Annabelle Hickson: A Day in the Country
WHY DAYS IN TOWN HELP ANNABELLE HICKSON APPRECIATE LIFE ON HER FARM.
WE DECIDED TO send the kids into a bigger school this year. We live just past the end of the bus run into town — one of the longest bus runs in NSW, says our bus driver Steve — and for the first half of the week, the children hop on Steve’s enormous bus, happily. It leaves at 7:18am on the dot, whether you are there or not. So far we haven’t missed it, although there have been some pretty intense mornings involving straight Nutella for breakfast and desperate screams of “where are the school shoes?” that go unanswered. The shoes are, of course, in places no reasonable person could be expected to know, except for maybe the person who left them there, but she is five and has other things on her mind. There’s a whole world for them on that bus that is completely separate from me. Names I cannot put faces to, stories I can’t believe are real but which, they promise me, are. One child picks up rocks while he is waiting for the bus each morning. He puts them on top of his head as the bus approaches and then puts his school hat on, over the rocks, and boards the bus despite the bus driver and school asking him not to. The second half of the week we stay in town. It sounds very squattocratic but it is not. We sleep in a tiny cottage next to a hardware store with its gas yard in our back garden (the rent pays the rates). Strangers who pick up their gas bottles often talk to me as I water the garden at the back of the cottage in my nightie. Other than that, it’s going pretty well. We use our town days to sleep in and do stuff after school. And when I say ‘stuff’, I refer to everything that is on offer on Wednesdays and Thursdays: tennis, gymnastics, acro (it’s much like gymnastics I know, please don’t press me for an explanation), footy, swimming and yoga for me. For those two days I turn into a tiger mum in activewear, shuttling my little cubs to various halls and leisure centres. Thankfully this town is relatively small and nothing is more than five minutes away even with traffic. In town I also take the opportunity to go internet-mad. The Crown, Chef’s Table, even the god-awful Designated Survivor in which Kiefer Sutherland insists on whispering all his lines in what I suppose is a presidential way, but only just. I consume it all. Just because I can. At home Ed and I debate whether to give even our own parents the wi-fi password when they come to stay, such is our battle with limited data. In town we are internet fiends on a bender. And we get takeaway. Takeaway everything: coffees, Thai, pizza... the works. Sometimes we go out for dinner at the local wine bar. I can duck out to the supermarket whenever I want. Even if I am just missing some butter or those handy squeezy yoghurt pouches for the school lunch boxes. It’s very exciting. It’s also exhausting. And expensive. There are so many options. What to do, what to cook, what to eat, what to buy, who to see. So many decisions to make. By Friday afternoon I am borderline desperate to return to the farm, where I can run away from, at least in part, the agony of choice. At home, far away from the bright lights of Coles, we eat whatever I can rustle up from the pantry or the freezer. We see our neighbours on Friday nights. We do absolutely zero extracurricular sporting activities. I can leave my wallet and keys in the car and there they will stay for days. There’s nothing to buy, nothing to remember to lock and no-one to have to be nice to. I cannot watch Netflix. But I can breathe. There’s a lot to be said for choice. But limitations are pretty handy, too. Annabelle Hickson lives on a pecan farm in the Dumaresq Valley, NSW. Follow @annabellehickson on Instagram.