PUZZLE ZONE
ACROSS 1. Boast 7. Game bird 8. Defined (area) 10. Duel (5,5) 12. Ex-lover (3,5) 14. Foaling farm 16. Rascals 17. Dismissed
20. Mistake 23. Guzzler, fast ... 24. Easy-going 25. Foot joint
DOWN 1. Garden pavilion 2. Daunts 3. Burn 4. Homeless kids 5. Mischievously 6. Declared 9. Reside 11. Willing to change
13. Fraternise 15. Property divider 16. Ignoramuses 18. University award 19. Wound marks 21. Boxing dais 22. Open mouth wearily
Puzzles supplied by Lovatts Publications Pty Ltd www.lovattspuzzles.com See page 30 for solutions.
THE MEANING OF EXISTENCE... AND OTHER SHORT STORIES
The accidental pasta time capsule By Stuart McCullough SAVE the date. I want to give you plenty of advance warning so that you can formulate your plans accordingly. After all, it would be a tragedy if, for some reason, you weren’t available to mark what will inevitably be a very special occasion. Twenty years is a long time. Whether it’s a job or a marriage, two decades is something of an achievement. It’s also a fair margin by which to be out of date. If, for example, you were a piece of food whose ‘best before’ date was 1997, it would be nothing short of a miracle if, all this time later, you remain unopened. Miracles, I believe, ought to be commemorated. It sits on the shelf above the kitchen bench. Seemingly innocuous, you can only imagine what kind of dark treasures might lurk within. It has something of an esteemed position; one whereby it has been elevated from mere container to decorative eye candy. It is, in actual fact, a tin can with a painting printed on the side. I’d guess you’d say the idea is to create the impression of an antique. Inside is some type of pasta. However, because the container was given such an exalted status, it has never been opened and its contents never used. Around the rim of the lid there’s a strip of plastic on which there is printed the expiry date. ‘Best before 1997’ is declares. Given that the strip sits over the edge of the lid, it acts as an assurance that the object has never been tampered with. It remains just as it was all that time ago; it’s contents doubtless withering within. Twenty
years seems as good a time as any to finally unveil the mysteries of the ancient pasta tin. It is, I feel, time to open it up. It’s been part of my life for so long. I’d slide the back door shut and cast a glance in its direction as it stared proudly at the room. The longer things have gone on, the more
my morbid interest has festered. It’s hard to envisage what twenty years has done its innards; whether they’ve slowly disintegrated or have remained perversely intact. For all I know, there’s a new strain of penicillin brewing away, waiting to be unleashed on the world’s superbugs. It’s funny to recall what the world
was like back in 1997. Not only was the decorative tin sitting on the shelf above the kitchen bench at my father’s, Bill Clinton was in the White House. It was the year Diana, Jeff Buckley, Michael Hutchence and the Notorious B.I.G. all passed away. The year that Tony Blair was elected and Steve Jobs decided to go back to work at Apple. Some of these events seemed profound at the time. Others more so in retrospect. As for me, I was just starting out. I had a job and an apartment, but it was still a time during which everything felt tenuous. Brittle. As though, at any moment, things could change and be upturned and any progress towards a real life immediately squandered. Those were the days during which I felt that fate could intervene at any time and force me to go back to living with my parents. Which, if nothing else, would have reunited me with the decorative pasta tin. Those, at least for me, were in between years. A time during which I was still finding my bearings. University was somewhere in the rearview mirror but I was still to figure out what I wanted to do. In 1997 I was living in the kind of apartment that doubles as a walk-in wardrobe. You could almost touch both sides with your arms outstretched. The stairwell outside was a concrete echo chamber in which lubricated tenants would perform full-throated versions of the last song they’d heard at the pub before deciding to stagger back home. It was a long way from Tyabb. It was around then that my car, a
Daihatsu Charade, was eased into retirement and I became wholly dependant on public transport. I also did a lot of things I thought were good for me that weren’t. I slept on a futon that was horrifically uncomfortable in the belief that it helped my back, only to learn later that I was kidding myself. In those years, my television was perched on a milk crate and I made weekly trips to the local launderette. It’s tempting to glorify your youth. Things in retrospect are often blurred by the passage of time. I can remember the people I met back in 1997. Some of those folks have been friends ever since. And even if I felt as though I had no idea what I was doing, I must have been doing something if not right, then something close enough, to have met those people. Thinking of it now makes me want to ring all of them and invite them over. I’ll make dinner. Perhaps pasta. When the time comes and I rip the lid from the faux-antique decorative pasta tin, I’ve no idea what I’ll find. I think I’m just hoping it won’t be like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they unclip the padlock, pop the top off and the cast of Ghostbusters comes flying out. It’s unlikely. Rather, there’ll probably be not very much left at all. Time, I suspect, will have taken its toll. It’s no great loss. Perhaps it’s better just to accept that things change over time. After all, that’s what happens when something is pasta its used by date. www.stuartmccullough.com
Frankston Times 14 March 2016
PAGE 23