The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

It's been a good start to the bright shiny new year so far. The weather has been beautiful and unusually mild.
Most of the mob in Canberra are on their holidays so we don't have to listen to their pompous preaching and stuttering

Having two new library books to start the year is also a good sign. Went to collect one of them today and managed to walk past the shelf with all the discards for sale without being tempted.
Buying some book shelves has been on the Izzie wish list for a long time and it is finally time to do something about it.
Of course there's still too many books in the Lair but it would get them off bench the tops and bedside tables and make a huge improvement of order in the present chaos

Took this precious bounty along with a bottle and some nibblies for an afternoon picnic in the grounds of a certain old lunatic asylum that is now an arts centre
Did intend to look at the art exhibitions but never got around to it.

( Books and bits )

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 )

After a very lazy first week of January decided not to give into temptation and spend most of a lovely sunny Friday in bed again.
Even left the Lair reasonably early on Thursday around 11.30am rather than some time in the afternoon

Planned a visit to the beach for one day off and the old lunatic asylum/ arts centre for the other.
Been a bit of a cheapie lately and decided to make the most of the two hours on the bus ticket to make detours enroute to our intended destination

Thursday was the gorgeous Analakshmi Indian restaurant on the river. It is run by an Indian cultural group and payment is by donation. The food is somewhat different than found in typical Indian restaurants - probably more like the stuff folks cook at home. It's a bit of a lucky dip. You never know what is going to be on offer. But it is always going to be quite kosher.
But the serpent was in luck this time. The potatoes had lots of garlic and onions in them, there was dahl and some very strange red coconut based curry with either mushrooms or eggplants in it.
For some inexplicable reason the serpent is seriously addicted to dahl in all its incarnations. Must really learn to cook it properly as it really is just about the cheapest, tastiest nutritious meal possible.
With ten minutes left on the two hour ticket, left the restaurant in the city and got to the train station.
Time for a coffee crawl on Napoleon Street, a visit to the book stores, news agent and the Singing Tree toy and book shop which after 15 years or so is closing down to be replaced by yet another yuppie jewelry shop
Funny how the small specialty toy and book shops are often infinitely better than the Toys R Us warehouses or Borders/ Barnes and Noble bookstores
Also visited the post office to post a parcel and figured it would be an auspicious time to buy the two nano note books for plotting and planning.
Starting early means being able to run two stories with two decks of cards and seeing which one produces the juiciest plot points.
More preparation, plotting and planning means much quicker squiggling once the starting gun goes at the witching hour at the end of Halloween Night. Well that is the theory anyway

Collins bookstore is always one of the first ports of call in this strange quirky street. For years and years it had three pale pages placed in the front window containing pretty much the whole Hogwarts text book list. But now it was gone
Izzie asked at the counter what had happened to it. Used to love looking at the list and drooling over all the cute and quirky titles
They decided to take it down after getting too many nutters seriously asking for copies of certain books on the list and getting a bit cranky when told they didn't actually have them.
They should have simply said that their last copies had been eaten by dragons or were not on sale to Muggles or some other such tall tale to take the piss out of these folks

The store just isn't the same without such quirky touches.
But one thing they did have was 2011 diaries at half price. Decided to take a quick peek in spite of already having a cheapie student diary and a resurrected 2005 model.
One of them was bigger than usual but very different. Not only did it have the usual appointment times for each day but columns for personal projects, business projects, family/ community projects, a little to do list for each day, a goals page for the whole year and one at the beginning of each month along with a whole bunch of productivity porn tips

There was even two special sections with 10 week countdowns - one for Christmas and one left blank for some personal grand project

Half price at $10 was much better value than most of the others on the shelf - pissy little things that they were. So yielded to temptation thinking that the indulgence is affordable and it ties in to the grand plan this year to make serious progress on that 101 list by actually putting times and dates on lots of items
The diary seems specially designed to concentrate on long term (year), medium (month) and very short term planning (day)
Already been putting in Wriye and Nano and prezzie posting deadlines.

Here's hoping it won't meet the same fate as previous attempts at being organized where the blank patches start appearing in mid February and slowly get larger and larger

It's going to be one of those 'kept next to the computer' diaries as it is too big to be carrying around all day except for the weekly days off with visits to sacred sites

Spent time peeking at it while sitting in a cafe before closing time at 5pm. Then went to the shops to get a bottle and nibblies before slinking off to the beach. At that stage got to thinking that maybe there is no point as it had gotten cloudy and there would definitely be no visible sunset that evening
But figures we would go there anyway as there's still the birds twittering at twilight and the sounds of the waves lapping on the sand.
There truly is something magical about watching the waves. It makes it very easy to get into some sort of hypnotic trance. Could literally feel the serpent batteries charging up with every passing wave.
Had a few 37 plus days since and its pretty obvious that it has done wonders for the serpent ability to repel negativity, noise and minor annoyances.

Friday was a visit to Fremantle and the old arts centre. In theory this would be the perfect spot for filling in this new blue book and doing a first reading with the bright shiny Victorian Romantic tarot.
But it turned out to be rather windy and it was an effort to stop the cards blowing all over the place. Kept losing track of which month each one of the 12 stacks in the circle represented. Had to keep counting the remaining cards to find our spot
Wrote them all down rather quickly in the big blue year overview section and quickly got them back in their box before they'd try flying off back to Finland via Prague
Had much better luck with the Bohemian Gothic which were made of much sterner stuff and did not blow around at all. Maybe those pewter edges are really made of lead
Looks like there's going to be lots of Major arcana drama with skulls and skeletons in cupboards and lurking around rat infested cellars
Also looks like it's time to learn the art of proper shuffling as the other lot turned up more than one third of pentacles

The two decks turned up very different cards but for some inexplicable reason September scored the seven of pentacles with both of them.

Next time will stick to tables inside coffee shops for laying out large circles of cards.