The bastards keep coming back.
The upside was a pile of dry, hard grass stems heaped up by evening.
The local brood of magpies seem to like to take these for their nests.
Seems to save them the bother of digging them up themselves.
By evening (in total absence of tittupping, I note with some sorrow), the place was full of maggies.
Tried to count them, but they kept coming and going to wherever it is that big magpies make little ones.
Reminded me of a rhyme we used to say in primary school.
The Magpie Counting Rhyme -- it tells your fortune:
One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret never to be told
Eight's a wish
And nine's for luck
And ten is the chance of a decent ham sandwich
Had to pick up some supplies after all this effort in the garden.
Saw two of my favourite road signs along the way.
1. NO LINES MARKED: DO NOT OVERTAKE UNLESS SAFE
Does this mean that when there are lines marked you can overtake unsafely?
2. CAUTION: MOWING IN PROGRESS
I mean: what exact precautions are you supposed to take to stop some bastard up ahead with an industrial mower whacking a bloody great boondi into your duco?
Maybe: stop the car at the sign, walk the 100 metres or so up the road and shoot the c**t?
This left me the afternoon for some film watching in prep for tomorrow's class.
Not sure how good I am at this but at least they haven't thrown me out this time ... yet.
Can you imagine the old CV with "Watching 100: failed"?
When I ran out of set "texts" (as the pretentious gits at the university like to call them), I turned to my old vid collection and took out Nosferatu (1922).
Great movie.
But I couldn't keep my eyes off Max Schreck.
He has these big whirly ears that look like cheese danishes.
Not dissimilar to Princess Leia's in fact.
(We call that "intertextuality".)
After a while, I decided that they were him, "symbolised his essence" as I've learned to say in class.
A vicious spiral of ever-increasing bloodlust.
Duly inspired, I have now decided that I shall begin my next novel with the no-doubt-to-become-immortal words:
The Count is a foreign pastry.
Sledge
