Restaurant opening

My 5 months of FREEDOM are almost up. We open the restaurant again for the new season on Saturday and because it is school holidays it will be busy. The scallops are fat, the crayfish plentiful and because it's too early for kingfish I'll put a crispy skin salmon dish on the menu. Probably with lemon rissotto cake and I'll smoke the frames for stock and reduce it down with veges, port, balsamic and brown sugar to make a black treakle sauce. My son and his partner are excited as two year olds to be taking over, with a little mix of trepidation because they have never been in the business before. It's nice to have their vision and energy around.

In case I fail

In case I fail. Fail to scale the granite cliffs of success where I think I will find peace of mind, where all my accomplishments end. Other people expect it of me - why? - Why do they think my mind is different when all it craves is a cemetry full of flowers - dahlias, daisies and dead dandelions that float off to a Shang-ri-la carrying all that matters as lightly as an angels fingertips until I can lie in peace and dissolve in the hell that is solitude. The people, those uncountable multitudes that we belong, and use, and are used, set barriers here, false trails, booby traps, blind alleys, and yet are only imagination turned back on itself and eating it's tail until the head is regurgitated and purged like a new skin snake. Each an individual themselves misguided like a half feathered arrow never reaching the target set so high but pretending all the same they wanted to quiver in the mud and slime of times vomited past.
To be raw young and twenty with a heart full of change and pockets empty, to stand and believe you are counted and will be numbered along with those that know it only takes a single breath to live or die, be right or wrong, sane or insane. And yet the insanity of age tempers and distorts until with platitudes and condescending smiles we look at youth and say - dreams? - you cannot eat dreams - ideals? - you'll see the snakepit is really a bed of nails and when you lie upon it the silver bubble will burst and the muck and slush will petrify the green countyside hopes of any village idiot. It is with so-called progress we nullify the hopes of the young, spreading thick marmite on fresh new bread so the yardstick which used to be freedom, happiness and above all change can only be measured with success, money and a new car, never mind the bile like taste making the gut turn over, we close our eyes and wash it down with great drafts of ale-brown regret.

We have an election too

Hey, we've got an election too. Don't hog all the limelight. We have had a labour (left leaning) government for 9 years and national (right leaning) (yes they hold each other up!) is well ahead in the polls. We have an MMP (?) system which means if a party doesn't get enough votes to govern alone they have to get into bed with a minor party. No, no sex and usually the large one is so heavy the small one keeps rolling into the centre. The green partys' leader comes from our area and I voted for them but they were shafted in negotiations after the last election. I was not happy. But I don't vote for me. I live my life no matter what government is in. I vote for Joe (Joel) Bloggs who earns $650 ($US400) a week, pays half of that in rent and is trying to feed 6 kids.
I would vote for me if my government was going to war. I'm a pacifist and a coward.

Believe in who?

Sure son he said the earth goes down on that sexy sun. Every day. They tell you it’s risen but it’s all bullshit. His voice grated like it was coming out of a hole in the ground and he flipped the skinned rabbit and spilled it’s guts, blue and steaming onto the grass. They also say no is an answer but it ‘s never satisfied me. Can I take the shotgun into town tonight. He smiles and puts his foot on it. Wrinkled old fart.

Fresh fish for dinner

Hey the weather was good tonight so took my sons' partner Paul out fishing. Young son Sam and his mates had been out skurfing ie. towing each other behind the boat on a surfboard - skiing/surfing. I watched them from our little house with binoculars. So close it felt like I was there with them. She's a small boat with a 40 hp motor so blats along free as a bird. Rough around the edges but that's how we like it. She appears to like us too.
Anyway we caught enough fish for our dinner. A leatherjacket, a gurnard, a snapper and a few bait fish. Cold when we got home after dark I cooked them in butter with a squeeze of lemon, sea salt and fresh ground pepper. What more can a man want.

