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.

The "Theory of Don"

I was thinking the other day about evolution...well,it was raining and there was nothing on TV.
I think what bought it on was the discovery of "IDA", the skeletal remains of a female primate which had apparently been sitting in some rich guys closet for the last 25 years...and was apparently possessing of some strikingly humanlike anatomical features...that he wasn't about to share with us.

The thought, that then occurred to me, was that evolution, can only be viewed by looking backwards. I mean, I'm sure that 47 million years ago Ida wasn't sitting out on her front porch, in a late Eocene afternoon patch of sunlight... munching fruits and berries and thinking to herself..
"you know, being bipedal would be a lot more efficient form of locomotion than this fused talus and prehensile tail that I seem to have inherited...but.. thank goodness evolution will take care of that, and will probably also sort out these few other biomechanical faults and flaws that I seem to have inherited...Hmmm.. you know, I might just pop over and see that new Australopithicus family that has just moved into the neighbourhood"

My opinion,.. and now gentle reader, remember that you have read it here first...is that we do not, and have not, evolved in the lineal progression of slithering along like a salamander to upright perambulation, that has been foisted upon us...I mean I read the other day where Dolphins actually went BACK into the water...now how dumb is that?... for all time missing the jigaboo antics of Robert Mugabe and that Ill Bong wot's his face who has his finger on the big red button marked 'NUKE'

In my opinion, all we have done really, is to have lurched mindlessly from one catastrophe to the next,searched frantically for our next decent feed,stressed, paniced and taken fright at all sorts of real and imagined dangers..and judiciously taken advantage of any series of opportunistic sequences that have presented themselves to us... In time we may have adapted, and god forbid, perhaps raised our pathetic existances above that of the masses, and become comfortable with ourselves...we may even have found a mate who has taken enough pity on us to have mated with us and bred offspring who have inherited enough genetic nous to have survived long enough to do the same.

I am reminded here of the differences between say..an Olympic Highjumper, and an Olympic shotputter...neither could do what the other does, do any great degree of accomplishment...now, say they continue down each path, both shot and jump for, say...oh, I don't know...45 million years... what sort of evolutionary pie bald misfit would you get? Or perhaps you could even add to the mix a computor geek and a Texan pie eating champion...Prehensile tails and opposable thumbs would actually seem tame by comparasion with what these dudes could morph into...I mean, come to think of it, will txting even remove the necessity for opposable thumbs, for example.

I am reminded here too, of the tree swingers from our distant past...why, and how, did they possibly learn to walk upright?...Well, maybe it was as simple as having to get across a creek to get to the Hagen Daz shop on the other side......what can I say...I'm a wimp,always have been, and despite spending my days swinging by vines...I would bloody well walk upright if it meant keeping my balls dry while crossing a creek....and just imagine how many times you would laid if every day you were the only one bringing home Hagen Daz from across the creek..pffftt and there you have it... suddenly all the kids can walk upright.

SEE...it is by adapting to the niche that you happen to find yourself in, that you then morph into something else...something more efficient, something stronger and sexually more desirable...after all attaining immortality is about getting getting yourself laid..If this niche is removed, then, the process becomes simple,millions of years of development reverses itself and you become extinct. Just like the VCR, or the Olympic typewriter...lose your desirability, get replaced by something stronger and more efficient...don't get yourself laid...and pfffft...you're consigned, for all eternity, to an historical dumpster.

No, it's only by looking backwards that one sees this evolutionary process or journey...So then the question I have to ask myself, (quietly too I might add, just in case someone sees me fondly cogitating my verbs)...do we actually, even today,know that we are,evolving?..and in what direction are we doing so....or even hope to do so...I mean for crissakes I don't even know what I'm having for lunch, let alone what I'll be doing in 45 million years...
Ahem,...and I pause here to add, that I believe there is anecdotal evidence that says women can even be domesticated... can actually be trained to carry out simple instructions and to also do things like household chores and shopping...Hard to believe I know, but this is an important process when it comes to evolving...it frees up men to focus on important stuff...like playing computor games and watching sports.

I use the word 'evolve'...only because I havn't yet invented a word that describes the opportunistic adaptation to the specialised niche that we find ourselves in...and that someone of the opposite sex who shares the same niche and interests also finds herself in...and who also wants to have sex with you,.. and who is fecund enough to conceive from your miserable attempt at copulation.
The "Theory of DON" springs to mind, but it is a working title only, until something more opportunistic comes along.

Hmmm... now I have forgotton already where this was taking me...and since it has just taken me half an hour to find the right button on the remote to remove the black line that appeared across the top of the TV screen...I'm not really sure that I have evolved as far down the evolutionary track that I really would have liked to have travelled...
...I still wouldn't mind getting laid however...even if not for the greater good of mankind and the survival of the species...but just because it feels funny.

I need to test this crap for faecal coloforms

God, life is so boring right now...I mean it must be, when today I got a vicarious thrill from getting the results of a Laboratory test for Faecal Coliform.

A process that we use for treating sewerage had managed to lower the FC's from 270,000 down to 2900...not quite drinkable but...OI!! what the F..are you still awake?...this stuff is both thrilling and riveting, so pay attention please.
Anyway quickly moving on..., before you expire from torpor...what this means,is that dairy effluent can be spread onto pasture without a 10 day withholding period because of the FC's...the cows won't eat the grass anyway...cos it tastes like...well..crap.
The effluent can also be spread close to water sources without ...without...zzzz...oh, all right you can all go to the toilet.

The market has been treating me well this week, everything that I have touched has shown some lustre...just as well I suppose, cos a few of those are a holding in General Motors..They havn't died yet..but I suspect that they might enter their death throes sometime in the next week...unless of course you wouldn't mind popping out and buying a new car...NOW, would be good... the surprising thing is that despite the trauma they are still ahead of what I paid for them...it also shows the human condition for hope and optimism beyond all...well, hope and optimism...cos I still have the bloody things...it's like watching a train wreck...and not getting the fuck out of the way.

Today I went and watched the god kids compete in the provincial duathlon champs..it was a beautiful day beside the great lake...Lib got second and her brother got third, which made her mother screech with parental delight...until I told her to shoosh...that people were looking.

