I’ve been learning tricks, would you believe? I have no idea what they are all leading to. For the last couple of days it was all about finding kibbles IN cardboard boxes.
Today the old woman put kibbles ON a box …
Here’s me finding them and taking one off. It’s a pretty wonky operation so I’m gonna wait till I’m really hungry before I have another go. In the meantime, I might think of a better way to get them down.
Other than that today has been a boring day as the old woman went out twice in one day, first time in the morning with all her painting gear and second time in the afternoon with the wheeled thing.
She came back hours later with it laden with stuff. New kibbles too, I hope. We were getting quite short on them.
The demolitions began with a weeks worth of fencing the whole site as is the normal procedure. So counting working days from then, it’s day 7. My son kindly let me know that the whole construction industry in this country (Australia) uses the same calendar where 9 day working weeks and flexi-days are concerned.
So when I said on Monday nothing is happening, where are they? He said, they’ll be doing something on another site.
Well, they’re back today. At 8.30 AM a huge semi dump truck backed into Carinya’s main street, looking bigger than normal due to the littleness of the houses. That starting time, by the way, is due to the work being in a residential area. Normal construction industry starting times are 6.30 AM, or even 6 AM. An early start makes sense in spring summer and autumn, when temperatures may be over 30 Celsius.
Yesterday, at 35 degrees C (95 Fahrenheit) from about 11 AM here, would’ve been unbearable, with the humidity quite high too. Today temperatures are back in the mid twenties.
A couple of men in orange hi vis shirts unloaded maybe two dozen tires. And it’s only because I saw a clip about an archeological site in the Orkneys being covered with black plastic, with ‘retired’ tires to weight it down, that I realized the tires in the present scene must be to prevent a load of dust and rubble being blown all over the highway.
Sometimes it boggles my mind that old tires are being used for that purpose all over the world. One of the joys of the internet: good ideas spread as fast as bad ones.
They dumped a pile of concrete rubble at the end of the street, next to the mysterious hedge that is still there. All the other vegetation were massacred except the hedge? I need a site informant.
A large front end loader is at work at the lower (eastern) edge of the site, In the elbow on the map, filling that same truck with rubble and broken cement it’s scraping up from–I suspect–the forecourt. I’m going by what I can hear, in this instance.
I need to try and retrieve the map of the area we were all sent a couple of weeks ago … got it!
Well, it’d be better upside down, because that’s the way I’m looking at it and taking photos. I shall endeavor to do magic with various software. I’d like to put on treasure-island-style crosses to indicate where the work is being done. Watch this space.
I’ve probably spent about an hour trying to comment on people’s websites–my apologies to the people who missed out–and then, to top it all off, had half an hour trying to get back to my own blog!
I had three passwords turned down, one of them the one I just put in. Then I linked with a service I do have a strong connection with, and was turned down the minute I tried to input using them.
Of course it may not be the fault of the platform we all love, or why keep coming back?
I’ve written before about the immense chain of connections necessary to be able communicate in this manner. And that is not even considering things things like power supply, labor strikes and the weather.
Correct me anywhere where I go wrong listing the stages necessary to make blogging possible.
Me on my laptop or using my mobile > by way of Jetpack or WP classical > my internet link > signals to the nearest telecommunication tower > [I’m a bit hazy on the next step. Is it up to space to a communication satellite?] > to the next tower and hopping to where an undersea cable takes the signal to the next country?
I confess to being completely stressed for the two nights that we had a visitor staying.
First there was the getting the place ship-shape, with no peace to just lay up and relax while the old woman worked through her usual routines.
No. We had putting away. Dusting. Airing the pillows. Wrangling bedsheets onto the mattress. Finding linen in the linen cupboard by first reefing things out, then putting most of them back.
This is how I prefer at least some of my day
But there wasn’t anything like sleeping on the couch for three days! because after our visitor arrived, I had to be totally on my toes. Not that the two women ever sat on the couch, they lounged about at the dining table.
And they mainly ignored me. Even the old woman ignored me. I didn’t get even one game out of her, and the kibble game might as well not have been invented. Very exasperating!
The first night I was shut in my den by 8.30 p/m! In vain I tried to tell her that she was making a mistake. Bedtime is at 9.30 p/m! She ignored my entreating look, where I begged to stay up longer. I was so shocked I didn’t make any further attempts to communicate.
The following night I decided to get back at them. Our visitor slept next door in the guest room made over from the study. I set my internal alarm, and putting my face right by the crack left by the door not quite closing, miaouwed every hour.
She had hardly any sleep, she said. Unfortunately, the old woman had a great night, she said. That’s when I discovered that when she takes out her hearing aids, she can hear very little. Certainly not a few little miaouws.
All was good, though. The visitor left at 9.20 a/m and my routines have been restored.
I’m just boasting here … not that I did any of the growing myself. These plants don’t seem to mind standing around on a south facing balcony …
Australian native fig (proper name later)
This is a rainforest species and starts in the undergrowth, so the conditions probably right up its alley.
Bolly gum … it’s reaching for the outdoor light I’ve been leaving on for the fishpond. It’s grown over 30 cm in 6 months. A sprig of its new growth.
This velvety kurrajong is also putting out new growth. I think I finally found the place it likes.
Isn’t that a lush and verdant growth of parsley and Chinese cabbage? I suspect that their success is more to do more with growing in thinly covered composting vegetables.
Most of the rest of the plants are struggling in various different ways. But never mind, I heard from my neighbours that we do get sun for a few weeks! Maybe then there will be various growth spurts. We’ll see.
Day two of the demolition stage … a brand spanking new machine is busy taking out the vegetation so carefully nurtured by the gardening crew only a few days ago.
Someone could’ve saved themselves a swag of money, time and useless busy work if they only worked together.
When I watch a machine like that at work, I always wonder whether a couple of men on the ground couldn’t do that work more efficiently.
Chainsawing the shrubs, stacking them on a pile or dragging them to a truck. There aren’t any real trees in that section. How can it be cheaper?
Yes. Don’t worry. That was a rhetorical ‘big world’ question. I realise that by the time an employer pays humans their holiday pays, sickness benefits and super, one driver is cheaper than three laborers.
By ‘big world’ I mean the ESG costs as well as just running a demolition company.
E = environmental; S = social; G = governance … I’m still in the dark about the significance of the last one. You?
Now that I’ve proven that I know how to play, the old woman is constantly thinking up new games. My favorite one so far is hunting kibbles.
Round about her lunchtime she’ll wander around with a small handful of kibbles and drops them tinkling into the various little plates and bowls she has hidden around the unit.
I know she means me to listen for the sound of them hitting the china but why would I? I just watch her bending over here and there to pour them from only a little height.
Then … this afternoon … she totally tricked me! We had a parcel delivery this morning that came in a cardboard box. After unpacking it, she set it in the living room.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Find out what’s in it. You should be able to smell them.”
First I just walked past it. It smelled new. Cardboardy. After her lunch I walked past it again. Hmph, still new and cardboardy.
By mid afternoon I’d worked it out though I continued lying around. A box with flappy bits—like that—seems like they’ll jump up and get me if I try to jump in between them.
The old woman weakened and lay the box on its side. That’s when I made my move …
Rita de Heer 