prickley subject

Wednesday 25th August 2010

My client just phoned to cancel and I, like a true addict, thought Great! Now I can get back to cyberspace. I haven’t washed the breakfast dishes, or dealt with the mail. Haven’t even planted those ground covers. I’m on the first rush of this new drug. Telling myself I will soon drop it - bingeing has always been my style. So I’ll probably blog furiously for a while then abandon it. Or get some moderation.

I’m working up the courage to email everyone I know and say’I started a blog’ Why does my mind immediately hear that sentence - ‘I started a blog’  - to the tune of a awful old BeeGees song “ I Started A Joke”?

Anyway. So I wrote my first entry last night and off it went hurtling into outer space like a teensy message in a bottle. What will become of it, my little squeak out there among the clamouring cacophony of the ever-swelling cyberspace hordes? It’s like a giant party out there with everyone talking at once.

Meanwhile, in the real world, F and I spotted an echidna on the steps going down to under the verandah, where Den has set up the ping pong table. A scrunched up little ball of prickles, burying its head in the sand and flinching at the sound of our footsteps. ('Sshhh, Mum!') Later, we paused from ping pong to silently watch it lumber up the stairs and waddle off behind the geraniums. 

and also thismorning:

draped over bouganvillea

above the studio door

- a perfect snakeskin

left overnight by our local carpet snake, which must have been warm from yesterdays sun. She’d be too cold to move today, curled up somewhere in her bright new diamond-patterned skin.

It is so cold today I am hobbling around the house wrapped up in the purple blanket and over the top of it the  wooly-wombat thermal ski thing. Ugg boots, beanie. Glamourous? Down the hill below my office, someone is brushcutting RRRRRRrrrrrrrrr. 

This weather feels like Melbourne not the subtropics. The day has that broody, moody, nothing-interesting-is-ever-going-to-happen-again sort of feeling about it. Implacable, grey. 

At the Writers Fest I heard prof Ian Lowe and Clive Hamilton both explaining eloquently, & with a touch of wry humour, why we are, collectively f***ked, planet-wise, climate-wise. It’s all too late, scientists agree. We’ve blown it guys! We’re stuffed! was their basic message. (Meanwhile Witchface and MonkeyEars squabble about who gets to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic, and nobody mentions climate change. But I am not gonna mention politics)

So what is the best response as Moscow burns, Pakistan is under water, and  our precious little planet heads straight for the iceberg? Go down dancing? Brace ourselves for the worst? Greive? Pray? Pretend it isn’t happening? At the very least get solar panels and water tanks & grow some vegs, I guess. A good idea, come apocalypse or not. 

After  D’s recent guilt-inducing carbon-footprint lecture, I have  been trying to ration my radiator-use. Just ten minutes morning and night, getting in and out of bed. that’s the theory anyway. But it’s a bit of a joke really, seeing as I just flew to Europe and back last month, gobbling up god knows how many hundred times the amount of fossil fuel I’d be entitled to if it was all equitably divided up between all the humans on Earth. Living with hypocrisy seems the only option...