above left Buttermilk echinopsis hybrid- first flower oh yeeeah.

freaky trade bead / elderly White Fronted Tern.
​Battered by a final breeding season then a bad storm; passed away peacefully in a comfortable box overnight.

Proteaceae porn: pink King Protea and various allies in my mother's garden

Quiet isn't a word I'd use to describe Punch Drunk either, a shade I think is exclusive to this formula.  It's a bright, clean yellow-leaning orange with a dash of golden/apricot microglitter... yeah, I know.  I'm not keen on that disco shit either, but it's fairly low-key on the lip, putting in its most meaningful appearance when you're wiping off, which can be a cool effect on its own, incidentally.  It is almost neon-bright, glassy-glossy, slightly easier to apply than F-Bomb, adheres well to the middle of the lip and is really fucking loud.  There's a sort of stupid tangelo violence to Punch Drunk and I for one enjoy this affront to good taste.  Its wrongness can be righted by an otherwise bare face; I have pink-toned skin and have to go hard with this shade to make the connection with the yellow in my eyes and freckles, which creates a left-field harmonic.  Punch Drunk's clarity means it doesn't really yellow-up your teeth too badly either, so be brave and really slap it on; you'll look like you've copped a dose of restalyne if nothing else.  The more I ponder it, the more I'm compelled to admit that I really enjoy this fucked up shade at 100% volume.

So in summary- these UD Super Saturated Gloss pencils are horrendously sticky, pretty glossy, slightly difficult, well-pigmented and very lasting.  Would I buy them again?  Nah, probably not.  Will I wear these?  There's definitely a daytime/workout place in my heart for them.  Quick trick: if like me you're starting to get a few lines around the edge of your lips, try slightly smudging out the margins of these glossier products with a cotton bud/Qtip- works a treat.

Susan sighed into her helmet and grasped the throttle one more time, shoving back her visor when the scooter refused all encouragement, remaining cold and idle beneath her.  Dismounting, she whispered an obscenity at its decrepit mechanics and turned to look over the aging convertible standing alongside Edward’s sedan.  Its driver door was a different shade of candy red to that worn by the remainder of the vehicle; movement in the other car led her to the sight of William doubled over on the passenger side.  He waved to her and she came toward him, cupping her hands against the window.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

He blinked as if he could not hear her and pushed the glove compartment closed.  She waited for him with eyes that followed the objects in his hands into his pockets as he rose, revealing hair partitioned into ornately-figured cornrows, a closely-tailored shirt of jungle green, silky black tie and matching drainpipes.  He towered over the Jaguar as he walked around to the driver’s side, taking her critical gaze with him.

“You look... very pretty.” she smiled, nodding down at the car.  “This yours?”
“Erm, yeah.  Why not?”  He grinned at her hesitancy.  “Yes it's mine.  Stop falling for my bullshit, Christabel, it only encourages me.  Going somewhere?”
“Into town... well, I was going into town..."
"Hélas, l’Escargot?"

Susan looked back at the scooter.

​"It died a natural death." she sighed.  He reached across to push the passenger door toward her, nodding his sunglasses onto his nose.  She sat down slowly, the soft oatmeal leather cool against the back of her bare legs.  He smelt like the singing green of his shirt.  “Doesn’t Barbie drive one of these?”
“Yeah, but she had to chug a lot of cock to get behind the wheel... only cost me an eight ball and a hand job so who’s the fucking fairy princess now?” he asserted proudly over an ignition he initiated with wires hanging from the steering column.

They flew backward, screeching out onto the drive and swinging perilously along its length; when she saw that he was steering largely from memory she ducked and covered her head with her hands, berating him while he ripped back the hand brake.  Their velocity suffered a violent check that dragged the long nose of the Jaguar past the gate post and the car shuddered to a halt on the road, Susan letting go of the dashboard to stuff her seat belt into its housing.  With his foot still planted, he fished his phone from his pocket and frowned down at the screen while changing gear, setting them off along the tarmac as though flung from the arm of a trebuchet.  Their impetus in both directions had dislodged a jumbled little world of debris from beneath the seat that banked around her mary janes, zip lock bags of pills stamped with stars and skulls, clinking nip bottles, dead electronic ephemera like wave-cast shells, a telescopic truncheon and one half of a silver bikini.  She kicked it aside to make room for her feet and settled back in her seat with her hand on the belt across her chest.

The road took them down from the hills into a more currently affluent suburb, the houses becoming taller, pastel-hued and more violently palatial behind their stucco facades, dynastic driveways and gaping vehicular porticos.  Susan allowed herself the view from the windscreen only as it became apparent he was a better driver than her worst fears.

“I didn’t think these things were very fast.” she observed.

“What Luc will do in the way of illegal mods for a lick of hash has to be seen to be believed.” he replied. 

“It's a really big fine here if they catch you speeding."

