Guided practice in the workshop

I am writing this post for the first assignment for one of the papers in my diploma in tertiary learning and teaching. The brief was to investigate an active learning approach and then create an online resource that my classmates can access from our course moodle site. It's overdue. Half my problem was choosing a presentation method: I vacillated between voice-threads and videos, I felt pressure to produce a PowerPoint or a Prezi. Now, a couple of weeks overdue, I have decided to just blast out a blog post on the subject of

Guided Practice in the Workshop 

At the moment I'm taking a class of high school aged students through a course in hanging and finishing plasterboard. While there is a theory component to the course (calculating quantities, knowledge of materials available) the main aim is for students develop manual skills with tools and measuring equipment and to gain hands-on knowledge of what people in the industry do with their day. This is the focus for the first few weeks of the program and students develop that knowledge and manual skill in the environment pictured above.

Each student is assigned a cubicle of their own measuring 900 x 1200 x 2400mm with a window, simulated wiring and a pipe penetration in which to hang and stop their own plasterboard to a paint finish. The cubicles are designed so that students are exposed to each of the basic skills a plasterboard worker uses daily - measuring, cutting, nailing, allowing openings for services, plastering flat joins, and finishing internal and external angles. Once they have been exposed to these skills early in the course it should be easier to engage them in the theory related to plasterboard as they have some prior knowledge to which to attach the concepts we are encouraging them to learn.

Guided practice 

From the resources I have found online, guided practice is described as the part of a lesson where students are set free to actively use the knowledge presented to them earlier in the lesson with support from the teacher. It is the stage of the lesson which falls between the presentation of new material and independent practice. It is also where students begin to take accountability for their learning of the day's content.

In a maths lesson, students may work together or individually on a problem requiring use of the day's concept while the teacher oversees them as required.

In my context, for example, after I have demonstrated running paper tape into internal corners, students then disperse to their own cubicles to try and to practice running their own tapes in. I am likely to talk them through the first one step by step, keeping an eye out for obvious misunderstanding while I do so, before encouraging them to complete the rest of their tapes at their own pace. Once they are working independently I am able to circulate through the workshop and give feedback and further instruction to individuals directly where I see it is required.

Practising the skill immediately after it has been presented gives students the chance to apply new knowledge while it is fresh in their minds. 

 Rich learning experiences

The educational theorist we have been particularly exposed to as part of my studies in teaching and learning is L. Dee Fink. According to Fink, a rich learning experience will happen where the three pictured ingredients combine:

Information combined with an experience may mean little without an ensuing reflective dialogue.
Reflective dialogue following new information will be of little help if one has not experienced applying that new information in some way.

The guided practice section of a lesson is an excellent way to create the required experience following new information. Some reflective dialogue will occur when the teacher is giving guidance: I often find myself saying things like "that one is perfect, that one not so much, what did you do differently?" and a discussion follows from there. At other times reflection is done in the classroom, away from the completed task.

Supporting students through guided practice 

When my students are first practising a new skill it is vital that I circulate efficiently and give feedback and further instruction wherever it is required.  This is the time to correct misunderstandings and coach students toward success with the new skill. Without this support the practice becomes independent practice rather than guided practice.

Using the example of running in tapes for internal corners, I am checking for

• motivation to do the task
• correct use of tools
• use of correct tools
• that students are not ignoring problems that need remedied first, like protruding nails that just need hammered in
• that tape is folded correctly
• that enough plaster is being used

So, in short, I am

• providing encouragement
• checking for understanding, and re-teaching where necessary
• modelling good practice.

As each student becomes more proficient with the task, as with most scaffolding type teaching methods, I gradually offer less support and move them towards independent practice of the skill.

References

The following online resources were helpful in preparing this blog:

http://www.icre.pitt.edu/cbe/documents/Info%20Sheet%20PDFs/Teaching%20Techniques_Guided%20Practice_Info%20Sheet.pdf

http://sps.k12.mo.us/sd/Guided%20Practice.htm

http://k6educators.about.com/od/lessonplanheadquarters/g/guided_practice.htm

http://suite101.com/article/guided-practice-a214274

http://www.dynamitelessonplan.com/guided-practice/

Night visitors and job interviews

Last night I lay awake, unable to sleep.

