OK, I have a whole bunch of posts half-done and awaiting the final push to force them into shape and spewed out to an indifferent world. The problem is that they are all rather complicated and serious, which is a difficult look to sustain around here. In the meantime, things need to keep inching forward. …
Tag: braidwood
The backyard engineer’s toolkit
As your faithful narrator has probably mentioned, the urge to tinker with stuff and maybe dismantle it is a lifetime one, especially when stuff doesn’t work (and dismantling stuff usually guarantees it will never work again). As youths, my group of mates were always building, making, destroying, repurposing and generally getting in where we shouldn’t …
Hello, cheeky
It wouldn’t be surprising if, unlike me, you aren’t familiar with the finer points of the first Muppet Movie. Maybe it’s a generational thing, or maybe we were starved of sophisticated entertainment in sanctions-bound 1979 Zimbabwe, but be that as it may, for some reason this jolly musical romp remains vivid in the old memory …
Achtung Spitfire!
It’s been a while since I’ve been on the tools, mainly due to the weather -- all that cold, rain and mud aren’t conducive to outdoor exertions. But there’s been a particular task weighing on the old mind and today was the day allotted to completing it. Remember the weeds in our lawn? Well, both …
Oh Captain! My captain!
Isn’t it embarrassing when you get up on your hind legs and spout out a bunch of opinionated rubbish about something you really know very little about? Especially when soon after you’ve nailed your colours to the wrong mast, the facts – which everyone else is fully aware of – are brought to your attention? …
Up the creek
The Bible relates that one of the tasks occupying Adam’s early days in the Garden of Eden was to go about bestowing names on everything. It makes sense: being the first human and all that, he will have needed to start getting a handle on stuff so he could talk about it when Eve showed …
I’m digging it
One of the thought processes that inevitably strays through my mind at some point while jotting down these posts is the temptation to turn whatever activity I’m going on about into a metaphor for writing. It’s probably inevitable for the out-of-work freelance wordsmith to see his obsession in everything he does -- as in those …
Wisdom of nuggets
Yesterday, you may recall, we went down to the Shoalhaven River in the rain and while observing the rising flood, cast a desultory eye about for a chance gold nugget or two. It turns out there’s a name for this activity. And that name is ‘fossicking’. I love this word – it seems just right …
Who’ll stop the rain?
Over the course of this blog’s eventful life, I’ve mentioned the triumvirate of crises that greeted our arrival in Australia: drought, wildfires and of course pestilence. Now it gives me a certain kind of pleasure to welcome a fourth apocalyptic horseperson as it makes its debut in the posse: floods. Yup, it’s been raining again. …
Jamon everybody
Consider the pig: intelligent mammals with advanced reasoning faculties -- or machines for turning leftovers into yummy bacon, ham, pork and sausages? We've looked at hogs, but what of your common or garden oinker? Like so many of the random thoughts that make their way into this blog, there’s no way we can conduct a …
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