Lawn mowing & Espionage

My lawn and I have been engaged in a battle. Lawn nearly won. It all started innocently enough. Lawn was behaving himself, sitting quietly in front of my house as a good lawn should, content with being green. But dark undercurrents of rebellion were stirring within Lawn. The first sign of trouble was the Dandelions. Like an advance party of Special Forces they surreptitiously began moving into position around Lawn, slowly lifting their heads from cover and looking around. I should have acted then… but my Sister had given me an Xbox and I was… busy.

Then things escalated. Lawn began to expand, upwards, fast. A slightly queasy feeling began to grip my stomach. I’d stand in my living room and careful pull one corner of the curtains aside, furtively glancing around at Lawn before quickly retreating back the relative safety of “Need for Speed Underground 2”.

Time for action! The problem is that I don’t own a lawnmower and I don’t fancy my chances with a pair of kitchen scissors. So I call the mercenaries… Lawn decapitators for hire. These guys have the gear to decimate Lawn and to carry away the evidence in a canvas bag. It turns out they aren’t cheap either! Especially as Lawn has now established a beachhead and is I suspect planning an invasion. I decide I can’t afford the mercenaries. An air of disquiet hangs over the neighbourhood. The neatly groomed properties either side of me seem to scream at me every time I drive in. I’d close my eyes except then I’d probably drive over my letterbox.

Plan B. This sees me borrowing a mower from my brother-in-law. I went to the hardware shop and bought a brand new petrol can, stopped at the service station to get some fuel, and headed home. Lawn looked at me defiantly as I walked past. I filled up the mower and rolled it into position, settled my earmuffs securely into position, firmly grasped the mower’s pull cord and… well pulled. Nothing. So I reset and grasped the cord again, took a deep breath and pulled again. The first 200mm of pull went according to plan. But then with a snap the cord broke. My arms kept up their momentum and my fist, still clenched tightly around the handle, smashed into my face. Lawn got a reprieve for another day.

Now to the espionage. While all this was happening it seems that one of my neighbours was giving reports back to my landlord (who lives a few hundred kilometres away). First I know of it is when I receive an email that says, “street report u r making hay on front lawn? lol, plse keep cut, ta”. Aaaah… I’m trying! Now I don’t know about you but there is something creepy about finding out that your landlord has someone watching the place to make sure you’re doing everything right. Not knowing who it is that is watching we are now glaring over the fence at all our neighbours… chances are we’ll eventually glare at the right person. Everyone else will simply think we’ve lost our minds and will warn their kids to stay away from us.

Back to my war with Lawn. The disgraced mower got sent to the repair shop and I was promised that I would get it back in three days. That’s three days where Lawn sat gloating at my failure. Both my neighbours cut their lawns again, just to rub salt in the wound. After three days I rang the repair shop… not ready. The next day… still not ready. Finally after six days I get the mower back. Look out Lawn, your time has come!

So I put on my boots, fix my earmuffs securely to my ears, check the petrol level and roll the mower into position. Then carefully pulling the choke to fully on I grasp the new pull-cord pausing long enough for a deep breath… and pull. It starts! For all of five seconds before spluttering in a death rattle to silence. I think naughty words loudly in my head. After much poking and prodding (and maybe just a bit of kicking) I realise that the fuel valve has been turned off during the repair. A simple thing to fix… and now I’m back in business.

Alas, the end of this story is not too dramatic. I cut the Lawn down. I am victorious. I need a cold drink. Until we meet again my nemesis Lawn!

Soul Survivor part 1

Ok... time to get back to writing. And due to popular demand (well actually two requests) I'll talk a bit about Soul Survivor. If you want to know all the details of what Soul Survivor is, what it's about etc check out the link. This post won't try to explain all of that.

My role for SS was the rather dubiously important sounding "production manager". I think that meant I was supposed to look as if I knew what end of a guitar to plug the cable thingy into and that a speaker is both a person standing at the front of the marquee sharing their wisdom with us and the big black box the sound is coming out of. It's all very technikal.

Because of this rather weighty responsibility I decided to get up to the site early on the set up day. The site was at Manfield Park in Feilding. Feilding it seems has won awards for being the prettiest place in NZ or something. Not being particularly enthusiastic about pretty gardens it's not a place I have ever been before. The salient fact however is that it is about 2 hours from where I live. And so I dragged myself from bed at 5.30am and was on the road by 6.30am with the intention of being on site at 8.30 in time to watch the marquee being erected.

Everything went according to plan until Levin. I wish to speak no bad things against Levin. You may come from there and love the place for all I know. And to be fair what transpired was not actually the fault of Levin or her inhabitants. I did however think some rather dark and uncharitable things when, just as we were driving out of Levin my van shuddered, sighed and then stopped. Basically the van was knackered with the balance belt in several pieces and bent valves etc. So for me SS started with my van being loaded onto a tow truck and having to be picked up by a kind man with a trailer (many thanks Shane!). By the time I got on site the marquee was up. Good for my ego that… reinforcing the fact that no one actually needed me there!

The rest of the set up went pretty well. Except for the lights. I know next to nothing about lights except that they scorch your retina if you stare into one and that sometimes if you spend lots more money you can get lights that move and can blind more people than the silly static ones. This is the reason why I have people on my team that are lighting guru’s. Unfortunately none of them were with me at SS.

With only about an hour and a half before the first meeting in the marquee I still had no lights working. Well, to be precise, they did work… just not in any logical or useful way. Phone calls were made hastily to Wellington and with the phone clutched to my ear and with a drummer sound checking his kick drum 2 feet from my other ear I knelt on the ground in front of the dimmer pack and tried to explain to lighting guru Daniel what was going on. Finally, with barely an hour to spare and desperate I pulled the power from the lighting, waited a minute and turned it all back on… and it worked! Stupid lights.

Next time I’ll write something a little more deep and meaningful about Soul Survivor.

The box

My life is in a collection of brown cardboard boxes. Some of them are small. Some of them are large. They are all full of my eclectic collection of paraphernalia… junk if you prefer. Maybe I should clarify by saying that I have just moved house, 3 days before Christmas to be exact. The problem was that I have also just been involved in the inaugural Soul Survivor NZ festival and therefore have not spent any concerted effort in getting unpacked.

I’m sure many of you have had the dilemma that I now face… where the heck did I put everything? I’ve lost count of how many times I have needed one small thing and then spent the next 15 minutes opening every single box and rummaging through the contents… then rummaged through them all again because I couldn’t find what I was looking for the first time through.

I have of course unpacked the essentials of life. My 550 CD’s are on the shelf… in alphabetical order no less. My cutlery and crockery is in the cupboards. The TV and computer are all plugged in and working well. I’ve found all the chargers for my phone, camera and ipod. But half my clothes are still in the boxes, My books are on the floor and I’m currently sitting next to box I suspect is full of rice, pasta and various herbs and spices.

So how long before I get sick of clambering around the boxes that are in every room of the house? I think my lethargy can extend a couple more days.

A feeble excuse...

So, the two or three people who read this may have noticed I have not added anything for... um... a while. My feeble (nay, pitiful) excuse is that I have been busy. And I have. But is it an excuse... I'll leave that to you to decide.

Since my last post I have:
a) Done the Christmas at the Park event in Porirua
b) Shifted house
c) Celebrated my Mother's birthday
d) Eaten far too much for Christmas dinner
e) Been a part of Soul Survivor's first ever NZ event
f) Slept nowhere near enough

So now that I have all of that out of the way I will endeavour to write a little about some of those things that have been keeping me busy... as well as finish unpacking all my household items from the multitude of boxes that are stacked in every room of the house and that I trip over at least once a day!