The Rites Of Spring

Well.

That was a large sort of weekend.

Spring has arrived, right? First of September, all that shit. Also, an anniversary for Natalie and I. Not wedding, but just getting together: nineteen years. Fuck, eh? Who knew?

By chance, the weekend was clear. And we had a three-year-old pile of deadfall timber, tree branches, old furniture, leftover timber from renovations, etc. Huuuuge forkin' pile of flammable stuff.

Not at all by chance, I had completed the basic work on the new fire-pit, near the playground. It's nice. Low, curved brick wall backed with earth, for sitting on. Gravelled surround. Nice, deep, gravel-lined pit, walled with fieldstone, lined with concrete pavers to protect the stone.

As you can see, the Ducks Were Lined Up.

Therefore, I brought out the Shotgun of Merriment, and shot the bastards down.

It wasn't really an organised thing. Just one of those neighbourly events, with added kids. (Total kid-count: eleven.) We started a nice little fire in the new pit, and toasted marshmallows and wieners. When the fire burned down appropriately, I slid a makeshift grill over the top, and cooked a mass of mushrooms and chicken and fish and chops and pork and sausages. Meanwhile, I took advantage of those concrete bricks (now thoroughly hot) and wrapped a very large number of vegetables in foil. Potatoes, pumpkin, sweet potato, and sweet corn. The vegetables roasted nicely between the coals and the hot bricks, while up above, the grill-specific comestibles toasted nicely, with plenty of smoky flavour. Yum!

In the background, there were kids. Kids with waterguns. Kids with nerfguns. Kids climbing shit. Kids with balloons. Kids chasing each other. Kids wrestling. There was also plenty of beer (a carton of Boag's St George) and cider, and wine brought by various neighbourly sorts.

Sometime around dark, I went down to the Gigantic Burnable Heap, and applied twenty litres of accelerant. For those who need to know: a fifty-fifty mix of diesel and petrol is recommended by those professionals I know who have to light backburn fires safely. I'm happy to say it worked very well. Your Mileage May Vary. I am Not Responsible for Any Stupidity You May Enact. Bear in mind that I live in Tasmania, and we've had a long, wet winter. There was zero chance of starting any unwanted fires... and despite that, we still had a nice quorum of sober, adult observers.

Natalie wasn't altogether impressed with my twenty-litre effort, mind you. She thought it was overkill. Heh. I did mention a long, wet, winter, didn't I? The fire burned down, and smouldered through the night, though we had a brief thunderstorm at 0500. It burned out sometime the next night, when yet another lot of rain arrived... and it turns out that maybe half the heap has burned. But all around the edges, where I put the accelerant to start it... nope. Still a hell of a lot of fuel there. I'm either going to have to repeat the process, or even hop on the tractor and see if I can scrape it together.

Either way: that was a very fine Spring Bonfire night. Here's hoping the rest of the season is as pleasant.

Silly New Project

Well, more than one, really. I'm sitting down, having a bit of a rest after landscaping around the new fire pit. I should probably take photos, shouldn't I? Nothing much to see, really. There's a hole in the ground with a stone wall lining it. And lining the circular stone wall is a wall of cement bricks, to keep the worst of the heat away from the fieldstone (which might, potentially, crack violently if overheated.)

The hole has about half a metre of gravel in the bottom of it, to keep rain from forming puddles. After the last couple weeks of weather, I'm pleased to say that it works very bloody well indeed for that job.

Near the hole is a nice, sitting-sized log. And today, I found some long-forgotten landscaping blocks and built a nice, curved, wall for sitting on. Then I took all the loose stone and earth, and piled it up behind my curved wall, and finally, I brought half a dozen barrows of mulch down to cover it all, and even it up.

It looks okay, actually. We'll probably have a fire in it tonight. It's a big fire night, actually -- we're going to try and burn off our three-year-old pile of old trees, timber, garden cuttings, etc. It's probably too wet to really go off, though. I'm going to have to go after it with the classic petrol/diesel mix the rangers use when they're setting up a controlled burn. I've got a twenty-litre container I can use for it, but it's a hell of a big pile, and I'll be surprised if it really burns. We'll probably have to do it two or three times.

