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Be all that as it may, meanwhile:
In other news…
Wednesday: Having done a marathon write and photo enhancing session last night at the keyboard, as well as a kitchen clean up to put me sweet with the tantalising toffee apple, it wasn’t till well after dawn that this lonely traveller slid between the fleecy low thread counts. This would help explain my dragging myself up about three in the afternoon, when the smooth smoocher returned from her first spinning social in over twenty five years at Menora with the Handweavers’, Spinners’ and Dyers’ Guild of Western Australia (Oxford comma challenged), which lasted a few hours from mid morning. She really enjoyed the break from the time stealers back around these parts.
What follows now is a case of should I or shouldn’t I be so candid? I did a bit of fertilising and watering of the rather neglected over this winter Sansevierias out the front, before weeding and watering the struggling pair of cocos palms near the road. While engaged at this, the neighbour’s on the uphill side’s father, who is checking on the property daily while his daughter and son-in-law, with their two children, are on holiday in their homeland of
It was getting close to dark, and I returned to the backyard to do a few odds and ends in the remaining light. I heard the same neighbours’ dog bark, Jacky, and I went up the back to check whether he was in our yard or his own, because the last half a dozen panels of the fibro fence between us were blown down in a storm in mid-July, and it will be an insurance repair job when the neighbours return. As it turned out Jacky was in his own yard, and I for some reason continued up to the area to look around. I noticed suddenly that a pack of ten 8 foot long galvanized star pickets were gone, which I have had stored maybe 15 feet back in our yard from the damaged fence line. They cost a small fortune when I bought them, and they could be double now, and I had plans to use them this spring to push back a hedge of bamboo near the back of the house.
Recently it crossed my mind when up there that they could walk, but I honestly never felt the need to move them, feeling that I could trust particular folk given that we are neighbours. I quickly scoured my mind for any chance that I had in fact moved them recently, which I quickly ascertained that I hadn’t, for they are heavy, and were tied by wire together in the pack, and I would surely remember such an effort, given that I last glanced at them maybe a fortnight or less ago. Now I began to get very angry.
The nibs’ backyard is completely fenced off from the front, and a key is needed to open the carport access to the rear. I knew with a certainty who was responsible…
One thing I despise is dealing with people ripping me off. All my life till recentish times I’ve let it happen, because I so dislike confronting mongrel behaviour aimed at me. However, I have finally learnt that some behaviour is very best confronted immediately, and with a force that the perpetrator respects. It is important to know what your enemy respects, for anything less than this will not achieve the desired result. I spent a bit of time calming down, my heart racing, and did a quick alpha state meditation, followed by a quick prayer, then grabbed another loose 8 foot galvanized star picket and an umbrella (it was raining lightly), and in the very faint light walked down the street some half a dozen houses.
I put the star picket on the paving near the front door, and could hear folk out the back. I found the side gate was not latched, and marched around there, where the fellow of interest was seated socialising with his son and another couple. I asked XYZ to come and speak with me, beckoning him out to the front. He followed me, and after he arrived there with me, I pointed to the picket on the ground and said to the effect: “XYZ, some one of your friends has taken ten of my pickets, and they will be put back very quickly.”
He was shocked but composed, and I went on to tell him that this was not on, neighbours must have complete trust in each other, I pointed out that I have never done anything like the same even though the opportunity has been there… He broke in to say “They are here” and “They’ll be back tomorrow” in words very similar to these (his first language is not English remember).
I told him that as far as I was concerned, once they were returned it never happened, and that ‘his friends’ must never do anything like it again, and as a conclusion I told him that while I am generally very mild I can get very angry. He obviously believed me (it’s true by the way), and said many times to the effect “Don’t worry Payton, they’ll be back”, and when I had told him they can be put at the carport, he said “No, I’ll put them back in place.”
