sausages

"A highbrow is the kind of person who looks at a sausage, and thinks of Picasso"- Sir Alan Patrick Herbert.

I'm supposed to go up to Morman's place and make some Sausages tomorrow. So I have got out the Sausage book my bruv gave me. I have a recipe for woodchuck sausages, bear sausages and squirrel sausages...

Grandpa's chook feeder and visits to the whoop-whoop

Well, in the gooti (fine rain, just the wrong side of mist) I had Bill visit this morning, and bring us some the fruit from his 8 foot + italian tree tomatoes (which are tomatoes, not tree-tomatoes. The fruit are pink and VERY large. Apparently the deprived sparrows who were stealing my chook food have closed in Bill - so I was telling him about this - http://www.grandpasfeeders.com.au/ - a chicken feeder that keeps out the pests. Norman has one (New Zealand invention, he tell me proudly) and it's very neat. Not sure it's $195 neat!

It was kind of fun getting visitors out here in back of beyond, although I am frantically trying to write. Tomorrow I need to do a short story. Sigh. Normally i take 3-5 days do them, making them less than worth while. Barbs was off at the CWA this morning, and then off to a sustainable energy meeting this afternoon. We're weighing the possibility of solar panels, which was interesting as my friend Peter was on the blower today, saying the price had come down to a dollar a Watt... Not too sure watt this means for us, and how practical all this is...

Click

So Barbs got into the blue slug this morning to go off to work in Lady Barron. As usual, mild chaos, eggs for friends, lunch etc all hastily loaded. Husband opening gate having shut the loyal hounds in...

And I continue to hold the gate. See Barbs charge into the house... sprint across to Peter's truck that we're (thank heavens) baby-sitting, and reverse over to the blue slug. I arrive at a rapid stagger (you cannot call what I do 'run') as she is hefting the load of daily requirements from one ute to the other...

"It won't start. Just goes click." And with this she left me to feed chickens close the gate and apply my famous curative skillz to the ute. I am a truly gifted mechanic. A genius with the 4 pound hammer, and sometimes pretty good with baling wire. sigh. Te sad truth is I've never had the supposedly masculine interest in the infernal combustion engine. Circumstances have forced me to do some work on them over the years, but my fixit skill comes down to opening the bonnet and staring at the engine. I've seen other fellows do it and it works really well for them.

For me... it went click. try again nothing happens. Go and do the famous stare... Try again. Lights on dash.

Click.

And the interior light slowly faded... Okay... so the fuses I checked (which all seemed ok, were fine. Battery terminals attached fine. There is power but it goes away in spite of the stare.

Suck my teeth. Try the stare with added fencing pliers.

turn key
Click

remove battery. By now horrible (ill-informed but horrible still, or maybe because of the lack of knowledge ideas of what expensive things could be wrong, are going through my mind. Our budget has zero fat. Expensive car problems are not required. I'm sure they'll come, but they really really aren't wanted. Is it Battery (not the worst). The Alternator... something else more expensive?

Put the battery on the charger... aha, it says not fully charged -which it ought to be. The whoop whoop is a long way out. Now... alternator or battery?

Worrying and not constructive enough to write i went and fussed about my plants for 10 minutes... came back and found the green fully charged light on the battery.

Hmm, The battery is charged after all. So it is probably not the alternator. Not knowing what else to do I cleaned the terminals with some sand-paper, put it back.

Give it my best long evil snake-eye stare. Wave fencing pliers suggestively...

get in. Turn key...

Brmmmmmm!!!!

I really have to work on that stare! ;-) (and was I relieved. It took me ages to settle into writing though, and I'd wasted quite a lot of time on the stare-process)

ping tung and the Capsicums

I've been trying without much success to grow eggplant here for the last two season. Yes, I do suspect James of feeding the plants nasty substances... but I think poor soil and short warm period have been the problem - rather like my attempts with melons... next year! Still I keep trying, and with capsicums -seeing as I got 1 plant through winter and got about 8 small red bell peppers/capsicums off it. This year I tried Ping Tung eggplant - in theory with small fruits (which mature fast) and prolific to make up for it. I've also got over 30 Capsicums in pots (and some in the ground)determined to get more.