Nevertheless, it will make for a nice evening, and there will be neighbours and many children, so no doubt it will all be fun. And yes, I'll try out the firepit, and if it works, we'll roast marshmallows and cook sausages and bacon and chops, and maybe throw in some potatoes. Hooray for springtime!

Now, as for the other silly project...

It's continuing to be difficult to find writing competitions or similar which will permit young Jake to enter. At eleven, he seems too young for most of them, which is just rude. I am, therefore, constantly looking out for stuff to entertain and challenge his love of writing.

Thus, when we were at our favourite second-hand bookstore last week and I found two old "Mandrake The Magician" comic collections, the germ of an idea settled. For those of you who don't know the redoubtable Mandrake, he was another creation from Lee Falk, who brought you the Phantom. And while it's purely a personal opinion, I feel that Mandrake (who is constantly 'gesturing hypnotically' and causing bad guys to hallucinate ridiculous crap) and his buddy Lothar (big, black, shaven-headed guy with a propensity for leopard-spot shirts) are possible the crappest ever comic-book action heroes.

They are, in a word, tragic.

Therefore, Jake and I have set upon them. I'm scanning the stories, page by page, and removing all text. Then he and I are reconstructing the stories, page for page. I get one page, he gets the next. The game is simple: whatever the storyline the previous player leaves behind, it is that which you must continue. And the story has to make some kind of sense.

It's not as easy as you might think. But it is fun. Thus, I direct interested parties to

The Amazing Adventures of That Suave Guy.

You never know. It might bring a giggle or two.

Well, So Much For "Protecting The Kids"

Not sure how many of you know, but various Australian ISPs have been 'voluntarily' imposing censorship for a while now. At the behest of the government. To 'protect the kiddies', naturally.

And of course, it was never, ever about politics, nor suppressing dissent. Nope.

I'm on a Telstra account. When I saw this link:

http://wikileaks.org/cable/2008/07/08CANBERRA685.html

on a news site, I was curious. There was a note that said the US government had sought to trial a nerve agent on Australian soldiers, and requested the Aus government's co-operation and silence. I'm skeptical, so I thought I'd read it.

I clicked the link. (Have you done so yet?) And I got a Google broken-link message. (I use Chrome as my browser. On Firefox, it 'times out'.)

Did I mention I'm skeptical? I'm also cynical. I promptly went to a very quick-and-simple proxy site called Workdodger, in the UK, and input that self-same link. And got this:

O 070749Z JUL 08 FM AMEMBASSY CANBERRA TO SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 9814 INFO AMCONSUL MELBOURNE IMMEDIATE  AMCONSUL PERTH IMMEDIATE  AMCONSUL SYDNEY IMMEDIATE  CDR USPACOM HONOLULU HI IMMEDIATE SECDEF WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE DEPT OF ARMY WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE NSC WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE

