The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

It was Monday 23rd March that everything started shutting down in Oz. By the following week, all my part time jobs had gone and I suddenly had nothing to do and all day to do it

But because the places that I usually lurk when not working are cafes, libraries, museums and the zoo and they were all included in the giant shut down, that meant that I had to find new ways to spend all this spare time

( Lurking around the Lair )

In this bit of the world June 30th is the equivalent of Goblin New Year’s Eve. A time to make grand plans for the future, to get finances and savings sorted and all that sort of boring stuff. Due to a very ancient and almost anal habit of keeping a little black book to record every single silver sickle spent, keeping the money monsters under control has never been particularly difficult. I decided to go the whole hog last June and to switch over from using a normal calendar diary to a bright shiny new 2014/2015 Financial Year diary starting on Tuesday 1st July 2014.
Tonight it finally gets laid to rest while the promise of a bright shiny clean slate beckons.

( Strange Days )

On the eve of Camp Nano, it is amusing to think that Nanowrimo proved to be the first testing ground for the serpent on the art of creating rituals or habits for getting stuff done. The seemingly impossible task of writing 50,000 words in 30 days was not so daunting when done in itsy bitsy steps, slowly and steadily plodding along every single day.

It’s satisfying to know that it’s been useful training for so many other things even if not a single word from all those years ever sees the light of day.

So the first two weeks of the new year are over. So far so good. There was a pickly sizzling weekend from hell where the mercury hovered around 41-44 celsius. It simply meant melting and lurking around the Lair instead of the usual cafe crawls and culture vulture adventures
Other folks were not so lucky. A combination of hellish heat, winds and a few fallen wooden power poles meant a flaming inferno in the hills and 50 or so houses were burnt to cinders. The creepiest case of all was the picture in the paper of a real estate agent’s sign on the street outside a house in the hills. The sign proclaimed the virtues of this very desirable property along with a ‘sold’ sticker stuck on top. But after the week end the pictures of the house portrayed on the sign were all that remained. It was burned to a cinder while the sign itself was miraculously untouched


Not sure what the legal situation may be in such a case only that the buyers have already sold their own home so like the original owners now have no home to go to

So many people have lost everything they owned in the fires. It must be especially difficult for those who work up in the mines and see the stories about the bushfires on the news and can do nothing of course because they are thousands of miles away

The zombie jobs keep the Izzie out of mischief for two days a week. They are also a source of inspiration for stories.
But most importantly of all they provide a sense of meaning and structure and a new social network. It makes it that much easier for the goblin job to be relegated to the dustbin of ancient history
Even the grand project of reclaiming the Lair is making slow and steady progress.

So far so good. Another wicked stinking hot as hell weekend is on the way. So it’s a struggle keeping the weeds alive. But those bushfires have a way of putting a serpent’s petty problems in perspective

Today turned out to be a not so scary solstice after all. It wasn't even sizzling and stinking hot but sunny and breezy and sometimes even a bit on the cool side but that is to be expected by the beach

For it was time to indulge in the annual ritual of watching the sunset. There are a whole bunch of other rituals associated with this day like drawing tarot cards as inspiration for the new year and unofficially sort of starting the new year. From years of observation this day seems to set the tone for the following year rather than New Year's Eve itself.

A new ritual has been added to the list and has proved most interesting indeed

( The Little Green Book of Lists )

Yesterday was a most magical and pretty productive day. The weather forecast predicted a rather cold morning which would mean a crisp and crunchy day with sunshine. This seemed most unlikely indeed after yesterday’s drizzly misery. But it turned out to be true.

Was supposed to have got some sort of tree seedling on hand to plant on this most auspicious day. Something grand and gorgeous like a Moreton bay fig tree (if only) or sensible like a pecan or guava. Decided to stick to nuts when it comes to pecans and macadamias. Much much cheaper
In the end had to make do with a baby curry tree (Murraya koenigii) One of four bought at a gardeners meeting last Monday. At two silver sickles each can afford to get a couple of back ups.
Also planted some silverbeet and spinach seeds in jiffy pots filled with piggie poo. Everything is so lush and green at the moment and the poor old sage died from drowning due to all the rain
The original intention to catch the bus at 11.45 got rather side tracked by the desire to linger around the Lair and soak up the sunshine while peeking at all the plants. It was the Izzie’s favorite weather. A bit cold and sunshine with the most delicate light. No fear of getting nuked like at the height of summer.

Felt very creative and inspired but determined to resist the temptations of acquiring any new books when there are so many other projects to attend to.

The bus arrived in Fremantle a good 15 minutes later than usual thanks to a pathetic bunch of snails invading every second bus stop and all armed with $50 notes or 5 cent coins. Well not quite all but it certainly seemed that way. Amazing how many sluggish fuddy duddies sit for ages at bus stops but do not bother getting out the money for their fares until actually boarding the bus.
Gave the usual Juicy Beetroot a miss and headed off to the west end to a certain cheap and cheerful training restaurant where you can have a mains and a glass of red for around $10-12. After that was a visit to the very cute railway carriage cafe on the Esplanade. Unlike the other esplanade in downtown Dursleyville this one still has lots of gorgeous old trees. No chainsaw massacres here.

Such an inspirational place, it was the perfect location to devote to more plotting and planning for Camp Nanowrimo in August as well as getting started on lots of lists for the bright shiny new Pensieve. Saved reading the newspapers for later as this site is too special for wasting with such mundane matters

It also had the advantage of being only a short walk to the beach and the sunset. Was thinking on Wednesday that a sunset picnic for the shortest day was going to be most unlikely as it would be all drizzly and miserable. There were other cafes to visit if that had turned out to be the case.
There were a handful of souls at the beach and all of them looked like tourists. It was way too cold for the locals to be lurking aside from the fact that most of the place has been turned into a construction site.

Even the radio programs for the evening turned out to be all strange and spooky. There was a wickedly wonderful play by Angela Carter called Vampirella. Must definitely look in to the rest of her stuff since this was so delightfully snarky and funny. Izzie just adores wicked twists on old fashioned fairy tales and this one took the piss out of a whole bunch of them.
“What sharp teeth you have. Countess” asks an ever so innocent Englishman abroad

There have been a few deaths in Radioland in the last week or so. Last Friday it was Alan Saunders and this week Gita Sereny. In her honour “Late Night Live” replayed some of her old stories from back in 1998. One was about Albert Speer - the Nazi architect of doom and the other about Mary Bell - a girl who had killed two little kids way back in 1968 when she herself was only 11. It turns out that the News of the Screws was involved in the witch hunt playing both sides as usual. They had been up to the usual moral indignation, chequebook journalism and phone tapping as led to their recent demise and not a moment too soon.

This was just one of the creepiest stories ever and even without the replay had remembered it more than a decade later.

So it was a most spooky and memorable day and here’s hoping some useful story seeds got planted

Izzie is beginning to suspect one of the real reasons for her incurable addiction to books. As well as being paper teddy bears or Portkeys to magical and mysterious worlds, they serve as a source for all sorts of inspiring or useful stuff. After all life is too short to reinvent the wheel.

( Lists and little black books )

In an attempt to be organized recently bought two bright shiny expanding folders. The bright lime green one is for packets of seeds sorted by month and season and the lurid pink one for bits and bobs, scraps of paper and articles that don’t really fit anywhere else.
But while 18 brown pockets might be all right for seeds, it is not so useful for other stuff. Had already considered clearing out the contents of an old folder and assigning it to this new purpose. But like so many other good intentions this one ended up in the too hard basket. That was until tonight.

( Bills and things )