” and so on.  What I did, of course, so as not to appear rude, and so as to ‘live in the moment’, was reach out my hand to shake his and say, “Hi, I’m Dee, nice to meet you.”

We chatted a bit, and while I wasn’t in a big hurry I was mindful of time, so he asked where I was off to. I told him, and before we moved away he wrote down his number for me on a discarded receipt. I, again in the moment, wrote down my web site’s address so he could find me if he wished.

As I moved away, he asked if he could walk me to where I was going, I assented, and we chatted  companionably along the way, and when we got near my destination, we said goodbye and he going one way while I the other, I walked up the street to the office rather bemused by what had just occurred.

I conducted my meeting, travelled across town to my destination for the evening, stopped to catch up with my host and have a good laugh about the events of the day, and then checked my email to find that he’d reached out through my website to connect almost as soon has he’d got back to the office!

The events of the next couple of days unfolded slowly, I have had the busiest time on this trip, going from north to south and back again across Sydney, (if you’ve spent ANY time here at all you’ll know that doing so is never a straightforward thing), and in the end when we did try to co-ordinate a meeting, the planets and our timetables just didn’t align.  The scheduling discussion then devolved into a long and completely flattering text conversation that left me feeling both delighted, if a little sceptical.

In the days since there’s been no ensuing contact, just in case you were wondering if this was going to turn into a scene from one of those hopelessly romantic movies.  I am now back in Victoria with a cracking story and a saucy text conversation to look back on to remind me that such things actually can happen from time to time.

The whole situation got me to thinking about what exactly IS the norm?  This brief exchange has certainly been outside my norms. Having spent so many years inside a culture where such a thing never occurs it’s been a refreshing experience.  But I’m curious to hear from my readers, particularly those who don’t live in an insulated (i.e. religious) culture; if you have one, what’s your outrageous pickup story? And, for those of us playing along at home, how did it end?

Still in Between

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I really dropped you in it didn’t I?  Sorry, I didn’t mean to. The last week in between tests, consultations and flying to NZ didn’t leave much room for any more than texting results to the ‘tight five’ and jumping on a plane. I’m now in the motherland, staying with friends and family and generally keeping things normal.

And, they are, well, not normal, but not alarming.  Let me give you the low down (seeing as Kelley asked).

Monday morning started innocuously enough, I’d been getting somewhat more alarmed during the weekend trying to mentally prepare for the CT scans and Nuc Med bone scans booked for that morning. I’d expected not to take too long, and had planned to spend the rest of the day working as usual.  This wasn’t to be, simply because once the scans were done I was asked to come back later in the day for a full body scan.

It was pretty much at that point that my brain started into overdrive… WTF? I hadn’t been mentally prepared for this, and my brain went into overdrive as to why they felt the need… all I could think was that they’d seen something that warranted further action.

You really can’t tell your brain at that point that if there was abdominal involvement it would have shown up on the ultrasounds… and it was even harder to have an internal voice of reason when the story across the Tasman had taken a turn for the more serious.  So I called up the Tailor who came over and kept me sane for a couple of hours before I had to go back to be scanned from top to toe.

That scan duly done I went upstairs to the [breast] surgeon’s rooms to collect my referral to the orthopaedic surgeon and went home to call him for an appointment. I was desperately hoping that he was free to see me before I was due to fly to NZ on the Thursday… and thankfully had a slot on Wednesday.  So the awkward in between continued, with something more of a disconcerting edge, until then.

I googled the surgeon… one of his specialities is musculoskeletal tumours… did I say disconcerting? I meant downright terrifying.

My lovely neighbour, offered to keep me company at the surgeon’s, company and moral support, and her son’s mother offered to drive, so it was Dee and the senior citz off to visit the surgeon. But we duly arrived, filled in all the requisite paper work and waited our turn.  As with all the other appointments I’ve had in the last 3 weeks, this one was also on time, quick, and ridiculously expensive…

The surgeon duly read through all the scans and finally pulled out the two relevant to his interests and asked me two things.  “Does it hurt?” (a consistent question throughout the whole affair to which the answer was always no) and “What have they already told you?”.

Based on the fact this thing in my arm has never caused me pain, and on his experience with looking at such things, the short story is that he was confident that he was looking at an enchondroma – I’ve googled them, they don’t sound serious, and as mine is asymptomatic I’m not expecting things to get any more interesting. The surgeon was pretty low key about it, seemed a little bothered at the extent to which my case had been esclatated… but as he wanted to set my mind at ease he is going to schedule an MRI and a bone biopsy to rule out anything dastardly.

We’ll deal with that in January.

In the meantime, I’m back in NZ, Lil’ Sis, is having a lymph node biopsy on Friday, and we’re all crossing everything that it proves negative, given that she went from  low grade, contained (in the duct) cancer to invasive carcinoma in one fell swoop during her biopsy, we’re on elevated alert. (Though at this stage she’s not considered to have life threatening disease… phew).

Thanks to all of you who’ve been checking in, sorry to leave this update so late… when it was all happening I had no brain space to blog, and now that it’s mostly all over I didn’t have any need to vent it out… for now, all is well.  I’ll let you know if that changes, and if I get gnarly scans, I’ll show you my ‘inside out’ pix in the New Year.