C O N F I D E N T I A L CANBERRA 000685      SIPDIS    STATE FOR EAP AND PM  SECDEF FOR OSD J.POWERS  PACOM ALSO FOR POLAD    E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/07/2018  TAGS: MOPS PINS PREL AS SUBJECT: GUIDANCE REQUEST: ALLEGATION USG SOUGHT TO TEST  NERVE GAS ON AUSTRALIANS    Classified By: Charge D'Affaires Daniel A. Clune.  Reasons: 1.4(b),(d)    ¶1. (U)  This is an action request - please see paragraph 4  below.    ¶2. (SBU) Australian newspapers, quoting recently declassified  Australian government documents, carried stories over the  July 4 weekend alleging the U.S. Government had asked the  Australian government in 1963 to permit aerial testing of VX  and GB sarin nerve agent on Australian troops in Queensland.  According to the stories, the U.S. proposal included a  request that the GOA conceal the nature of the testing,  including from the troops on whom they would be conducted.  The Australian government at the time did not respond to the  U.S. request, according to the press stories.    ¶3. (C) At the Embassy's request, staff of Defence Minister  Joel Fitzgibbon, currently in Hawaii and en route to  Washington, provided a background paper used to brief the  Defence Minister that includes further details (see full text  at para 5 below.)    ¶4. (C) ACTION REQUESTED:  Embassy requests guidance for  possible use in responding to media inquiries.  Defence  Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has indicated he will raise this  issue during his forthcoming visit to the United States,  possibly including during his July 8 call on PACOM Commander  Keating and during his call next week on Secretary Gates.  In  addition, although no press had contacted the U.S. Embassy as  of COB July 7, we anticipate the need for guidance to respond  to press inquiries over the coming days, particularly for a  previously-arranged radio interview of the Charge in Adelaide  July 9 on a range of topics.    ¶5. (C) Following is the text of the background paper provided  by Defence Minister Fitzgibbon's staff:    Begin text:    Nerve Gas test plans    Regarding widespread reporting - The Australian, SMH, Sunday  Program, Advertiser 07/07/08 - that recently declassified  National Archive documents reveal an American plan to test  Nerve Gas on Australian Defence Force members during the Cold  War.    Background    Recently declassified documents held by the National Archives  contain information that the US wanted to test Nerve Gas on  Australian soldiers at the height of the cold war.    The Australian reports that under the plan, 200 Australian  combat troops, presumably wearing 1960s-era chemical  protection suits, were to be subjected to aerial bombardment  in the Iron Range rainforest near Lockhart River in far north  Queensland.  The Australian also reports that the plan is not  believed to have been acted upon.    The nerve agents were to include VX and GB, better known as  sarin nerve gas.  The aim of the tests was to gauge the  effectiveness of nerve agents in jungle warfare at a time  when US military involvement in Vietnam was intensifying.    The US proposal is alleged to have made by US defence  secretary Robert McNamara in July 1963, according to Defence  Department and Prime Minister's Office documents.    The documents stated that of the 200 troops to be used in the  tests, "only four to six would need to know the full details  of the operation".    The US proposal is reported to have recommended that the  Australian government keep the nerve agent tests secret,  describing them as either "equipment testing" trials or "land  Qdescribing them as either "equipment testing" trials or "land  reclamation" experiments.    The Australian reports that the Australian government is  believed to have not responded to the initial US proposal in  1963, but in 1966 Washington approached the new prime  minister, Harold Holt, with a request to drop tear gas on  Australian troops.  Reports say that again, Canberra quietly  ignored the request.    A former Holt staffer told the Sunday Program that the then  Government was concerned that its Cold War alliance with the  US would be damaged if it refused to allow the tests.    Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, who was Minister for  Army from 196668, denied knowledge of the US requests.    COMMENTS BY MINISTER FITZGIBBON - 06/07/08    "(It is) difficult to believe any such request came forward,  but if it did, surely it would have been rejected by the  conservative government of the day out of hand".    "I have asked Defence for an urgent and full briefing on this  matter. I can certainly rule out any such testing in the  future."    New lines for the Minister:    --I am aware of reports that the United States sought to test  nerve gas in Australia during the 1960s.    --I am advised that the United States did seek Australian  agreement to conduct experiments using chemical agents in Far  North Queensland, as they had no suitable sites available in  areas under their control.    --I am advised that in 1964, the Cabinet agreed it was not  appropriate to allow such trials to be carried out in  Australia and agreed to advise the United States of this  decision.    --I am advised this information is available on the public  record. Relevant cabinet papers were released in the  mid-1990s under the provisions of Archives Act, 1983.    --I am advised the United States was made aware of the  pending release of this information in 1994.    --I have asked the Department of Defence for an urgent and  full briefing on this matter.    End text.    

Don't take my word for it. Try it for yourself.

So. Is there anybody out there who still thinks the government's censorship of the 'Net is about 'protecting the kiddies'? Because if so, I've got a lot of money in Nigeria you can have if you just send me a few thousand dollars to cover administrative costs...

