Scriptwriter
Melbourne was fun. Hard to believe it was only a month ago that the Lovely Wife and I were across the ditch.
She had Her stuff.
I had mine.
Yeah, it’s been almost a decade since my last budget-blitzing-blast at Forges, so it was naïve of me to think it’d still be there, the passage of time and all.
Otherwise we saw family and friends, we bar-hopped, and tried the local fare. We do so like Melbourne.
Last Friday was pizza night (yes, we still have a pizza night), and I was chopping onions when Bobby Brown’s Every Little Step came on through my headphones.
I was happily chopping and singing — including each and every whoop and holler — when I realised half-way through that I knew every goddamned word of that song and it must’ve been at least twenty years since I last heard (and danced) to it.
The moral of this post? Some things can not be un-remembered.
Bonus moral? Don’t bust any dance moves whilst holding a kitchen knife.
A certain short film was quietly uploaded a few years back.
It’s just been moved from Unlisted to Public.
In 2009, Fortress Mamea’s spirit of Halloween was crushed by Barbie and her Ghoul friend.
Things haven’t been the same since.
Now that we’re ensconced in rural Northland, the spirit of All Hallows’ Evening might just be revived.
Happy Halloween.
I was working in the keep the other morning when I turned in my chair and saw a large grey shape in the doorway and thought, [EXPLETIVES], that is one big [EXPLETIVES] rat!
Then it lopped away at my big girly gasp which roused The Dog and The Puppy, and after some running and hopping and hiding, the interloper was captured alive.
We’re not sure how the rabbit got into the fortress. Presuming it gained entry through the cat flap by the dining hall, it made it past our presumably sleeping guard hounds (their performance against their KPIs will be noted accordingly) to reach the keep which is at the opposite end of the building. I suspect The Kitten brought it in for some playtime but the rabbit is unmarked.
Anyhoo, we have a rabbit in Fortress Mamea. And it’s a cutie.
You’ve already been introduced to our resident rooster, Ghost Dog. He does a pretty good job of looking after his girls: he points out food that he finds (whereupon he’s winged aside by his female companions), and now that we’re out in the country, he keeps an eye out for trouble.
There was something familiar about him and his harem that nagged at the back of my brain for some time.
And then I flashed on this:
Of course.
Back in the Big Smoke, The Dog and I had a basic three-mile running route that I called, with writerly flair, the fleur-de-lis.
(I’ve just remembered I usually referred to it as the cloverleaf route but fleur-de-lis has a certain ring, yes?)
The first iteration of Fortress Mamea being in suburbia, the route followed roads and was all asphalt, so the dog ran on a lead. (We had another couple of routes, five and seven miles respectively, in the Waitakere Ranges where she could run off-lead.) The routes and distances were fixed, and for over a decade we ran those three, five and seven mile distances together.
The current Fortress Mamea is on a piece of land large enough to allow the dog — and The Puppy, now — to run off-lead without worrying about automobiles or newly-relocated townies who think all dogs should be on leads with muzzles. After a few months of getting to know the property, we have a running route that I have dubbed the corazón.
The corazón runs through two wooded areas (The Wood and The Copse) that are separated by paddocks, meadows, and the fortress itself. The running surface includes long grass (that can obscure uneven terrain), half-hidden tree roots (that can still catch a foot or toe), and loose sticks (that can stick, stab or trip you up). The wooded areas are pretty cool to run through (they make me flash on the opening minutes of Silence of the Lambs) — check it:
At first, The Dog ran the full route with The Puppy and I.
Lately, she has taken to running more efficiently:
For me, my fitness regime of, in effect, running around in circles, is more of a journey-rather-than-the-destination kind of thing.
For her, it’s a social thing: she still gets to run (mostly) (kind of) with the pack. Since she has twelve years and several thousand kilometres under her collar, I think she’s entitled to conserve her energy for other pursuits.
I’m nowhere near approaching the crossfitness heights of a certain Mr Tripuraneni but I’m doing okay, if I don’t mind saying so myself.
I logged a far-too-modest 45 weight-training sessions this year which is obviously less-than-once-a-week (and my belt notches certainly show this). I’m trying to console myself with the thought that it could have been worse (previous years have logged paltry single digits).
As for the running, thanks to a (personally) epic 12 kilometre run earlier today, I’ve managed to clock just over 300 kilometres in 2015, though this was only achieved on an average of one run per week.
I wouldn’t say 2015 has been busy; it’s been more… eventful. I turned a year older and my appetite — once a shameless point of pride — has shrunken to bird-like European dimensions. Maybe I’ve reached the point where my exercise goal of shooting for the moon and glorying in my pain tolerance should be moderated to shooting for the moon and being grateful I can still shoot for the moon.
Housekeeping here.
First, my apologies for the cliffhangers — in case you were wondering:
Having said all that about the relevance of our new digs to writing…
The previous inhabitants had let the property go to seed in various areas (q.v. burner and B1), the most visible sign being the establishment of Jerusalem cherry through The Wood and in the Green Zone. Although its green, orange and red fruit provide a splash of colour, its fruit is rather poisonous.
“Solanum pseudocapsicum04” by Paul venter – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.
So, most days since we took possession of this land, I’ve been pulling that weed out by hand (Fortress Mamea is organic, thank you). It’s a simple enough job, mindless and repetitive (and immediately gratifying) but because a considerable part of the property is under this weed, it’s also an awfully immense task.
The only way to handle the size of the task at hand has been to a). prioritise the workload, and/or b). do it a bit at a time. Since the weed is fruiting right now, the priority is to pull out whatever’s fruiting because each of those fruit contain at least a dozen seeds, and any one plant can have as much several dozen fruit on them. Sometimes that gets boring — or overwhelming — so I stake out a little 5 by 5 metre area and pull out all of the Jerusalem cherry, and afterwards stand back and feel a little bit like General Sherman.
Which is a typically long-winded way of saying… I’ve started writing again.
The move to Northland, and the work required to tidy up the property and its surrounds for clear fields of fire, have consumed much more of my mind and energy than I expected. The blog posts — as you can tell — have been more about the new circumstances rather than trying to see the writing angle in things.
But I’ve started writing again. Which meant I had to dig out my notes and files to try and remember where I’m at with various projects. Some projects are so large and/or complex that I’ve had to prioritise my method of reacquaintanceship, or nibble at the edges to make sense of a small part of it. It feels a little overwhelming — a bit like a patient coming out of a coma and trying to come to terms with the time lost — but it’s manageable. I can prioritise. Or I can start small.
Just like with the damned Jerusalem cherry.
