One can never have enough land.

Whew, it's been a tough start to the year...been so long since I posted I'd forgotton how to do it..which included the angst of remembering my long forgotton password.
First though, the news. God daughter made the New Zealand Triathlon team,and is off to the World champs in Budapest..which is actually two cities on either side of the river Danube...named coincidentally enough, Buda and Pest.
Last year at the NZ champs the kid got 65th. This year she got 2nd. "Not bad" I said,"I told you I was the greatest coach in the world" "Pffft" she replied, "I didn't win". She was 13 seconds shy of gold.
Since then though, her unemployed and moneyless wastrel of a father has somehow got it into his head that he has had something to do with her success...things have become strained, and so now she is trying to do it on her own...it's a shame...but that is life.

I was talking to Wickie in the pub one night. Wick is the manager of the local tip..."recessions over" he said. "What makes you say that" said I. "People are dumping more rubbish" he said. Five weeks later the Governor of the reserve bank of New Zealand raised interest rates, citing inflationary pressures...
"the worst of the recession is over" he said...
Sheesh, I thought, Wickie could have told him that weeks ago.

Business has been awesome of late, and I have saved close to $150,000.
So, I decided to buy some more land...(one can never have enough land.)
When I was 8 my father leased a long narrow strip of land sandwiched between the Great South Road and the Railway line...we called it, in a fit of eloquence, 'The railway lease'.
"Why don't you build a motel on the railway lease" I once suggested.
"I'm not going to be a queen street Farmer" he replied.
I was so humiliated that I never broached the subject again.
If he'd listened to his 8 year old son, he might not have gone broke in the aftermath of the '87 sharemarket crash, and lost the farm.
Now,years later, I own that strip of land, and a motel on it would still be a good idea.
Transit New Zealand meanwhile have been widening the main road, and have bought out, and closed down, the two christmas tree farms north of the city...so I am going to grow christmas trees, which I am hoping will make a pleasant change from cattle.
The land, which is 10 acres, cost $390,000. The vendors couldn't sell it, so I offered them enough money to pay off their mortgage, $140,000, if they would leave the balance in at 0% interest. They heaved a collective sigh of relief and said yes...and I get two crops of trees before I have to pay them off in 3.5 years.
It has been a real birthing process and has taken months to settle...but now we are there, and I can now look out the window of the cafe and watch my grass grow while I drink tea.

E=MC2

Still can't quite get my head around how Einstein arrived at this view of the world...I mean I think about stuff, I also make decisions and occaisionally some of them are even right. But even though I know the theory behind the formula I still struggle to comprehend how someone could mathmaticly theorize that at four times the speed of light energy could change into matter...I mean this at a time (1905) when the fastest thing around was probably a train doing about 80 m.p.h. How fast is C2? It's 30 times around the world in one second is how fast. It wasn't until 40 years later, in 1945, that people came face to face with the amount of energy that C2 contained when the US detonated an atomic bomb over Hiroshima....and if ever you think you are having a bad day, spare a thought for Tsutomi Yamaguchi who was in Hiroshima on a sales trip when they dropped the bomb...he suffered third degree burns, but discharged himself from hospital and went home to recover. He just got home when "yep" they dropped another one of the suckers on him. He survived that one too...but must have begun to seriously question his decision making processes.
Anyway back home, spring rain has turned everything on the farm to slush, and driving means more often than not going sideways into fenceposts.One of the little suckers in a fit of picque kicked me in the side of the knee..whew it made my eyes water, I tried to keep running, but then my other leg gave out in protest...so now I'm sulking... The kid has holidays, so last night we went to dinner (chinese) and the movies (fame)..it wasn't as good as the original version...far too busy and trite...was my verdict. Today kid rang and demanded lunch, it was raining and I had just been filling a cattle buyer up with tea and scones at the cafe...I didn't want to be seen back at the cafe so soon after the first visit...so took kid to another one three miles up the road. Then with nothing better to do, I decided to bore her to death by showing her the farm that her great great grandfather bought in 1905, About the same time Einstein was formulating E=MC2 Great Grandfather Henry was chopping scrub and planting grass seed.I'm sure she was relieved to get home. The apple having fallen so far from the tree as to almost be a different species.
The first lot of calves are almost ready to sell..I don't know what the price will be yet, but even a loss at the moment would be preferable to the haemorrage of money that is occurring right now...it makes me cranky.

