Well my Amazon associates links to my books haves earned me 88 cents. At this rate I will retire. The wind is pumping again, and it's chilly, and guess what... I'm working furiouso. At 88 cents I have put in hours... :-)

More Kindle...

Life has been a bit full and hectic at the moment. Various developments I can't really talk about yet. I've also been trying to get more shorts up on Kindle and Smashwords as training for the novels, and also to improve the cash trickle. The next



is up. It's a sort of romantic ghost story...

I have another 3 to go, and some that need work first. I'm interested to see how they get on.

I also did a session - and I mean a session, at the dentists today,with Alan trying to fix a rather ineptly done root canal, in which there was quite a lot root dead and left there to make me sick from years back. Well, hopefully that's over. We had two visitors who wanted me to pose as Father Christmas for their letter. Yes, I believe they're adult - at least if compared to me. We mocked the universe for a while and argued about everything ethics to allergies and several subjects not related to either.

bang bang

Today I did the gun safety course, and the practical. It appears my Old Man was wrong and I can hit a barn door from inside, because I passed. And then we had about 30 people at Scottish dancing - very bouncy after too much sticky date pudding.

Well, hopefully Paddy is on the plane to England now. I have heard nothing to the contrary, so I assume all is well. Tomorrow I go for my gun license class. My word, is the instruction manual designed to send people mad and off to shoot the instructor thereby getting all firearms banned, and saving all this trouble? I'm not exactly a firearms expert, but of the 20 or questions asked - at 5 cannot be correctly answered with their multiple choice guesses.

Anyway, we got given some spinach, cheese and chicken sausages from Tassies today... shudder. Sorry, they reminded me just why I like to get our own meat and fish and fowl.

A bit jumbled...

The posting has been a bit erratic, as I have a lot on my plate and a lot in my head at the moment. The boys have just finished University, James is... somewhere. I know he's heading for Harare with Alana at sometime. Paddy will be off to England in the next day or so. I actually haven't heard from either (not surprising, their plates must be very full, packing up after 3 and 4 years living in residence, moving away from friends, moving to new lives. Anyway, I hope they're OKay, but at their age I was not exactly telling the Old Man where I was and how I was doing. I've finally got all the details to go and sit my skipper's ticket. I've also got my gun license course on Thursday and a fair bit of swotting to do for that. We're also in early phases of various possible upheavals in where we live. And to add to this we've had thunderstorms... my computer does not like those. Anyway, been working on some new stories, and trying to keep my head. I keep mislaying it. I found myself looking for my glasses in freezer this morning, and worse, finding them.

A Solitary Man

Well, underslept and overfed - life on Flinders Island at this time of year. Friday we went wit the professional hunter and learned about hunting and gutting wallaby. I like his attitude - and am terrified by his accuracy and speed - so that was after midnight. Then Saturday I blanched 4 cauliflowers from the garden and froze them and we processed 4 wallaby. One for each cauliflower as it were. Then (after some work) that evening we went to dinner out Greg's place where we had entirely too much crayfish. I also made sticky date pudding (using spelt, not wheat flour) with butterscotch sauce, which was just too good not to be greedy with. And today we went to yet another friend's birthday bash, which included a great deal of music, singing, poetry and even dance. And of course odd food (they don't do -- I think it is -- flour and milk). Interesting for a change, but I am glad to return to our eclectic odd food that gets made from stuff out of the sea, or fresh from the garden or game... I like flour products, and enjoy milk products too.

It was all good fun, all people I liked, enjoyed seeing, but I found it was almost a sensory overload. I've had quite enough of 'crowd' (there must have been 40 people or so) for now. I long for our solitude again.

Fortunately, I'll get it :-).

Arachnostripobia

I have something that many a young man wishes he he had. A young lady got into the car with me and then immediately leaped out and rapidly removed her clothing.

It's not something that happened to me before, actually.

Maybe because I had not had Barbs say "there is huge spider on your shoulder," to them. The point at which arachnophobia gives way to the realization that one has just stripped down to one's bra in front of a strange man suddenly dawns is very amusing. I was a nice bloke and stopped trying to rescue and looked away (laughing helplessly, I admit).

And then we caught some squid. Arthur, the Jammy beggar, went on fishing while we cleaning the squid... and suddenly I get a rather plaintive bellow for the net. We'd caught little ones. He got the kraken. We also had the sting-ray scavenging - about a metre from where we were cleaning the squid. His spine was waving outthe water like a sort of 8 inch long black stick. I shone a torch on him, and on the way back to the squid, shone it in a little puddle-crack that we use for washing our hands... and there was an eel in that.