Oh, and I forgot...on Sunday night I went to the movies...watched the new Star Trek movie...it was actually very good...and, I have to say.... that as Luke Skywalker flew over the corn fields of Idaho on his way to take over the Enterprise...I swear that I saw Kevin Costner building a baseball diamond...
...now I am off to test all this drivel for faecal coloforms

He left at free firty ona pus

It's been a tough week.
Last Friday 'free firty ona pus'was roaring, rolling, rollocking drunk. He was so drunk that he dropped his diary. It fell open at a page that had my name on it. It was a handwritten contract that sold my product to a man I didn't know,and delivered to a place that I knew nothing about...and certainly hadn't recieved any money for. A little discreet enquiry revealed that he had been lining his pockets at my expense. Needless to say it was his last day in my employ.
oh, how he ranted and threated and cajoled, to no avail I might add.He arrived at free firty ona pus...and I geuss he pretty much left the same way.

On Saturday morning I ran at some ungodly hour with Mike, then after showering, raced through to stand in the rain and wind to watch my kid play netball.
It was worse than being waterboarded.
Then after a bite of food, jumped on my bike with god kid, where she proceeded to reduce me to idiot savant...We caught up to some competitors in a bike race. I have never experianced such relief as to be slowed down by a bike race.
Sunday a.m. though, bought a modicum of revenge. Mike, Jon, God Kid and me ran a local 15 miler called the Fanny Hill (called that cos it fucks you). It is a run over nothing but hills and forest tracks and it is gutbusting tough.It was Libs first time over 15 miles, let alone something as tough as this. She went well for over an hour and then the sky fell on her head.
I have never seen such a look of eye sunken malice, when I glanced over at her, as we trawled up the last hill two miles from home.It had taken her 34 minutes out to the barn, but 45minutes back. Tough?...you have no idea how tough this kid is...she never looked like quitting.

My new yard manager starts tomorrow. He is an irrascible old scotsman named funnily enough 'Jock'. He has a scar from his chin to his navel, where surgeons removed what was left of his shrivelled up heart.He turned up to the interview, unpretentiously enough, in drawstring track pants and a flurescent shirt.
He is however a mechanical genious and I am looking forward to working with him. When I explained the details of the latest project I have been working on, he grasped the concept immediately and was able to offer some quite thoughtful insight.
What I am really looking forward to though is chucking him the phone, and getting out of this weather to somewhere that will warm my pituitary to a temperature that will actually kick start the freakin thing.

I'm thinking perhaps of Singapore for some shopping,(they have electronics to die for)Mediterranean Turkey for a little historical culture and sun, and then maybe New York for some awe, inspiration, and a ride on the subway.

It was worse than the battle of Actium.

I was in the urinal of one of the local pubs on saturday. Which is not such an unusual place to be while the local rugby team is playing (and winning) and all the tickets are sold.
A couple of porcelains across was a fellow who couldn't walk, talk or see properly so pissed was he. He was leaning against the wall, head resting on forearm, eyes closed...and well, urinating..he turned across to me and said "jeez this place stinks" I thought "thats curious,the last thing that you lose is your sense of smell"

I was there with an old school mate, who was lamenting the fact that he played for the same team, and in the same position, for twelve years in the days when they didn't get paid...now he's a real estate agent, in the middle of the biggest real estate burn since the great fire of London. His timing, one has to say, has been appalling.

Friday night, I had the married one over...she had decided that she wanted to stay the night...NOW, It wasn't really the 16 txts seeking affirmation and reassurance that pissed me off, it wasn't even the arriving two hours late, and it wasn't even the smashing of the wine glass with a drunken sweep of her arm...nup, the unbridaled passion made up for all that..things were actually going rather swimmingly, until, that is, she slipped into the arms of morpheus.
I was just drifting off myself, when someone started up a chainsaw next to me...jeez..it was louder than...than...the squawk of that Goose that got hit by the plane, before it crashed into the Hudson... I gave her a hopeful poke, she grunted, and carried on snoring, I poked her again...ditto. I read a book...and thought of Lisa and wished I had her ear plugs.(she has a train running under her apartment)
It's bloody funny looking back on it, but it wasn't so at the time...I kicked her out at 6a.m...and, now, of course, she is blaming me...I'm an insensitive degenerate pig, and wholly deserve neutering...and I am left thinking..."isn't it curious how the last thing that goes is your sense of smell."

What an incredible stroke of good fortune.

I was just thinking the other day about what incredible good fortune I have.

Some 800 years ago 17.2 million people started on a procreational journey that 35 generations later has resulted in ME, ME ..ME.. ME.
Not only did I arrive here relatively unscathed, but each one of my forebears managed to arrive unscathed as well...it was probably fortunate that for the first 700 years electrical sockets hadn't been invented, and for the first 150 years, neither had firearms.
Just as an example, in 1348 bubonic plague killed some 70% of the population of England. The population dropped from about 6 million people to 1.8 million. Not one, let me repeat that...NOT ONE of the of the 4.2 million people who died during that plague was one of my ancestors..and it only had to get ONE of them, just one, for me not to have been born.
Then in 1845 one million Irish people died from the potato famine. Not one of them was an ancestor of mine. Revolution, wars, famine, accident, disease, we escaped them all...as of course, if you are reading this, did you.
As you can, no doubt imagine, this is an unimaginable peice of good fortune.

Anyway, getting back to the story,...Then, every 22 years or so one of my ancestors not only had to find someone who would take pity, and have sex with them, but also had to have the incredibly poor judgement in achieving conception.
Then they had to survive childbirth, not succumb to disease, pestilence, famine, war, their own stupidy (it's amazing how many people this kills)

Just how fragile and tenuous this genetic string can be, was bought home to me, when in 1891 in a frontier town in New Zealand a midwife delivered of an unwed mother a son. The skill of this midwife lay in the fact that both mother and child survived the primitive conditions. 6 years later the mother, now wed to my great grandfather,had my paternal grandfather. In an ironic twist of good fortune,the midwife went on to become my great great grandmother on my mothers side...which of course wouldn't have happened if say she hadn't have washed her hands and had killed my other great grandmother.
I was thinking too that in the year 1206 (gee, that doesn't seem that long ago) when my 17.2 million ancestors started out making me, the average male orgasm was probably pretty much the same as it is today. That is some 17 seconds. Now 17 seconds multiplied by 8.6 million men is 144.5 million seconds.
Essentially what this means is that I started off as an orgasm that lasted some four and a half years.
It also means that I started out as enough semen to float the Titanic...eewww.

