Squack

Squack is the oral progeny of a love-up between a sqwawk and a quack. How such seemingly ill-matched sounds could ever meet, I do not know. Perhaps sqwawk had a cold she needed healing, and found a quack in the phone book. If this was the case, I can imagine her retelling the story at a dinner party. "I was just sat there, feeling ill. He said, say 'AHHH', and of course I could only say 'SQWAWK' - so that was it, love at first sound." Aww, say the assembled guests. That's so tweet.

Well, the sounds of the feathered legions are really very different here. This is not a land of delicate nature and pretty birdsong. Tweet was not a tough enough noise to survive Australia's evolutionary rigours. Even the crow's caw has been hammered into something more caustic. Imagine pressing the last breath of air out of a dying man's chest. AAAR. AAAR. That's something like it. I happened to catch a minute of Home and Away, during which one of the characters uttered the expression "stone the flaming crows!" Having now heard 1232.5 crow noises, I can understand why stones might be considered appropriate. Or perhaps even "high velocity metal alloy insertion techniques", to quote a phrase used in the conservation sector. Bullets, in case you were wondering.

There is also a bird that makes the sound of a car alarm. Or a car alarm that makes the sound of a bird. I still haven't placed the source.

Do Robins sound different? Well, I've started squawking to strangers, but more of that later. I haven't seen any avian Robins, though I'm assured they exist. I have seen lorikeets rainbowing the trees of King's Park. I have seen an elegant parabola of pelicans over Mandurah beach. I've seen the red wattle bird and the honey eater and the galah. I have seen magpies bigger than magpies and burly crows with bandy-legged gait.. My favourite is the willy wagtail, who wiggles his rear every time he lands.

But back to what I sound like. I sound busy. The worms are popping up everywhere, and my beak is wearying from all the gobbling. I started work last week raising money for a charity called Bush Heritage, who buy land and look after it. An area the size of a football oval (aussie rules, not football) is rendered infertile every hour by commercial activities like mining, logging and agriculture. South Western Australia is second only to the Amazon in biodiversity, and already they have lost 90% of the bush. I persuade people I meet to put a dollar a day into saving the world. It's a good job, and it makes me happy.

I'm also working on a couple of lectures for the local uni. I've been asked to talk about games design and writing for games. Quite exciting, but the preparation has been keeping me very busy.

And I had a tryout today for a copywriter role, which seems to involve writing fun things about various products. I think I'd enjoy the challenge, so fingers crossed. And not because my hand needs to wee.

Now I have to fly. The Julie bird will be hungry, so I'll have to peck something nice from the shops.

I must away, but I'll be beak.

This lady will be your point of contact...

If one is a person of a particular persuasion, one is to wont to immerse one's particular self in activities of a somewhat addictive nature. When I first met Julie, I remember we compared climbing and knitting. There are many similarities between the two - indeed, climbing is an anagram of knitting, but only the cleverest of you will discern the logic in that statement. Anyway and anyway, it does take a certain type of person to knit so earnestly and for such durations that the eyes protest and protrude, making them useful for potato printing but not much else. The gist here is that Julie knits a lot, and thus that not merely one, but two, are persons of a particular persuasion.

As an aside, it's probably truer to say that Julie's quiver-thrill response to the sight of a horse is more akin to my relationship with rocks, but that doesn't suit the purposes of my post. And the porpoise* is this: Guerilla Knitting!

It seems that every sphere of interest encompasses a wide range of personalities, and even knitting has its Rambos. These bold wool-weaponed warriors quest forth and target sites of strategic unimportance. Once the target is selected, there is no escape. Quick as you can say a few words, the needles are employed and the target is enveloped in devastating prettiness. Objects thus transformed range from the very small, to the very not small. Guerillas call this yarn-bombing.

Guerrila knitters are the free solo big-wallers of the knitting scene. As a boulderer, I probably fall into the cross-stitching camp.

Anyway and anyway, having detected these cross-over areas, I made the mistaken assumption that all things climbing must have a knitting counterpart. Climbers travel many miles to visit meccas of rock. What locations call to knitters with the same mermaid allure?

"None."

"What?"

"Can't think of any."

Perhaps I should have guessed. After all, mermaids leave sailors stranded on the rocks, precisely where climbers yearn to be. There is no mythical creature, as far as I know, that leaves voyagers trapped in the tangles of wool.

Thus, if you want to know why we are in Smurf, blame the Greeks. If their imagination had been a little less blinkered, Julie might have been drawn by the power of metaphor to somewhere else entirely. As it was, Julie had a fancy for the west coast, and I for adventure. So here we are. See:

On a bridge - King's Park

And now we are here, what next? Well, given the tardiness of my blogging and the speed at which events have unfolded, next has already happened. Like ships dropping anchor, we have both stabilsed ourselves with the weight of our obsessions. Julie's needles have become lodged in some murky waters indeed. I began this post with a title that may seem lifted from a badly written thriller. Actually, it came from an email that Julie showed me. Don't tell anyone, but I worry she is being led astray. I am watching her carefully for symptoms of femme fatale-ness. I have heard the ears show the first signs of change. So far, colour, orientation and response to stimuli (whilst she is asleep) all seem normal.

But if I end up mummified in wool, I'll know which guerrila to blame.

Enough for now. I wool be back.

___________________

*Sea what I did there?

Life Goes BLOOP

BLOOP is the noise of heavy liquids moving rapidly. Well then, we two waterbags have well and truly blooped. We boarded planes and blooped at first merrily, then soon wearily, and continued blooping until we arrived somewhere really quite different to the place we first began.

This will come as a surprise to some people. Not the blooping - I'm sure you all had me down as a potential blooper. Or even the fact that I am now writing this upside down. (It's true, if you removed the distance that now seperates us, the soles of our feet would be touching.) The surprises are as follows: Firstly, I have moved to a place almost bereft of rock. Secondly, I have moved here with a lovely lady. Since there are those who I have not spoken to for quite some time, I must make special mention of this fact, for this fact is special. My lovely lady's name is Julie. Here she is:


Behind Julie, the less blind of you will have spotted an expanse of water. This is the Swanless river, in the fine city of Smurf. We currently live in a backpacker hostel, seen below on the left.

--

We have been here for two weeks. Things are very different. The buses are free. A pint costs seven quid. They have heat lamps in the climbing walls. And marmite tastes nice/horrible (delete your opinion of English marmite and you'll be left with a suitable adjective for the antipodean variety).

If you still don't know where we are, here's a clue:

Anyway, enough for now. I promise not to write regularly, if ever again. Check back soon to read the same post. There is a hidden message. But only if you are good at creating such things where none really exist.