Lego: Bosley’s Builders 9

Jackie’s Grief

Jed, Dan and Tim loaded cover-plates onto the trailer, from wherever they were stored.

Wendy drove the tractor and trailer to and fro the places where the plates were to be installed.

Dan pushed the plates across the trailer to clatter to the ground. From where Tim and Jed dragged them into place and then tamped the plates to fix them to the foundations.

When she was done with the fetching, Wendy went to hide in her hut, to try not to hear the clattering and Jed’s constant commands. Who said we need him to order us around? Before we had him, we’ve always worked well together. Bosley had no complaints.
 
This was her last day before needing to go off-site to her paying job, and she had to listen to Jed harrying them all so he could make a good impression? What is it with the guy? I really don’t enjoy being here when Bosley isn’t here too. Wonder if Bos even knows how I feel?
 
Oh no. She heard Jed decide they might as well start building the store’s rear wall. She heard Dan and Tim drag a white beam over the studs. Rattle-rattle. Are they fools, she thought. Bos as good as said the foundations had to settle before the walls were begun.
 
Even Dan was taken in, and that after his upset over Jed’s selfish attitude. I can’t stand it. I’m going to have word with Dan. Find out what he really thinks. I’ll be very disappointed if … she opened her door and beckoned Dan.
 
Trish drew Jackie away with her. “What say we build a bridge from the roof of your cabin to my garden?”

Jackie smiled tremulously. “Will we be able to fence my roof too?”
 
“I don’t know,” Trish said. “We’ll have a look at the materials situation.”
 
After they did that, and found not enough panels to fence Jackie’s roof, Jackie seemed to fade and Trish couldn’t think of anything more to say. She did a lot of thinking, however, while they moved planks from the ground floor to the upper walkway, and from there to the roof, and then lay the planks across.

She reflected on Jackie’s moods as they showed in Jackie’s demeanor since Jed and Jackie arrived. Jackie happy and smiling while building and installing the cabin. Like she had an expectation. Jackie glum and sad since the night that had Jed marauding around for half of it getting his crane safe.
 
OK, so maybe they quarreled. It’s not my job to convince them to kiss and make up. Wonder what Nin Wiz heard? He’s totally taken against Jed. Enough to make anyone suspicious. Is there time for a coffee break with Tim, and possibly Nin before I ask Jackie? Should I?
 
“You know,” Trish said at the end of the job. “I haven’t even seen how you’ve fixed the inside of your cabin.”
 
Jackie burst into tears.
 
 As if you didn’t know that was on the cards, Trish roused at herself. “Changed my mind. Come into my cabin for a break? Tim fixed our coffee machine.”
 
When she saw Wendy crossing from where she’d had a word with Dan, Trish beckoned her over too.
 
“Smells like you fixed the coffee machine?” Wendy said as she followed Trish into Trish’s cabin.
 
“I thought Jackie might like to tell us her problem over a coffee,” Trish said, passing them a steaming mug each. “Maybe we can help?”
 
Jackie suddenly sobbed. “I miss our baby so much!”
 
Trish and Wendy exchanged glances and Wendy squashed in on Jackie’s other side on the bed. She hugged her arm over Jackie’s shoulder. “You and Jed have a baby? Boy or girl? How old?”
 
“B-b-boy,” Jackie said. “Joey. He’s six months old and Jed said to leave him at Jed’s mother’s, and she said a building site is never going to be place for a kiddie. And Jed said that you-all just wanted workers. That you wouldn’t want us if you knew we had a baby!” She cried aloud now. “Hu-hu-hu!”
 
“What’s up?” Tim said from the door. “I came because I smelled the coffee?” He sidled in and shut the door.
 
Trish and Wendy filled him in. Wendy fierce. “I knew there’s something off about that man!”
 
“Jed is half-right,” Tim said reasonably. “Bosley’s does want workers. Don’t we?”
 
“Nobody has ever said anything about us not liking babies,” Trish said. “Or wanting to have kids around,” she said with a dark look that had Tim blushing.
 
“It’s never come up yet. Or has it?” he said, asking Wendy.
 
