SWAN VALLEY: A bleary and grapeful Payton L. Inkletter marvels at the lush growth as seen from West Swan Road: “Give me a home among the grape vines!”

Be all that as it may, meanwhile:

In other news…

12^th to 15^th March 2009:

Thursday: I had not the best sleep, but then not the worst, and definitely not enough. Umple Dais had dropped Pa pree Inkletter off about four, so Janny soldiered on with company as she prepared for the Babies’ visit this evening.

When I surfaced a bit later I vacuumed the kitchen and adjoining areas, declaring that if that wasn’t good enough then it wasn’t good enough. I watched My Beloved for the latest mixed bag of news, usually mostly bad, with Pa pree, and then shaved and showered to be bootiful for the Babies. I managed to be back at the TV in time to watch Clarke and Dawe, my first for a few weeks, which hurts, for they are so brilliant and funny. They had better put their skits on a DVD or else…

The Babies were late, and arrived in the yellow love bug, having been shopping for glasses for Baby Peggletter, but not got any yet. We enjoyed our meal, which was a marvellous dish of fried chicken, corn bread, green beans, purple waxy potatoes, and even more I can’t recall, and later dessert was another homemade delight, custard to die for on a mixed fruits crumble to kill for.

We didn’t play any games, as everyone was a bit tired, so we chatted more than anything else. Baby Inkletter was pleased about the email from Fremantle Press’ Linda Watt who graciously let me know that they were looking forward to receiving our work, regarding Venty Still. I just have the rather challenging task left of writing at least another 30,000 words now…

After the Babies left about eleven I returned Pa pree, and then watched a tad of Lateline Business before Letterman, whose interview with Tom Brokaw reminded me of how poor his diction is, for I missed much of what he said. This apparently hasn’t mattered in his career; perhaps it’s helped him by giving him a trademark characteristic, like our Western Australian politician Brendon Grylls’ speech defect. An Horse were good I thought, the finishing act.

I was way too weary to walk, write, do anything, so I went through my longwinded ablutions, and slipped in beside the alabaster dragon a little after one. The night was almost cold, and there was some breeze about for the first time at night in maybe five days.

+paytontedwithlove+

13^th March 2009:

Friday: As weary as I was, I had a poor night’s sleep, taking ages to go under, listening to the alabaster dragon’s sleep breathing beside me, but I must say the cold hindered then helped, for after rugging up more, it was nice to sleep cosy, not to mention that Missus InkleIcan’tresisthim was cuddling me. Our force ten fans, the two of them, blasting us with air of course adds to the chill factor greatly.

As is its wont, the alarm went off 50 minutes after the set time, so I got up having had a very mediocre rest, lightly hovering between waking and sleeping much of the night. I struggled to get up to speed, and battled with the usual health problems I am beset with, until some degree of ‘normalcy’ arrived, enabling me to do a kitchen clean up and a cowboy watering in the back garden.

I drove to Guildford and picked up Bob after half two, and on this pleasant to warm day drove with him to Charlie G’s, picked up a Byetta script for Janny, and he ate the lunch we bought at the cafeteria there in the Dr Ronald Kilgour Gardens at the north end of the hospital grounds. Trying to get there along the north-south corridor artery met with locked doors for security reasons, and subsequent queries of staff, up at the north end, as how to get out of the hermetically sealed establishment into the gardens, had me and Bob being looked at most peculiar, and none of them had heard of the Ronald Kilgour Gardens, yet he was this very hospital’s Medical Superintendent for a mere 18 years in recent times, and this ward was within a hundred metres of this very most beautiful garden at the northern end of the hospital grounds named in his honour. Bob enjoyed the peace and beauty of the place, and there was no-one around at the time. I missed the flowing stream, which had not long been turned off for some reason, still trickling downstream but dry at the fount.

We bussed from here into St George’s Terrace, and I got my Emmylou Harris CD album, ‘Cowgirl’s Prayer’ from 78 Records, having finally arrived earlier this week from Uzbekistan or Mongolia, I don’t recall which; I ordered it back on the 19^th January. Bob collected his usual freebie magazines and bought his car magazine and postcard – ‘the Brewery one’ almost always – before we took a Red CAT bus ride, one circuit.

