Itchy Toe

Kept awake half the night with an infuriating itchy big toe, I eventually left our warm bed at about 6am so as to go and scratch it properly without disturbing Lib, and with something abrasive to give me relief, and find the nailcutters and do the job on my feet with a prop like a chair so that I was not assaulted by leg cramps as I bent my leg to reach my toe as I had been in my nocturnal discomfort.

Of course the the house is freezing in this cold midwinter but a cup of green tea with lemon juice has me feeling vital and in the mood to post on this blog before I switch my mental energy to the day's tasks ahead.

Is this another age thing? My feet are getting hard and calloused, as are my hands that suffer from dry and cracking and painful splits that are reluctant to heal. Am I not far away from visits to the podiatrist as many old people I have known have done? When I was picking up new glasses in Belgrave recently a podiatrist shop in the arcade caught my eye, and the receptionist was leaving for lunch so I asked her what an appointment costs. It wasn't cheap, but she said I could get a voucher from my GP for six or so visits at a reduced price. The world is a changed place for me. It has crept up.

Come to think of it, a podiatrist used to come to the farm to do my father's feet in his last years. Same with my old friend Ida Pullar in Gembrook, I think it was subsidized by local or state government, but certainly you would have to have a concession card to be afforded this service, and that is not so in my case, being still actively self employed.

Speaking of Ida, I had a day of nostalgia yesterday. It would have been her 99th birthday yesterday if she was alive. She died more than a decade ago, I think maybe in 2005. My nostalgia had another basis also. I was picking variegated pittosporum in Gembrook at a house yesterday where I have been picking or a few weeks, where the owners have several largish trees along their front fence, and are kind enough to let me prune them down for them. It is the fine leaf variegated pitto, not the garnetti variety that I have at the farm and at home but a substitute acceptable to my customer who buys this foliage in large quantity. I've been picking the garnetti for three months and as I was running out I began mixing it with the fine leaf one, and the demand is continuous. I have almost run out now and will have to wait till after it regrows vigourously in spring.

It was a garnetti pittosporum that was responsible for my friendship with Ida. She lived close to where I was picking yesterday and she had a large one just inside her front gate. I had seen a little elderly lady with white hair in the garden and thought I should ask her one day if I could prune it for the foliage, but I hadn't got around to it until one Saturday morning I was in the local supermarket before going to to the footy at Waverley Park, a Melbourne v Hawthorn game early in season 1995 I think, if not maybe 1994. Ida's husband Allan had not long passed away and she was adjusting to life by herself. The supermarket owner, Richard Mullet (I went to school with him at Camberwell Grammar) was serving me at checkout and we were talking footy and I told him I was going to the Melbourne Hawthorn game. Knowing I followed Melbourne, he said you'd better watchout, Ida here next to you is a Hawthorn stalwart. I turned to talk to the little lady and recognised her as the lady in the house with the garnetti. After some good natured chat about the footy I told her I'd seen her bush and had meant to pop in and see her about it. With no hesitation at all she said, "Yes, come and take what you want anytime, it needs cutting back. I'm a cutter, gardens need cutting back but that's too big for me."

So began a wonderful friendship. She had other things in her garden of use to me, namely two large bay trees, a beautiful pink flowering dogwood, daphne, camelia, mollis azaleas, and numerous native shrubs like eriostemons and grevilleas, all of which were of great use to me. It was only a quarter of an acre but was extremely productive. I picked there regurlarly for several years and called on Ida twice a week on average for a cup of coffee. She was an avid reader and our conversation covered footy, politics, gardening and her family history, and anything at all. She was a great conversationalist, happy to share her knowledge and wisdom. I became friends with many of her family who visited her regularly.  It was sad she suffered Alzheimer's in her last couple of years. Eventually her family had to move her into care and she spent her last of life in an aged facility in Sale.

I know I have blogged about Ida before, but yesterday she was front of mind, and I'm thankful for her friendship that made my life richer. And writing about it, and blogging generally, is hopefully helpful to me, perhaps, as a preventative measure to stave off or delay mental deterioration, should it follow what is obvious to me, my physical decline.

PS Another happy memory is that on that day at Waverley Melbourne kicked 8 goals to 1 in the first quarter and gave Hawthorn a good flogging.