“Has not come up,” she said grudgingly. “Although mothers and babies are my bread and butter, the subject has not come up. In fact, I think sometimes people here ignore what life is really about …”
 
Tim interrupted. “Dan told me just now that tomorrow he’ll be driving you to your paying job?”
 
“Yes. He is,” Wendy said. “Don’t mind me getting onto my hobby horse,” she said tartly. “I’ll be doing a three-months mid-wife locum stint at the Town Clinic. Why don’t you come with me, Jackie? You and Joey can bunk with me in my accommodation. I have a large room.”
 
“That’s a great idea,” Trish said. “By the time you come back we’re bound to have progressed quite a lot. I’ll make sure that you have a fenced yard. Tim, can you bunk with Nin tonight?”
 
“Hardly,” Tim said. “Not enough room at Nin’s to swing a cat.”
 
“Nope,” Wendy said. “I’ll bunk with Jackie. Jed can sleep in his beloved truck. You want to let Jed know or will I?”
 
“You should, Wendy,” Trish said. “Time Jed discovered who is in charge when Bos or Drew aren’t here. You and me,” she said at Tim. She pointed at the ceiling. “Upstairs. Bring our coffees?”

Cat Tales 20

The tadpoles saga is ongoing. As a cat who eats only cat kibbles—and there’s a very good reason for that—I am amazed by the kinds of food that tadpoles will take to.

At a certain point my human said, “I’m done trying to chase up oak-leaf lettuces. They’re obviously not in season. And expensive when I do come across one. We’ll try these little beasts on a few other greens.”

Which we did. The taddies, as we’re calling them now, would have nothing to do with icebergs, silverbeet, warrigal greens or boiled lettuce. Fussy little beggars. Then, out of sheer desperation, my human broke a nasturtium leaf from the abundant plantation of nasturtiums we have camouflaging Skink Haven.

Personally, I hate nasturtiums. I hate their smell on me. I hate their wibbly wobbly leaves, and how they are just the right height to get in my eyes when I walk among them. So, no. I don’t go in that jungle. Which is probably why the nasturtiums have been encouraged to sprawl over the one-time garden bed where now a community of a special sort of skinks live. Since I’m not allowed to hunt them.


But the taddies, now. They love nasturtium leaves. Look at them! But which left us with the fish food problem. They went off fish food, left it floating on the surface of the water. I like it so was mightily tempted to go fishing for it. A couple of times I almost overbalanced reaching for a tasty titbit.

Watching my antics, the pernickety old woman said, “That’s it! No more fish food. We’re going to have to try them on something more substantial.” She went hunting in the backyard with an insect net.

I fetched a salt-reduced cat-kibble that’d been soaking in my water bowl. Dropped it into the pond. See what happens, I thought. It’s the pernickety old woman’s own, favorite, and nearly always useful expression.

Eight or ten of the taddies made a straight line swim to the sodden kibble and started in on it, butting at it and tearing crumbs off it. They obviously like it. I could say I told you so.


The pernickety old woman caught a great big grasshopper eating something precious, and killed it. I didn’t see how. She could’ve let me do that. She lay the grasshopper carcass on the water where it floated for three days.

Then! You guessed it. It had needed to rot a bit before the voracious little beggars could get their teeth into it. Do tadpoles even have teeth? They ate that whole carcass though, worrying at it even after it sank.

Dozens of hungry taddies lined the top of the water, waiting for a meal. They worried me. What if Mr Egret came along now? He’d have a feast!

My human had a couple of solutions. First she soaked a bunch of salt-reduced kibbles, put them in a fruit-net from the green grocer’s with a couple of hefty pebbles, and sank the parcel in the pond. “So they don’t spend all their time at the top of the water, easy pickings for the likes of that egret.”

Next she found a dried Bangalow palm frond and cut it more or less in the shape of the pond. Wedged it in there. “Camouflage for the little critters. And, when they start their legs …”

What? These critters would be growing legs? I intended to spend a whole lot more time on the pond edge to see that happening!

