The intertidal zone

Assemble your tools and an able assistant.

Dampen the area to be covered, which preferably includes a crack.

Tip most of the cement into the barrow. Keep some in the bag in case — as with icing — you make the mixture too sloppy.

Gloves are optional. I like drawing them.

Pour water by cupfuls into the cement, stirring as you go with a spade and, if you like, a piece of kindling.

To test for consistency, fill a cup with the mixture then invert and empty it, as you do a sand castle. The slurry should slump to half its original height. Add more cement or water accordingly.

Seize the ready moment and tip the mixture into the corner.

Pounce on it with your trowel. Shape and smooth the concrete into place. Admire its gleaming surface.

Hunt around the house for beads and buttons.

Sit in the sun beside the concrete puddle and idly stick them in. When your pattern is complete, poke the beads down a little harder. Let them be gripped.

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.