​“There's a tiny bit of heat on the plates, but I don't have a license and they don’t light you up here for minor shit, so ça roule..."  She glanced at him again as they sailed over a dip in the road; the glove compartment fell open, disgorging a box of flavoured condoms and a CD of Cantonese opera onto her lap.  “I don’t know how those got in there.” he laughed as he reached across and tossed the prophylactics onto the back seat.  William exploited the opacity of his shades to look at her while she busied herself inserting the disc into the console, the dramatic opening strains of the first act bursting forth on either side of them.  She wore a string of silvery glass beads and a blue sun dress that brushed her knees, sunlight glowing through its fibres and printing the pattern on her skin with shadow.  The Jaguar lurched to a halt at an intersection and he apologized on behalf of its brakes, turning down the aria and glancing back at her frank expression of inquiry, which he obliged, lowering his head toward her.  She smiled and pressed a fingertip to one of the scarlet braids over his ear then succumbed to the temptation to stroke the curiously satisfying texture, allowed to sate her curiosity in silence.  His collar proved a luminous companion to his skin, distracting her briefly until something else inspired a single note of inarticulate astonishment.  

William's right hand lay on the wheel, clearly delineated against the darkness of the dashboard paneling.  She caught it as though it were some wary animal and held it in earnest, wordless wonder, forced to count his fingers twice to confirm that there were five instead of four beside his thumb.  The replication of conventional polydactyly had found resolution in harmonious gradation, its difference to her own hand seeming entirely of scale.  She spoke of it softly to herself, her enthrallment relieving his suspicion that he had appalled her; Susan's gaze fell slowly to his boots. 

“Does it... do you... toes as well?”
“Six fingers and five toes would be weird.”
“Does no one notice?”

He shook his head.

“Not for a long time.  Are you sure you don't want to hurdle the door?  I'd understand..."
“It’s amazing!" Susan laughed.  "It's... it's beautiful."  The word surprised, then moved them both, and she refused to qualify its immoderation, dividing his fingers gently into varying cohorts.  "How do you buy gloves?”
“I don’t.” he admitted.  

Still astonished, she replaced his hand on the wheel at the behest of probity, but he could not refuse her wistful stare and returned it to her, watching her appraise its elegant architecture while the lights changed and the cars around them began to pull away.  Susan enjoyed it to the exclusion of all else, and with his hand still clasped in hers she stared out through the glass, both baffled and enlightened.

“Do you really play polo?  I can not imagine it.”
“Yeah... the Kurdistani dead goat version.  Do you ride?”
“God, no.”
“I could teach you.”
“You've got horses?”
“No... but I could get some.”  Her laugh began to exceed the bounds of polite convention, the bright, hiccuping sound accompanying the glitter of the stud in her nose as she released his hand.  “Blah blah blah me me me.  What about you?  Any fam?  Brothers, sisters?”
“Only child.  My parents died... car accident... so it's just me.”
"Désolé." 
“You’re alright.” Susan told him.  “I didn’t think you would be, for some reason.  You're nicer than I expected.”  

The sun was a flaming disc on the smooth black surface of his glasses as he rolled the wheel and took the corner.

“Are we shopping?”
“I need some sort of evening dress thing.  Your brother’s taking me out to dinner for some reason, but god, I don’t want to go and I’ve nothing to wear.  He said something about reviewing my situation... that’s not good, is it?”
“He must be thinking about signing you on or you’d just wake up face down in the middle of the road one morning.”
“I don’t know what to say to him... he’s... such a...”
“Prick?  Like the black rays of an alien sun?  A brass-necked, bone dry, joy-crushing bastard?  As much fun as a dead dolphin?” he suggested.  “You'll be fine... just don't mention anything political, religious... cultural... or scientific... except the laws of furry dynamics or whatever the fuck it is... he's happy to pound on about that shit all day.”  He smiled reassuringly as she frowned.  “Ed is a fascist shaitan, there's no tap dancing around it, but it’s like... you know... not getting between a crocodile and the water.  Watch his left hand under the table, though, I’ve been told about that.  Anyhoo, what’s the frock budget?"
"There isn't one.” she chuckled.
“How about an advance?”  William held up one of the credit cards he had liberated from his brother's vehicle, flipping it deftly between his fingers.  “Ooh, and it’s the black one.” he laughed archly, sucking his breath between his teeth at the thought of its potential.  "Let's make the fascist shaitan bust a fucking blood vessel."  
Susan eyed the plastic and chewed on the edge of her thumb as she considered the gesture’s malformed chivalry.
“William, I can’t.  It’s very nice of you but... I don't...”
“It’s very passive aggressive of you to tell me I’m nice without letting me be nice to you.  Why not just slap me and call me a six fingered freak?”

She looked back at him for some time in a laconic manner that began to discomfort him slightly.

"You get away with quite a bit, don't you?"  

Keeping his eye on the road he reached back over the seat and retrieved the box of condoms, placing them in her lap and patting her thigh with a crooked grin that developed into laughter.  In retaliation, she took the bikini top from the floor and used it to tie the box of prophylactics so that they dangled from the mirror, swinging and striking the side of his head as they cornered.

Leaving the car in an alley, they walked together through downtown blocks to the edge of the prestige retail district, their destination a pair of looming glass doors studded with silver bosses.  They guarded a boutique walled with a black finish like that of new French jet, its slick polish supporting a strange array of structures and merchandise united by a sinister visual affinity, their shapes and textures interlocking like questions and answers.  Perspex specimen shelves, traction frames and complex, knotted traceries of surgical wire and large-gauge fishing hooks held small collections of ready to wear garments interspersed with handcrafted fetish wear, displayed like trophies cut from the gleaming bodies of mythical beasts.  Susan walked past William into the midst of the room where an arrangement of sombre training corsetry graded into those fashioned from doe and ostrich leather worked with traceries of precious metals.  Turning slowly, she found a row of featureless black mannequins entwined in luminous shibari ropes, their curious, extrapolating intricacies like the webs of drugged arachnids.