95% of money is created by private banks

Have a look at this excellent article on american hillbillys' site about the creation of money and how it's fueling the collapse in financial systems. Such as : "Moreover, inflation also serves to close the circle as it means that money only has one place in which it can easily seek refuge from its loss of value, and that place is a bank. Thus people, and especially those who are savers, are forced to protect themselves from the reduction in the value of money by looking for the shelter of a bank, which with this new deposit will be able to create yet more money and produce more inflation so that the wheel never stops turning. Inflation traps our money in the banking system and is the finest incentive that the system has for attracting deposits."
Written so even I can understand it! It gives no answers but I guess we are the silly poobums who want everything now and take 100% loans to buy 'the thing no one can do without'

Apart

I saw you last night
Down by the sand and rocks
Where whirling tresses
Danced a faceless waltz
You cupped a cupid shell
To your mother
But not to me
But not to me

xplydre

Does anyone else have a morbid fear of the hieroglyphic (I did not use the dictionary!) word verification system on some bloggers comment columns. I mean pxllgt, I have never seen a proper word yet. I look at it long and hard before I type it. What if I get it wrong. Is it an intelligence test and will the award 'dunce of the year' start flashing. Is it some secret blogger code and everyone is laughing at me when I use it?
Maybe I'm paranoid, even an easy word like metempsychosis makes me imagine souls passing in the night.

Why do I blog to an audience of 1.5 people

Aw come on, you're not the .5 person you are number 1. It's just a statistic. I polled the world wide audience and divided it by only the bloggers that say something important. It's not like he/her is 1/2 a person, it's just he/her (sounds like a donkey, perhaps I should poll the animal kingdom, do bats tune into broadband?) only views sometimes and I'm working hard to bring hehaw up to .75.
I know you think I'm perfect but I do have addictions. There is the world before my morning coffee (I hate it) and the world after the strong drug (it hates me). I have an addiction to being right even when I'm completely wrong. I can't believe I admitted that, perhaps the rehab is working. I am a normal sociable person drinking gin/vodka/cactus juice/meths but start me on whisky and you've got a raving lunatic on your hands.
So is blogging an addiction? Do I wake at 4 am thinking about what I'm going to write. Yes...Do I high five the cat when I get a comment. Yes... Do I actually believe it's worth reading. Yes.. (delusional as well). Do I enjoy it. No... But feel I have to = addiction.
So, dear 1.75 readers (stop press he/her has just gone up to visiting once a month) I hope my imperfections haven't put you off. My counter only goes up. If you are wavering I have a once in a life time offer... keep logging in and learn whether I wear underwear or not!!!

American aggression

They are at it again. This time bombing in Pakistan and incubating more terrorist cells.

Haircuts

Son Sam told me to get a haircut and look at his record, nice boy to monster! Now I don't know if he was serious or just trying to deflect the fact that the dishes weren't done and his room is a pigsty (sorry pigs I luv ya). I mean it's not that bad (said hair). A bit fluffy at times when I use the new fangled shampoo and conditioner I find in the shower. Daughter works for Swartzkopf? so we have lots of product! I've been through shaven and mohawk. He's been through skullet and mullet (I feel a poem coming on). Perhaps I'm taking away his rebellion and he wants a nice neat father he can ridicule.
Bugger him, I'll grow it while I can.

Dreamtime

Your eyes shadow hollow closed
I kissed
Lips sweet memory pained
And wept
Coddled as we were in dreamtime
Far from Maughm St
In the wake sleep time of
Closeness
I didn't know you
But I know you
Now

Summer house

Our wooffer friends will be pleased to know. The bach lives on!

A bach is a summer house in NZ and ours was due for demolition but has a reprieve for a year because we can't find anywhere else to live. With a view as above it's going to be difficult to be motivated. It will be like being on holiday all the time. What's that you say? Seems like I'm on holiday all the time anyway! I'll have you know I've been overseas on business. Checking restaurants and researching live music and talking to artists about exhibitions at the Egg. It's been a hard few months.... I think I need a holiday!

Denise is off to Australia to see her Dad today and there is a bach list on the fridge.

Shore up the foundations so it doesn't shake in the wind

Paint inside and out

Lay carpet

Install a ranchslider

Change the stove

And that's only the first day. I think I'll demolish it and live in a tent!