Well, I have my first ever eggplant... only... it's one fruit. Yep One. bite size. Ah well. Back to the planting board. And the the capsicums - well they got a bit muddled, so I no longer know what plant is what. I have 1)Peter peppers (Chile, hot) 2)Lipstick (chile mild?) 3)Paprika (mild) 4)'healthy'(bell pepper not hot) 5) F1 (bell pepper, not hot) and no idea what I'm growing...

any idea what the pale yellow one is, appreciated

Adventure racing: salute to George Forder

My friend George Forder is dead, killed in a car crash. Back at uni George arrived when we just getting the mountain club organised - a club that ended up having the second biggest membership of any at Rhodes. I remember four of them showing up on the first trip of the year to Morgans Bay, sea cliff climbing - George, Andy, and two girls - George with a laugh like a harpoon through chenille... "This is Caz (Carol) and this is Fred." He never let any minor detail like forgetting a crucial name stop him for a microsecond. The poor lass was Fred thence forth... through years of trips into the nether regions of chaos in the mountains and sea cliffs, fueled by gluwein and optimism. And George was there in sliver underwear... or tights or whatever could provoke a good laugh at his insanity and crazy panache (yes I suppose it wasn't a crowd that was exactly worried by macho image. We DID stuff, didn't need to strut it.) After 'varsity we drifted separate ways and it wasn't until my kids got into post-matric at Treverton that they got involved in adventure racing - and we ran into George again. George had found the sport that really suited him - and his character. As a combination between orienteering and - depending on the race - just about anything else, from shooting to abseiling or mountain biking or kayaking, with a major teamwork element, it's a lot of fun and it separates the real from the talkers, the way any extreme sport does (but with variation and team work aspects), and is damned brilliant for kids (it's fun, it's not for the usual winners at the ordinary sports, the team work and variation knock them back, and teaches lifeskills like nothing else). I'd give long odds that 1)if things go wrong you'd never do better than to have a 'graduate' of these sports at your side, or probably in front of you, keeping cool and working it out 2)that there are few serious addicts to drugs or alcohol among people who are involved in these. Drugs are woosies who can't handle adrenalin, as we said. 3) for the SES and the army, or just having a population that can handle natural disasters as best as possible, it's hard to find anything better. I suggested doing some here on Flinders only to find that no-one had ever heard of them. I was informed that they wouldn't allow it in Oz (wrong) and that the insurance issue was just too much to even think about. Well, I know what my friend George would have said. It's not polite. And there was a man who did dozens of things that 'nanny' would have had kittens about most weekends... killed doing something as legal and approved as possible. When we met up again, we said we must get together for one of our own brand of adventures soon. Never quite did - life and work and emigration took us in different directions. If there's a lesson there, it's do it now. Go well into that beyond, you mad bugger. And to those who knew him, to his family and kids - it's absolutely tragic, but by God there was a man who LIVED, who got up and made things happen that had a vast effect on loads of kids. I'm glad that he was a friend. We'll not see his like again in a hurry.

I'm still here

Ok sorry about the lack of posting - put it down to me feeling rotten and trying to give what I can to STEAM MOLE. Fortunately that has started coming good at last. The weather has turned vile. It seems however to be just perfect for my lettuces, which are coming up lovely. There is a rose in every set of briars.

a small circle

Well my writer's circle turned into one... Quenten. Ah well, we had some lively arguments about divinity, the recognition of self as an entity, and the problems with Malaria in PNG (spreading to Australia in the North) and a dozen other asides from the practicalities of water-pipe repair to frontal lobotomies. Yeah, it is kind of fun for me to wander into this sort of turf for a while too. One of the joys of Flinders - and particularly of my set friends here - is there are a fair number (disproportionate for a remote rural area, drawn here by the place and the isolation of being on an island) a lot of readers, people who are way smarter than your average bear, some just smart people and others smart and with amazing tertiary educations too. Odd for woop-woop - but this Flinders.) In the meanwhile I'm not feeling a lot better, but we continue to batter away STEAM MOLE. I'm hoping illness and other issues don't colour my writing too much. But needs must... We're doing well on the tomatoes and zucchini front, the capsicums are slowly moving... and the ping tung eggplant (supposed to be small fruit and quite fast)... just aren't. Oh well. Another front in the war to feed ourselves...