Behind a monolithic granite counter Lilian stood flipping through a magazine until she spied William through the displays and beckoned impatiently.  She wore a charcoal-grey kimono dress, an electroplated bird foot pinned to its left breast, and pulled him with her into the darkly-curtained alcove behind the counter. 

“Your hair boy said you were in hiding.  Turn your fucking phone back on or do something about that crazy Rachelle bitch.” she told him while he watched her prepare an intravenous narcotic on the black shelving.  “I don't know the guy who gave me this so you’re going first.” she added over her shoulder.  He dumped boxes full of shoes from one of the plastic chairs behind them and slumped down in an attitude of languorous consent, folding his hands behind his head while Lilian stood between his knees.  “Got a preference?”

“You know me." he sighed.  "I’ll let you put it anywhere.”

​She rolled back his sleeve, tying off a length of braid around his bicep before attempting to raise a vein.

​“Who’s the beard?”
“Susan.” he sighed again.  “We’re getting married.”
“You dirty whore.”  She worked in vain to find his vessels.  “For fuck's sake... were your parents even human?  You got a total fucking fish arm.”

William plucked the syringe from her fingers, stabbed it into the crook of his elbow and sat back as the drug rode through him to modest effect.

“It’s like a pixie farted in my ear."  She frowned and packed away her gear.  "What do you think?” he added quietly, rolling down his sleeve as he followed her out into the boutique and nodded toward Susan.  “Do I have a chance?”

Lilian examined the object of his interest in some detail.  

“It’s hard to know.  She can’t think straight in here... the shit’s talking to her.”  She glanced at Susan again, leant against the counter and went back to her magazine while the latter perused the dresses at some distance from them.  Slowly, almost stealthily, William slid along beside the granite and lowered his chin to Lilian's shoulder, his hand finding her rump and following it downward.  She allowed the discreet imposition for a short while, caught between objection and her taste for novelty.  

“Frost...” he whispered, parting the fair hair over her ear with his finger; a strange warmth slid down her neck like syrup.  “Did I ever tell you about the girl who took me home and closed her eyes and got everything she wanted?”  It was the very opiated sweetness of his voice that engaged her suspicion.

“You are fucking kidding me.” she hissed.  “Now you want to go?  We shower together... you've been sleeping in my fucking bed for five years and you only prod me in your sleep...” 

“I'm a territorial mofo.” he promised.  She laughed at the assertion.  “Frost...”  He privately formulated and abandoned several approaches.  “Please don’t hook up with my brother.”

“I hook up with everyone’s brother.” she quipped, going back to her magazine.  “I’m your worst fucking nightmare.”  William leant over on his elbows and stared out through the glass facade while she continued to feign disregard, though the intensity of his misgivings distracted her from the pages.
“What can I say to stop you?” 
“Something about his account being overdrawn.”
“You would comp him in a heartbeat and that’s exactly what I’m talking about.  It’s already a thing... you’re thinking about it right now...”
“Because you’re fucking my ears with it.” she exclaimed.  “It’s not a thing, okay?”  They glared at each other warily, Lilian still flipping pages.  “Yet.  And go frot something else.”  She looked at Susan pointedly.  “Something that won’t mace your ass and call the cops.”  Her phone flashed on the granite beside her, the blue glow prompting him to reach toward it and examine the messages idly. 

“At twelve fourteen today, Orb the capslock bandit said... pick it up bitch... then something about... I don’t know what that word is... BTW, he’s going to put you in the river when he find you, bitch.  What the hell were you thinking?  Albinos are the devil’s work."

"Brian's a wigger, not a fucking albino."

​"Oh, and what do we have here?" William inquired.  "At eleven ten, eleven twelve, eleven sixteen, eleven twenty and eleven twenty two, Edward Lamb said...”  The text of their exchanges fashioned his features into a vindicated grimace that he turned toward her once more, pushing the phone along the counter and wiping his hand on his sleeve.  "I’d say he kissed his mother with that mouth, but I don't think he ever did.” he shuddered.  “But I don’t have to worry about this, because you’re not into him.”  She pressed her mouth into a straight line.  “Ever looked at someone and gotten a really bad feeling?”
“Every goddamn day.”
“Stand there and tell me you don’t get that from him.”  

Her milk-blue eyes held a curious blend of surprise and involuntary concession.  He watched her tip her shoulders back self-consciously, pressing the pages to the counter with both hands in a determined redirection.

“What do you want me to do?" Lilian demanded.  "He’s rich, he's a perverted freak... he’s totally built under all those clothes, fucks like an animal, goes all night... I can't sit down right now and that's the way I like it, so yeah... unless you can tell me he microwaves crack babies in his spare time, you’re shit out of luck.”  William clapped his hands over his ears.  "You knocked on that door, so step off my dick or it gets worse.”

“Are you coming to our party?  I’ll send you an invitation.” 

​“The group show at the house?  Someone already invited me.”  

Lilian glanced sideways at his sudden decampment to the alcove behind her, the sound of some intense physical effort prompting her to peer around the partition, but the pale blue light indicating customer ingress flashed on the wall over her head and she returned to her station in time to see Rachelle Whateley striding through the doors as though she were late to some event in her own honour.  Clutching the strap of her handworked bag she quartered the displays with an unfailing eye; it returned several times to Susan as the latter pulled a garment from the stand before her.  The fruit-coloured fabric of Rachelle’s short summer dress stressed the faultless nature of her tan.  She pushed her glasses back over her blow-out.  