Back to Charlies, then we drove back to Guildford, going via his old address in Tuong Street Meltham, the original house now demolished and a new couple of units on it, or so it appeared; the typical arrangement where a blade of grass would crowd the block out. I left his place not long before half seven. Once home I delivered vittles to Pa pree, then watched The Collectors while eating my din dins.

Janny made a meal tonight for Meg Deeler’s family for tomorrow, she having come home from about two months in hospital last night. Meg and Murrah called in while I was away to see Janny, and Janny tells me Meg still looks very unwell, having just had another chemotherapy session earlier this week.

I watched a recording I did earlier in the week of Foreign Correspondent, and blow me down if Mark Corcoran didn’t actually open the program by calling it correctly ‘Foreign Correspondent’, singular. The first feature, ‘American Emergency’, by Tracy Bowden, certainly drove home how we are light years ahead here in Australia with our public health system, and just what a brutal state of affairs rules for tens upon tens of millions of North Americans. It is to their shame actually that such a state of affairs that imposes such terrible hardship upon so many people has been allowed to continue for so long, while a not so insignificant few wax obscenely fat from delivering services within their health care system. The next story was full of hope and despair: Sally Sara’s ‘Young Lions of Lahore’, concerning the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan Cricket Team in Pakistan, and the effect on the psyche of the cricket loving citizens of Pakistan. I can only hope that the twisted sods who shot and killed the police and tried to kill the cricketers lose all support from as many ordinary Pakistanis as possible, and come to find they aren’t tolerated anywhere in the nation any more. One can hope…

I watched SBS news after a quick writing break at the computer, and learnt that Bernie Madoff is now in jail: my heart does not bleed exactly; I have compassion for someone who can sink so low as to do that to so many people, but my sympathy is only with those folk so terribly ripped off. Back to the keyboard briefly after a quick bit of marriage building, then back to The Box for Lateline, with Leigh Sales clearly not having won the battle with a bad hair day, poor gal, with a swathe of the keratinic protein filaments falling clumsily over a third of her forehead and almost blocking her right eye, which bothered her, given the several attempts she made to flick it away. (Feminazis note: keep a total of the references made in by published diary to men’s appearances and compare to those to women’s appearances, before declaring me sexist; odds are, I’m sexist; is there an ‘enlightened sexist’ category?)

Now correct me if I heard wrong, and the transcript hadn’t appeared at Aunty’s online site when I wrote this, but did Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen keep saying to the effect ‘this is not a false dichotomy’ in his repartee with Greg Hunt, Opposition Environment Spokesman? He meant to drop the ‘not’, for it was a false dichotomy on the opposition’s behalf. [Back from the future update: it's early Tuesday morning 17th March, and I've now checked the transcript (clearly I don't have enough to do), and yes, Chris Bowen did mix himself up, on his second use of the expression, bless his linguistic socks: 'But as I say, it's not a false dichotomy between jobs and the environment. You can do both.']

I did more work online, removing my recently created Progressive (Cumulative) Stories site, realising that I just don’t have the time at this juncture to devote to it; maybe I will down the track. I wrote up extensive notes to accompany the preamble to the page last Monday in long hand, but on reflection, it’s not easy to explain how I want the stories to give the freedom to make profit from the stories for any contributors while also sharing them as a progressive story, and how that actually would sit with third party publishers who might take on a contributor’s story. After discussion with Baby Inkletter, aka Say H. Inkletter, I gave it more thought, and finally decided to ditch the site for now. If I had easy access to a copyright law expert, and a webmaster to run my sites, it would all be far more practicable.

I returned again to The Box to watch Letterman, and talk about my having been dropped on my head repeatedly as a boy, what about Paul Teutul? The Westside Story broadway act was a good one as the finish tonight. By the way, I’ve said it before, the CBS Letterman site is useless for searching for recent anything, if it happens not to be on that home page.