EDITED TO ADD:

1) Different results have been reported to me from different ISPs - well, yes. I'd expect that. Conroy's Great Big Firewall hasn't been implemented, but a number of ISP's have agreed to censor voluntarily. They're supposedly listening to Interpol, but there's nothing that says they're all censoring the same stuff the same way... and there's nothing to say that Telstra, for example, isn't taking quiet instructions from our government.

2) A later check allowed me to reach the Wikileaks site. But the cable was simply not there. On the other hand, it was still accessible via the English proxy. This was about five hours after the first couple of checks, which occurred across a period of about an hour to an hour and a half.

3) According to Twitter sources, Wikileaks.org has been under cyberattack today. Well, maybe. On the other hand, I can't quite see why a cyberattack would block an inquiry from a Telstra ISP, but let an inquiry from an English proxy go straight through.

Something's not straight, folks.

FINAL EDIT: And now, as of 2220, I can get straight through from my Telstra ISP to the cable itself.

So what happened? Did a cyberattack somehow block access from Telstra while leaving open access via an English proxy? And did that cyberattack somehow later refine itself, allowing access to Wikileaks, but blocking the one cable in question? Or is it merely my computer (and two others in this house that can access the 'net, of course... naturally I tried them.) which has somehow slipped a gear?

This isn't the first time I've noticed problems with accessing portions of the Web using Telstra. This is, however, the first time it's really pissed me off. I'm going to keep watching this, with interest.

Unattractive Leisure Pursuits: The Bronchoscopy

I had a distinctly unpleasant day yesterday.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a good dose of bronchitis. The same cough went through every kid in this neighbourhood, but I'm the only one that got raging bronchitis. Personally, I think it's because of my pathetic cough-ability. Somewhere in the last few years, I lost the ability to cough deeply, and bring out all that wet, nasty shite that goes with minor respiratory tract disorders. As a result, my goddam lungs are probably better at incubating vile bacteria then they should be.

The doc who saw me for the bronchitis said he'd set me up with a referral to a respiratory physician. Well and good. And about a week ago, I got a note from the Launceston General Hospital telling me I was on their waiting list. They also said they'd notify me when my name came up.

Well, fine. The waiting list is apparently several months long. I could try going privately - but it's not really urgent. No big deal. I'll wait.

Except that on Monday, while I was at the supermarket, I got a call from a hospital clerk who wanted to discuss my 0800 appointment for Tuesday. For a bronchoscopy.

Fuckin' what?

Apparently a gap opened in their list, and they forgot to tell me. I got slotted in because other than the cough problem, I'm in good order. The lung doc figured I'd probably need a bronchoscopy, and he knew he could safely slide me into the gap because I'm not in my seventies, and on five different kinds of medications.

The clerk was surprised I hadn't been informed. Not as surprised as me, I told her. Fortunately, I'm not stupid: I actually asked about pre-procedural prep ("Don't eat after midnight." "Why? Will I turn into a gremlin?")

I also asked about driving. And there began the problems.

With the total lack of warning, there was no way Natalie could go in with me. And what with the sedation, I wasn't supposed to drive for twelve hours afterwards. Hmmm.

Well, okay. I figured I could just stay in Launceston, shoot on out to Bruce's place in the evening, catch a movie with him as usual, and then drive home roundabout midnight, as I often do of a Tuesday. There. Plan made.

I got out of bed obnoxiously early and drove into Launceston like a chiropteran making a rapid exit from Sheol. That ensured I found a parking place near the hospital - one that would actually let my car sit for near-enough twelve hours. Yay!

They signed me in pretty quickly. And then they gave me the dreaded backless gown. These days, you also get nifty paper underpants and booties. Add to that a nice little lap blankie to keep the breeze away from your 'nads (those paper underpants are about as useful as... paper underpants, really) and you're all set for a forty-minute wait in the TV room of lung-victim hell.

Happily, it was a slow day at the hospital. There were only two people before me, and neither of them seemed particularly tuberculoid. We nodded and smiled and carefully avoided looking at each other's paper underpants, and eventually, I got called into The Room. With The Chair.

