 | Got my damn quince. $5 for the whole bag, which is a relief given that my young tree did fuck-all this year and our quince jelly supply was starting to look tight. Once you've started with that shit, nothing else will do and running low on those glossy pink jars full of fruity goodness feels like the last crumbs rattling around in your dime bag. Forsooth, it doth mocketh thy dependance. Same with the fresh chillies for harissa: we are currently staring down the barrel of real-time spice paste insecurity. |
But fuck it all, I am not paying $30 a kilo for that shit when it's peak season and people should begging you to take their heaving surplus. So if you've got chillies you want to offload, get in touch. I'm deadly serious. I'll totally pay you, just not, you know, unicorn placenta-type money.
| In other news, after a shitload of procrastination, we've finally applied ourselves to putting up the Idlehouse fence- a first strike against the intensely boring and tedious procedural inertia that generally characterises the beginning of any building project. If you're thinking of DIYing something similar, please be aware that this is not how you do it. |  |
 | Our methods are unconventional. Primitive. Arse-backwards. Retarded, even. Our skills are mad skills and not in a good way. Our conceptual development consists of talking at cross purposes and heavily shitting on each others' crappily-drawn ideas. Available materials are sort of picked up and looked over but somehow never meaningfully quantified. By the time we've upped tools and gotten underway, the veteran nit-picking and next-level pettiness is threatening to derail the whole fucking project. Practical shortcomings thicken the bitchy stew; I currently specialise in incorrectly measuring crucial items and R has not taking important observations on board down to an exquisite t. That neither of us has murdered the other with a claw hammer in full view of passers by is a fucking miracle. We usually need to get at least a third of the way through the thing before we stop wondering about whether we could afford to live alone (the answer is no). In short, we are experts. |
| Don't do it our way. Buy one of those laser sight doodads. Go to the service station and buy nails before you get started. Get a proper post hole spade or hire one of those giant diggy screw things. Find a level that isn't coated with concrete. Don't spend half the day scooping dirt out of the bottom of the post holes with your bare fucking hands because you didn't want to make them properly wide enough for the shovel. Don't position crucial shit using ye olde random squint-and-shrug technique, nor should you burden yourself with timbers of varying lengths and gauges, meaning your paling intervals will end up whacker than neoliberal social policy. After 20-odd years of this, we've come to place our trust in three exculpatory principles. 1: that you can make fuck-ups and shortcomings visually acceptable with cunning retrospective improvisation. 2: that a wonky but functional handbuilt look is just as good, if not gooder, than expensive perfection. And 3: that the cosmic goodwill accrued via repurposing salvage materials is the secret grease, the unseen glitter that makes everything cool in the end. This fence will be perfectly alright (that really is wide-angle distortion in the pics adjacent) and we'll have saved ourselves around $1500 in labour costs. Oooh look, a native tree fuchsia flower.  |    One of those awesome red-legged spiders, Nessus coloripes, came to chasten our presumptuous incursion. It was totally badarse but then lost its nerve and ran away up the tree while we were getting the camera. |
  |  The Paper Birch is dropping leaves that range in colour from burnt condensed milk to high-carat gold. The Toad Lily is flowering (above) and the roses are rounding out a truly heinous fungal season by scrunching up their leaf buds into stunted little balls. It's not cold yet, but it is getting a wee bit damp underfoot. Not sure what else I'm posting this week due to aforesaid fence action: if it rains, I'll write. |
Also: RIP the fucking magnificent John Clarke. You may not have heard of him. He was so viciously funny that he had to leave New Zealand (where long experience has taught us to dimly understand when we're being made fun of) for Australia (where it's always assumed the abject wankers at the heart of your tale are somebody else). He made the world better for everyone and was instrumental in demonstrating to a younger me the awesome power and legitimacy of haute shit-ripping and pelagic deadpan. There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
Finally, xylophone rampage for the win. Gone Daddy Gone. I am old, they are older, this is an old, old song. Janky drug tip- get fucked up and then really bring the screen close to your face and stare at it unblinkingly when the stripy dress lady is doing her crazy dance.
Happy Full Moon.
Finally, xylophone rampage for the win. Gone Daddy Gone. I am old, they are older, this is an old, old song. Janky drug tip- get fucked up and then really bring the screen close to your face and stare at it unblinkingly when the stripy dress lady is doing her crazy dance.
Happy Full Moon.
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