A Tale of two Harry's

The skirl of the pipes woke me ANZAC morning.
I would have thought that they would have done their practising at home, instead of leaving it until the last minute before they were due to march...and while they were some way from my window, their skirl was not.

I never knew Mad Harry, no reason why I should really. He died in a car accident in 1966.
During the first world war though, he won the Victoria cross, the highest of all the British armies decorations, and but for a line of barbwire that he couldn't get through, came within a whisker of winning another. Winning instead two distinguished service orders..or D.S.O. and bar to use the correct vernacular. The French gave him the Croix De Geurre.
It was the skirl of the pipes that reminded me of him.
The pipes are to comemorate the fallen, and the returned, soldiers of the Gallipoli campaign of 1915.

My Grandmothers brother Harry was one of them. He enlisted in the New Zealand army, and became what was known as a Mainbody man, which meant he was one of the first of the idiots to arrive on Gallipoli.In his favour however, they did tell him that it would be like going on holiday and that he would be back home by Christmas...He got there in April of 1915. Mad Harry was another.He was a shiftless wastrel from Tasmania, who to get out of working in a logging camp, enlisted in the Australian army.His life so sorely lacked purpose that he thought Gallipoli was an upwards career move.
So, there they were, both Harry's fighting for the Empire against the Turks, over a god forsaken stretch of dunes that you would have trouble raising spit over.
It is, however, perhaps one of those ironic quirks of fate that one Harry's sister ended up raising the other Harry's son.
See, Mad Harry, despite all his medals for bravery, was actually a coward.

After the war Mad Harry got married, nothing wrong with that, (except perhaps the shonky alliteration.) Then his wifes neice came to stay, nothing wrong with that either. It was the tupping of her that caused all the ensuing problems.
"What steps are you going to take?" said his wife. "Big bastards" said Mad Harry and promptly left the country,pregnant neice dutifully in tow. Wife got the cattle station, and stayed silent.
It was the other Harry's sister who answered the add in the paper to adopt Mad Harry's bastard.
Mad Harry for his part, married the, by now, ex wifes neice, and went home, sans child, to a life of reflected glory, considerable fortune and two more children. (legitimate ones of course)
For a time there was word that he would even be made Prime Minister of Australia. It was probably this story,stored away in the skeleton closet, which caused him to turn down the offer.
His son, for his part, never fell far from his fathers tree, and dutifully spent his life spreading his genetic pool as far afield as he possibly could. He unfortunately did not have a Gallipoli to redeem him, and he died of Emphysema a matter of days before the cancer would have got him.

I checked Mad Harry's six pages of biography on Wikipedia, and read the book about him. Not one mention was made of the abandoned son...who, incidentally,for better or worse, came to share my name.

The other Harry too managed to survive the carnage of Gallipoli and cheat the death trenches of France. He even managed not to get hit by any bullets or bombs, which was more than Mad Harry could do.
No, in a somewhat ironic paradox he managed to get to within a month of the end of the war only to be bitten by a mosquito while drinking warm beer in a downtown bar in Cairo. The resultant Malaria then killed him.
The moral here, I geuss, is to always check what they tell you about the holiday destinations that they are sending you to.
He is buried in the grassy calm haven of the War Memorial Cemetary in Cairo.
Cairo, a pox of a place, where even today you can still get a reasonable choice of pain filled death from Malaria, Typhoid or Cholera,caught while drinking warm beer in a downtown bar.

The day before ANZAC Day my god kid was competing in the New Zealand Secondary Schools Triathlon...Lord, where was that little fat kid,who couldn't jump off the ground. She swam, Biked and ran alongside the best athletes in the country and she never gave them an inch all day...and who I have since watch grow up into such a delightful young lady. To come within a heartbeat of taking a medal was all that I could have asked of her. I was so proud I had to turn away and pretend I had dust in my eyes.

and the moon shone magical.

Power mainfests itself in many different ways, and power exchange I find just as quirky.
She txts me Saturday morning and suggests we meet that night.
It's not a complete surprise to me, her marriage is in trouble, and so I guess she is dipping her toe in the first pools of psychological freedom, even though she hasn't reached that point legally...either that or it's because the moon is new.
I tell her what to wear, because I like doing that, and she does so because likes to acquiesce.
We meet in the carpark of a bar midway between between where each of us lives, and we park in a space next to each other.
She has on a short black dress, with a zip that runs down the length of it. It is tempting not to strip her naked in the dark recesses of the carpark.
She has on sheer stockings, but no bra and no panties..I know this because I check.
I don't even speak to her, before grabbing a handful of her hair and bending her head backwards so that my breath enters her mouth. Then I run my tongue down her neck, and bite the hollow point where the muscles of her neck join her shoulder...she groans with pleasure, as I take ownership of her and power from her.
I don't hold her hand as we walk, I hold her wrist...it gives her comfort but not intimacy, and is a reminder that her power is being slowly removed.
Inside the bar, the music is so loud, that the resonance vibrates through my heart and rattles off my ribcage..all the band wear ear plugs, but none of the crowd...
The lead singer has a great smile and a level of showmanship that makes up for his lack of ability. It's not that he can't sing, it's just that he has to fake his way through some of the high notes.
I make her sit on a high stool, facing the room, it makes her skirt ride up, so that the top of her stockings show. The men ogle her unashamedly. She squirms when I tell her to spread her legs. She does so behind the protection of her cardigan. She gulps a glass of Chardonnay like it was the last one in the bar.
We talk easily for two hours, a lot of it revolving around sex and me telling what I am going to do to her later. I talk dirty to her, and when I hit a raw spot she makes a noise in the back of her throat like a growl...it is so visceral that she doesn't even know that she is doing it...and it thrills me inwardly to know that I have this power over her.
In the carpark later I am busily reducing her to a puddle, when a man comes over and asks if I want to make 50 bucks... I am so deeply into the moment that I think that he wants what I am having.
I have to shake myself back to reality and ask him what he has in mind. It's almost dissapointing to find that he and his mates are from out of town and that all they want is a ride back to where they are staying.
I say "no problem" and collect $65 bucks off them before their drunken minds register that they have parted with the money.
Once we are underway they immediately start a drunken sexual patter aimed towards her, she loves the attention...I lean towards her and suggest that I give her to them, and she again emits that visceral groan of pleasure, and her hands unconciously move between her legs. I check as well, and she has an absolute puddle down there.
I find where they are staying and there are fervent invitations to come inside...or more to the point for her to come inside...I laugh them off, and say that I will rent her to them but that selling her is not an option, and that anyway I have to get her home to her husband...she is by now gurgling with salacious sexual anticipation about what I am going to have her do next.
My plans however do not include sharing her with a bunch of drunks, although taking the rest of their money, I have to admit, is a passing and tempting thought.
I stop in a deserted industrial carpark , and in the backseat of her van...I bite her shoulders, neck and cheeks, not caring that she has to take the marks home.
I push her skirt up around her waist, and tell her what a dirty little whore she is for wanting all those men to use her....and when I thrust into her, I tell her that as a punishment she is not allowed to come until I tell her that she can...she acquiesces and then grunts with the effort of trying to obey. I have one hand around her throat, one on the seat for balance, while all the while I am pouring a torrent of sexual vissicitude into her ear.
She starts to sweat with the effort of trying not to come, while all the while emitting the gurgles and growls from deep in her throat that tells me she is not too far from losing conciousness.
With several deep thrusts I ejaculate into her, and then in my deepest stenorian voice I tell her to come...Bloody hell, It was like releasing a bronco...she just howled... gutteral, visceral and deeply primeval. Her face contorted purple, her shoulders hunched while the rest of her writhed and twitched as the waves of orgasm engulfed her... she comes again and again and again.
..and all the while the moon shone magical over her.