The nurse was nice, but she made a hash of sticking a drip in my hand. Natalie told me later that it's probably because of my more-than-usually tough skin. The nurse did ask about that - wanted to know if I did a lot of outdoors work. I do work outdoors, but no more so than any gardening type... it's just my skin. Anyway, she missed the vein in the left hand, switched to the right, and caused a truly remarkable amount of pain by missing the vein there too, whereupon she just gave up.

Fuck it hurts when they miss the vein.

I lay there on the chair, waiting. I had the blood pressure cuff round my left arm, the pulse monitor on the index finger of my right hand. Lacking anything more interesting to do (I did smuggle in a book, but it was kind of hard to read with all that crap hanging off me) I played around with biofeedback. I discovered that simply by concentrating hard, I could move my heartrate down to sixty-five (it generally hung at about seventy-five, which is higher than I like, but I haven't been able to exercise well lately) and up as high as ninety or so. I also discovered that my blood pressure is about 123/77, which is pretty reasonable for a forty-five-year-old man coming out of a bout of bronchitis. It's even better when you recognise that hospital stress tends to raise everybody's blood pressure. (Natalie's jumped twenty points when she had it done in a hospital. Which is weird, since she works in the things.)

So all up, aside from this stupid cough, I'm doing okay.

The nurse finally noticed my fluctuating heart-rate. She stared. Asked me what I was doing. I said "Biofeedback. It's fun."

She stared some more. Then switched the machine off. Well, okay.

The doc arrived. He was good value. They stuck a needle into the crook of my arm, and then put a mask on my face. I had to inhale nebulised lignocaine for a while, to numb the airways. Apparently, jamming a camera up one's nose, then all the way down to the lungs can be traumatic. Who knew?

Finally, they got around to loading me up with a mix of Fentanyl and Midazolam.... yippee. Happily, whoever mixed the dose had a light hand. According to the doc, most people come out of it without realising anything has happened. I, on the other hand, recall... well, a little more than I want, really. The bit where the tube wouldn't go up my left nostril, so they tried my right, then went back to the left -- there's a thing I could do without. But on the other hand, the bit where the doc tilted the vidscreen and said: "There's your vocal chords. Say 'hello'..." was very cool. Especially because I did indeed say 'hello', and my vocal chords moved in the most amazing way. Keen!

Anyway, they had a good old probe around down there. I don't recall that they found anything too exotic, and they wound up splashing in a bit of saline so they could get some sputum samples, which provoked a certain amount of coughing. And at this point, I'd like to report that it's fucking difficult and painful to cough with a camera in your goddam lung...

... then they wheeled me to the recovery ward. I got a little oxygen while we waited for the various drugs to clear, and then they shifted me and my bed to a second ward. Shortly thereafter, they brought me my clothes and my bag, and shifted me to yet another ward - this one all about chair. (I abandoned my paper underpants with alacrity, and returned to the comforting cotton of my regular Rios.)

And the waiting began.

Apparently, I shouldn't have told them I planned to (eventually) drive home. I had been quite clear with them that I wasn't driving for twelve hours. But they didn't like the sound of that, and so instead of letting me go by 1330, as they'd intimated, they 'asked' me to stay 'a while longer'.

By 1500, I was over the whole funking experience. Sitting around in a hospital is dull. I'd read a lot. I'd even composed about a thousand words of fresh fiction on the Netbook 'puter I brought. But I was bored, and I was feeling rocky from the afterFX, and I wanted to GTFO.

So I called up a nurse, and very politely explained that she needed to remove the needle still hanging out of my arm, or I was going to do it for myself. We had a short, friendly conversation, and then they brought me some self-discharge forms. And I left.

I can understand that the hospital needs to cover itself, sure. But enough is enough.

I did have a bit of aftermath. For some reason, I started running a low fever at about five o'clock. But by eight o'clock, I was in Bruce's kitchen, cooking asparagus and mushroom crepes with cheese sauce for him and Tiarne, and by eight-thirty, the fever was broken, and gone. We watched a French crime/thriller thing which was, by and large, not too bad, and I hopped in the car and went home almost exactly twelve hours after the bronchoscopy was complete. The drive home was very normal indeed.

