My folks live in Murray Bridge, a town about an hour up the South Eastern freeway. And yes, that's where I grew up. 

Now that they are in the twilight of their lives (so they say; they're only sixty for goodness sake!) Ma and Pa (not what I call them but hey - they're from the country) decided a few years ago that they could no longer handle the hour drive to and from Adelaide so they built themselves a residence here in my home city.

Christmas was spent in Murray Bridge. G <script type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"></script> iven that this time last year I was in England, I figured my mother wanted to have her family at home. So down we went for an eventful day of gift-opening and discovering the sex of my sister's baby. For those that want to know, it's a boy. Extra pressure for me there. How to get an all-Australian boy to (1) like cricket (because, really, after this Ashes series which Australian kid will be interested in the game anymore?) and (2) support England. Yes, that will be a tough one. But anyway, in the all a good day.

After Mum stuffed us with her assortment of foods, though, admittedly, she did heed to our advice and did not offer us lasagne as well as two types of meat, antipasto, prawns, various vegetables and schnitzel. So we weren't that full. Okay, a little. 

Dad and I reclined on the couch watching a too-loud television (a sign of his old age, I think; the need to blast our ear drums with atom-popping sound) while the rest of the family went on Mum's annual tour of the town. I had already been on the tour, having been down to Murray Bridge the previous month for my father's birthday. You cannot tell me that things would have changed that drastically in a month? According to my mother, yes.

Mr Thomas came back from the tour with tales of fear and excitement. Apparently my mother, in her Mercedes no less, had taken a wrong tour in one of the more questionable parts of town. Apparently these areas are meant to be entered, but never exited, which does explain a lot about welfare-dependent population of the town. For once the wrong turn had been executed, the Angela family were troubled to note that there didn't seem to be a way out. The ghetto, for want of a better word, seemed to envelope them, and from the dilapidated houses came swarms of people, all missing-toothed and singlet dressing. I fear that outsiders rarely stumble upon their hovel and according to Mr Thomas, there was wild astonishment on all their faces at having seen not only a car that had all the same type of tyres, no rust and all its original doors, but to get a glimpse of a carload of humans that had all apparently showered in the last week.

But that wasn't the end of it. The locust plagues that we have watched with mild interest on the news, probably because we city dwellers don't really seem to care about what is happening outside the metro area, had reached Murray Bridge.

First of all; those poor Mallee farmers. First it was drought. Years and years of drought. Then it was the outrage over Melbourne stealing our Murray River water (the greedy bastards) when the farmers in SA did not have access to a drop. Next it was the late-season rain that has threatened to ruin every crop ready to harvest, and now, for those few poor fuckers that even have a crop left, the locusts had come.

Mr Thomas said they were popping about all over the place down by the river. (I got to see how bad it really was for myself when glancing at every car on the freeway during our journey home. Those that had come from the river all had a paste of dead, battered locusts on the front of their cars.) Though Mum and Dad's house is about as far from the Murray you can be whole still sitting in the town limits, I ventured outside to see if any of these pesky biblical hoppers had reached this far. Indeed they had. Flipping about the place like cigarette butts outside the local TAB, the locusts sprung here and there as I walked over my mother's lawn. 

I thought: feck me, this is bad. Not because the locusts could destroy hundreds of crops giving every supermarket in the country an excuse to raise their prices ('yes, carrots have gone up eight dollars a kilo because of the locust plague, don't you know...') but because now my mother's garden would be destroyed. 

See, if you were part of the family, you would understand. But perhaps you, too live with an Italian, and let's face, those that came out to Australia in the 50s and 60s and lived in post-war Italy are a miserable bunch. There's always something to complain about. And my, are they all soooo hard done by. Like my mother, for instance. After a day of incredible heat, and I'm talking, 40 degrees and above, I'll speak to my mother on the phone and complain, as I always do, about the heat. 'Oh, it was hotter here,' she would inevitably say. 'And it's a dry heat.' 

Now please, to get the full impact of that quote you must, and I repeat, must put on an Italian accent. Doesn't matter that my mother has lived in Australia longer than I have, and certainly longer than when she lived in Italy. Also doesn't matter that her Italian accent is almost non-existent. It is my right as a child of an immigrant to make fun of her accent. Whether it be existent or not.

So the locusts have come, and I've realised that now, not only does my mum have the heat to complain about, and how it ruins her garden, as well as the horrible Murray Bridge soil, and how it's a miracle she can grow anything in it, and also the frost, which happens all the time if you believe a word she says and is able to kill off her entire garden every year (though we have no proof of this) but now there are the locusts.

Of course they'll eat all her roses. Doesn't matter that they don't like roses, but they'll take a shine to hers, because her roses (when they're not dead due to drought/heat/frost) are the best. They'll also eat all of her beans, which she plants every year and which provide copious amounts of beans, so much so Mr Angela and I have pondered selling them by the kilo to the local fruit and veg store. They'll also eat her chillies, which are already in danger from the mice (oh - did I mention that they have a mouse plague, oh, every year in Murray Bridge?) and where, may I ask you, would an Italian immigrant mother be without the offerings of food for her children and roses for her neighbours?

In heaven. That's where.

See; she delights in the complaint, I am sure. The martyred attitude that seems to have fallen on every single Italian mother I have ever met. I am literally waiting right now for daily updates on how terrible the locusts have been and what they have done. Dad, not wanting to be outdone, already rang me this afternoon to give me an update. Mum's going to be ropeable when she finds out she didn't get in first with the locust news. 

The trouble with my parents having two residences is that my mother has two things to complain about. Two sets of yards to de-weed, two sets of windows to clean (and she will NOT hire a window cleaner. I think you can guess why), four bathrooms to clean, two kitchens etc etc. And this is where things get problematic. 

I have just witnessed a locust in my own backyard here in Adelaide. Martini, my cat, is still trying to catch it, watched keenly by Memo the dog who isn't anywhere near as quick as her.

Tomorrow's Friday. It's the day Mum and Dad come down to Adelaide. And if there's a locust in my yard, there'll certainly be one in theirs, given they're in the next suburb over. I'm not going to hear the end of it.

Happy new year? I don't think so. I'll have to spend the weekend listening to my mother and the plague on both her houses.

photo by: BY-YOUR-&acirc;&OElig;&tilde;