I returned relieved that he did not pretend ignorance and admitted quickly, but it took me some time to regain my equanimity. Why do we do such things to each other? And this fellow is not poor, not struggling as we are, nor is his daughter’s family beside us, the yard through which he took his spoils. Janny knows, in retrospect, when it actually happened: two days ago on Monday when I left in the car for Guildford to take Bob swimming, within moments a vehicle pulled in to the drive next door, and she heard scraping metal up the back, thinking it was in the neighbours’ yard, and Jacky barked a lot. Nevertheless she did walk out into the backyard lest the dog was going to make a nuisance of itself in our backyard, but not far enough to see what was actually going on. Then a little later she heard great laughter from the nibs’ carport, and soon after the vehicle left, down the hill toward the nibs’ father, XYZ’s house.
Too much excitement for me, and I really hate confronting bastards, or more exactly perhaps, bastard behaviour. I will do my best to greet the culprit, who we see several times each week visiting the house while he is looking out for it, and just as often at all other times, due to his visits to his two grandchildren, as though it never happened, true to my word. He walks up every day all year round.
The Dear Leader ate with us and watched the great Wednesday line up on Aunty, until I returned him before ten, and I did some writing until Lateline: The (Leigh) sales graph: Regular readers know that I have waxed lyrical about how Ali Moore is an excellent template for elegant appearance for the ABC’s current affairs and news presenters, but I never expected Kerry O’Brien to take it to heart, for he has been looking the image of Ali this week on his 7.30 Report! But enough of that: Leigh Sales took my breath away for how sublime she looked tonight. That peachy hair style so marvellously complemented her face, which was graced with subtle effect make-up only, tiny earrings and no other jewellery, and a smart and very becoming black approaching-elbow-length sleeved dress with white banding, with diminutive décolletage; she was a picture that still has my head spinning. And a chalcedony apparition to boot, as clean as the driven snow; there are women who would scratch eyes out for skin like this. Did I mention the sparkle? Or should I say ‘scintillation’? Wow. No, WOW!
So, was anything of import on the program? Well yes, actually Ms Sales had an in-studio interview of interest to me with that well fed svelte sparrow, no, a sparrow on clover, Opposition Treasury Spokesman Joe Hockey, who did again what he does well, and that is to bucket wholly everything the Labor Government does, and manage, as always, to spin every good thing as a result of the former Howard Government. Who has noticed that the nifty charmer Hockey exerts a powerful effect on Ms Sales, who can barely resist his charisma, especially in-studio? Yet again Hockey caused Ms Sales a few moments of giggling like a school girl – brief as they were – the first time calling on him: ‘Well come on, throw it out there!’; the second after Mr Hockey mentioned Peter Costello: her smile was so incredibly effusive, her eyes were smiling as powerfully in congruence, but hey, this is a slimey politician, like them all (with few exceptions), and it’s better that they not be allowed to gain this degree of traction. To be fair, these were just moments out of over 13 minutes; Mr Hockey should be very happy with the amount of self spruiking he managed. I have advised Ms Sales and Mr Hockey to book a room before, and tonight’s performance is suggestive of their having taken my advice.
Mr Hockey had some good things to say, when professionally and sensitively questioned by Ms Sales, about the private versus public lives of politicians, but unfortunately he also missed an opportunity to affirm that indeed it is best for politicians to set better examples ethically and morally than average, instead giving a fairly mediocre and stuck-for-words analysis of the general principles of that aspect of the issue.
The elegance factor was not over yet, for Ticky Fullerton made the sun rise for the second time today when she fronted Lateline Business: she looked grand (take a look see), the result of the enchanting combination of her hair style, her top, her unadorned décolletage, her subtle make-up. Well done Aunty’s presenters tonight!
I began writing in my sanctuary, interrupted first by watching David Letterman, and much later by Janny calling out for help from the bedroom, which gave me a fright: she had a very bad thigh muscle cramp, one of the banes of her life. This took almost a half hour to settle down with our usual measures, including the percussion massager.
Dawn was approaching on this chilly night, and I was still writing. This day has been punctuated with a very unpleasant interlude: I would be happy never to have cause to confront anyone again ever in all eternity like I did with the neighbour’s father.
+paytontedwithlove+
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