A Life of Quiet Observation

I've had SUCH an interesting life! There's been good and bad, quiet and exciting. The important thing is to stay strong and straight, looking towards the future. Keep a good attitude and you'll be OK.

I mean, they keep changing their minds about what to do with me! When I was built I was sturdy, strong, my bricks laid carefully and with skill. Lovely men who put me together, they were.

The old one used to call me Daisy. "Mornin', Daisy, old girl, we're gonna make you taller today!" Then "We're rendering you today, love, dunno why they want to cover your beauty, but there you have it."

"It makes the wall stronger, Dan," the younger one, called Pete told him, "sealed inside the render, the bricks are protected." "Oi!" He'd yelled at the apprentice who had spilled render on the ground. Bob was the apprentice's name.

Bob had come back again years later, to patch a bit of the outside corner where one of those noisy metal things had smashed into it. The foolish man in the metal thing made such a loud fuss, trying to blame me and everyone else! I was watching the whole time, and it was him not looking where he was going, leering out the window at those girls.

When that nice young lad had come to repaint the inside he told me his Grandfather had been one of those men. I don't know which one. "My Grandad built you!" he told me as he poured paint into the tray. He didn't call me Daisy, so maybe not Dan. So either Pete or Bob. He looked a bit like either one of them, really. I never heard his name. He didn't stay once the painting was finished.

I've been repainted so many times that I've lost count. Mostly white, but sometimes a darker colour for a change. I was going to be red once, that young lady wanted me to be red, but the man was in charge & decided against it. It takes extra coats of paint to cover up strong colours afterwards.

The red might have been a good idea when I was the den of a criminal gang. There was quit a bit of blood splashed about. They seemed to argue with each other a lot. That's probably why they're not here any more. I don't know how they could get anything done when they were fighting about everything! That gang didn't paint me any colour at all. They just left me to myself, which was quite nice really.

The nicest ones were those ladies with their dressmaking. Such pretty voices and tinkling laughter. Only nice things were said while they were here. Even when there were no customers. I loved the pale pink they painted me. I loved all the excited chatter of girls and women having new dresses fitted and made.

Mind you, they did drill into me quite a lot, but I didn’t really mind because it was to make the place so pretty, and there was no major damage!

I was sad when they packed up and left. They were here for so many years too! The oldest one had stopped coming for the last few years, and there wasn’t as much tinkling laughter, but there were still customers and lots of sewing! Until there wasn’t.

Now the big glass window displays only cobwebs and dust and the rooms are empty except for more of the same. It's lonely without the people inside. Even lonelier now that hardly any metal things with people inside come down the laneway. They just whizz along the main road past the window, ever so fast.

I got excited the other day, because men in hard hats carrying big papers came and looked all around. That usually means building! I wondered if they were going to add a new wall, to divide up a big room? Maybe change the kitchen or bathrooms? They didn't do anything. They looked everywhere, said some things I didn't understand, made notes on their papers, and left.

I can see one of them out the front this morning. He's saying things to some others and pointing. The other men and striding about looking busy. They've got some really big metal things. I haven't seen those before. One of them has a big bucket on the back, and one of them is very tall and has a big black ball swinging on a chain. I'm generally happy by myself, but it's nice to have some company.

Ow! That big ball smashed into me! Golly that hurt!

Again! It keeps swinging into me, and I'm pretty sure the man inside the glass box is making it do that. I'm holding myself together as well as I can, standing straight as I can manage, but really, I'm falling apart.

Crumbling.

Bricks are coming apart. About half of me has fallen in a heap.

I'd be embarrassed, but this is clearly what these strange builders want to happen. Swinging that ball at me is doing this, and I can't stop them any more than I could have stopped them building me.

So I wait. In pain. Wondering what will happen when I'm a pile of disconnected bricks.

The swinging ball has stopped, and the metal thing with a glass box has taken it away.

It's a whole new perspective, looking at the sky from strange angles on the ground. My roof used to look at the sky. Now lots of parts of me do.

Several men now, and a girl, are picking up my bricks, and stacking them on pallets. I want to ask why, where I'm going, what's going to be done with me.

Almost as though she heard my thoughts, the girl patted a stack of my bricks and said to the man with her. "They're in amazing condition! Just think! My great-grand-dad put some of these bricks together, and now they're going to be my garden wall!"

"They're great bricks! I'm glad you saw the ad!" he replied, " Maybe we should get some more?"

She nodded. He left to talk to someone and she returned to picking up bricks and carefully stacking them on their sides, uneven chunks of mortar and all.

It would be nice to stay together, I thought, but already realised that the other pallets of me were going other places.

I tried to hear information from the various other people, but no-one else said anything useful. Still, part of me being a garden wall sounded nice. There hadn't been a garden near me in a long time. Gardens were peaceful.

I'd be seeing and hearing things in different places soon. I hope they join the bricks properly: nice and straight and strong.

I've had SUCH such an interesting life!