Penis sheaths

OK, after huge demand and the sound of one hand clapping I have published one of my more embarrassing moments (story two posts ago). In case you are not sure, I'm the one on the left with the red face and our guide Jimmy is on the right

Erupting dugong in Vanuatu

But it didn't end there (from previous post).
We heard tell of a dugong that villagers summoned from the deep so travelled down in the back of a ute to see it. Called by slapping cupped hands on the surface of the water, it swam in after about 30 minutes and lolled about in the shallows, all 4 metres of it. Now I should have noticed that the villagers only went in ankle deep but I wanted a closer look so floated out above it unafraid because it has no teeth and no arms and spends its day peacefully grazing seagrass.
The damn thing grabbed me between its big floppy nose and chest and dived to the bottom of the ocean. Ok I was in a bit of shock but things crossed my mind. Am I wrong about the teeth? Does a dugong know how long a not very fit man can stay under water? Thankfully no teeth and he let me go before I ran out of breath so no harm done except lacerations to the chest from his short bristly hairs.
On the way back our guide suggested having a look at the volcano. Now that has teeth! We walked high amongst a moon scape with the guide showing us where 3 people had died last year from flying boulders and after depositing us at the edge of the crater didn't notice again that he sat 50 metres away. It's a wonder I'm still alive I learn so slow.
The crater was deep and in the centre the lava was rolling and gurgling away golden bright in the smoky darkness. Slowly it got smaller and smaller until we couldn't see anything. Then B-Boom like the end of the world and a huge shower of lava gets flung high in the air. Denise started running and didn't stop until she got to the carpark. I had the video camera running but it only shows my feet with a long drawn out expletive. It was an amazing experience. In fact an amazing day!

Visiting Samoa reminded me of a trip to Tanna the most southern island of Vanuatu a few years ago. We decided to see a remote village so on guide book instructions took some food to give to the chief. We arrived at the village and were introduced to the villagers, the ladies just in fashionable grass skirts but the men in magnificent penis sheaths of what looked to be dried grasses. Which I at once coveted. Don't ask me why! After much sign language I found the chief sitting on a stool behind a huge bunyan tree and giving him the food tried to ask if I could buy a penis sheath. He watched me for a long time then his face lit up in a big grin and he summoned some of his boys and they led me inside said huge tree where tucked in corners and crevices were a great many of said apparatii. It was like the supermarket of penis sheaths, where they came from I knew not. Hand me downs, slain warriors, outgrown, I didn't want to ask.
Next thing I am disrobed and they are asking me to slip one on for size. I try to protest but they are having so much fun I do what I am told and they tie a piece of string round the end and then around my waist so the damn thing sticks up proud as a peacock.
So imagine this porky white interloper being led out into the compound amongst forty magnificent very black warriors and Denise has the video camera running and the other five tourists are falling about laughing. Not my very best moment.
Later at a waterfall for a swim our two guides deposited their sheaths and in deference to the ladies tucked their johnnies between their legs but of course in diving in, there were their menhoods peeking out like surprised possums!
Do you think I could get mine off! The knot they had tied was impossible to undo.
Still brings tears to my eyes.

To smack or not to smack

Does anybody else have an anti smacking law in their country? And what does that say about us? I am ashamed but in our little slice of paradise we have an unacceptable level of abuse against children the most vunerable members of any society. Who knows why. Warrior race. Frustration. The way it is reported. Any excuse is not good enough. The opponents of the law say it criminalises parents who give their child a light tap on the bottom to correct bad behaviour but in reality no court is going to prosecute for that. I don't mind either way but if it addresses the problem of child abuse which is what it is designed for then it's a good law.
I've had the pleasure of bringing up seven children over 41 years and in hindsight I was a much stricter father at 19 than I am at 60 equating to more smacks to make sure the kids conformed because I was unsure of myself as a parent. Strange because I was very unconformist myself. Later kids got no smacks and they seem fine. In fact they all seem fine. It's amazing how resilient children are. But not to abuse which just seems to perpetuate itself

Spring has sprung

It seems while I was away sunning myself
Spring has sprung
The blossoms rum
And I go on ad nauseum
I don't feel I deserve it! Spring that is, not the going on. I know I do that. But I can't take part in conversations here. How's your winter been? Wet and cold. How's the fishing been? Couldn't launch the boat. Ran out of firewood. Grew webbed feet. Frostbitten. Blown over. You think I can tell them about an endless summer in a little red convertible! Don't think so.
So I tell them I've got no home, no job and we all sit around and have another gin and tonic and fall into deeper depression!
My dog understands though. He enjoys spring, chasing rare birds off their newly made nests and digging up the vege garden

Sun and sand in Samoa

Oa mai oe
Posting ain't easy here in Samoa, is that a good enough excuse! Lovely sun and sand and people, simple easy and relaxed, I'm almost asleep here at the computer! Stayed on Upolo and now on the bigger island of Saveii in a primitive fale on the beach, painting where I can and enjoying life.
Manwea leosa