Dearest citizens of Luxville,
Thank you all for your beautiful thoughts, wishes and love that were felt, sent, emailled, phone, texted, acted on, carrier pigeoned and given. So sorry to have to postpone Luxville Heart on Feb 14th. Myself (Madame Yum) and the Luxville City Council will ensure you are on a special invitation list for the next Luxville event, which will grow slowly in the place of Luxville Heart.
Love Madame Yum
Lucy’s duotone high pitched leather bench seats, were toasty warm. We five sleeping kids draped across them like dirty washing against a laundry wall.
Not all asleep. I was a drowsy bookend, unmoving, observing, ensconced. The seat behind the driver was always mine. Years of barley sugar and threats of vomit had ensured I was always closest to the exit… just in case.
The side window was my frame on the world every family trip; summer holidays, dentist checkups and every late night dinner party journey and slide night gathering. It was the 70s and it seemed like everything was new for my Irish parents. No more babies, seven was enough, time to party.
From the seat with my name on it I watched during night drives as Lucy’s headlights played on the gum trees that leaned over the road, reaching for the trees on the other side, meeting somewhere above Lucy’s roof. Lighting them out of the darkness, grey, green, grey before disappearing again.
Lucy always felt safe, even when she had stopped on the country road we travelled to reach home after the dinner party at Ron and June’s… Johnny and Pam’s? Aunty Rose and Uncle Jim’s?
That night we must have been in convoy as adults gathered in the light of Lucy’s front end, only two of which were Ben and Mary. I could see them just over the front seat, over the dash, below the steering wheel.
Queen Mary gathering her red velvet coat close to her, while darling Daddio with sideburns plus grin laughed aloud. Their friends looked like they were still at a party, while each car held the over crowded cargo of kids.
Next morning I woke up in my bed, and the day beginning as every other day before it that I can remember.
You are loved, we are loved, love is loved.
Though sometimes bad things happen.
Wanting, wishing and desiring are not enough.
However things continue to unfold, shape and change.
Late last year my beautiful darling Daddio died, 12 months after Queen Mary’s reign had be written into the record-book.
Luxville will recover and return, just not yet.
Will you come and play?