Dralion and the Cuckold

The calves are coming thick and fast, and everyone is shitty with the pressure.
We are still building infrastructure while they are arriving and that is not helping everyones humour...especially mine, since the place is haemorraging money like a water fall.
Every night I go home and write up the financial carnage in an exercise book, and then every morning I get up and go and spend some more.
Mercifully the winter has been kind and reasonably warm and life could be so much worse without the warmth ..for both me and the calves.
Eyes of blue seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet, but I have been too busy to both notice nor particularly care.
Married one turned up today,making purring noises in the back of her throat as she is wont to do when squirmy.
I took, I have to say, full advantage of the opportunity, with a quick lunch at the cafe and then a long hot shower at my place.
Festivities and proclivities followed soon after with reckless abandon...finally sent her home to her husband with marks all over her back. I have to say it did nothing to help assuage the yearning I feel for some long term company.
On Sunday took kid and godkid to Cirque du Soleil...it was a great show, but I still have a feeling of unease at being totally rorted by a bunch of French Canadian circus performers. I mean it can't be all that hard to gather together a dozen or so ex chinese olympians and have them skip a little while standing on top of each other...and $56 for 3 boxes of popcorn I still feel is a little excessive.

What is it about women sans babies?

Its been a good week, highlighted of course by finding $12.60 and five ballpoint pens down the back of the sofa. The bourse of course spat up some profit, and as is often the way kept on rising the minute I sold. I was reminded however of the words of one of the Vanderbuilts (I think) who when asked how he had garnered his great fortune replied "I always bought too late and sold too early."
The first of the new season calves arrived on Wednesday, all lanky, doe eyed and dewy nosed. My calf man, a gentle wreck of a creature, who seems to function better in this world than in the real...and the calves just love him..and the buyers just love the calves, calm and meek and gentle as their carer. We usually raise about 500 of them, which means manic pursuit of the magical 100kg liveweight over the next three months.
Some feral lowlife chucked rocks through one of my tenants window on Friday night,(which actually means one of my windows) oh, but how I wish I could catch them...the pretty muscles that I have spent years developing and which I use several times a week for swimming could then be used to force feed the rocks back into their various cavities..The frustrating part, I find, is the powerlessness and defilement of these anonymous rats, who operate under cover of darkness, and who wantonly destroy what they don't have the guts to acquire by their own self determination.
Today it was up in the hills, running with the godkid, the mud on the forest tracks was up to our knees,it had rained for a week, and godkid looked like she had been in a mud wrestling contest, covered as she was in streaks of the stuff.We ran into midwinter darkness, guided home down dark country roads by a bright midwinter moon. Why? Because she had spent the day earning money by painting kids faces at a birthday party.
I was thinking too, (while she was busily kicking the living bejeezus outta me) that if all the kids in this country had her self determination, her honesty and her work ethic, there would be no crime and no need for welfare. From there it would only be a short hop and a financial skip to being one one of the richest countries in the world.
Eyes of blue is still on the scene, albeit tenously. What is it about women who don't want to have babies?

eyes of blue and eyes of brown

The day finally arrives, we have talked and talked and both have built up a mental picture of the other...but now is the time, and the day, when we put the fantasy's aside and step into each others realities.
I havn't seen her in 5 years and my memory is hazy, I know that she is blonde and cute but there the memory ends. I find the place after an hours drive, and park my wagon in front of her house. The curtains move slightly to one side and I see her checking me out. I stride up the stairs, knock and open the door in one movement, and catch her momentarily off gaurd. I put one arm around her waist and lift her off the ground while closing the door with the other...she is both delighted and alarmed,and squeels with pleasure. She is absolutely knockout georgeous, 5'3" blonde hair,blue eyes, and little short black dress. She takes my breath away.
The afternoon slides into evening, she has cooked meat, I have bought wine. Her neighbour arrives drunk as a grenadier and proceeds to strip off her clothes..her body is delightful, but her raddled face belies her alcoholism, and the constant flow of tears gives lie to her uncontrolled depression. I am a qausi expert on the subject this week, having just read a book called "shoot the damn dog". Bought in a moment when I was thinking of Lisa in New York and wanting to understand what she was experiancing.
The evening burns through into night, and still we talk..I'm still not quite sure how I managed to stay the night in her bed, but someone was guiding my good fortune.
5 a.m though and I am having to drive my cold miserable arse the hour back home to work..the weather is pipe frozen cold, and the day is spent in withdrawal...not quite knowing what fits where.