“Hey, mudflap girl... we’re closed.” Lilian told her.

Rachelle stalked around the display that lay between them and stood looking at Susan, who glanced back at her after a while out of curiosity.

“Oh please... if Wil-liam’s not here then what is she doing?  She can hardly make the bus fare down here.” she snorted back.

“Get the fuck out, Rachelle.  Store policy.” the latter advised.  Far from obeying the directive, the statuesque intruder wandered toward the counter and set her bag on it, cocking her head at Lilian in wide-eyed, synthetic sympathy.

“Don't you have some dick to suck?  I don't know how you find the time." she smiled.

"I was gonna take a two hour lunch to suck your boyfriend's."

​"My god... when I think about it, this must be so hard for you... him leaving you behind like you were a sack of trash... that's got to feel like a lot of rejection.” Rachelle smirked.  “You must have hated us being together.  There you were, praying he’d make it past the nasty baggage one day.  But it’s like bitterness is all people see now when they look at you...”

“It looks like bitterness, but it’s rage.” Lilian replied.  Susan smiled; a small, half-choked sound issued from the stock alcove.  Rachelle marched around the black gloss wall, standing with her hands on her hips and scanning every inch of shelving before ripping back the rubber curtain to expose the empty dressing room.  “Wow, it’s like he never stops calling or trying to get with you.” Lilian laughed over her shoulder.  “Guess we’ll never know what it’s like to be his special lady.”  She picked up the phone, shaking her head as it rang.  “Patrick?  There’s this crazy fucking day-release bitch here trying to shove half the store in her bag... blonde, fake LV... you’ll love her.”  Replacing the receiver, she regarded Rachelle with some satisfaction.  “That’s Patrick, our mall cop and he’s a taser freak, so you better dust the fuck off before he gets down here and melts your Tijuana funbags.”  Still clutching the dress, Susan let go of the laughter she had held tight to that point while Rachelle hissed furiously at both of them. 

“You’re both mentally ill!"

When she had gone, the two remaining women walked together around the partition in their curiosity, amazed to discover that William had ascended the tall stack of box shelving and wedged himself between it and the silver ceiling tiles; he let himself down and hung from the ventilation grille.

“Did you hear that bitch?” Lilian chuckled, returning to the counter.  “In Rachelle’s world, I'm dry humping you,you’re monogamous and she’s an internationally-respected icon.  I’m almost getting why you fucked her.” 

Susan stood before the register with a dress draped carefully over an arm.

“I can’t find a price on it anywhere... could you..?”  The scan altered her expression from apprehension to dismay.  William turned the screen toward himself and looked to Lilian incredulously, sliding the card from his pocket.  “William, please, don't... I won’t be able to pay you back for a year.” Susan murmured as she attempted to stall the transaction.  He pulled the dress from the counter, standing back to hold it up against himself.

“It’s got stretch.  We can go halves.”

“You don’t think it’s... too much?  I think I might be too short for it.”

Lilian laughed ironically.

​“Ask the freak in the frog shirt.”  She turned back to William.  “And your name doesn't start with E, so take your fucking crimewave downtown.”

“But it’s a virgin... does thou leave it thus, a maid, still so blushing and unsatisfied?” he purred.  She tapped the card on the countertop impatiently before reaching down to run the transaction.

“If he asks, I’m gonna tell him.”  He leant over the marble partition and licked her cheek as she packed the dress.  “Get the fuck away from me.” Lilian sighed.  She swung a printed bag full of hand-picked clothing at him.  “And put this shit on when you get there.”

Susan and William took their respective seats in the Jaguar, turning to glance at one another when she rustled the bag to attract his attention.

“Lilian seems...”
“She is.  Bondage queen... plays both ends.”
“Are you... into that?”  

He laughed as he grappled with the ignition.

​“Christabel, you just asked me, your employer, to my face, if I'm a sexual deviant out of total idle curiosity."
"You're not my boss."
"Now you're completely undermining my authority."  He shook his head.  "There's something about you... I don't know what it is, but it does concern me, even more than your obsession with my sexuality.”

Susan took a hair clip from her handbag and pinned her fringe out of her eyes while he spoke, then leant forward, turning the stereo up until he stopped talking.  They took a different route out of the city, William driving them in a scenic loop enlivened by his mendacious commentary though it lapsed as they headed back toward the house, leading her to suspect that something was still exercising him privately.  She slid off her shoes and tucked a foot under her leg.

“Now you’re being too quiet.”
“I’m plugging a vent.” he admitted.
“Vent away, honestly...”
“I really love Lilian... she’s my best friend around here, but christ... I realised the other day that I’d known her for years without ever letting her meet my fucking brother.  And now I know why.  It’s happening already, in slow motion and it’s going to be so bad, and I’m sitting here looking at it like a fucking idiot, doing nothing...”
She seemed to consider the problem without prejudice.
“How do you know?  That it’s going to be bad?  It might be alright... I would probably just do nothing too.”

He shook his head, both hands on the wheel.

“I tried that the first time.”

She did not understand the reference and shrugged, applying lip salve in the bright yellow heat of the afternoon.
“They don't really look like the sort of people who need protecting.” she insisted, to which he shook his head again, more slowly and emphatically as he accepted the gloss from her.  She lay her head against the padded rest and smiled at his obscure misgivings.  “What would life be like if no one ever did anything stupid?  Nothing would ever happen.”

