Tag: wedding preparation

I’m flipping in the wind like a flag on a pole – 26th December 1994

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Mentally exhausted, stressed, frayed at the seams – me and my love are flaking it, ok, we do it to ourselves cos we’re on the move again.

On Monday we borrowed Cathy’s car and drove up to the Central Coast, crashing at P_’s overnight, up and out early to house hunt, we drive round and round in circles round the beautiful beachline towns, checking particularly in busy little Terrigal which we like as soon as we drive through. We check out a fully furnished house on a hill with a verandah deck the same size as the house and a dramatic gorgeous view of cliffs, beach and ocean, we love this old wooden shack and dream of sitting out on the verandah sipping wine and feeling the evening sea breeze caress our warm cheeks like silk sheets. Unhappily, it stays a dream as it is just out of our price range and decide to pick on something unfurnished and cheaper so that when we move again (yeah, we’re always moving, might as well think about it now) we’ll have some furnishings to take with us.

And the next day we find us a nice home just a short walk from the beach. With 3 bedrooms and a verandah and garden hopefully we’ll stay here for a good long time and start to settle into some kind of routine, though routine is not the right word but just to feel like this is it, this is where I want to be in the world.

With good access to many beaches and only an hour out of Sydney, it’s an ideal spot and we can’t wait to get there next week, just three days before Christmas, time means little to us these days and I think sometimes there’s no present like time.

So, back that evening we have shocked our systems silly with stress and emotions and excitement, we both run low and have done since, except for spoiling ourselves last night with a swim, spa, sauna and steam room special which chills us out and ultimately knocks us out, then to wake early this morning and into the city to sort out the printing of the invitations for our wedding and do some Christmas shopping and I feel good inside to buy such nice gifts for people and also sad that I’m unable to earn myself any money just yet to buy things for myself but that is something I’ll be getting used to, particularly as I’m applying for a degree course, in English, as well as some other courses if I don’t get into that one. They’ll leave me with some spare time in which I can look for work in the area which I reckon will be booming over the summer season and dead during the winter, so with the sun I may catch some part-time work here and there to supplement Broni’s hard earned cash, things are going to be tight that’s for sure, but money doesn’t buy happiness, to overstate a cliche and really things couldn’t be going much better could they?

So, why so low?

I guess the future is daunting and scary and the stress of job-searching and house-hunting combined with wedding plans does get a bit much. I have to say that Broni is taking control of wedding plans and arrangements and doing an amazing job, I’m not sure why but I can’t get into an enthusiastic mood to work out all these complex details, this doesn’t mean I’m not enthusiastic about getting married but I wish someone could just organise and we could turn up and then we’d be married, but that’s me living in the clouds again. I am old enough to take control of these things but all piled on top of each other is a bit much for little tiny me, and sometimes I wish I didn’t feel like that, jeez, I’m talking in circles here.

Well, now we’re busy packing and wrapping presents and soon to go out to Libby’s and Dougie’s for a bit of a party, that should bring little smiles to our tired faces.

29th March 2021 – Writing this out again makes me realise the significance of that penultimate paragraph. Bigger changes were on the horizon a few years in the future and perhaps this feeling was its genesis.

Give me some gas and the open air – 18th October 1994

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

So, early a.m. we catch the commuter train with the suits and the smart dressed young ladies into the city to pick up a hire car. Broni handles the controls, this being our first Oz car driving experience together. It’s already a blistering hot day at 9am. Slowly but surely we make it across the city to Wendy’s (Broni’s oldest sister) to pick up some stuff, then on out of the city, where suburbia ends and turns into farms and small town communities.

In the distance we can see the Blue Mountains beckoning us. We stop off for some salad, watching big carrier planes taking off from the army base close by and yippee, I get to take over the controls and charge us through the countryside, to the bottom of the mountains, slowly up, twisting turns, the smell of gum invading our nostrils, sun blazing in blue, oh blue sky faint whisper of cloud.

Not my picture…

We catch a brief glimpse from hilltop back to where we came, a breathtaking spectacle but we are still onwards, upwards, through orchard country and then into the real mountains with burnt scrub bushland, crickets screaming out their mad calls deafeningly loud in unison, cancelling out the radio. Road still twisty we balance on the edge of precipices looking into long deep vale valleys covered in black eerie gum tress caught in last years fires, for all the eye can see everything burnt, charred, like a graveyard to the flora, to nature and it’s wonder, each tree stood like a monument proud into the sky, now beginning to show signs of growth again.

For some half an hour we carry on through this beautiful landscape before descending down into the old coal mining town of Lithgow, and from here we drive for another hour across plains and farms to our destination, Bathurst, Australia’s oldest inland city. And here, at Broni’s parents, we make a brief stop before we head out to some places to look at with the intention of finding some place to get married and as usual, with our positive outlooks and thinking we find somewhere quickly that is an ideal place for marriage ceremony and reception so then we high tail round town to try and find a priest who might marry us outside, something which they are not known to do.

Again, not my picture…

We run out of time doing that but not before a quick run up Mount Panorama round the race course there, where some guy got himself killed in the Janes Hardie 1000, going much faster than us I might add. During the rest of the year the course is open like a normal road, with a picnic stop at the top. Weird driving round roads with tyre barriers and red and white caution markers on the corner bumps.

Back to base we lazy away the rest of the evening in conversation and old photographs.

P.S. The crazy natural amphetamine of youth! Ya!

  • Main picture taken on top of Mount Panorama with my best man, Rob, March 1995.

Wide open spaces of open mind, these people need something to believe in – 17th October 1994

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Oh wandering spirit in my soul, guiding me away from trouble and blasting me forward into the furnace of life – I embrace you, hold you and cherish you. I cherish this time, this day, this very second. I love my life, I love Bronwyn (deep, deeper), I love myself, I love the earth, the trees, the birds. My inner vision (and outer vision) now expanded with world awareness, my third eye open to positive elements (earth, wind and fire – oh yes, I feel a lot of funk in my life) and all that hippy mumbo jumbo shit.

Like someone said to us today, “you cannot convey to someone who hasn’t been to Australia, the space and feeling of freedom” and also it is that “that intimidates some people while others embrace it” and you see what I feel.

To bring you up to date we spent three pretty torturous stressy days at home together with a lot of all our stresses surfacing and causing us brief frictions but we understand each other and our situation and realistically just why these things are occurring as I probably explained some text earlier. So the last thing we wish to worry about is getting married yet this is what we’ve thrown ourselves into and we trip out to Bathurst where Broni and her 8 brothers and sisters were raised and her mum and dad still live.

Photo found online