Happy Birthday Pop.

My sister was living in Hobbiton long before they put a statue of Gollum in the main street.
Today we sat in a cafe across the street from the statue and watched the tourists take photo's of each other. Their delight was infectious, but it didn't stop us quietly taking the piss out of them.
My sister told me that the movie producers didn't like the shape of the apple trees at Hobbiton, so they got some plum trees, stripped the leaves off the apple trees, and reattached them to the plum trees...she didn't know what happened to the plum leaves.

We were celebrating my fathers 80th birthday today, and even though he died 7 years ago we still toasted his good health.

Today I got papers from city hall approving the new Indian restaurant for Anna from Bangladesh.
I am excited for her...and I am so looking forward to having to walk the 17 seconds overland to get my butter chicken...now that is what I call convenience food.

This evening I managed to get out for a jog on the golfcourse, but darkness is now falling so quickly that I have to step lightly to get out of its way.
The leaves of the Planes trees that border the old race course, crackle underfoot but by the time I run over the top of them it is too dark to see.

Never try to shop during Easter

Easter holidays are one way of finding out who the disorganised are...I should know, I'm one of them.
After running out of bread on Good Friday I got to the dairy to find someone slightly less disorganised than I standing there with the last two packets of buns...the bread, of course, being long gone.
There was only one thing left to do...yep...go bludge off friends. The first lot however were away, so I carried on to the second lot. They were more disorganised than I was.
He chopped up potatoes and fried them with butter and salt, while she made scones, so heavy on the flour you could have used them as ship anchors...the potatoes I have to say were delicious, the scones rather less so, although they did stay with me for quite some time.
The conversation, as always was pithy and peppered, as he attempted to put a windowsill into place immediately after she had judiciously swept up an important little peice of specially shaped wood and put it down the waste disposal.
We still dine out on the time he was painting the roof, and to keep his balance had tied one end of a rope around his waist, and the other end to the bumper of the car.
She of course decided to go to town.
The first he knew of this was when she dragged him screaming up one side of the roof.
He did manage to get himself untied while going down the other side, but not before he tumbled off the edge.
The guttering did however catch his new jersey in time to prevent him plummeting to the ground, and then slowly bent downwards as it lowered him serenely.
It did not however stop him flinging a tirade of obscenities towards his long disappeared spouse, and which he continued unabated for a good week or more.
OR the time they again ran out of bread, so he decided to cook some rice...he boiled the bejeezuz out of it, but it was still as hard as hell when he ate it...when she got home he complained long and bitter and loud, until she pointed out that it was grass seed he was eating.

Lettuce, forkhoists and brand new shoes.

Coffee and Baileys is a great way to finish the day...well the upright part of it anyway. I read where the Baileys company uses the milk from 40,000 cows to make their liquor. That's a lot of cows, and that's 200,000 gallons of milk a day that they make into their fine product..
The days are growing shorter and colder, and for the first time in my life I find that I am grieving the loss of summer.
The recession is treating me well though, I am having to take on more workers, and the days are filled with work. The workers are all Tongan, courtesy of 'free firty ona pus'.. I came back to the factory this afternoon to find my forkhoist in peices on the floor and a Tongan, who I have never seen before, polishing its innards...they all have varying degrees of ignorance of the mother tongue, but they toil with a will, and they are thankful to be employed in their new country. I am equally as thankful to have them here.
My kid came over tonight, we piled our plates with whole leaves of lettuce, halved tomatoes, boiled eggs, big chunks of colby cheese, big cold crisp carrots that snapped with a spit of juice when you bit into them, tart green olives (although the kid doesn't like these) savory sausages fried till they split open...it was a feast fit for a king...she's having a growth spurt, so is hungry as a horse all the day.
The share market coughed me up 12k of profit the other day, the same day as I got a five page letter from the IRD....the auditor, he sounded a delightful little chap, and I can barely wait for him to violate my privacy...actually I shouldn't really be too antsy, it has been 20 years since they last paid me a visit.
I took my god kid out this afternoon and bought her some new running shoes, bought myself some too. After thrashing me on Saturday she said in a quiet voice "my feet are a bit sore". She had blisters covering half the balls of both her feet. Second hand shoes that are two sizes too big will do that to you....Tough kid..Lord help me this Saturday.

A taste of Ferric.