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

Online sources suggest this species prefers acidic substrates.  It's my experience that most of the succulent species available to the average non-fanatical collector are pretty adaptable in this respect, and if my windsorii is suffering in alkaline silence, there are no physiological symptoms.  I don't practise additional feeding aside from the slow-release granules that are a feature of most quality potting mixes.  The plant spends its dormant, leafless winters indoors on a windowsill (the colder months are wet here) in low light and temps that can get down to around 3ºC on a cold night to about 20ºC during the day when we have the fire on.  Some peeps say to water occasionally during the leafless state in order to fend off root loss, but I never really have so... er... maybe I should?

Pachypodiums aren't really beginner's plants, strictly speaking, but if you've gathered a few clues about general succulent culture you should be able to manage the easier species.  I'd rank P. windsorii amongst them.

A bit of background: Dunedin in a university town.  A couple of weekends ago a bunch of first-years and associated organisms were injured when the wooden juliet balconies they were heinously overloading whilst watching a shitty band do a street show unsurprisingly collapsed onto people below.  That no one died is a minor fucking miracle.  A quick look at the scene < will illustrate the excruciating degree of inevitability in play here, exacerbated by local police who decided they simply 'couldn't' (quote/end quote) do anything about the egregious overcrowding and general jejune fuckery that had unfolded.
 
I may be a callous old bitch but I remember what it was like to be a young person.  Vividly.  The thought process looks something like this: durr/fuck yeah huh huh huh/durr/mmmm chips/huh huh huh/fuck yeah drugs/durr/mmmm genitals/durr.  These days a young person's development is also inhibited by a combination of neurotic helicopter bullshit + the scourge of superentitlement, and I do feel moments of genuine sorrow for the generation raised in these circumstances.  But I'm also just going to say a few unflattering things at this point because no one else seems to have expressed them publicly and that troubles me.

1: Right- some of us are gifted with foresight, some just with foreskins, but how the bubbleheads overloading those balconies made it through the previous eighteen years without getting their tongues stuck in powerpoints is anybody's guess.  I look at them and get this sound in my head like a balloon rubbing on glass.  You have got to fucking wonder about the people standing underneath them, too (see first pic).  Physics: you're at university.  Look into that while you're there and if you are a pointless shitlord, try feigning viability in public.

3: More troublingly, the police were actually on the scene but decided they didn't have the power to go onto private property and intervene.  Uh huh.  This puzzles me since bitter experience informs my certainty that they would have intervened with pepper spray, batons and German fucking Shepherds if the crowd had been browner/weirder/listening to different music/less visibly affluent.  We've been perplexed and sort of freaked out by recent developments in police culture and policy down here, and this incident is quite indicative of the tone-deaf, rudderless WTF stuff they've been up to lately.  Police have the time and resources to locate and intimidate TPP protesters with preemptive home visits (yes, that really happened), but are nowhere to be seen when violent fuckwits are making central Dunedin a no-go zone on a Friday night, especially for women. 

Student culture isn't what it used to be, largely because students aren't what they used to be.  Tertiary education isn't a smart kid ecology anymore; it's a punter-based economy, thickly stacked with attention-seeking, pay-to-play slow learners demanding their store-bought version of the student experience.  Hence all the pyromaniacal look at moi Saturday night crap- they are unimaginative, externally motivated and calibrate their activities to provide maximum social media spectacle.  In the absence of policy to contend with this bullshit, one can only assume that the agencies concerned are outsmarted by people who hoot in circles around furniture fires.

I really don't give a fuck if all this sounds like a letter to the Editor circa 1923.  In my own day, a fairly hardcore Class-A-loving arts cohort used to tear shit up without attracting the popo, and if we were raided it was usually because a cluster of jesus monkeys within the police was convinced everyone in black was a baby-eating satanist (it was the nineties).  Panda rides and drunk tank lags were for the engineering contingent.  I'm absolutely in favour of creating enough trashy memories to ornament the arid remainder of one's existence and christ only knows we need them more than ever these days, but I deplore the basic-bitch approach that seems to be prevailing.  It is deplorable that debauchery is heading the same way as literacy.

Anyway.  This event was a massive organisational fail and local cops have no business being 'bemused' or defensive when the circumstances and outcome are plain for everyone to see, which is why I'm bitching about it on the internet.  When it comes to crowds, either police that shit or GTFO.  You know... develop coherent management policies instead of acting surprised and butthurt every time a mouthbreather glasses up Castle Street, because these children obviously require supervision.  Personally, I would abolish the police altogether and just issue selected senior women with the prods that I mentioned earlier.

I realise this critique means we are probably now threats to national security.  But what would you rather be- the peppercorn or the arsehole?  Get the fuck off my lawn.

In important jewellery news, I bought some oldish heishi beads online, strung them up for myself and am very pleased with the result.  You know the ones- those bakelite/record vinyl discs that look like yards of polished snake around the neck.  Heishi is a loan word describing the flat stone beads made by Native American peoples and seems to now apply also to African pieces in the same style made with vintage plastics and coconut etc.  Now that I actually have a neck, I like to pack as much shit around it as is possible and these fabulous collars fulfil my need for scale and irregularity.  Highly recommended.

There is... definitely uncertainty surrounding what else will be posted this week.  It will b arrgghhh Dandy Warhols.

