Once we had a Mailbox

 

ODE TO MY MAILBOX

by me

Oh Aramco Mail Box numbered no more

I’m not very pleased with you for

There’s nothing here again for me

Except for The Sun, delivered free

And the usual request for a sub

From the Dhahran Expats Camera Club.

Once I had a mailbox... but alas I do not see a brilliant bestseller, a la Karen Blixen (who famously once had a farm in Africa), arising from that beginning. I had to leave the actual numbers out, as someone else will be using that number now.

The poem tells me this was written in our early expat years - the days of Bruce and the Camera Club. We kept the same mailbox throughout of course, while living in many different houses. The photo is of the sprinkler going in one of our gardens, our last garden but one I think. Col did take a photo of our Aramco mailbox as an entry for a Club competition, set by Bruce, but I can't find it, so I have settled for this.

The Sun is The Arabian Sun, not the Rupert Murdoch one. My mother used to write every week with news from home. Letters were so important in those pre-cyberspace years (when dinosaurs ruled the earth).

It is still oddly warm for the time of year. And John, in our Monday Zoom Session, said that Sydney is very hot even for their time of year - midSummer.

Our expat life, all 25 years of it, is fading far into the past now. But it was quite an experience - travelling to parts of the world I never expected to see, being able to visit my bro and his family in Oz many times, and being scudded by Saddam Hussein. I could have missed out on the latter experience happily of course.

At the moment I am wrestling with my two thirds written short story, The Sands of Mars. I have a big plot problem that has to be resolved and then its pretty much finished - just the refining work to do.

It is not Sci-fi - far from it. It is set firmly on the Planet Earth. This is the planet on which I hope Captain Butterfly, me, all our family and friends - and you, my blog readers - will live happily ever after.