Friday, June 18, 2010

The red flag flying there.

No, before you even ask. THERE ARE NO PHOTOGRAPHS. I'm not that tired of life. When, like me you've been married for a long time to a woman of strong will (she has to be, she's still married to me) and arm (she has to have. She has a strong will and she's married to me, and I do daft things. 'Anything I can do she can do better (I can do better than you :-))'. This includes use a chainsaw - do you understand 'respect and no photographs' fully now? Do you understand my favourite character in Rats, Bats an Vats better now? If you haven't read it, you should. It's available at the Baen Free Library.)

What's all this about then? Well, it's our dogs and cats, but mostly the dogs. We suddenly realised this morning that 1)Paddy is as sick as a horse, and needed to go to the doctor (done and on antibiotics) -- he's got his mother's AND my obstinacy. getting this done was no small feat. 2) The Doggins get out of quarantine on Monday. And we haven't sorted out the fence yet. I've been too busy with the book. So B and I went on a very expensive mission to Elders to buy a gate and wire and posts (there is a 20 foot section that needs fencing and a gate, where the driveway comes in.)The one downside is our double-cab ute does not have a very long bin, and we wanted a 12 foot gate - which protruded. We tied it in place safely. So the youngster at Elders says 'have you got something to tie on the back? Which of course we didn't have. And our local police have been stopping cars at the intersection going out of town.

But B is wearing red trousers. So she says "Is there a law that says you have to wear pants when driving?"

The youngster's jaw gets gravel rash. I think he'd never quite dealt with luntatics like these South Africans anyway... "Er. No."

"Good," says B, and gets into the cab. The youth gets the picture... well the idea anyway, and disappears with terrifying speed. I know better than to argue, collect bright red cords and give B my jacket as a sort of skirt. Attach trousers firmly to the gate, and we trundle the couple of klicks home in the blue slug (a nudibranch for those of you who get Zoological jokes), not meeting any black-and-white uniformed folk, unless you count the Magpies. They always make that laughing noise.

And B and her trousers are re-united and James and I dig the new hole to the centre of the earth - or close anyway. Little fellows in red pyjamas kept climbing out of the hole. If they'd showed up earlier we could have hung them on the gate.

Some small fiendish part of me does however have this mental image of the large cop from Lady Barron first leaning into the driver's window, and then saying "would you mind getting out of the car?"

18 comments:

  1. Heh.

    You were unlucky. When that happened to me, I had a kid with me who was wearing a red T-shirt.

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  2. Back from VaCa and glad to see all is going on well At the Freer Estate. I always fret when carrying a load sticking out the back of the pick-up truck.

    Reaffirmed my own foraging skills at an estuary along the North Carolina coast.

    Go out in the morning with a bucket, a rod and a lure and come back with a handful of "snapper" Bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix). The small ones taste the best; particularly if headed and gutted right away. Had we more time we would have used the carcasses as crab bait.

    Wednesday night I took Chris to the pier where we caught the better part of a school of black tip sharks...all about 16" long. Five for her and 16 for me. We sent them back to grow up and get lasers for their foreheads.

    I wonder if Bluefish get down Tasmania way...though it may be too cold for them that far south. Nothing like casting into a boil of Blues; they'd hit a rock if if had a spinner leaf and a hook on it.

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  3. Did the same thing with my top when we bought wood to build our porch in the other house. :D I figured, bra on so "street legal". Our older son spent the entire trip back with his eyes closed AND his hands over his eyes. :D

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  4. Do you understand my favourite character in Rats, Bats an Vats better now?

    So, let me get this right.

    You're saying that Barbs is a shrew?

    <ducks inevitable punishment>

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  5. I think it was more the "Gah! You're old enough to be my mother!" bit, than your being from SA. In the hypothetical case of it being your 20 year old daughter making the offer the youngster's reaction would have been rather different.

    <ducks>

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  6. Flinthart - So it's still legal to attach kids to the sticking out bits? Good sensible legislation at last!

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  7. Quilly - tailor/bluefish/shad/elf - Big target species in South Africa (thank heavens for Latin names). I've seen no mention of them in Tassie, but summer water temperatures are high enough. You've got to eat them fresh.

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  8. Sarah, I think ours would have walked home :-)

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  9. My favorite character, not yours, ReverencePavane
    Humph. Have a coconut. Have three.

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  10. danneely is that life insurance of yours fully paid up. If not now would be a great time to invest in one.

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  11. Dave,

    Robert offered to, but we needed him to saw the wood, and it would have taken him rest of day to get home. :) He still looks embarrassed when we joke about this incident. Also my top was never the same again.

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  12. "I got a luvly bun' of coc'nuts..."

    Oh so she's slightly batty then!

    <grin>

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  13. Hum. I've heard of red shirting, but red panting? Or is it red pantsing? Dave, I think you've invented a whole new metaphor for writing here. "Which part of the story did you red pant your protagonist in?" "Oh, I waited until the chase scene, then I red panted that rascal. He raced away from the villains just great with his pants flying." Very nice imagery. Or "Athena was red panted in the very beginning of Dark Ship Thieves, and went on from there." See, really helpful.

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  14. LOL, Mike the imagery is dangerous.

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  15. Better than debriefed, which always seems to remind me of that advice to think of your audience in their underwear...

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  16. Just because I am sharing computers with my sons now, does not mean I can't read the blog! Just takes me a day or so to catch up. Who is coming to the con in Sept??? I will get even then. Nothing I do is secret any more.. Woe is me... It was fun anyway, that poor youngsters face!!

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  17. Today, being Monday, I went back into the same shop to get all the other bits and pieces we need for the fence, and I got the most amazing welcome! The same salesman, what a nice guy, asked if I had really put my trousers on the gate, so we obviously did not faze him that much!

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  18. Barbs? You can tell people you are just following historic examples. Our Japanese public TV just retold what apparently is a famous event in Japan -- 1838? Someone had set up signal stations, with red flags and telescopes, who passed along important information using their flags. Sure enough, one day, a group of saboteurs tackled one of the stations, and managed to toss the flag over a cliff or some such before being chased off. The injured signals man, thinking quickly, got his support person to break a bamboo staff while he took off his red fundoshi (breechclout? long cloth worn as underwear!). He tied it to the staff, and proceeded to relay the signals, saving the day. So... you're clearly a history buff!

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