​Do you have a gap between your front teeth?

​I do.

chameleon and baobabs, Madagascar.  Awesome.

We had the thing to ourselves for the most part and only ran into about 5 other parties toward the more popular seaward end, even though it was the xmas break.  That's still five too many in my book, but if you're the kind of person who's smile is turned upside down by the smell of sunscreen and spray deodorant coming at you through the trees after enjoying quality quietude, the Charming Creek track is probably for you.
​
The grade and geography are as easy as the DOC notes suggest and the whole thing could be walked by virtually anybody with half-decent footwear and no major physical challenges.  We are fit and fast, spent a long time taking pictures and still knocked the 9kms/one way off in about 3 hours.  That being said, it can be both sticky-hot and pretty cold depending on the month, and a day pack is a good idea since neither you nor your dog should drink the heavily mineralised water.  Old, half-buried trolley tracks and broken/fallen rock form 90% of the trail, meaning it's disturbingly easy to complacently zone out and go arse over tit in the dim conditions.  Vigilance and adequate eyesight are required.

Not a great pic; we were loathe to flash him and not just because of the possible toadstool curse scenario.  Using flash on confiding wild animals is a dick move and can disrupt nearby nesting in the case of nervous birds.

As I've said previously, Charming Creek is a dark and winding road devoid of the sort of screamingly obvious money shots and grand montane views that dominate most peoples' idea of the New Zealand landscape.  In that sense, it is far more representative of our native whole, which is a dense and sometimes opaque mélange of small-scale wonders; little rivers, diminutive animals, isolated remnants and modest distances between strikingly divergent places.  I mean, a mountain is a mountain and a lake's a fucking lake pretty much wherever you go in the world, and a lot of peeps miss what makes a mass unique while they're frantically joining the obvious dots.

Everything along the way is growing and expanding, from the underlying mountains which are still enjoying upward thrust to the podocarps pictured here, both stoutly hoary and daintily regenerate, with their damp, frilled shifts of lichen and plumy chartreuse club moss.  Black water wanders at its own speed over and through the foundational stone, carving out the schist and disgorging glittering lodes of milky quartz and pyrite.  There are kiwi here, apparently, although they tend to be crepuscular except in times of hardship so it's probably best to come at night in hope of hearing their eerie vibrato.

Above right: the pendant branchlets of young rimu, Dacrydium cupressinum, a Gondawanan proto-pine whose masts have fed the local fauna for longer than bears or monkeys have been shitting in the woods.  There aren't usually any bears in the woods here; you'll just have to go to a bar.

About a third of the way down the track the sneaky water begins to coalesce behind your back and before you know it you are walking alongside the Ngakawau river proper, just as it settles down into the gorge it is scouring for itself.

Above right and below left; views of the nascent gorge from the first and smaller of the suspension bridges (heading downstream).  R likes to pretend that shit like this doesn't give him any pause, strides either sassily or manfully- I can't decide which- across it and that's his cute little prerogative.  Felix is my child in that he loves water but doesn't enjoy having to walk over it on dodgy-arse and alarmingly mobile contraptions like this one.  My personal distrust of them was heightened somewhat by the recollection that exactly the same sort of bridge had shit itself under a fistful of German tourists a couple of weeks earlier; harrowing myself with the feel-alive flavour of the worst that could possibly happen in any situation is just one of the things that makes me such an agreeable companion.

​The hapless NZ Department of Conservation is responsible for fully half the shit that ever happens outdoors here in this little land and our current regime has been busily stripping it of staff, morale and funding because what's left for conservative monetarist fucktards when stalking beneficiaries and bankrolling Saudi hobby farms begins to pall?  Needless to say, they don't tell you any of this while they're stamping your visa.  If you're coming to New Zealand to peruse the scenery, consider donating to DOC.  The little they get is generally put to good practical use and they need every damn cent you can spare. 

Mottled lilac shade lay on the balcony outside the studio, to which Edward carried the sofa, settling to scan the pages of his broadsheet.  Green tea darkened in the bowl beside him, its new-mown scent rising with the steam.  Bede and William brought the smell of horses, sweat and human blood into the house on their return; they entered the studio together in pale uniforms stained with mud and saddle dirt, barred helmets hanging from their arms. 

“We won, but I think Sachiin’s throwing in the towel for the rest of the season.” Bede reported.  William dumped his helmet on the ground and sat against the railing, leaning over his legs to light a cigarette.  "I do think he was treated somewhat unfairly."

"Endured with quiet dignity, I'm sure." Edward muttered from behind his paper.

“Flagged three times for fucking nothing... some bullshit riding off and accidental hooking.” William hissed through the smoke.  “What a fucking shower of bastards.  I offered to blow them all in front of three hundred people, so it’s not like I could have backed out... ce sont des foutaises.”   

Bede glanced at Edward then looked away into the studio, uncomfortably aware of his unblinking golden scrutiny.

"Kala'amātya, we are truly sorry about your car.  We did put a new battery in and have it valeted..." he began, conscious that it was by no means the subject of the latter's considerations.  "There is something I should have mentioned to you earlier...”  Edward demanded an end to the prevarication with his stare.  “I believe we’re being observed.  By... I think by governmentals."

His host returned to scanning the property commentary.  A trio of swallows chased one another into the studio, their shrill little cries echoing as they looped about the empty chamber.

