Capturing clouds

Without the sun                              
there would be
no clouds to capture rain,
nor would there be
wood to shape
these cupboard clouds the same.

Nor shadows sharp,
to cut the clouds,
the sun without would make,
for heads to tilt
and globes to spin,
and cameras click to take.

These idle thoughts
this winter's day
have come to me just so
to take away,
reflect upon,
rearrange and show. 

Spam bam, thank you Ma'am

A curious email just arrived in my husband's work inbox from the "various exhibition booths & truss system for 15 years in Shanghai"...

The author calls herself Yolanda and begins her letter "Hi Dear", then proceeds to thank my husband for an inquiry he says he never made to take part in the 15-years in Shanghai booths and truss system. Why he didn't make an inquiry (if indeed he didn't) to take part in such an event I cannot possibly imagine. Booths and truss system in Shanghai - what's not to like?

A few details of the booths and truss system are then provided by Yolanda with the promise that they will give my husband "an edge over you competitors."

Yolanda then concludes her final wrap-up on the intriguing booths and truss system in Shanghai by saying "I hope you'll be pleasure my service and feel free to contact with me!!"

"Pleasure my service"?

Even if my husband isn't looking into booths and truss system in Shanghai, I am!

Berry red

How red is my garden? Berry red, that's how. And this brilliant baby berry (don't know its official name; hopefully it's not poisonous) is not only raging red; it's resilient red too, for the little wonder is the only - THE ONLY - surviving plant from our original garden, such as it was, which wasn't much, but still. 

Indeed, this little beauty is a survivor. Twenty-plus years, much dislocating bulldozing, and, as an astute eye might notice, a somewhat laid-back approach to weed eradication and general garden upkeep, she (or he) has endured and lived to tell the tale. In fact pretty much all I do in that regard these days is take photos of our plants, which is not, technically speaking, plant care or 'gardening', as such, but more plant appreciation, which is something. The plants - the ones that survive at least - know they are admired. 

Indeed if you want to know the whole story of the berry red berry - and I sense that you do - her (or his) survival is most directly the result of our first son's insistence that we preserve the little red berry from the bullying bulldozers when they first rolled in back when he was a lad young enough to care about such low-tech things as small red berries. How the lad has changed (!) in the intervening thirteen years, and how the little berries have not. 

And this is the true charm of the berry red berry story: how some things change and others stay the same - and long may it be so!        

Bugged

Call me old-fashioned... but when THIS, or close-relative, appears between my bed covers in the dead of night, waving it's creepy feelers in my direction as if sizing me up as a possible host for its winter hibernation, I am understandably a little bit BUGGED. It's a bit much really, if you ask me, which it didn't.

Mind you, I didn't wait around to ascertain whether or not it was a courteous sort of bug but rather leapt from my warm cocoon of covers to stand half naked at the side of the bed shivering and spluttering: 'There's a giant bug in the bed! Can you get it out?' to my good man in a tone of voice that was sure to wake him along with one or two of the neighbours. I was thinking of him really, as he too was in the bed with a giant boggle-eyed bug and just didn't know it.

He didn't necessarily see it this way, as he had been in a deep sleep happily dreaming about complicated guitar riffs when assaulted by this truly alarming prospect and asked to do something about it pronto. But seeing there was no way back to that happy guitar place until he located and removed the GIANT bug, he bravely lifted and scanned the covers on my side - with his hand! - and his eyes shut, before pronouncing it bug free in a mumble-grumble voice that suggested he wasn't entirely awake.

In fact, there was no way to tell for sure about the bug without the light, it being the middle of the night and all, so when this was made clear to my good man he switched on the reading light and rescanned the covers with his eyes at least half open. I looked on from more of a distance, to appreciate the bigger picture.

No bug, giant or small.

OK, so there was no big bug in the bed. It seems I dreamed the big bug up. How was I to know? I have never dreamed about a bug in my bed before. Things are getting dire; I think I might have to take up the guitar.    



 

         

Cover clue

I've just sent off a mock-up design for the cover of my book and the publisher likes it! At least they said they will 'definitely keep it in mind', which is about as good as it gets with publishers. They're still in control.

Unfortunately, I can't reveal said cover, for all sorts of top-secret and terribly important reasons, but here's a vital clue.

Go figure...

Love at first Skype

OK, that's quite enough of Don-Key's face for now and forever! My family need me to move on to some other face, ANY other face but his.   So here she is: the much more agreeable face of OWW, sensibly wearing a beanie in case her proximity to the ponytail-pulling donkey puts her own hair in peril. You never know when or what that PM is going to pull next.                  But enough about that and on to the matter at hand: love online... 

Our first-born (21-22), recently announced, like a lightning bolt in our back yard only much more startling: 'I've met someone and I'm going to Perth in three weeks to see her'. As we live in Auckland, approximately 5,351 kilometres from Perth and the son in question almost never leaves his room these days except to go to the bathroom (and sometimes not even then), it was just as well I was sitting down at the time he dropped this startling news in my lap. 

Not that I'm complaining, mind. Whatever it takes to get him out of his room is fine by me. And, indeed, I'm all for love, on and off line. And it appears that what it took was a mutual interest in some highly addictive computer 'game' (not allowed to call it a game) and Skype. Love at first Skype? Stranger things have happened -- a ponytail pulling prime minister, for instance. But I'm over that now. I shall never mention it again.

Pony or penis?

I thought long and hard (npi) about whether or not to sully and stain my beautiful blog with the image of this pony-pulling prat of a PM, and decided that in the interests of the nation, which is naturally hanging on my every word, I would.

This is because I have a theory about "ponytail-gate" that I'd like to share with our great nation of people, most of whom seem ever so slightly confused about what sort of person makes a good leader, or even a good person.

"Ponytail-gate" refers to the recent asinine antics of the right-wing, pawn of the rich PM of NZ who, in his spare time, when out with his wife and bodyguards, likes to tug on the ponytail of the waitress who serves him, not once, but many many times over the course of months, despite the young owner of the ponytail asking, then telling him, please don't! He's a class act our PM. Clearly the best man for the top job.

But my theory about the whole silly sordid affair is that the man's a repressed homosexual, either wanting to prove he's not or confusing the ponytail with a penis in wanting to give it a good - rather, many a good - tug.

This is not to denigrate homosexuality, of course, but to highlight the fact that our so-called Mr Nice Guy PM is a two-faced pony-penis-pulling phoney who needs to be outed, whatever he's hiding. If it is homosexuality, that will be his most dignified skeleton you can be sure.

His wife was with him on his pony-pulling outings, for fuck sake! She even told him to stop, several times, and still he continued. O to be his wife! And between tugs, this first-class phoney presides over the steady demolition of the best welfare state in the world, with cuts in arts funding, state eduction, student allowances, public broadcasting and taxes for the rich. Brilliant! Talk about the second coming.

Where have you been all my life, John! I think it might be time to grow my hair.