The Great Wall of Wood

Basil and I took a walk down by the two rivers again this morning. There was an older couple strapping a boat onto the roof of their land rover. The whole arrangement of the land rover looked like a more or less permanent camping vehicle, very neatly set out. Packaged meals in compartments all along the side with a fold up wooden panel like on the side of the meal trucks that come around to industrial sites. They had folded up push bikes in the back and what looked like a windsurfer on the roof next to the boat. An all around retirement adventure, looked fantastic. And both of them looked as though they could run circles around me even though they had a good thirty years on me. I've got to get back in shape.

It was cold enough to see my breath this morning. It's only march, early Autumn for heavens sake! It only gets cold enough to see your breath in Sydney maybe once or twice a year. It's going to be a long cold winter for me here, especially if we never get this missing baffle plate. I finished stacking our wood this morning. As an exercise to keep warm in the cold morning air, it has few rivals. Quite an imposing structure now it's complete, makes it look like a lot more wood than it had when it was just in a pile. Hard to believe we're probably going to end up burning more than five or six times that amount in the cold months.

I applied the idea I had last night about Dream Stealers politicians not having policies to the story today, fits in nicely. The story has doubled in length in a day and is now beginning to look more likely to be a ten thousand worder than the two thousand worder the first Stealers story was. I can't help but have a little bit of 'Yes Prime Minister' sitting in the back of my mind when I write about my hero and his political advisor. Not that there's anything even remotely funny about a Dream Stealers story, they give me the willies. It would be fun to write comedy some day, but it's probably going to be a long way off yet. I need to hone my craft a great deal before I'm ready to attempt comedy.

Basil now has a new charge to guard in the backyard. The wall of wood. He now sits dutifully in front of it, sitting to attention (at least whenever he knows we're looking) making sure that... well making sure it doesn't get away... I think.