Well the long weekend whooshed by in the usual blur of feasting, working and a bit of booze. It was great to see my sisters and nieces and Grandad Luxton stayed over and cleaned us out of crosswords.
The olives are horribly light-on, and if we get even two tonne we'll be considering it a win (after revising our expectations down to about 6 tonne around October last year). So much rain was promised and so very very little actually precipitated. We're basically lucky our trees are alive, let alone managing to push out an average of about 10 to 15 kilos each.
Returning to work is always a bit of a strain on mondays, but after 4 days it can be so much harder, and it was. Although the farm is struggling, and the work is draining, it's such a continual pleasure to feel the ground under my feet and feel air all around me. The sky has been dazzling, and Riley drops at the end of his days into a contented stupor.
There were two other great highlights last week - just prior to the long weekend - Upstairs Tom came through town on the home-leg of a 5 week journey. He'd been across to Adelaide, up through the red heart, across to the reef and down. We had noodles out on the Bremer and the bats came up the river and it was great to hear him tell his stories of the trip and to see a familiar face. Upstairs Tom has a great laugh and a sly sense of humour. After dinner we had a beer and attempted a stroll. My first visitor! Glorious.
Then, a shock - I went to a book launch at the Art Gallery and - it was great!! A local (prolific) artist has self-published a book - on the creative process. Well. I was hobnobbing it with the TC Arts Crowd and didn't all 10 of us have a top night. The highlight of the night for me was hearing the guest speaker - Dr Gilbert Burgh (lecturer in philosophy) give a fairly radical point of view on the role of art in life. I did buy a copy of the book, as it looks great and will probably get a bit of air-time here once I've read it!
Wednesday is, of course, hump-day and needs no other reason to be mentioned, except that two very odd things have already happened. Yesterday I zoomed past a middle-aged man hitchhiking on the highway heading west. He looked a lot like Nicholas Higgens (from North & South) and that got me to thinking how he's probably doing it tough and here I am in the Road Monster, shuttleing backwards and forwards. So this morning at 7.15 am, I picked up a white-haired fellow who introduced himself as Barry Johns. I just accidentally typed "Batty" Johns and considered letting it stand. He was as full of shit as a nappy left at a picnic site. Sis2 saw me drop him off at the Amberley Roadhouse and SMSed me with dire warnings and imprecations against doing this kind of thing again. Now I thought that it was *being* the hitch-hiker that was dangerous. After all - how did he know that I wasn't some nutter with an intimate knowledge of the local scrub and a penchant for forensic science? He didn't. So my day started with a slightly random, barely thought through exploration of annonymous generosity and it's relationship to personal danger.
The personal danger theme was obliquely developed when on an errand out and about, a giant, fat, heavy plane dragged itself over the sky above me. Feeling small and vulnerable, I looked up at its belly and realised "those are *bomb*doors* above me." Right above me. Other people started taking photos - I was looking around for somewhere to run to. The immediate urge passed, and the bomber took a few slow orbits to find the right runway or whatever it was looking for. Apparently this is considered a bit of an attraction around here. Frankly, I found it disturbing. A lot more disturbing that Batty Johns who was *right*there* next to me for half an hour. But no-one wants to stop and take a photo of old Batty, or the unknown Nicholas Higgens of yesterday.
If things come in threes, this arvo ought to be a corker.
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