Satima's Blogspot: October 2012

Thursday, 11 October 2012

Re-inventing myself - yet again

Thursday, October 11, 2012 |

Posted by Satima Flavell

Every few years, it seems, circumstances conspire to create drastic changes in my life. This latest re-invention of Satima has brought me a huge change of lifestyle, from being an itinerant house-sitter to living in a tiny bedsit on the fourth floor of a large apartment block.

My new home is in Bentley, a suburb close to Perth. The bedsit, of course, only has one room where I must live and sleep, and that room measures just three metres by five metres. It has a sunny little balcony with a pleasant outlook, a perfectly acceptable kitchen and a neat bathroom with an excellent, large shower. It's in a secure building, maintenance is available on call and it's only 20 mins into Perth on the bus - as long as you don't travel in peak hours! What's more, it is very quiet, and having spent so much time in retreat houses, silence is something I treasure.

But oh dear, I have far too many books, CDs and DVDs for a bedsit! I also have a large number of casette tapes - old recordings that I haven't been able to replace digitally. I'm going to have to do as one of my sons suggested - just not allow myself to buy any more books or discs unless what I want is genuinely not available as a download. And having read a book, I must decide at once whether or not it's a 'keeper'. Of course, I have about a dozen favourite authors whose oeuvres I treasure, and I'll never willingly part with those in hard copy.

My family history research is another problem - I really need to keep the hard copies because this is work for future generations, and who knows these days what technology will be outmoded in ten years, let alone fifty or hundred! I have the family tree in a database, of course, but the original certificates, letters, copies of archival documents etc are all safely stored in archival quality materials. They take up a lot of space and I need to buy still another set of shelves...

Nearly two weeks in, and the place is still a mess I'd hoped to put pictures up to show you the chaos, but the pix are on the iPhone and iPhone and the computer, it seems, are no longer on speaking terms. (This too, will pass, I hope!)

I'm embarking on a whole new lifestyle, and it will take time to adjust, but I can see that once I get used to it, I am going to love living here. Already I'm enjoying sitting on the balcony for a while each day to eat a leisurely lunch, with the sun on my back and the spring winds gently stirring the trees that line the quiet street below. I'm looking forward to sharing the experience with visitors, so I hope friends who live in or visit Perth will 'come up and see me sometime'!

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