Libby and I did 1 k's today..that no mans land of purple lipped grimace. 1k's... a distance handed down to us by the French, and which is a one 40 thousandth part of the circumference of the earth, and lies partway between a half mile and a mile...
Libby is my Goddaughter, the eldest child of my friends who were borrowing when they should have been repaying, and as her parents continue to sink into a morass of financial distress, so I have been requested to take over her triathlon training.
It hasn't been an been an especially smooth road. For Libby, I held no consequence. Just an old fat man who showed up occaisionally, drank tea with her folks and then left again. Then one day Ant and I took her out for a bike ride, we did 55 miles through the hills, it took every ounce of what she possessed to stay with us... the scales fell from her eyes.
The Ironman followed, and while it crucified me, and made my feet bleed...I didn't let it cow me, and it showed Libby that I could walk the walk. Her demeanour towards me changed completely. I was no longer someone who merely wrote a schedule and told her to hurt herself. I was someone who could hurt as she did, and who could metaphorically bleed and suffer as she did.
So today, for the first time in some 15 years I did 1 k's. Three of them and Lord did they hurt. My hamstrings were twanging like a string orchestra at the Phil. Libby was 12, 8 and 6 seconds ahead...and with a few more of them under my belt I think that I could beat her..meantime, while she has all the growing pains and tongue tied angst of a typical teenager..she expresses herself beautifully when she runs... and she gives no quarter.. asked, nor given, between us ...she is as determined to put me to the sword as I am of her.
So there she was, my god daughter, running hard and fast...running like a guy, pony tail bobbing away in front of me...and I couldn't keep with her.
She is only 15, but mark my words, one day she will win the Ironman.

Just after this weekend in far off New York, Lisa turns 28.
I continue to vicariously watch her life unfold with the fascination of a slowmotion train wreck. She obsessively writes, for which I am grateful And I find myself as much fascinated by the cafes that she frequents and food that she eats, the tastes that she descibes, as I am by the carnage of her somewhat frequent romances.
One day in New York perhaps I will have the good fortune to meet her...even if only to drink bubble tea, meantime though, I am being flayed alive by a 15 year old kid with a grim and dour set to her. I admire that immensely.
Tonight it is with some sadness that I bid adieu to summertime...I am not a great fan of winter, it depresses me and makes my shrinking pineal squeel with anguish. A month wandering New York would not be such a bad thing I'm sure.

On Shakespeare and Butter Chicken

Anna came from Auckland at midday today, I don't when she came from Bangladesh.
The world economy is off to hell in a handbasket and she wants to open an Indian restaurant in my building. Her timing is impeccable, her courage unassailable.
She bought plans, drawn up by her daughter the architect. I bought my builder.
She bought baskets of Indian and Thai food for me to try.
I took her and her daughter to lunch at the cafe opposite the golf course, where over tea and a scrap of A4 we outlined the terms of a contract.
It was straightforward and easy, and the salad I had for lunch was delicious.

I was wondering today how Shakespeare would have coped with Blogging...apparently his spelling was appalling.
I was also wondering about Glory Holes.
Not the hole persay, nor the function...but the fact that someone had bent his intellect to the formation of the word.
I mean, after a lifetime of work Henri Bic at least gave his name to the ballpoint pen...other great men have perhaps contributed one maybe two words to the English language, and recieved recognition for the doing so.
The point of all this, is that Shakespeare, and I'll type this slowly so that you don't miss it...contributed 2035 words to the English language.
He put 'UN' in front of words so that their meanings were made opposite...like unkind, unlock, untie...sheesh I wish I had thought of that.
And when you say
"he vanished into thin air"
"you have to be cruel to be kind"
"I waited with bated breath"
"he's my flesh and blood"
"it's a forgone conclusion"
"he was a tower of strength"
"To thine own self be true"
Or if you use the words critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, horrid, vast, hereditary, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, well-read, zany, barefaced, eventful, or excellent...Well, you are actually qouting Shakespeare...now aren't you the clever one.

Meanwhile, tonight, thanks to Anna, I was in Butter Chicken heaven.

11 days 6 hours to go.

I woke this morning to find the earth was breathing normally for the first time in a while.
It was sunny, it was cool, and the wind had gone. It was 6a.m, too early to get up, so I read for a time. Bill Bryson's study of Shakespeare. I like the way he tells me stuff that I didn't know, with a gentle humour, and with words that I can understand.
At 7.30 am I swing my legs out of bed, and am immediatly reminded of the 22.2 miles that I ran yesterday. My thighs hurt, and the tape to hold my right knee stable pinches.
I grit my teeth and peel it off in one long tear.
My knee has held up, and for that I am grateful.
I put the billy on to make tea, and then settle into the day.
Check the emails, have a shower, pull on a pair of black shorts and a grey tee shirt.
I settle back on the sofa with my bare feet up on the hardwood chest that I put there to put my bare feet up on.
I am writing a letter to my friend Julia who lives in Melbourne...I don't send her emails, I write her letters, not many I have to admit, but I like to take the time to touch her with my words and to let her know how special she is to me.
Julia, you see, was my first girlfriend. I was 14 and she 13... It was a lifetime ago, but what we had back then still sparkles like magic between us.
Meanwhile I have to go and stand on the cold concrete in the bathroom, cos my feet hurt. Yesterday was Sunday, and my last long run.
Mike came with me on the bike, and while I suffered just the same, my time was 14 minutes quicker than last week.. I start to feel a little gob of self assurance about this race.
Tonight I go swimming with my kid, I go through my sets with ease. Despite the leg fatigue I'm getting faster.
I have 11 days and 6 hours to go.

Gropey, Frolic, Squalid and the gnomes of the MogoDron.