Kudos to the doc: he had a good sense of humour, and he really did handle the machinery - the hospital's and mine - well. I have no soreness at all today, and though the cough did flare up, he warned me of that, and it really hasn't been a big deal. The nurses were nice, the hospital was organised... but no matter how you paint it, the whole thing was still a tube up the nose and down the chest, followed by several hours of post-drug hangover and waiting.

Ah well. We shall see what the results show, eh ?

Write A Book In A Day

That's what they call it.

It's a school thing. It's a competition associated with Katherine Susannah Pritchard, and it's exactly what it sounds like. Once your school is registered, on a given day at 0800 the competition people send you a bunch of details that have to go into your story. And by 2000 that night, you have to email them your book.

The local high school has a few avid writers, and they've been asking me to do something with them for a while. They leaned on their teachers, and eventually the gears turned, the wheels ground, and we all agreed to do this WABIAD thing. The high school folks were 'specially nice in that they even agreed to let young Jake join in for the day.

I did two prep sessions. The Friday before last, we did a couple hours on character: how to build character, using and understanding motivation, and how characters act as the main point of entrance to the narrative for the reader. Last Friday, we did a kind of dry run, putting together story outlines based on sets of data of the sort the WABIAD organisers supply.

And today was the Big Day.

Naturally, things had to be difficult. Firstly, Natalie went to Hobart last night. She's away for the weekend. Obviously, that made things a bit challenging since Jake and I had to be at the school by 0800 - but Genghis and the Mau-mau also had to get to their school at the usual time. Likewise, Jake and I were prepared to be busy until 2000... but of course, Genghis and the Mau-mau were on a school bus home by 1500.

Difficult.

Happily, Viking Neighbour Anna was prepared to accept Genghis and the Mau-mau in the evening. It probably helped that one of her progeny was also involved in the WABIAD competition, and I gave him a lift home when we were done... but nevertheless, I'm grateful. There's no conceivable way I could have handled this otherwise.

The WABIAD day was - well, actually, it was extremely bloody cool. They had enough kids signed up to make two teams of ten or so. The first lot had to write with a lifeguard, an artist, and one non-human character - an elf. The had to use a wrecker's yard as a setting, and they had to address the issue "one good turn deserves another".

Not too difficult, really. They jumped right in and got going.

Unfortunately, the second group kinda got screwed. They had to write about a gangster, a sandalwood cutter, and their nonhuman character was a doll. Their setting was a peace rally, and worst of all, their 'issue' was 'drought'.

That's a bit of a bastard combination, really. Not impossible, of course, but not at all pleasant. You really have to twist things to make 'drought' your central issue when your setting is 'a peace rally'. I have to give them credit. They handled it well.

Both groups also got a list of words that had to be used: 'ginormous', 'beef stroganoff', 'plopped', 'amongst', and a couple of others.

It was one blue-arsed hell of a hectic day. Really.

It started with mad brainstorming and character design. Then the writing and illustrating took off. (Yes. The books have to be illustrated, and they have to have a front cover and a back cover too. And for high-school level, they have to be a minimum of 4000 words long.) By lunch, the bulk of the drafting was done, and we were well into the editing and proofing.

But things got out of synch. Chapters got mislaid or missed out. Computers spat the dummy at inopportune times. Collating and proofing was slow, troublesome work. It got quite tense towards the end, doing final proofs, and hunting for typos, etc, while juggling image files and text files...

... and I have to say, I fucking HATE Microsoft Word. What a fucking awful piece of shitbag software! Overcomplicated, slow, resource-hogging crap that desperately tries to impose all kinds of idiotic formats and standards on you. What fucking good is a goddam grammar checker when you're writing large slabs of dialogue? FUCK!

But - yes. We managed to get both files emailed away to the WABIAD folks in the last half hour before the deadline. And there was pizza all around.

The students had themselves a fantastic time. I actually cannot recall another time I've seen twenty school students work twelve solid hours so cheerfully and enthusiastically. By the time we were printing out copies, they were swarming the photocopier, competing to see who could get the first complete version to take home for the oldies.