I went for a very late walk, and it was windy for a change. Half way through I began feeling sugar weak, and by the time I got home I was quite unwell. I showered, and was so weary and out of sorts I came to bed without even brushing my teeth; may Sidrah and the Tooth God not find out. Janny insisted I consume something, but I felt too unwell to bother.

+paytontedwithlove+

14^th March 2009:

Saturday: No less than 12 hours of reasonably solid sleep, after feeling so unwell last night, but I still did not feel too bright when I surfaced about five in the afternoon; to a new Sarrerdi no less! The alabaster dragon was not here, so I gloried in the solitude for but a brief while, and that familiar plummet into despair occurred when I heard the Swift pull up and Pa pree and Missus Inkles arrived.

Missus InkleIvisitthesickanddowncast is close to translation, having been picked up early afternoon by Murrah Deeler to visit his missus Meg at home, but two days out of hospital from her cancer treatment stay. Janny took a meal for the family with her, and will sew some hats for Meg who is going to shave her hair off.

I did some fertilizing out the back, before My Beloved, then I returned to the wilderness till dark, doing some watering. I ate vittles in the lounge with the delinquents with a free to air movie running of Robin Williams: Runaway Vacation. Back to the keyboard to send an email to Gladys Hobson letting her know I’d closed down my Progressive Stories site, and I continued bringing this diary up to date.

I took Pa pree home before ten, then kept working at the keyboard, eventually doing a dual posting of this diary to the Main and In other news… sites. A break from it all having a snack and joining Janny in the lounge, where a free to air Nicholas Cage movie was on, a remake of The Wicker Man. I watched a bit, before watering the Sansevierias out the front, fertilizing them first. This commotion caused Missus Inklenotlonggonetobed - stillreadingthough, to push the curtain aside and glare at me, not knowing I was out there.

I came back to the computer, and did more diary writing, took a break to try to get my health enough in order to walk, and off I set on a very late walk on this warm night. There was the distant sound of some big music fest, maybe in Malaga, and the local shopping centre had numerous drunk hoons noisily advertising their big tough look-at-us presence, which made my perambulations less pleasant; nevermind, I was able to take some different routes to avoid the core group of them.

When I got back I again tackled the diary here, this time working under the bonnet in the html mode of the blasted stinking Blogger editor to post maybe six to eight unposted days of diary, but in only three posts, two already posted, so it entailed adding via html the new posts; if you understood that, you need get out more! All of which took ages, hours in fact. It was oiled by my listening to the wonderfully talented Emmylou Harris on her superb album ‘Cowgirl’s Prayer’, on shuffle repeat.

I struggled with some health issues, and then managed, in the early morning light, to water the bamboo and lawn by hand. I tied back the large Bambusa balcoa shoot, my largest ever, which has insisted on curving in towards the centre of the nearby Dendrocalamus latiflorus clump; I had given it a lot of time to straighten itself, but it doesn’t appear it had any intention of doing so. The sky was overcast, but a hot mother is forecast…

I showered, did a quick diary update, and visited for the first time the Meta-Wiki site, then got ready to slip in beside the alabaster dragon, about half nine.

+paytontedwithlove+

15^th March 2009:

Sunday: It took me too long to finally fall asleep, but the gift of unconsciousness did eventually land in my possession. I slept during a very hot mother, as it was forecast to be, yet it exceeded the boys and girls at the weather bureau’s expectations, almost topping forty Celsius. Janny had picked up Pa pree earlier to spend the afternoon and evening here in our airconditioned lounge.

I had, late in my repose, an unusual dream which was vivid and easily recalled, and I shared it with Janny when that alabaster dragoness came to wake me, although the contrary alarm had decided to work this time and on time, so I was awake and reviving, or attempting to do so. It was about half six in the evening when I finally emerged from the boudoir of Missus Inklebaster’s thousand delights, in the typical surreal daze that is my lot upon rising.

