This will hurt me...

Trench in the backyard. Waiting for the Hun. April 2011. I think that everybody should have a trench in the backyard. You never know when somebody might invade. September, 1918 , Amy Lowell This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight; The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves; The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves, And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows. Under a tree in the park, Two little boys, lying flat on their faces, Were carefully gathering red berries To put in a pasteboard box. Some day there will be no war, Then I shall take out this afternoon And turn it in my fingers, And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate, And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves. To-day I can only gather it And put it into my lunch-box, For I have time for nothing But the endeavour to balance myself Upon a broken world.

Henry is a firm believer that Tasmania is a nice place, but that there are too many trees and that they spoil his view . Being a determined fellow, he's made it his life's mission to take a few out, starting with this one!

The past two weeks has seen a combination of drilling, jackhammering, blasting, digging, more jackhammering, more blasting, more digging right outside my office window . At first I thought that it was an innovative art display, but when the blokes stopped for a smoke and to display a genrous amount of arse crack to passing tourists, I was convinced that they were genuine, dinky di, ridgy didge, legit Aussie workers .

Here you can see Dear Little Henry and Dear Little Ezra separated by the infamous Berlin Wall . You might be surprised to find that the Berlin Wall had a section built from wooded lattice, and indeed that Henry and Ezra were around to see it. You can tell that the photo is an authentic old one in the way that it is in black and white. Obviously, it was taken from the perspective of the east, where everything was painted grey, and colour photographs were expressly forbidden.

Henry : "Are you a bounty hunter?" Bounty Hunter : "A man has got to earn a livin'" Henry : "Dyin' ain't much of a living boy."

I'm trialling Henry for some work down in the salt mine. I'll let you know how he gets on.

What an embarrassingly late first post for the day. This is what happens when you don't prepare ahead! Above is the Hydro Tasmania building from my favourite angle. The powers that be decided to allow the bigwigs from HQ to spirit me off to Campbell Town for a pow-wow drawn from all of the fiefdoms across the land. Even better, I had my very own slot in this meeting to present my report! Even more better, I don't have a report! I can now see the logic that drove decision-making processes of the powers that be. It is a damn fine thing that I'm not shy and I can string a sentence or two together, lest I make a fool of myself! Anyway, I wrote a poem. thank you thank you for not thinking today about me.

So Theme Thursday again, and I managed to guess the theme in advance. That has not made it any easier to find something to say. After ANIMAL, then VEGETABLE, it was no shock that this week we're talking MINERAL. What do I talk about? What photograph to show? Minerals are everywhere, and in everything! Do I show everything? Nothing? BAH! I could talk about the reliance on mineral exports to China, Japan and (a lesser extent), India, that Australia's economy developed. We used to make stuff with our stuff. Now we sell stuff to other people to make stuff to sell stuff to us. More cheaply, of course. But what photograph? BAH! So I'm looking around the office, for something to photograph. I'm thinking "c'mon, it can't be hard, minerals are everywhere !" Yet in being too common it's just too hard. So I settled on the light right above my head. Figuring that I might get a halfway interesting photo out of it, I take the snap. There has to be a host of mi...

"Must... get... baby..." Urgghhhh... "Must... get... baby..." Arghhhh... "Just a... little... bit... further..." It must be very frustrating when you are beginning to understand the fundamentals of crawling, but you're just not quite there. Even moreso when you finally manage to get your hand on it an an anti-social toddler snatches the prize at the very final second. One day he shall have his revenge. One day...