Not a single cross or cranky word did I hear all day. Lots of hilarity. Ridiculous characters, silly dialogue, crazy ideas -- and a tremendous spirit of co-operation. Everybody jumped in, and tried to help everyone else.

Jake in particular had a great time. He got his writing done well before 1100, and went around helping out others, and writing the blurb for the back cover, and so forth. He even had time to refine his mad pie-seller character: in the end, he was a French expat who cursed the police in French that Jake dug up via Google, and who suffered from myokymia of the eyelid. His Beef Stroganoff pies were apparently notorious for causing constipation - which was handy, since evil gangster Barry Broxburn had slipped laxatives into the ice-cream trucks which attended the peace rally...

So now I'm home. It's 2130, and the kids are in bed. I've managed to neck a couple of decent beers, and... holy shit, I'm exhausted. I've read, edited, and proofed every single word of both books (though I'm not the only one to do that!) I've helped twenty different authors through plot hitches, over character motivation humps, and down the long, winding road to a proper denouement. I've helped invent names for characters. I've cut much-loved passages, and insisted on added detail in sections otherwise too dull or pedestrian, and I've been question-answerer and dogsbody and grammarian and I've done the bakery run for lunch, and yeah, shit, I am really, seriously worn out.

"Elves And Trees -- And Everything In Between" went to 7500 words.

"Paradise Mislaid" made it to 6500.

Both books went out on time.

Two teachers put in the hardest yards I've seen at a school in years... and twenty-odd people had a really, really entertaining day.

Oh, Wow! This Is Brilliant!

For all my comrades-in-arms out there in the world of parenting, I present this frigging brilliant website:

Child's Own

They're Canadian, but they ship overseas. They're not too expensive, and what they do is bloody fantastic. Essentially, they'll take a drawing made by a child, and turn it into a custom-made soft toy.

So. Your kid ever make a really special picture? Now you know exactly what to do about it.

For the non-parents out there: this site might not seem so interesting to you. But trust me... it's pure genius.

Zombies? Ha. I Survived Mermaid Fairy Princesses.

That... was a big day.

No parent with even a skerrick of experience leaves the timing of a birthday party open. The invites clearly said: 2.00 to 4.00pm. Naturally, there's always a bit of looseness in these things, but a note like that tells parents of invitees more or less what's going to go down. It's after lunch, see, so it's not likely to be a big nosh-up, but of course the usual range of party food will be available. And you'd better have a damned good excuse if you try to leave your kid much later than, say, 4.30.

I had a lot of work in the morning. I scratch-built a chocolate cake with a layer of marshmallow in the middle, and I filled a bunch of ice-cream cones with the remaining home-made marshmallow, then covered the lot with colourful sprinkles. Mermaid Fairy Princesses fuckin' LOVE colourful sprinkles.

Had to do a shopping run in the morning, of course. Drinks, snacks, party favours, balloons, and the inevitable sausages and bread rolls. Oh, and jelly.

An odd moment in the car: the Mau-Mau was in the back seat, already decked out in her frilliest, pinkest, princessiest finery (did I mention her mother brought her a goddam tiara from Ireland?) while Jake was up front with me. Jake dug out the AC/DC soundtrack album from Iron Man II and stuck it in the cd player, which was all right by me. Is there a better hard rock band ever than AC/DC? I think not. They define their own genre, and whatever their music may now lack in novelty, it remains solidly what it is: hard driving guitar rock.

So 'Thunderstruck' came on. And I turned up the volume. As you do.

Jake cringed into a foetal ball with his hands over his ears. Ahh, but in the rear view mirror what do I see? It's the Mau-mau, and she is goddam ROCKING OUT. Her arms are in the air over her head, flailing away. She's bouncing up and down in her kiddy-support seat, and banging her head like a complete freak.

I could not, in all conscience, turn the music back down until 'Thunderstruck' was done. Jake just had to stay curled up. Pfeh.

