BRILLIANT

No, not Richard or Robert's recent posts but I guess the regular readers know that.

I'm talking about the EGO 56 Volt Cordless Line Trimmer  that was delivered today.

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Once I charged up the massive battery I gave it a work-out. This baby can go man! It ripped through the weeds that have had the effrontery to grow crazy recently, and the lawn grass that thought it was safe now that the lawnmower is kaput sure got a wake up call I can tell you. Whizz - crunch - rip!
They won't be messing with me anymore.

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NEW POST - THE WINE GUY

LISTEN TO JESUS

FAST FOOD

I made a comment before on my previous post about people who frequent fast food outlets. It might come across as elitist - sorry about that.
Good friends Dave (now deceased) and Jane used to own and manage a dairy in Newtown in the early 1980s. Even back then they told me that people who had the lowest incomes would often be their best customers spending the most money. This was because they didn't plan their food shopping and cooking, buying instead convenience foodstuffs when not buying takeaways for the family. Often mothers would send the kids along at the last minute to buy big (and expensive) packs of bacon to have for dinner. It's sad and things haven't got any better.

Yesterday I made wholemeal pizza bases in my bread-maker. I rolled out the dough and cut it into oblongs for small, easy to make pizzas. I 'blind' baked these for a few minutes before freezing.

Some tomato paste or pesto lining topped with Mozzarella cheese, tuna or salami, vegetables and other classic pizza toppings makes for a quick and delicious meal. Cheaper than chips and a whole lot better for you. After warming the oven it only takes 10 minutes or less to cook these babies!

WE'RE DOOMED!

WE'RE DOOMED

I don't know what it's like near you but up here all the crazies are coming out. They don't fully understand the rules of Level-3 so are driving to the beaches to swim, kayak, fish and do all the other things that they haven't been able to do for the last month. They are taking it too far though and I've seen some definite 'out of the bubble' behaviour.

Somehow the isolation message hasn't got through to a big, if not biggest percentage of the population. Lockdown hasn't been an exercise to curtail their rights and freedom. It's been an exercise to limit exposure but also to be able to contain the spread of COVID-19 if someone is infected. It's about the authorities being able to trace and track contacts. How difficult is this to understand?

The fools who queued up all night at McDonalds and then associated like kids at a tuck shop need to be kicked in the arse. Darwin's theory could well come to rule on them for sure like that foolish anti-lockdown protester in USA who now has the disease but I worry about the people that every one of these fools will interact with over the next days and weeks. The ability to 'track and trace' will be very difficult if not nigh on impossible.

FADING AWAY INTO NOTHINGNESS

T.S. Eliot

         The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy

I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

“The Hollow Men” is a poem by the American modernist poet T.S. Eliot, first published in 1925. Uncanny and dream-like, “The Hollow Men” describes a desolate world, populated by empty, defeated people. Though the speaker describes these people as “dead” and the world they inhabit as the underworld (“death’s twilight kingdom”), the poem shouldn’t be read simply as a description of life after death. It's also a reflection on the sorry state of European culture after the First World War. For the speaker of the poem, the horrors of the war have plunged Europe into deep despair—so deep that European culture itself is fading away into nothingness.  - Lit Charts

The Hollow Men are hollow because they have chosen not to act as human. They do have hope - hope to escape the stagnation they find themselves in but this is impossible as they lack empathy and disregard their fellow sufferers ("We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river Sightless").

Donald Trump is a Hollow Man. His lack of empathy in the midst of his own despair fits Eliot's poem perfectly.

Add to him a whole lot of other greedy and ineffectual bastards like Putin, Johnson, Xi Jinping, Erdoğan who unfortunately control our destinies then we are fucked.

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

A LONGER WALK

Given the enthusiastic acceptance of a previous post A SHORT WALK, another 'walking' post is in order.

Here it is!

The good news is that I walked a longer distance and so took a few extra photographs.

I started the walk going along the same track that I went on the other day. To get a feel for this I suggest that you look at the photos from that post and imagine them backwards. OK?

Instead of walking along the north side of Mount Aubrey I went south and took the longer track around Reotahi Point to Little Munro Bay.

