No rush, we’re on holiday

The news of Australia’s new prime minister was making headlines. It had been on television for the last few hours. As has been said jestingly — but with elements of truth — Australia is where you could go to bed with one prime minister and wake up with another.

Malcolm Turnbull replaced Tony Abbott in the course of a day and Bob Diaz had watched it all unfold on TV, fortunate to be on holiday from a busy banking job. (Counting out other people’s money ad nauseam every day could make one exhausted and, sometimes, a little sick.) Had he been at work, he’d have missed the unfolding news and would have had to endure updates from Delia, the floor supervisor, who delivered these titbits with the embroidered lace of her own editorialised opinion.

Bob, his wife Ann, and their twoyear-old with the same brush.”) took care things in the background, silently.

Meals got ordered, little Jamie was given a bath, changed, fed and taken for a walk. He did hear Ann whisper that the sight from the porch was breathtaking. He’d taken a look — whisking the drapes aside — only to see nothing because night’s own curtain had fallen a while ago. I’ll feast my eyes on it tomorrow morning, he thinks. Mustn’t rush. There’ll be time. Everything will get done in leisurely fashion. It’s a holiday, he counsels himself, not a duplication of a work day rush-around pretending to be a vacation.

So he leans back into the comfort of the lounge chair and picks up the thread of where Australia is at under the new leader. Panelists are expressing their opinion — some feel Turnbull is justified in making a challenge and

of dethroning his own partyman, even if it might appear disloyal, if only for the party’s sake etc etc. Others differ.

And so the night blends into a blur of mixed voices, some rising to signify the extent of their dissent. Bob turns down the volume and in this semimutedness realises that Ann has gone to bed and Jamie is, no doubt, in his baby room next door, long asleep, well into a stretch of childhood dreaming.

Bob also realises suddenly that he is missing something — Constance, their cat. She’d not have left him sitting up alone so late. She’d have been curled up on his lap. He thinks of her fondly but knows she is comfortable at Ann’s sister’s place where she is being cat-sat for a week. The one relief, thinks Bob, is that Constance is not going to be springing up on his bed tonight, demanding a share of bed space. They’ve tried unsuccessfully to train her to sleep in her own cat basket.

So, with thoughts of an uninterrupted night’s sleep ahead, Bob turns off the television — the discussion is becoming boringly general at any rate — and heads for the shower. That done, he tiptoes across to the bedroom so as not to disturb Ann. His sleeping shorts must be in the bedside drawer, he thinks. He whips off the towel, throws it on the rack and is standing with the drawer half open when a voice from the bed asks, “Had a shower, dad?”

Stand rooted? Spin around? Grab the towel? Mustn’t rush? Bob is not sure what’s his choice; what’s appropriate. But all little Jamie says, yawningly, from the bed is, “Goodnight. I’m tired.”

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.