Towtrucks and Tickets

Oh dear, a bad ending to a pretty lousy week. I got a parking ticket by a nasty piece of work in Hall St, Bondi. She was already writing the ticket as I was crossing the road to buy an envelope. I came back in 2 minutes to see it being stuffed under my (not very well working) window wiper. Then she turned on me like cobra who is used to being cornered on a daily basis. I gave her the look - I was two minutes gone (I calculate at $4.40 per hour parking meter time, I should have really put in 6.5 cents), then she did this, she said "you've left your child in the car" (the sun had gone down), "I've recorded it and taken a photo" (so I did too) and "it's illegal - you know it is" (do I?). I said "he just woke up, I was two minutes!" (I really was) and she said "I've got four kids" and gave me a cobra spit. Depressing, so what will happen to me, will I get my kids taken off me? Will I go to hell, jail or worse - court.

All this after feeling so chipper about breaking down yesterday with a snapped clutch cable in the middle of the shopping centre, stuck at the exit with a line of cars up my bumper. I was rescued by a sweet Norfolk Islander that rounded up a car fulla of Maori council fellas who pushed me out of the way, he then drove me and my kid and the shopping home and gave me a free pencil made out of Norfolk pine. He said "up there things are a bit different and if somebody is in trouble, people pitch in and help". Not like the old bitch in the queue saying "Do you mind moving it! I'm in a hurry!!". I really would like her and the Hall St Cobra to connect sometime.

Postscript....these things, if you are superstitious, got to happen in threes. The next day I was dropping off a couple of guinea pigs we had been minding for friends who were holidaying. Pipsqueak and Dizzy, pretty casual, hungry, furry girls...who had obviously never been in a VW before. Pipsqueak began to show the signs of irrational terror and leapt out of her travelling box in the front, she was petrified by the roaring sound of my ultra-mega engine (one can dream) and started to run about unleashed, heading straight for the shade under the brake pedal. I did a 'drop off' manoeuvre, the sort of "I'm just pulling slowly to the side with all indicators blazing because I have a small animal under my brake pedal and can't use it right now or two little kids will come home from Thailand to find their pet squashed" sort of road tactic. Needless to say the pigs were happy when they got home.

Wake Me Up Before You GoGo

I heard the possum get caught in the trap this morning, at dawn. At first I felt pity, hearing it shouting in possum 'WTF?!&*%$##', then a faint schadenfreude set in as I packed up my earplugs, hopefully forever, never to be woken again by scratchy native feet coming and going in the night through a portal that is positioned exactly above my insomniac head.

It's up there now, in a cage, probably sleeping, waiting for its release, which thankfully the Possum Man will give as required by law, somewhere within a two hundred metre radius. It might find a comfy tree to crawl into, or someone else's roof peeling at the edges. I dread it may even try to break back into the patched-up roof above it used to, until this night, call home.

I know how it feels, being moved on. Renters, we who act like we own the place and taint the joint with our bothersome animality.

I wish I could take a little hot joe up there into the roof and stroke the sad thing, explain how it has to leave because I can't bear to lay awake every night in fear it will wake me up. How I've had to strain to find any wandering earplugs that've fallen to the farthest corner under my bed, embedded in dust. I'm tired of looking up from my pillow at the stains from excrement piled up and seeping through. I'm tired of being moved on too, from developers, rent hikers, divorcing owners who want to sell. I want this small corner of our new house, this pretty lady-cave I've claimed, all to myself.

Eyesight Salad

At 37 my eyesight is starting to have bad days - usually fatigued depending on the Facebooking action from the night before. Being a photographer, I need pinhole sharp peepers.  I can always flick the digi camera dial to autofocus - if I can find the damn thing - anything under 15cm is a bit fuzzy now and makes my head hurt.

Focus used to be possible at a lovely visually acute 10cm, apparently the distance between a mother's loving gaze into her newborn's whilst breastfeeding in a glowing reverie. Well those days are way over. Now it's more likely I can just register an incoming headbutt at 10 o'clock at a k.p.h. hard to judge whilst I wait for my vision to pull focus. 

The $20 cheapie glasses at the newsagency give me superhero vision until I take them off and start dry retching from the naseau they induce into the mints and jellybean section, and before I march into the optometrist and pay $800 for a Calvin Klein look I have been thinking about what I can do to improve my eyes au natural.

I have invented the 'Eyesight Salad' - full of food that will give you bouncy, stretchy, muscular (eye)balls and keep macular degeneration still waiting in the nightclub queue.

EYESIGHT SALAD (for 2)

2 handfuls of washed baby spinach

125g small tin of Red Salmon (check label, get Wild Red Sockeye - Coles have a good brand)

1 advocado sliced

1/2 pear sliced

1/2 small red onion finely sliced

sprinkle of pine nuts or any chopped nuts

toss ingredients together and use a dressing of your choice, eg. Balsamic vinegar with Olive oil and garlic

Devour  blindly

Random Acts of Weirdness

This entry is just a really bad effort to get back to blogging, I've been distracted lately by FlickR, Facebook and my new webpage, y'know how it goes, but all this time I've been busy I've still been driving around town in my beloved VW and enjoying being tall on the road (as opposed to short in life).

Except when I walked to the pizza shop, I spotted this really cool car that I'm thinking when the VW finally goes to Kombie heaven, I want one like it, it'll be my early mid-life crises car, definately something like a Charger, with a tiny back seat that has no room for baby seats.

Other than the usual photographing of spiders and children I had a 'Steve Irwin sighting'....is he really dead. Or is he adventure sporting with Elvis. Till I find the definative answer, all I have is this fuzzy shot taken recently.

Finally, you never know when you number is up so I have a luckly $8 to give away via Kombie Kash which should bring a tear to any VW (pre-1972) lover's eye.  Come to think of it, I have been watching a lot of 'My Name is Earl' DVD box set, perhaps there is a link between all these random acts of weirdness.

Psychedelic History of the VW

Think one of those pesky kids took this, very creative little chicks.

Ode to Motherhood

I love being a mum

I love being a photographer

I love having a fat bum

But I should listen to Ajay Rochester

I love my sunburnt country

I love my sunburnt bum

I hope Obama wins

I pray for new manchester

Find Yourself a Nice Bird

A sound rings from the swamp, a clear clang bird call, slowly emerging from the tweet-clutter.

A boy bird searching for a spring love. Even my human-girl ears are piqued to this heart cry ringing true. All noise litter stops to hear the deep evolutionary song trickle through the air and thick vegetation,  a rythmic ponk ponk sent out with the pure mission to enrapture a mate, to seek for that one set of ears that cannot resist.

Then a hammer starts to bang, a plane flies above, all the creatures titter at once again. Rowdy rainbow lorikeets squawk like a football crowd, cheap chirps fling about in casual conversation about the weather, gossip, where to eat, where to go. The lover's throat is quiet.

Eucalyptus leaves rustle in a high breeze to shoosh the rabble. In the vacuum after a plane trail a space grows.  All the chat starts up again only to give way to the soloist who emerges above the din to pierce a  lovebird heart that beats in the swamp.