I was thinking about that part of the brain which deals with failure the other day.
I don't know about other peoples brains, but in my brain there is a committe of gnomes who run the psychosomatic dept. They deal with my neurosis, my stress levels, inner demons, that sort of thing.
Right now, and for quite some time now, there has been an ongoing battle between them, and my will, over the rights to my success or failure.
I picture them sitting around up there thinking of ways that will make me give up on this quest for athletic endeavour.
"I know" says one, whose name is Gropey, "lets make his nose bleed"...and so they do.
"well that didn't work" says another whose name is Frolic. "lets turn him into a dithering idiot, and then block up his nose with snot"
"Hey lookit that" says another whose name escapes me cos now I'm a dithering idiot, "He doesn't even care that half the lightbulbs in the house have blown, and the dishes aren't done....eeewww and what's that he's eating"
"I know" says another called Sqaulid"lets peal half the skin off his arse" "nah" says another "we tried that before Christmas, lets peal it off his penis"..."WooHoo.. now that got his attention"
And then came MogoDron "well boys" he drawls "what I suggest"he says, pausing to put his feet up on the desk, while spreading his elbows and clasping his hands behind his head, "is that we keep those lascivious and salacious thoughts that he has, but halve his ejaculate...we can then use the spare protein to make his nails hurt"
So they do.
Now with one long run and two long bikes to go, I am teetering along a physical tightrope. I have lost 12lbs, my right knee hurts, I am physically brittle and psychologicly fragile, but I am almost there. I take an almost perverse pleasure in the amount of punishment I can inflict upon myself. In two days time though I can start to be nice to myself again. I am looking forward to that. I will have beaten the gnomes.

That puddle, my dear, used to be me.

Mike was away so I cajoled my kid into biking with me through my first 20 miler. The most she'd previously pedaled was the 3 miles to school and back.

It wasn't altruism, the thrill of the challenge, nor threats of dire consequence that got her out there either....Nope, it was 20 bucks folding cash...well, at least the squirt didn't make me pay in advance.

So at 9 a.m. on Sunday off we trot from the ex's place.

I had managed to procrastinate a good hour away in purposless dither, and now the heat was starting to bite.

A flat 5 miles was followed by 5 miles of hill up to Glen Massey, and the kid was finding that she was having to earn her money.

Time and again I lose sight of her, and half expect to find her sitting under a tree somewhere...but then there she would be, waiting on my side of the road, water bottle in hand...the comfort of that is immense.

The heat climbs into the 80's and then into the 90's as I plod along.

I cross the road to run briefly in the scant shade of the willows that line the banks of the Firewood creek. The tip of my tongue starts to burn, like it does on the bike.

I tip water in, and it then leaks out. I feel like an old bucket. After two hours my toes blister, my bum chaffs and my resolve narrows and then shrivels to the size of a raisin..

At 17 miles I send the kid on ahead to the dairy. At 18 miles and with 2 miles to go, she stands outside the shop with two cold cans of coke. I rip the tab off one and swill it in one gulp, it bubbles and froths and I spew it back up...my kid watches aghast at the raw bodily functions of her father. I'm just thankful I'm not standing on Mrs Singh's linoleum. The second one stays down. The last two miles, I have to say, were a freakin' nightmare. Like boiling a frog. I was burnt, I was chaffed, I was tired beyond belief, my feet hurt, and Voldemort and the deatheaters were pattering along behind me...but finally I was done. I lay cooling on the soft sanctuary of the ex wifes sofa, drank two beers and then went home to sleep the afternoon away.

Now, I have never tasted Lambic beer even though I have been to Belgium and have stood on the great folly that was Waterloo, which is just down the road from where the beer is made. On Sunday 18th June 1815, some 40,000 Lambic drinkers were put to the metaphorical sword...although a fair number were blown to smithereens by being fired at point blank with cannon....victims of a combination of outdated battle tactics and misguided heroism.
French soldiers, on Napoleans orders, would form into squares of 100 or so men, muskets and bayonets bristling they formed a formidable barrier to both charging soldiers and cavalry. Wellington however, didn'nt send either men or horses...he rolled up cannons, pointed them at the squares of men, and ordered them to surrender...they wouldn't...chivalry and commonsense having apparently traded places ...the carnage that followed the lighting of the tapers was a sickening sight to behold....and made for one of the bloodiest battles of recent recorded history.
The ghosts of decapitated soldiers still stalk the escarpement at Mont St Jean, and to walk its field is an eerie experiance still. After 193 years people who visit, still cry there.
Lisa drinks Lambic, and on Sunday as I studied its providence and manufacture I tried to conjure the taste....of both.

I now know how toast feels

There is something about making hay.
It's a preparation and a planning for hard times and inclement weather to come.
A laying aside.
It's the value and pleasure that fatigue,sweat, sun, toil, comradeship and laughter can give you on a hot summers day.
That, and I like the smell.
So on Sunday we made hay. It was good hay too. Man sized bales, that were tightly packed and strung tight with green twine. A testament to the honesty and integrity of the man who cut and baled the grass.
It was a pleasure to grunt with the effort of lifting them.
We started at 7am, there were five of us. The air was still cool and the humidity was in the teens. We worked through until 3p.m when it wasn't.
The barn was full with laughter, the smell of beer and fresh hay when I left them. They had money in their pockets and I had hay...one of the greatest exchanges I think that I have made.
I then meet Mike, for the first of my long runs. 15 miles.
I havn't got a lot of time left before this race, but I have had pretty much continous improvement, and only one day off with a cold. My weight has dropped 10lbs and I can maybe wring another couple out of myself before March 7th.
My legs though are a dead weight from the bike with Ant the day before. For the first time, I have made his eyes sink back in his head with fatigue, and made his normally calm facade taut with the effort of climbing the hills... I am biking stronger than he is.
Today however I am paying the price...I learn later that he was too tired to do more than a short ride...while I am out suffering through 15 of foot.
Mike chatters away, he can do this because he is on his mountain bike...while I haul myself up the road through the mile bush grunting monosyllabic replies. I have loaded him up with toilet paper, water bottles, a change of clothes, vaseline, money and cellphone...even though there are no shops or coverage where we are going. I am slow...real slow, but the hours and hours on the bike have given me a residual strength that I find heartening.
The humidity is uncomfortable, and soon I have run out of space to wipe the sweat off myself, so with the bottom of my wet singlet I just spread into a sheen around my face.
At half way I wring it out, and put on a dry one. It is soon as wet as the first.
It's an interesting feeling reducing yourself to a pile of soggy ash in a fraction of the time that it takes upon a bike. In 2hours 20 I am back on Mikes doorstep swilling tea with him. I Didn't use the toilet paper, money or cellphone...but felt security in having Mike and they with me.
I have to say though, that after today, I now know how toast feels.

ahhh swear to gawd bruffa, dis a great jop.