Even statues take precautions

Normally there are Rifleman birds flitting about here but not today

Looking south

West towards Marsden Point

Big tree growing over the track

A bit of 'UP'

Looking East

Little Munro

A lot of 'UP'

From the top of a very steep road

Lookung out over McLeod Bay

For Richard

McLeod Bay

Towards home

My road

Nearly home

Home

A PICTORIAL POST ABOUT THE DIFFERENCES OF BLOGGERS IN OUR LITTLE COMMUNITY

NO COMMENT

ALTERING MOWING WITH AN EGO

It's another lovely day here today.
I waited until midday before mowing the lawns, out of respect for ANZAC day.

The trouble is though that the mower wouldn't start.
It wouldn't start last time either and now the lawn weeds are getting quite high.

What a gyp!
The mower is only 25 years old and has been given loving care, care, petrol and sometimes oil over the years. I put it in the lee of the shed so it hasn't been subjected to driving rain like some of my other garden tools so - what gives?

What gives?

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I gave up on 'Mr Mower' as Richard would say and ordered an EGO battery line trimmer from on-line Mitre 10. They will be able to deliver that next week when we go to Level-3.

56 Volt Cordless Line Trimmer 2.5AH Battery

We don't have a lot of lawn - just a bit out the back and a scrappy strip below the deck out front so I figure that I'll be able to deal to the grass and the weeds with a line trimmer.

Sorry Mr VICTA.

A SHORT WALK

It's been such a great day here after a week and a half of indifferent weather and rain. It's a pity that swimming is banned.

This afternoon I went for a short walk along our road to the wharf and then along one of the bush tracks to 'Epiphany Beach' so named by The Old Girl years ago when she decided that she'd like to live up here full time. It's just a small stretch of rocky beach but meaningful to us.

Epiphany Beach

I walked along the rocks and saw a large stingray. Here:

Admittedly the stingray had gone by the time I got my phone out of my pocket and started the camera but you can imagine what it looked like.

Sort of like this:

I continued my walk along the beach and then back home along the track taking some photos this time.

Oyster rock

Selfie

Some track

More track

Wharf

Looking back to home from the wharf

 

Nearly there

Home

THE ELEPHANT IN MY ROOM

Richard's latest post is about him adopting an elephant and wondering where to put it. Don't ask but have a look HERE

I think the lockdown is getting to him and he'll no doubt start taking those drugs that Robert does. (Robert said "I'm on it" in a recent comment.)

Anyway, I've got an elephant in my room.

It all started when I was clearing out tidying the shed and rediscovered my Pilsner Urquel tankard.

Pilsner Urquell was the first pale lager, and the name "pilsner" is often used by its copies. It is characterised by its golden colour and clarity, and was immensely successful: nine out of ten beers produced and consumed in the world are pale lagers based on Pilsner Urquell. The German name, which can be roughly translated into English as "the original source", was adopted as a trademark in 1898.[9]
By 1839 most beer in Bohemia was dark and top fermented. However bottom-fermented lagers were gaining popularity. The people of Plzeň preferred imported cheaper bottom-fermented beers to local top fermented ales.[10] The burghers of Plzeň invested in a new, state-of-the art brewery, the Měšťanský pivovar (Burghers' Brewery), and hired Josef Groll, a Bavarian brewer, to brew a bottom-fermented beer. On 5 October 1842, Groll had a new mash ready and on 11 November 1842, the new beer was first served at the feast of St. Martin markets.[11]
The brewery registered Pilsner Bier B. B. name in 1859.[12] In 1898, they also registered names Original Pilsner Bier 1842, Plzeňský pramen, Prapramen, Měšťanské Plzeňské, Plzeňský pravý zdroj and finally Pilsner Urquell and Plzeňský Prazdroj which are in use today.
Pilsner Urquell is today brewed solely in the Pilsen brewery. It was brewed between 2002 and 2011 in Tychy, Poland[13] and between 2004 and 2017 in Kaluga, Russia.[14]

Thanks Wikipedia.

I thought that this would make a nice addition to the snooker room.

"Think again Matey" said The Old Girl. "That's old and ugly and can't stay there"
I removed the offending item thinking that if that's the criteria it's a wonder that I'm allowed in the snooker room.

I tried a few other places around the house.

The hallway

NOPE

The bathroom

NOPE

The kitchen

NOPE

                                                        The mantlepiece in the lounge

NOPE




I was beginning to think that this is where she would prefer it.........

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........before getting the OK for it to go in an alcove in the bedroom largely hidden from sight

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