Carol’s Column

Momma is marooned on an island paradise

LUCY Irvine, author of the book ‘Castaway’, answered an advertisement in a newspaper saying ‘Writer seeks wife for year on tropical island’.

She got the job and found herself on an idyllic island, Tuin, off the northern coast of Australia. Unfortunately, along with the island, came her not so idyllic partner.

Would you answer an ad like that?

Yes, I thought to myself as I looked around the kitchen with a dead banana loaf smouldering on top of the stove.

In the corner, nestled a pile of dirty washing so high that it almost reached the ceiling. There were three dog puddles and a plop deposited by the latest newcomer to our household, Dumpling, a minute maltese poodle puppy.

Sun

The freezer was frozen solid and needed a good scrape, the fridge was full of leftovers jostling for their place in the sun and my electric shredder, blender, cutter and squeezer had shredded itself into extinction when my youngest unmarried son shredded a piece of rubber for a school project.

Boy, I’d answer that ad like a shot.

Imagine being all alone on a tropical paradise with just coconuts, fresh fruit, vanilla pods, kaleidoscopic birds, multicoloured reef fish, coral and sunshine to worry about.

Bliss.

The girls at my knitting club weren’t so ecstatic.

“Personally, I think she’s mad,” said Bertha Ginkle, “I mean, just think of all that sand ... uugh.”

My good friend Betty was more realistic. As she knitted the crimson dog coat for Schnitzel the schnauzer, she made a pertinent comment: “You know, it’s not the island that’s so important, it’s WHO you are marooned with that counts.”

We nodded our heads in time to the knitting needles.

“For instance,” she continued, “I could think of nothing nicer than being marooned on an island with Paul Newman. He could do the cooking and I’d stare into his beautiful blue eyes.”

“It’s not the colour of the eyes that matter,” remarked Bertha, “it’s other virtues that count. For instance, being able to gather food, make a shelter, fish, be resourceful.”

But I agreed with Betty. I’m a pushover for blue eyes.

“Personally, I think eyes are important,” I said to Bertha, “I’d go for somebody with blue eyes. Imagine waking up every morning under a coconut palm with a suntanned, blue-eyed lover, delicious. A sort of Woody Allen with blue eyes.”

Everyone gasped.

“Woody Allen?” they shrieked. “He must be the most sexless man around. You’d have a dreadful time being stuck on an island with Woody. You’d have to act as his psychiatrist, mother and grandmother all wrapped in one.”

“So, and what do you think I do now?” I snapped, “except now I do it in the gloom of Parkwood, in the shade of an old, decrepit deep freeze. What’s more, I don’t even do it for one Woody Allen but for five Lazars, four dogs, a cat, a goldfish and a mother-in-law.”

Adventure

“The trouble with you, Carol,” said Betty, “is you have no sense of adventure. “Instead of Woody Allen, go for something a little more exotic, someone like Robert de Niro, Boris Karloff or Richard Geer.

“You know what, I’ll stick to Woody Allen, at least he has a sense of humour, or,” I paused dramatically, “perhaps I’ll take Garfunkel, he sings.”

“Well, I’d take two men,” said Marion, “a boy scout to do all the work and then I’d take James Taylor to serenade me as we walked along the moonlit beaches holding hands and tripping over crabs.”

Ros, on the other hand, voted for Richard Chamberlain and a hairbrush.

We then got on to the topic of essentials. “I wouldn’t move without my hairdryer,” said Bertha.

“I’d be lost without my tumbledrier,” said Agnes.

Pauline was specific: “If I’m stuck on a desert island, I’ll take my IBM computer, it’s versatile but it doesn’t answer back.”

I shut my eyes and a vision of my own little idyllic island floated before me.

There, under the tallest palm on the island would stand my new stove, fridge and deep-freeze (full of chilled coconut milk, shark steaks and sailfish stew).

Beneath a lower palm, I’d place my waterbed and stinkwood dressingtable with matching stool.

I’d have only candlelight in the evenings, it’s so romantic — besides, everyone looks better by candlelight and I’d want to make Woody Allen’s spectacles mist up as he leapt towards me with a bowl of freshly-made palm heart salad with blue cheese dressing.

I’d put the TV against the hillock facing the double hammock and then the two of us could sip iced rum and coconut milk laced with lime as we watched Dallas.

“Why are you smiling like that?” asked Betty, an acute observer of human behaviour and facial muscles.

How could I explain that Woody Allen and I had just fallen out of the hammock — and, my luck, he’d landed beneath me with fractured collarbone, slipped disc and broken glasses.

Ah yes. I can see why Lucy Irvine fled to her island paradise. Such is the stuff dreams are made of.

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