It was not, though you might have thought it would be, because my wife had come home with possibly life changing news - the possibility of a new job for her in a new town and all the upheavals one might anticipate with moving teenagers. No, it wasn't that. It was because the cat hadn't jumped on the bed.

As happens normally about that time of night there came the noise of soft footfalls approaching the foot of the bed. Normally after that sound one of two things happens: Either the foot of the bed is viciously attacked to the sound of claws tearing fabric, or a soft purring thing arrives at my feet suddenly, before padding up the length of my body to deposit a couple of loose hairs under my nose and the back to curl up inconveniently between my knees.

This time, nothing jumped on the bed.

This time, the scratching at the foot of the bed was more tentative, accompanied by a soft, rhythmic, emphesemic panting. 

I leaned over the side to look, and by the light of the i-pod in my hand I saw a small round dark shape glide swifly away from the light and under the bed-base.  I leaned over more. Aiming the i-pod towards the middle of under-the-bed I peered at the dimly illuminated scene. I could make out the wallpaper on the other side in almost all directions, except for one small orb of darkness directly beneath where my wife lay.

I rolled myself back up. put the i-pod beside the bed and pulled the covers up to my chin.

"What were you doing?" asked my wife.
"Just looking."
"Is there a hedgehog under the bed?"
I didn't reply. She had enough to think about.
"Tell me there isn't a hedgehog under the bed," she said, a hardness coming into her tone.
"I didn't see one," I said carelessly.

This was almost true. And as I said she had enough to think about just now.
My wife works in the finance section of a large co-operative. Just one small corner of the place. She finds this boring and limiting.
One part  of her job she enjoys is taking care of the use of a particular piece of software specifically written for finance and banking. In the course of her week she speaks to one or other of the team of four who make up the company that wrote and maintain the software, and gets on with them all very well. And for the longest time she has been proclaiming: I want K***'s job at A****!
Well yesterday she was talking to J*** at A*** who happened to mentions that the guy who was supposed to take K***'s job when she left had never showed and the position was open again. I want that job! she declared, and he said Well you'd better get in quick, G***'s interviewing now.
So she e-mailed G*** and he e-mailed back asking if she could get to Christchurch for an interview.

We're driving up tomorrow.

Now she had every reason to suspect that there would be a hedgehog under the bed because the week before, when I was down at the ED waiting for somebody to get x-rayed because their sibling had slammed their wrist in the door, she sent me a fully disgruntled text message to the effect that she'd just made the bed, hedgehogs were disgusting, and how was she supposed to remove a large mother hedgehog and three baby hedgehogs from under it?
By the time we got home, she and the door-slamming sibling, with the aid of a shovel and a cardboard box had solved the problem. Not wanting to spook the mother into abandoning her babies by covering them with human scent, they had shovelled all four into the box and deposited them outside, and the mother had dutifully, over the next hour or so, picked the little ones up one by one and ferried them off to somewhere else. 

Anyway yesterday, while we were sitting in the conservatory discussing the possible ramifications of this interview. (Honestly would anyone expect you to travel nearly four hundred kilometres for an interview if they weren't just a little bit serious about employing you?) While we were discussing this a large hedgehog (they're just not scared of us any more) scurried doggedly across in front of us in the direction of the cat's bowl.
"Is that the mother?" I asked.
"Not big enough, I think," she said. "You know even if the rent up there is double what we pay here we could still..."
Well you get the idea. The next time I thought about the fact that a real hedgehog had walked within six inches of my feet (it no longer excites me, not since they spent a summer crapping on my pantry floor) there was no hedgehog in sight. When we got to a point in our conversation that we realised it was too cold to be outside, we got up and moved into the lounge, shutting the door tightly behind us.

Later, after the dark orb had glided under the bed, I lay thinking about how after about five years of little to no social interaction beyond work, I had finally found a small group of good friends with similar interests who I would sorely miss if we moved; about how the kids had just begun settling at school; about how after a miserable year workwise I have settled in a job which, while not stupendous, I quite like; about how Dunedin is... comfortable; and about how I should really get some sleep.

And that is when the grunting started.

TO BE CONTINUED

Funny what you find in old exercise books...