Now blow me down and stomp on my face, if ESP is not all over the place, for last night I thought about Sidney Thayne, a Mormon missionary who first called on us maybe two to three years ago when he was posted to this area, but hailed from the U.S.A. We quickly became very fond of him, out of the hundreds over the last almost twenty years who have come to view our place, despite us being strictly pagan heathen infidel gentiles for not being members of the one true church – of any church – as a refuge in this suburb, a place to be sure of at least a cold drink, and snacks, if not often a full blown meal. He left about August 2007 back to his homeland, and we have had three email contacts with him since, the last being a year ago this month. Well, while I was trying to return to the land of the living, coaxing the life deep in my core to the surface of my body, having not long left the boudoir, I checked my email, and who should one be from if not Sidney Thayne!

Many of the billions of followers of this blog will recall the number of times I get these interesting premonitions, but not aware, of course, till a little later, that it constituted a premonition. The last very striking one was last year when I chatted to the family about, despite being in my fifties, the fact that I had never been summonsed for jury duty (not a subject I discussed more than every few years), and this in spite of the fact that my pommy wife had had at least three or four summonses for Australian jury duty, and within a day or two a letter arrived summonsing me to jury duty!

I planned to reply to his email later tonight all being equal, and shot outside in the lessening daylight to photograph my huge Bambusa balcoa shoot which I tied back to attempt to straighten early this morning, then back inside to watch My Beloved and the first two stories on Sixty Minutes with Pa pree and Janny. I, like thousands I’m sure, felt viscerally ill looking at the shark bite on young Sydneysider Andrew Lindop’s leg. And I hope like thousands, I was disturbed by Liam Bartlett’s crucifixion of Dr Roman Hasil, not because he appears to be a fine human being, because he appears not to be, but if, on the slim chance that he did not murder Victoria Cafasso, what hope has he of ever getting a fair trial if he is tried for that murder?

Would Liam Bartlett appreciate such a journalistic lynching on national television at the hands of a smug reporter if all the signs pointed to Bartlett’s having murdered someone, but which he was denying, and was actually innocent of? I think I could countenance a Sixty Minutes program on the matter that neither pictured or named the suspect, but made references to him, such that those familiar with the circumstances would recognise who it was that the intimations referred to. Broadcast television exceeds its boundaries, in my opinion, when it essentially becomes judge, jury, and executioner in cases of serious crime when the accused is denying the charges. I know it’s a grey area in many cases, especially as we climb the political ladder to the levels of State and National excesses, but I believe that there are sufficient differences at this level to warrant crossing the boundaries which should be respected at the lowly ordinary citizen level. To name, picture, and accuse on international media, for example, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, of genocide, is different, even if he is innocent. I hope many understand and concur with what I’m trying to say in a hurry here.

I returned to the computer and worked on editing prior diary notes for reposting to this page, from back in February, which I had uploaded without spell and grammar checking, and I found myself expanding on some it. There was a fair bit to do, and I didn’t get it all done by any means before Janny called me to come and watch Compass. Now there was a show! There will be many Catholics, not least the hierarchy, squirming over this ‘Hand of God’ victim’s family produced documentary, which, of course, will of itself make little difference to the momentum of the overall charade, but let’s hope it improves the safety of the children of parishioners and isolated children who find themselves under the ‘watchcare’ of the Catholic Church in some manner. The fundamental structure has so many flawed principles built in that the Catholic Church cannot help but generate dysfunction from the highest levels down, with the ‘celibate’ priesthood being but one of countless faults guaranteeing serious problems.

After it finished I returned Pa pree, a little before midnight, to his place. I then helped Janny to bed after I got back, did a half kitchen clean up, and returned to finish the five days of February editing of diary, and finally reposted it. Quite a job, a total of over 5300 words, and that’s just my diary!

I then braved a walk on this humid still warm night, and came back very damp from perspiration. The stillness had a charm, however, and I think I prefer the still nights, not least because I can easily hear my favourite talking book.

Missus InkleI’mupforatinkle was up for a tinkle when I got back, and I scratched her back for her then kissed her on her way, before doing a cowboy watering of some of the bamboo outside under lights.

I showered away the stickiness of the walk, titivated to various titbits, and crawled in beside the chalky chameleon towards six.

+paytontedwithlove+