Now I don't profess to be an expert on the subject, but the market belched me up some ambergris this week. I find much of my self worth revolves around making the right decisions, as I geuss it does everyones.
Last Thursday some bank shares that I had bought for $16.00 had an attack of the frenzies and despite the woes of the world lurched themselves upwards to $18.70 where upon I sold them....not all of them mind, I'm not that clever. They then fell out of bed and dropped back to $15.30 whereupon I bought them back again....the minute the money had left my bank account they dropped again to $14.95...I know, I know...it's a conspiracy, but there you have it...and there had I, $2600 of profit. I then also discovered that the exact same bank pays you 3.5% interest if you lend them your money, from which the government then takes 33%in in tax...believing as they do that if you earn interest then it is unearned money and they deserve a third of it. However, if you buy shares in the bank, then they pay you a 10% dividend, and they also pay the tax on it. Why am I telling you this...well it's simple...only two lost souls read my blog last week,...and they could have just accidently tripped the counter in their rush to get somewhere else... and the week before that, nobody....so the cat is hardly going to be let out of the bag anytime soon. It also goes to show that if you own the bank, you are a bloody sight more important than if you are a customer....oh, you and the rest of the world already knew that huh?
Two weeks ago I bought some cattle, mangy looking things they were, all forlorn, dapple bedraggled and covered in shit from being on the bottom of the truck on a long haul. I paid $187.50 each for them. Bought them home, washed them down, dried them off, gave them a drink and a decent feed, cleaned up the spare room, cos the neighbours were complaining about the lowing... and took them back to whence I had bought them, they fetched $300. I tell you it beats the bejesus outta working....the moral?...if you look and feel like shit, then they are going to put you on the lower deck of the truck, thereby making it a self fulfilling prophecy.
The P.A. left last week, no explanation...just left...half the world is off to hell in a handbasket, and P.A couldn't cope with whatever attack of the vapours had come visit her. There was prolly a time when I would have bought into whatever it was that was ailing her...taken her burden, and staggered around with it like an imbicile...those days have mercifully gone.
The Tongan however, now has half of Tonga working for me (or him...I'm not quite sure which), and a few of the outlying islands as well...there are women sitting under trees, children running everywhere, men in big hats...it's like a pentecostal revival meeting out there. How the work gets done is not my concern...that they are happy and doing it in their own way is fine by me...and it just proves you don't have be able to say "three thirty" to get ahead in this world.

Rolled, bowled and arseholed.

Saturday morning, and I have decided on an addition to the course that I normally ride. So, instead of heading West I head South. It's gentle and flat and green, and after 10 miles in half an hour, I turn right cross the river, and start to head west towards the beach. By this time it is after 10a.m and the temperature is starting to rise, but the race will be at this time, so I might as well get used to it. It is not as yet unpleasant, but as I hit what they call 'the divi' which is the first range of hills between the plains and the coast, I get a taste of the rest of the day.
It is fun going down the other side. The corners are tight and steep, and I am going fast enough to hold my own amongst a line of cars, I like that I have the skill to do this, it makes me feel important and slightly superior.
After another 10 miles, I turn right again, and head North. This is deliverance country, and has only recently been sealed. I havn't been through here in years, and never on a bike. It is beautiful, untramelled, the tide is in and there is a breeze blowing off the upper reaches of the harbour. People stop what they are doing, which is mostly sitting, and look vacantly at the loon on the bike.
At 35 miles, I reach the crossroads and turn a mile out of my way to go to the shop at the hotsprings...it is touch and go, but I don't think I have enough water to get me to the school tap at Pukekawa. Mrs Singh calls me "you stupid man", as she piles ice into my drink bottle until it overflows onto her linolium floor...the same floor she had just finished admonishing a man for dripping upon. 15 years ago when she first came here she was a customer of mine...now she smiles and gossips and gouges me $3.50 for a can of coke. It is just after midday by the clock on her wall.
5 miles further on and I am trawling up the hill to the land that my great grandfather bought in 1905, and to which his name is still attached. It still bares the brush strokes of the toil that he painted upon it...bamboo windbreaks, and camellias which over the years have crossbred into variagations of a hundred hues and patterns. I realise with a start, that I am older now than he was when he died in 1912. At the top of the hill, Mrs Singhs water is already warm.
At 50 miles come the three roads to temptation. The westerly is blowing hot, and the tip of my tongue is burning...the road is melting about me, and it makes popping sounds like I'm riding over bubble wrap. I've given up trying to count the hills, and have taken up trying to survive them.
At the top of a god forsaken hill on a nameless stretch of road, there is a small cemetary. In the middle, amongst the graves, is a headstone with a picture of Margaret upon it. She is young and beautiful and dead. One day I will stop to discover her story. Right now though I feel sad that while her beauty lives on her life has been extinguished.
Now, who would call a farm 'Silverado Lodge'...my swarthy mate is who, and it is always with a sense of relief that I see the sign with his name on it. It means the hills are almost gone, and soon I can rest with my figurative toes in the river at Mercer. It is 60 miles, and the skin is starting to peal off the tops of my ears, and I'm covered in a crystaline film of salt.
I read the business section from a discarded newspaper, as I sip tea, swill pepsi, and wait for my sandwich to arrive. The euphoria of Barracks inaugeration has done little to stem the haemorrhaging of the Dow.
I don't want to go, but have run out of excuses to stay. The on ramp to the expressway is steep and painful, and heralds a headwind as I descend down the other side. Come now the hard parts.
Now, in a province called Gaujing in Western China, there is a small wizened woman who works 12 hour shifts in a factory sweat shop. She is bitter and sad at the relentless grind that she has to endure on a daily basis...I'm making this up, but I'm sure a woman just like her made my bike shorts.
In part repayment to the Western world for her straightened circumstance, she has made a rough edge to her stitching. What does she care, that it, now, wet with sweat and toil and salt, starts to sandpaper the skin off my butt.
Finally I'm off the washer board that is the expressway, every bone I have feels rattled, across the river, and down the old highway, my legs feel strong, but everything else is hurting...there is almost orgasmic relief in lifting my butt off the bikeseat. I can see now why cyclists take drugs.
The sun is lowering towards the western hills and I'm into the final 10 miles. I enter almost surreally into a twilight zone, between feeling like I could bike forever, and imminent collapse...the wind is relentless, my water is gone, and I am muttering obscenities.
After 7 hours and 20 minutes I am done. 120 miles of hills, wind and heat. If I wasn't so beaten up I would probably feel elated...the Ironman will not be anywhere near as hard as this.

