Confessions of a junk-man

You know the old saw: 'You have three choices, and you can have two, any two - you can have it cheap, you can have it quick, you can have good.'

And this is very true, and as a writer, cheap is always the must-have option (I have explained to you that despite the rip-off prices on books here in Oz, I get 6% of the _US_ paperback price? (on the solo books - it drops 2% on the Lackey and Flint ones) You are being gouged, but actually, that's two of us, not me doing the gouging). I've sold more than 1/3 of a million books, and I have to count those pennies very carefully.

Now I didn't do for the money, any more than I live off the land to save money. It does of course, a lot. But I would choose to do this even if I won the lotto (for which I don't have a ticket) tomorrow. There's an ever diminishing chance I could hit the bestseller/movie jackpot, but I'm too politically incorrect and and not much good at kissing up, and probably a pretty average writer - you can succeed with the last so long as you're really good at the first. I'm not that perturbed about the fortune I could have made if I'd chosen a profession on the basis of making money. I like what I do, I'm quite proud of it, and we generally get by. I do, like everyone, get a bit of envy when I see someone cheerfully buy a piece of kit I'd love, and would actually USE - which some folk don't. It's their money, and if they want de-lux saw or breadmachine they will barely use - at the end of the day the junk man will find it either on the tip or at the garage sale, resurrect it, and love it and use it and fix it until it really is irredeemable. And he'll have the satisfaction of knowing he got a real bargain. My biggest bitch is the petty beaurocracy which makes so many things so expensive and add no value at all, effectively saying to the poor-but-industrious-and-careful 'no you can't build your house with the cash you have, and scraps you can get over the next ten years. You can only have a 2 year permit and it'll cost you more than you would have spent on things to fit your house of recycled scrap -solid and safe and better value than you as a poor bloke could ever afford -which we won't allow you to use. No you must either be very rich or buy poor quality but approved expensive clap-boards which we're happy to sign off on.'

The problem that the junk man - me - has, of course, is projects. Whether it is a trailer, or a longline or a new bit of lean-to or another patch of garden, it takes a BUNCH of stuff. In time that can usually be found, and in more time assembled - If I was to buy a longline's ingredients to match mine - would cost me around $180 - let alone getting someone to make it for me. It cost me just on $12. And I put off and agonized about spending that much... and the ingredients have taken me about 3 years and five different sources to cobble together. Today I scavenged 4 three metre toss -out poles - a bit damaged but nothing a chainsaw to the end can't fix. I have some 3.5 meter 4X4". I'll get some scrap iron and make a lean-to for the boat-trailer with that. And I found a broken plastic drum that will make wheel mudguards for the trailer... and so on.

It means three things: the one is I have plans - lots of them, which I have to change to fit what I get at the next garage sale, or get given as a 'I thought you might want this'. The second of course is I have a lot of junk - some of which I have a plan for. I'm not in Peter's league, but working on it. The third of course is I have patience and dreams. I've been lucky in my friends and finds, and try to pay that back in kind - that way the luck keeps happening. Over the years with patience and work I've achieved a fair bit of those dreams - had to kick a few to the curb to emigrate, but we'll fight up.

Most of what we have is good and was cheap (to us, if often not in the first place). It's not flashy or new. But it's ours.

Which is why I'm a junk man and proud of it.

A false image

Yesterday constituted nothing more wildly exciting than my pouring some sugar down the inside of my trousers. No, I won't explain. I will leave it to your sordid imaginations :-) I wrote, James went for a dive at West End, and brought home some Abs. We played about an hour and a half of Cranium and I proved 1)I can't hum, 2)I can't spell without writing it down. 3)Bill has unsuspected gifts as a sculptor. 4)Women are smarter (or play cranium better) than men.

Today the weather was supposed to be utterly calm, and we were supposed to set a long-line for gummy shark to show our frequent dive partner how it is done. I have set many as a biologist for sampling purposes, and really prefer leaving shark alone. They're a very popular eating around here - I find it rather boring fish - but I did eat a lot of it (impoverished biologist's first rule: work on something that you can eat. And preferably that someone else catches or keeps alive!) I



This picture is a falsehood and a deception. The wind was stiff, the swell nasty and short, and the flat sea was full of holes. We kept falling into them or going airbourne over them. Barbs had a sore back anyway, and was looking like death warmed over by the time we got out there. I wanted to set in deepish water (daytime set, just off the tide-race (fish come past). Only the bouy-lines proved a little short. The small bouy sank.... the big one floated and so did its anchor... (just as well so we could recover it) so we had to set in much shallower. The catsharks (all returned) got among it, and we did get something large - but it bit off the snood line as we were trying to haul it up. And it was wet and choppy, and B slept on the boat and then on a rock. We caught a handful of Flathead -15 between us -big fish, but rather sparse - picked up B and the wind dropped and let us retrieve the second set - which is when I took the photo. Hard to believe we got pounded, looking at that. Nice ride back though.



And so, once again to work.