***************************** ************

On Tuesday I make the same phone call that I have been making for the last twenty something years..it takes several attempts, she is now famous, and in charge of some 20,000 people, so others are wanting her time. She is though, expecting my call,it is after all her birthday, and we slide easily and seamlessly into the conversation of hearts that we have continued and shared together since we were not much more than kids.
"How's your neck?" I ask..."it's getting so wrinkly I have to wear a turtle neck" she laughs in reply.

"I see you did the ironman" she says "how'd it go" The event was four months ago but I am secretly thrilled that she has remembered and cared enough to look up the results. "swim bike and waddle as usual" I reply, and she laughs music.

"How's your mother?" she asks. A question still a little gilded with sadonic irony.My mother once threw her out of our house for not wearing a bra under her tee shirt...we left together and hitchiked hand in hand the 225 miles to her house where the question was never raised.
"She was biking down your way recently" I said "Oh, shit" she says, "I saw her photo in the paper and meant to cut it out for you, but I forgot"

"Wanna go to Portugal and lie on a beach?" I ask "yes" she says without hesitation.

******** ************************

Married one arrived on the weekend wanting to be humiliated and used...I happily obliged, although there was a small moment of conflict, since I am dipping a tentative toe into a new emotional pool...I explained the situation to married one, it only heightened her arousal...it's a funny old life, once you have garnered the financial and emotional tools to sit back and enjoy it.

Winter drags on though, and while the days have stretched a smidgeon summer still seems a long way off.

We'll probably roast a koala for lunch.

Sunday I was running the bush tracks above Fanny Hill.
It was as cold as charity, and the loggers had scoured the track with mud and slush, and stormwater sat cold and deep in the ruts left by their bulldozers.I tiptoe along trying not to fill my shoes with water.
The view is astounding, but not today. Today I am above the clouds with the rain slanting uphill to meet me.I am chilled to the bone, and there is an irritating trickle of cold water and sweat leaking down between my shoulder blades.
Every yard or so there is a footprint planted daintily in the clay, I try to lengthen my stride to match it, and do so for a time, before it gets away on me again. The footprints belong to my 15 year old Godkid, who has long since dissapeared into the fog.
This is our 5th time around here, it is 15 miles of brutal hill running, and we will do it 12 times over the next three months. Every time around here she gets stronger and faster and has improved some 17 minutes since the first time I introduced her to the course.
By the time I finish she is sitting in the wagon with the heater on reading a week old newspaper. We stop for cokes at the local dairy.
Back at my place I shower to get rid of the clay and the chill, and then we head off to the supermarket for buns and ham, and lettuce and tomatoes for lunch.Then it is back to her parents place for hot tea and soup made from a pumpkin that sat on the bench for two weeks.
The 9th of each month is when their mortgage is due, and the tension becomes palpible the closer that day approaches.

I have a date tomorrow.
Apparently, and I have no recollection of the conversation, butI once said to her that if ever she became single then she should call me. She did and she did.
She's as cute as a button, and my fantasy life has, quite frankly, been rampant as I await the day.
We'll probably roast a Koala for lunch.

'I' before 'E' except after 'C'

I have a mate, he is a lawyer, he has a three storied house and a paycheck that sidles up nowhere near close to his ability.
Because he is so highpowered, and so rich, he decided to put in a lift to save himself time.
$18,000 dollars later he was being whisked in a jiffy to the top of his three storied house...and everything was honky dory, and tickety boo.
Six months later his big fat guts popped the bottom two buttons off of his Pierre Cardon shirt...silk of course...So, to remedy this he, for $7500 dollars, bought a stair climbing exercise machine...the purpose of course, was to make himself sweat mightily.
"Why" I asked him, "didn't you just climb the stairs you already had? You could have saved yourself $25,500 and two buttons."

NOW...
When I was young I was taught that 'I' came before 'E' except after 'C'.
they didn't tell me about...
Science,Insouscient,sufficient,species,ancient,fancied,policies,conscience,prescient,
efficient, deficient,...or the double wammies of deficiencies,efficiencies and sufficiencies.

Nor did they tell me about...

veil,their,seize,weird,weight,sovereign,vein,kaleidoscope,neighbour,feisty,caffeine,
casein,codeine,protein,feign,seize,seizure,eight,deign,beige,forfeit,feint,freight,
geisha,rein,sleigh,surveillance,weigh,neither,leisure,heir,heinous,height,heist,
feisty,Rotweiller,seismic,stein,counterfeit,forfeit,surfeit,
foreign,reveille,sovereign,heifer,albeit,atheism,deify,deity,onomatapoeia....

The bastards.
...and I had my heart set on being a professional scrabble player too.