“I told you he knew.” William snorted.  He unstrapped his boots and kicked them off, freeing his long, clawed toes from the pinching leather and flexing them slowly.  Edward poured himself another bowl of tea.

“How was Europe, Avi'ashān?” he asked, to which their guest shrugged.  

“Enormously crowded... hideously so.  I don’t think we’ll go to Italy again during the season.  We ran into Mr Auberjonois in Herculaneum... he sends his amities... seems in preposterous health.  Naples... horrible... stick your fingers in your ears and Venice is still worth looking at, though it smells more like a colostomy bag than il mare these days.  And there is only so much you can take of being followed and prodded and breathed on." Bede related.  "In all honesty Kala'amātya, if you can sit here knowing you’re being papped by a military industrial complex, I can only take my hat off to you."

Edward closed his broadsheet in order to remove the notional barrier it provided.  

“The political situation?”

“Not the rosiest of pictures.  The deceased do seem to have become attached to the idea that they should enjoy exclusive dominion, but I’m not sure coming between the Baillis and his sense of manifest destiny is something many are very enthusiastic about."
"Wow, you're shitting me." William droned.
"I have to concur, Sachiin.  Are most demagogues not subdued in, if not by, the fullness of time?  I think that while it may be uncomfortable, the majority are content to await the workings of karma.” 

​"While they still cherish the thought of personal impunity." Edward replied.

The sound of a car door slammed into its framing, then the hyphenated syllables of William's name came rolling over the roof toward them, Rachelle's customary exigence tempered by some new vein of constraint that kept her from physically consummating the intrusion; her object turned toward his brother.

"I discouraged her myself, since you are manifestly incapable." the latter assured him.  On the grass by the edge of the swimming pool a blackbird seized the end of a worm and began to tear the luckless annelid from the earth.  Bede leant over the railing, staring down at the breeze-troubled grass.  “Where is Nyāti?” Edward demanded of him as the blackbird tipped back its head to gulp down the prize.

“Shopping somewhere, I believe.” 
“She'll come here?”
“I'm not entirely sure."  He seemed to have at last satisfied Edward’s obscure line of enquiry.

“Nyāti discovers retail therapy, accommodates your extramarital ventures and has no firm plans for either of you...”  Without another word the latter rose from his seat and kicked his guest’s legs out from under him with such brutal swiftness that Bede found himself pinned to the floor of the balcony before he could utter a syllable of protest.  Producing a small, stout blade, Edward stabbed it into the back of his calf while William sprang to his feet, abandoning English in the heat of the moment; his brother replied in kind.  “Speak, Avi'ashān, while you have the tongue for it.”  He twisted the knife sideways.  

Susan scowled as she negotiated the stairs, pausing to lean over the balustrade and assure herself that their visitor had remained in the porch as per her own insistence.  At first she thought the unmistakable contention in the voices that echoed toward her responsible for their confusion, but as she approached the studio it became apparent that the barrier was linguistic.  As her fingers closed on the door the argument ceased, replaced by a silence that she entered into warily.  William and Bede stood with their backs to the railing, wearing some sort of sporting uniform and an expression of dour neutrality. 

“Mr Lamb, there’s someone downstairs for you... it's um, Rachelle.  Should I show her up?”  Her cheeks and a small stripe at the base of her throat were coloured by the pervading atmosphere.  William's gaze fell to her mouth.

"Er... negative.  Tell her... tell her I’m on a retreat and there’s a no-contact policy.  I’m somewhere far, far away, polishing my shortcomings and I won’t be back for... two weeks.  A month.”
“She knows you're here.  Is that really what you want me to say?”  
“It’s a story..."  His face brightened again.  "Think it needs some horny trolls?”

She regarded him unsparingly, having already been subjected to Rachelle’s unreasoned demands.

“Mr Lamb, I think it’s probably best if that comes from you.” 
“Cristabel... I’ve just been kicked off my polo team... have a heart."
Susan folded her arms. 
“William, it’s not that I mind telling her to go away, because I don't, and you're right, she really is a nutter... but I’d like to be able to say go away, rather than just try again.”

Her advice struck down his wistful appeal and he stood abashed, blinking as though in mazing sunlight while Edward rose from the obscurity of the sofa, his presence surprising Susan greatly; she started backward.

"I'll tell her you're here but you don't want to see her.  Is that alright?" she proposed, scowling in her eagerness to conclude the matter.  He smiled again, and brought his hands together in a gesture of gratitude, from which she turned in her impatience.

“Christabel...” he called after her.  "Merci beaucoup." 

He waited until she had descended the stairs before turning his cousin around and examining the blade still buried in his calf. 

"What the fuck?" he demanded of them both.

“Never mind.” Bede murmured.  Shaking his head, William set a foot against his flesh and whipped the handle backward, tossing it at his brother.

"B, if you're sitting on something, you'd better fucking whip it out now..."
“On that note, I think I’ll go.  Guests and fish and three days, etc.” Bede sighed.  William murmured in his dejection and kicked a fragment of roof tile from the balcony.
“Well, fuck off back to Venice, then.  Don’t worry about us... looks like we’re just going to be sitting here getting swabbed by Black Op windowlickers."  He pressed his hands to his face melodramatically.  "And Ny's going to fuck you up when she finds out you’re playing away with Fred... so good luck.”

“I don’t want to push our luck with our old papers...” Bede ventured.