Blogging Stats: An Outlier

I usually do an annual assessment of this blog where I have a look at what is working and what’s not. This year I have an ‘outlier’ to consider. This is a post that does so well that it outstrips every other post with Views. Even now, eighteen months since it was posted, search engines are still finding it, and still gets between 1-5 Views per week, with so far, over 150 Views in total.

If it was one of my usual non-fiction posts I would be over the moon! Ecstatic, even, to think that so many people appreciate my writing. I would definitely then analyze its every word, tag and category, to see whether I could replicate its success.

Instead I will analyze it for the elements that allowed it to cross over into ‘Lego-technical-expertise-country’. I think what is actually happening is that Lego enthusiasts are hitting on it in the belief that it is one of the xyz posts they’ve heard about explaining a particularly nitty-gritty technique by way of a technicolor video or some such.

When they discover it isn’t what they expected, they just as quickly click away. Giving me a bunch of ‘false-positives’ in the blog’s stats. Lol, I won’t be posting the title of the offending post in this article! I’m not after more ‘false-positives’!

But seriously, when by now more that a hundred and fifty people click away with their expectations unfulfilled, that can start to have repercussions for a blog. Time to do something about it. I’m thinking of combining the information in all three posts pertaining to that subject, and deleting the originals. That way I still have the information available.

Cat tales 19

My proper, Hand-of-God life, as backyard guardian, started when these frog eggs hatched. The next day, my human carefully emptied all three buckets into the bath in the backyard. A few hours later hundreds of tiny tadpoles wriggled up to get a breath of air, and down to the floor of the pond to get food. And repeated that all day. I studied them for hours.

Their first danger was the egret that came every day. It seemed to know when it was safe. If it came at dawn, I’d be stuck in the house because the pernickety old woman still lay in bed. In the daytime, I might be inside because the pernickety old woman had gone down the street for some shopping.

I stalked from left to right and left sweeping my tail angrily behind the glass doors, hoping Mr Egret would see me and feel threatened by my scary puffed-up black and white shape. But he didn’t appear to be able to see through glass. My human and I had learned from the TV that only intelligent—whatever that means—animals could see through glass or see themselves in mirrors. I have no trouble whatever with either of those types of glass though I confess that the TV sometimes tricks me.

When Mr Egret first arrived, he’d perch on the corner of the garden bed, and would stare for many minutes in every direction. If no movement anywhere—despite me at my performance— he’d half-open his wings and use a slight downward thrust to hop onto the corner of the pond-bath that was mine! He’d start with his scooping action, scooping up a few of the tadpoles at the time, many many times. Every time he’d been for a meal, I expected the crowd in the pond to have been quartered or even halved.

But it didn’t turn out too bad. The babies grew very fast and filled the empty spaces. And they ate everything suitable for them in a matter of three days. When my human and I started to see skinny tadpoles, we knew we had to do something. She researched food for tadpoles and took off down the street. That first day she brought back an oak-leaf lettuce, a tadpole delicacy, she said. I couldn’t see why, surely they’d need something more heartening? She floated the lettuce in the bath to see what would happen.

They loved it. Ate and ate until the remnants sank. My human had already fetched in another lettuce, a different look about the thing, which the little animals barely touched. Oh no! We were back at the beginning plus one. The plus one referring to their growth so far, of course.

“I couldn’t get an oak-leaf,” my human said. “How would they even know the difference?” There were a few things I could’ve said, but I knew she wouldn’t listen. “Maybe they’ll eat fish food,” she said. “If I leave you in the backyard will you still be here when I get back? The Pet Shop is just around the corner.

Humans have a saying for how I decided I would communicate my intention. I tried to remember how it went. Ah. I remember. I arranged my face, and even my body to say Butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. Though I might be making a mistake about that saying. I’m not human, after all. It doesn’t sound all that applicable. What I meant to say, Yes I’ll be here. Yes, I’ll be good.

And so I was when my human returned with fish food flakes. They smelled so good I was tempted to jump into the water after them. But in fact, upon getting a good sniff of them herself, she realized their attraction for me and poured a little pile of them for me to lick from the corner of the pond.