Hi everyone ,
today I went to spend some time with Max and his wife again , it was a really interesting visit , and also just for the exercise I feel that I need to give a name to his wife’s character, I’m not sure what but I guess maybe it can be Kate then .
So I arrived at their house this morning and they both seemed quite pleased to see me , so I took up the normal position in the lounge and sat down , and then the conversation just started .
Max had a two new chairs they were provided by his package with one being positioned at the dining table and a bigger more comfortable one in the lounge , he proudly showed me and asked me to sit on them both to try them out .
So I did and found that they were a lot easier to get up out of so they are much better for Max.
So then Max and I sat in the lounge chatting about various things with Kate joining us every now and then .
We talked about back in the old days when the war had ended and all of the farming land around the whole district was covered in bush , Wonthaggi’s and surrounding land area was prominently mostly made up of tee tree which is a native and mostly prolifically grows in swampy type of land .
After the war , when Maxes grandfather finished his service in the Australian army , he was allocated a slice of local land being of 600 acres , by the government,
as part of his war service payment , and it was given free to him under the one condition that within a set amount of time he had cleared the land for farming use.
This was something repeated all over the district for return soldiers and their families . And the way a majority of the farms here were cleared .
I mentioned to max and Kate that I had been invited to sing in a choir at Archie’s Creek pub tonight , Max asked me if I could sing and if I could sing for him , so I belted out a couple of notes for him .
He asked me then if I could sing him a whole song and I found out then that he loved Elvis ,
so I set up my phone and proceeded to sing in the ghetto for him .
When it was finished Kate said to me you will regret that Curly as Max will have you singing to him all day .
I asked Max if he liked Michael Buble , he was unsure so I sung Feeling Good to Maxes delight and as I had just found out that his favourite thing in the world was listening to music.
I smiled to myself and thought that this is the first time in my life that I have been paid to sing .
Max then got up from the chair and motioned for me to follow him and he led me to the big lounge into the corner where his stereo system stood idle , I think for the past 9 years and he asked me if I could get it going?
I said I’ll take a look at it thinking that it shouldn’t be a problem as it was a high end unit and of top quality.
So I opened the cabinet for a look and spotted a five cd changer amongst the stack .
So then I sorted out the leads at the back , and plugged it in and pressed the power button and instantly the lights lit up and the unit burst into life with radio static coming from the speakers .
I then tried to sort out the cd player and fire it up while Max waited patiently .
I realised it was just the parameter button I needed to press to change the settings over but I couldn’t find it .
I madly pushed every button I could see before eventually deciding to be smart and go to my car and get my glasses , because without them reading small print now is virtually impossible.
When I returned I quickly found the right button and pressed it , I must have had the volume button up pretty high because the music came on with a crack and really quite loudly , with a nice song and we now had music.
I turned around to stand up and what I saw was incredible ,
there next to me was Max dancing as hard as his body would allow him to , so I without a second thought I joined in with him , and in the moment we danced together in the lounge .
His face just said everything.
So me and Max have something cool in common and that’s loud music , I think we arnt good dancers and I then I looked through Max’s cd collection and then l said to Kate that I have a heap of cds at home that I can look through for Max to listen to and I think that if he is being a pest at any time you can slip on a meditation cd and put him to sleep.
We laughed at that .
I need to bring some cable with me next time to hook up an ariel for the radio for him next week , and he is set.
So also as an interesting part of history we talked about and that there was at one stage back many years ago a big barn on the property and back in the day there was a public dance held every Saturday night in the barn that soon became famous around the area and people from all over the district would attend .
The only thing was that every woman that attended had to bring a plate of food.
The dance became widely known as the Thistle dance and the music was played out of a single record player , to the crowd.
So all up it’s been a really interesting and rewarding day today .
Time to go sing .
Ps
The photo is the record player set up used at the dance and
The strange white things in the pic are chairs
Cheers ,
Curlyg
and good mental health