A Covenant with the Apocalypse

First thing every morning I find myself checking Americas financial and emotional pulse on an almost daily basis...it gives me a sense of longing, for all that I am, and can ever be, is a bystander to this great financial and social engine.
The first individual I always check is a girl who lives in Brooklyn...I'll call her Lisa...she is the powerless flotsam and jetsom of the American whirlpool, the first defenceless level of human pain for all that happens financially, and the one they take aim at when something foes wrong. She is gifted, immensely so, but doesn't always realise it. She is heart stoppingly beautiful, in a Carrie Fisher sort of way, with a vulnerability and honesty that is brutal, and worn on her sleeve like a badge. She is world famous...must be, I know about her, and I live on the other side of the planet...although she thinks that she is anonymous and insignificant. She is the person who is laid off from her job with no notice, which I as an employer find appalling, and one of the great travesties of the American system. Are the controllers of the peoples wellbeing so stupid that they cannot forsee that you don't save a company by firing a $13 hour worker. These jackals aside, I find it fascinating, and almost addictive, to vicariously watch her life unfold.
The second person I check upon is a 78 year old man who lives in Omaha, Nebraska.He is a savant, a mathematical genius, a man who is driven to a level of perfection that has rarely been attained by anyone in this worlds history. I worked it out once that he has made 95 cents every second, of every minute, of every hour..ya de ya, since Jesus was born. With this last crisis it is prolly down to a paltry 45 cents, but I'm sure that he will recover. He owns a company called Berkshire Hathaway, and it is one of my aims to take advantage of this world financial crisis and own just one of his companies shares...so that one day I can attend his companies Annual general meeting, and of course to meet him. The only problem is that the cost of one of his shares, despite being discountedby 40%, would still buy a medium size house where I live, and that always creates some conflict.
The third person I visit is a tall skinny fellow named David Letterman, who last thing at night, tells me what is happening in New York city...where, if I didn't live here, then I would try to live there...
My fourth person is Barrack Obama, although I don't visit him. A man whose soaring oratory, and gentle demeanour, seems to come from an honesty of 'self' that we should all aspire to...and whose fulfillment of promise fills me with such pride for the people of America who did the right thing by electing him. I didn't know however, before I tried to do it, that a foreigner cannot contribute to an American politicians campaign fund.
Meanwhile I continue to focus on this accursed Ironman, an event which before it has even started has stolen 10lbs from my midriff...and given me a life so narrow it feels as if I am living in an infomercial. I continue to pare my life into slivers, shaving the peripheries, and do nothing that doesn't contribute to progress towards this race. I loathe being this disciplined, it hurts, and it savages my Anglo Saxon Protestant work ethic, as I suffer the anxieties of not being a whole person. I have now six weeks to go before I fulfill my side of the covenant that I have entered into...I suspect that it will be a covenent with the apocalypse.

I'd rather be fishing.

It is 8.30am and I have both hands full, front door keys in one hand, bike in the other. Pull the door shut, pocket the keys, and in one movement am clipped in and pedaling. There is a chill in the air which makes a pleasant change from the humidity of yesterday.
Mike has decided that he wants to bike with me today, but then in an attack of anal has decided to leave 15 minutes before me. I'm a little ticked, so set to work with a will. A slight tail wind helps my cause.
He has told me that he will turn around at 20 miles, and with 100 yards to go I blast past him doing 25 mph. He nearly dies of fright, and his head spins like a weather vane. He can't comprehend that I have caught him 15 minutes in 20 miles. I wave him goodbye, having ridden together for a good 75 yards.
The hills are no less brutal but I get to Mercer 15 minutes quicker than Wednesday, where I settle in to Pepsi, and Tea and a Ham sandwhich. A woman with a tight maroon top approaches, I look directly into her eyes, and her nipples become so hard that she looks like she is stealing the salt and pepper shakers. We both smile at each other as she passes. An old woman tries to take my drink bottle, she asks if she can borrow the sauce.
Back on the road, I find the morning chill was caused by a sou' wester, which is now blowing directly into my face. There is only one thing that makes you grovel quite so badly as a head wind, and that is a head wind after 54 miles of hills. I suffer a slow desication while I twist in the wind like a gibbet.
I stand in front of my front door after 94 miles, bike in one hand and keys in the other.

Came a Hot Wednesday

The parameters of life continue to shrink. Pain and fatigue will do that.
Everything that is extraneous has been culled in the name of focus.
Wednesday was a great day. Didn't get on the bike until 10am, by which time it was getting uncomfortable hot... my legs were tired from Sunday, so I was falling behind at every mark...but I made the Pukekawa school with two swigs of water left so for the first time I carried on. Made Mercer down on time but in resonable shape. On the way home had a slight tail wind...so, tanked up on sugar from the Pepsi, I started to stomp. Managed 20 mph for the 30 miles back home, and ended up 15 minutes quicker than Sunday.
Thursday night, midnight, couldn't find my cell. Rang the number, couldn't hear it. Took the phone to the front door, pressed redial, then scuttled down to the wagon to see if it was there. Couldn't find it.
Went to bed. In the morning reached over, and there was the cell...brain had turned to mush with fatigue and I wonder who I was ringing at midnight.
Friday night I went to the pools, then got some groceries, and then called into see some friends who were borrowing when they should have been repaying. I took a couple of bottles of wine, which he gulped and swilled without tasting and then emptied into the toilet at 2am. Financial pressure will do that.
Mike got me out the door this morning, which I'm not sure that I could have done on my own.
The humidity was 100%, my legs were concrete, and I had to keep leaning forward so that my momentum would continue in a forward direction. I was never so thankful to stop, my legs were chaffed raw, and Mike was appallingly cheerful at my discomfort.
I know this pain will pass, It is merely willpower trying to overcome the preservation of status quo...but living through it is a trial.