The intertidal zone

It rained hard last night. We noticed the damp patch in the ceiling above the table but it was dark outside and the roof space too cramped for entry or even torchlight. This morning I realised I’d had a lucky escape. The laptop is still functioning. R. has been up on the roof. He’s bought and used a pair of tin-cutters. The builder has been summonsed

FB message of the morning: ‘Eat the day or it will eat you.’ I think it’s fair to say we ate each other. Here’s my small mouthful:

Starting with the blue thing and moving clockwise: that’s a recycling bin, bought this morning from the city council office, to replace the one we ran over several years ago (it worked but it was wonky). Also a roll of 100 city council doggy-doo bags, reputedly biodegradable (but not before you’ve carried them home in your hot little hand). I do think that wrapping dogshit in any kind of plastic is a retrograde step: it’ll compost quickly if flicked into the green belt or under a hedge. However, sometimes bagging’s the only way to go.

I collected 100 beautiful business cards (from Ezyprint Solutions) for Michael to hand out as the author of Road Markings. I sewed them into 4 cloth pockets in order to make the package flat enough for ‘letter rate’, and posted them off to the USA in a recycled envelope bearing its original potato-cut hearts (how to alarm an author).

While out and about I bought an article not shown here for someone about to turn a year older than me. In the same shop I indulged  in another fine-nibbed pen, used for the above. Then I went to fill up the petrol tank. This cost exactly the same as 100 full-colour, two-sided business cards.

A. was here so we sat one each end of the table to do our drawing and colouring. He was making a vivid recruitment poster for a new Dunedin-chapter Harry Potter Club. I was trying to make eggs ovoid.

We ate egg and chive sandwiches for lunch then, for our sins, J. had to make a chocolate cake without eggs. It turned out moist, dark and flat as a pizza base. Good though. Outside the sun shone on Peasgood Nonsuch and trumpeting lily alike.

E. and Z. joined us all for  cake and summer tales. We laughed and cried a little because life is both hard and good and you have to chew it up as best you can.

Our PM John Key referred to New Zealand on the radio today as a cork bobbing on the ocean, which I think shows a lack of imagination.

Polly went out on the smorgasbord tonight. She sneaked off and chomped her way around the neighbourhood bins and compost heaps. Tonight she’s stunned, rotund, and leaking queasy gases.

The new year is underway. We have little idea what it will hold. We have hopes and qualms, loose plans and quiet intentions. We will all be watching what unfolds and will play our part accordingly.

Tonight I made tom kha pad thai yum.

I heard Aung San Suu Kyi answer questions from a class of American students. I admired her dignity, intelligence, and radiance of being.  At last in Burma, democracy looks possible again: that precious blend (to quote The Lady) of freedom and security.

Perhaps in order to prevent collisions with its plate glass windows, the local swimming pool has near-life-sized transfers on the glass, of young swimmers frolicking. This morning, we watched the window cleaner charge his squeegee and make the first bold sweeps.

I walked into plate glass once. We’d just finished walking the Milford Track and I went to soothe my aching feet in the bathroom of the tourist information centre at Milford Sound.  Coming back out, I stared at the sea and mountains straight ahead and smack. This might have been the cause of my otherwise unexplained deviated nasal septum. They should stick dolphins on the windows, or something that trampers crave and would never walk right through, like a bowl of fruit salad.

Now, I’d better get on with some work.

I was poking around the sunny vege garden on Friday when I noticed I wasn’t alone. A  black rat was also sauntering and sampling, grasping and nibbling on salad greens.

In fright, I leaped into the nearest room and snatched the cat from the bed. She sat where I planted her on the flagstone, dazed and befuddled and ten inches from the rat, who carried on munching. Cat stared blindly at rat. Rat stared at spinach. Then cat’s head jerked as her nose lifted and she sniffed left, right, straight ahead, then — ah! She raised her front end and fell on the rat. I turned away in shame.

Could I not have left the rat to its indolent vegetarian meal (and backyard breeding programme)?

Anyway, rat gave cat the slip and half an hour later cat was still weaving in and out of the beans, lettuces, spuds and long grass, hunting. At day’s end she ate jellimeat.

In the morning, though, I found her gift outside the bedroom door.

Of course, the cat might not have committed the crime. The rat might have fallen from a biplane. I sure hope not. I hope it wasn’t this rat.

Rich pickings from the blogroll this week:

Claire commits alchemy with Emily Dickenson and a cheese grater.

Talking of rats, Isabel‘s miracle cat-in-exile makes a second comeback.

Helen analyses a healthy writing group.

Talking of cats, the paradoxical one writes up the launch of Sue Wootton‘s new poems, By Birdlight.

and I've been disappointed.