In the year 2050, 1 want to be a Witchiepoo. Witchiepoo was the shrieking witch who terrorised Jimmy and Freddy, the Talking Flute, in the TV show H. R. Pufnstuf, but she was also the old lady who lived on the other side of our back fence when my brothers and sisters and I were kids growing up in Box Hill. She had a reputation as being a fearsome harridan who ate children for breakfast and I don't know how she acquired it, for I don't remember her bothering or even speaking to us: possibly my five siblings and I simply needed someone of which to be gleefully terrified, and
made the whole thing up. I do, however, recall the incident during which Witchiepoo cemented her nickname in our collective childhood memory. My sister threw a tangle of thorny rosebush cuttings over the fence one day, and Witchiepoo promptly threw them back at us. They caught on my sister's shirt and she ran around the yard howling with delighted rage while we fell about in hysterics. Shortly afterwards, Witchiepoo was spotted marching down the street toward our house. We all hid under our beds while she railed at Mum for allowing such ghastly children to run amok. Mum made us go and sing a Christmas carol to her and, under such humiliation, we never tormented the poor woman again. She was harmless, and probably a very nice lady. It was, I think, our excessive youth that was the problem.
But I want to be a Witchiepoo for real. I'll be eighty-one in the year 2050, so I'll be well and truly old enough to be crotchety. I think anyone of venerable age has a right to be crotchety if they so desire and I'm fairly crotchety already, though I'm only thirty-one. I dream that one day, before I'm too much older, I can buy a large chunk of land, preferably somewhere just out of Bendigo. I'll plant trees and shrubs all over the land - by the time I'm eighty-one they should be well established and doing what they were planted to do, which is to provide a habitat for birds and animals. I'll dig a
lake as a resting place for passing geese. When I am rich enough, or so crotchety that no one can stand my company, I'll move to the property and live there permanently, alone. I will soon establish myself as the Boss Witchiepoo of the region. I will be known as the strange old lady who lives with one hundred dogs and all the neighbourhood children will be halfheartedly fearful of me - they'll try to peek in my windows and get me to come out roaring, but they'll also know that a football kicked onto my property is a football lost. I will show a soft heart now and then, when the mood takes me, just to baffle the neighbours, but, in general, any child that comes to my door singing Christmas carols had better be a fast runner.
It will be a peaceful life, when I'm not actively being Witchie. I won't watch television or read newspapers - the world can go on without me. I will take pride in the wildlife haven I have created: what chooses to live there will be my welcome guest. I will leave my beautiful property to the Wilderness Society, to be preserved as a haven forever. When I die, my house can be knocked down and trees can be planted where it stood, I will have left something priceless behind me and I'll take with me an awesome reputation: what more can one ask for, in a single lifetime?
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