“He jacks off over anything in triplicate so passports shouldn't be a problem.” William declared of his brother with a bitter flourish.  A distant thud was followed by a brittle, cacophonous crash from somewhere in the building and he murmured to himself, craning from the balcony then climbing up onto the sagging copper gutter from the balustrade.  He used it to gain the roof, tiles sloughing away under his feet and skittering from the eaves as he strode toward the yawning hole that had opened over his rooms.  It had strewn the boards beside his bed with plaster, shattered tiles and rotten timbers; in his absence Edward turned a brutal glance to Bede, as though he had not yet satisfied the knife.

"Sis'thle bai'in." he said, the farewell transformed into directive.

Bede left the balcony on a slight limp before William returned.

"Ever since I've been here I've been telling everyone... come round, don't be scared, I made him dump the chest freezers... but hey, keep stabbing random fucking people.”  Receiving no response, he addressed a curse to the air around them.  “At least you’re making Susan feel like family.  She’s already wondering how you end up with three pints of blood in your laundry basket.”

“If she’s asking questions now, how do you propose to fuck her without incurring more?” Edward inquired.

​"She's someone to talk to at three in the morning who’s not evil or crazy.”

His brother smiled ominously, revealing his pointed teeth while William struggled with his anger before it betrayed him further.  The effort was in vain, and Edward expressed a low, sere sound as he walked into the studio.

“Now I’ll have to take her to dinner.” 
“Just leave her alone... you’re the one dropping us in the forensic shit."
"If she found something it's because she was prying, so now she's on the table."
"For fuck's sake... she said to me once that she thinks someone's creeping round at night... the AIU are up there so it's probably them.” 

“I don’t doubt she suffers a tangible sense of foreboding.” Edward replied.  He stood before his largest canvas and inspected the cracks in the paint. 

​“Escape from bastard island, Kala'amātya... come toward the light.  We have monogrammed robes over here too."  Another tile fell inward from the perforated roof, clattering distantly onto his bedroom floor.  "What we need around here is more eyes... if you’re away and I’m somewhere else, this place is just waiting to get tossed.  Hire a guard or something.”

Murmuring to himself, William deplored each of the assembled works in turn, grimacing at the remorseless smears of magenta and cobalt, applied with a knife over both black and white grounds and cured like the crusting of a sun-dried wound by the passage of a blow torch.

“I know this is bearding for your dayjob, but someone's going to get that you kill people for money if they look at this shit long enough.  I’d be digging deeper.”  He stepped back from the largest canvas.  “Add puce and call it ‘Opal’.”

“Call it whatever you like.”

​“You could hit it with some agricultural de... decons... what is it?  Deconstructivism?  Recontextualize them.  Staple chicken feet around the edges as emblems of your private pain, charge double.”
“Stop reading my subscriptions.”
“Eyeballs everywhere are screaming for you to rediscover naked women.”
“Get out of my studio.”
“Art’s just like, you know... alchemy these days, isn’t it?" William continued.  "You get all this random crap together and tell people it’s really significant, et baise-moi... stupid fucking white men come five figures, right there in your hand.  You don’t even have to stab them.  That's fucking tight.”  He sat down on the stack of punching bags arranged against the wall, took out his lighter and began flicking the wheel.  “I will sub you a dozen top-shelf whores for a lunar month if you leave Lilian alone.”  The sound of her name coincided with the terse rasp of the flint; he reverted once more to their native tongue.  “She told you she doesn't do GFE, didn’t she?  You don't know the first thing about her."  If Edward had heard him, he gave no indication, and William shook his head, leaning back as he continued, taking small pleasure in the observations.  "She’s got a habit... it's eased up at the moment, but when it’s on, she’s off the fucking reservation.  Her regulars are hypersensitive... they will not like you getting her for free.  Drug debt... she’s in holes all over town, and that’s before she’s squared up with the po-po.  That fucking pimp Orb blew her cop money on jerk chicken and Haitian jailbait, so now she's a POI to every shady badge for fifty clicks, and if I'd brought that kind of heat through the door, you'd kick me to sleep.”  He guided the tall flame in his hand to the end of the cigarette.  “She’s a total, pathological liar... and if she has feelings, you’ll need a grinder and solvents to get to them.  So while you might sound perfect for each other, what I’m trying to say is for the love of god, mahatma... leave her alone.  As a favour to me.  She doesn’t need you to fuck things up.  That’s all taken care of.”  

His own hectoring address bounced back to him from the bare walls as haunted echolalia, the words falling like wind-blown ash before a forest fire.  William berated himself privately while his brother's disinterested gaze passed over him, seeking a piece of delinquent equipment.

"At least buy out Susan's contract.  Rachelle's got a hard on for her and it's only a matter of time before she takes it to Opal."  

He left Edward's indifference in the studio and returned to his rooms, kicking the ceiling rubble from the garments it had smothered.  Bede had collected his few belongings and conducted himself to the driveway, awaiting the car he had already called, and William walked down alone to keep him company.
​
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
​© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

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Any of the very slight disappointment you might have detected in this review centres on the technical difficulties Corvina presents to me personally rather than anything explicitly wrong with the product, and that's an important distinction.  It is after all chromatically impossible to make a vibrant, opaque peony pink with any slip whatsoever meld seamlessly with lips that are a completely different colour.  So don't let that put you off.  If you're the lucky owner of a pale, warm or neutral mouth you will more than likely adore this joyful, well-composed shade.

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