The Mermaid Fairy Princesses - and one pirate - turned up on time. I believe we had an extra five little girls in the house, plus the young pirate. Of course, by that time Jake had turned out eight batches of jelly while I'd been prepping marshmallow and cake, and setting things in motion.

Three hundred balloons, in the end. I partioned off the sunroom, and just goddam well inflated balloons until the place was knee-deep (for a six-year-old, anyhow.) I think the boys managed to blow up maybe thirty balloons between them, so I probably did something like two-hundred and seventy. Yes: by this point, I am largely over the bronchitis.

Happily, we had a bit of a break in the weather. It was especially good because on top of all our mermaid fairy princesses, the Viking Lads turned up with loaded waterguns. Meanwhile, Jake and Genghis had prepared their Nerfgun arsenal, intent on keeping Mermaid Fairy Princesses out of "their stuff". Thus, when the Viking Watergun Raiders arrived, the battle was on... and fortunately, it was warm enough and dry enough outside that it was an outdoors event.

There were shrieking mermaid fairy princesses running hither and yon. Nerf darts flew. Waterguns creaked and spat their streams of moist vengeance. Parents dodged, and talked, and drank the beer I'd laid on (with considerable experience and foresight.) Whenever things started to slow down, I threw snacks into the fray. When they finally started to look tired, I grilled an abominable mass of sausages, slashed a horrorshow worth of chewy bread-rolls, fried a half-dozen onions into tasty rings, chopped up a block of cheese and a jar of pickles, and limbered up the tomato sauce jar: and many, many children were fed.

The timing was very good. By about half-three, a very light rainshower drove them inside, where they gleefully began swimming about in the balloons. (I have photos of a mass of balloons. You cannot see the children beneath. They wanted it that way.)

I played my ace in the hole, and threw Natalie to the lions with a pass-the-parcel game. The big prize at the end was a bubble-gun, and after all the balloons and notes and lollies and teary outbursts, the Mau-mau wound up with the coveted weapon and promptly added vast quantities of soap-bubbles to the chaos...

The party did run overtime, yes. Various parents were having a good time too, so the kids stayed until the oldies were done. Last to go was our pirate, whose parents had the very good manners to turn up with a really interesting bottle of bubbly, which we promptly demolished. By that stage, I was already prepping dinner - a great big pot of spaghetti with a strong tomato/anchovy/basil sauce, and plenty of fine-sliced bacon. Thus, when we were down to just the usual three kids (plus two Mermaid Fairy Princess sleepover types) I fed the hell out of everyone yet again, and Natalie and I gradually defragged the place while the kids went through their shower routine, and watched 'Chicken Run'.

Whew.

I admit, once all the offspring and their ilk were in bed, that I cracked open another beer or two. But not until I'd managed to quell even the three Mermaid Fairy Princesses, who were lying all three together on one vast inflatable mattress on the floor of the Mau-mau's room. By pointing out that if I heard little voices any longer, I'd put one of 'em up on the Mau-mau's bunk to sleep on her lonesome, I managed to send even those three off to the land of nod.

And so, I think that last beer or two was very well earned.

In the morning, we despatched children with pointy bamboo skewers to kill all the remaining balloons in a frenzy of colourful rubbery violent death. The sun came out, and I managed at last to pour the concrete footer for the stone wall around my firepit. Laundry was done. Tasks were carried out... and lo: in the end, I even managed to convince the Three Mermaid Fairy Princesses to clean up the Mau-mau's room.

Eventually, Anna the Viking Neighbour came and claimed her daughter, leaving only one excess Mermaid Fairy Princess. I fired up the barbecue, and prepared a mass of tandoori chicken and lamb, plus a bunch of roasted sweet potato. I also set up a green salad, and a bowl of turmeric rice, and a dessert salad of melon, ginger and coconut... because when Madame Double-Trouble arrived to collect her daughter, it was dinnertime, and she had two boys with her as well. Thus, my weekend finished with a barbecue dinner for eight. (Woulda been nine, but Natalie went into town to play music.)

Am I tired?

Fuck, yes. Where's that fucking beer?