"And so..." he said, smugly for he was a man full of brass and warm wind, happy to stand in the spotlight.
"And so..." he said. louder this time as he had noticed my attention had drifted to the window.
"AND SO!!" he cried, louder than the first two times.

I looked at him, trying to make my eyes impervious. He'd forced my attention, and I had looked at him but I tried to make my eyes impervious, non-communicative cold concrete marbles glazed slick, slippery that you could not fix a stare of admonishment on.

After all he was only a school-teacher, a policeman, the prime minister, the president of some football club erupting like a volcano while you ride your bicycle on his field. He was none of these and all of these bundled into a small man who knew best, full of brass and warm wind who waited for me to listen to his view on rubbish and litter and personal responsibility, on larrikins and layabouts and slow sure paths to anarchy and who was he to say to me, on only his authority, if I couldn't take my rubbish home to put it in the bags...

Love the cat.

The inside cat would like my attention. She wants to sit on the pages of my assignment which are spread around me in a half circle in front of the fire.  When I decide to tidy up a bit she jumps about trying to sit on the papers I am touching, only for me to add them to the pile and reach for another one which she must, in turn, sit on.
I go to the kitchen to check her food bowl and she follows, purring. It's full.
She wants to be with me in the toilet, poking her paw under the door and trying to swing it open enough to get through. On my way out I pick up her dry sick from the carpet with a piece of toilet paper and dispose of it. She's had plenty to eat.
In bed she wants to sit on my chest, padding and purring loudly, before finally settling down at my feet.

I didn't want her.

After the old cat died I had hoped the outside cat would get a second chance to be an inside cat.  When we got the outside cat the old cat made it clear there could be only one.

The old cat was like having my own dog. Whenever I pulled up in the car outside the house he would come running from some hedge or other on the street, where he had been waiting for my return to greet me. I had him for eight years.

One night, when my girlfriend of the time had been out with her friends til the early hours of the morning, I heard the front door open and the sound of her stumbling in.  The next thing I knew there was a pressure on the pillow beside me and something cold and wet in my ear.  The cat had followed her in.

We had never seen this cat before, though we had lived in the house for some months, but he struck me as a very polite cat. We didn't feed him at first and he was very good about it, but after a week it was obvious he was there to stay and we bought that first pot of cat food.

He wasn't the type to twine around your legs in that irritating way to suggest he wanted something. He was content to merely sit at a civilised distance and give you one quiet but assertive meow. If you took a step towards him he would lurch forward and butt your leg with his head. He wasn't terribly keen on being patted, but if you put your face near his he would happily exchange headbutts for ages. I got so much into the habit of expecting headbutts from small animals that when an acquaintance introduced me to his Shi-Tzu I horrified him by pressing my forhead to the dog's before I realised what I was doing

The cat - the old cat - had no tail. For me all cats with tails began to look odd. He outlasted the girlfriend and lived with me in four successive houses. He left a scar on the nose of the Pitbull-SharPei cross a friend brought to our house and who really wanted to make friends with the ball of black fur under the coffee table. 

We had our little games. I would try to make him symmetrical and he would rear back and with both paws scratch me symmetrically on both cheeks - but he never really put his claws out. And whenever I pulled the car up outside the house he would come running from wherever he was.

Eventually the old cat became the disgusting cat.  His bottom was never clean, and neither was the furniture where he used to sit. He started to always be hungry, and lost his politeness about asking. He stopped burying his doings, and soon there was no spot on the back lawn where you could safely put your foot.

I took him to the vet, and they said they could do a test for two hundred dollars but that that would only tell them which thousand dollar course of treatment to pursue. I took him home and read about cat diets on the internet. I snarled at the children to stop giving him milk and stopped feeding him biscuits in favour of pieces of raw meat.

It seemed to be working. He perked up and his bottom started being clean again. And then after a week there was a knock at the door. I opened it to two stern faced ladies from the old-folks home kitchen. One of them held the old cat, his back end wrapped in a towel. I should take better care of him they said. They'd cleaned him up they said. They'd been feeding him left-overs and cheese they said.

I took him back and begged them not to feed him again. So much for controlling his diet.

A few days later I came home for lunch and saw him through the window lying very still under a tree in the only sunny spot. I went out to see him. I finally acknowledged how thin he had become. His face was limp and his breathing shallow. I stroked him and told him I was glad he had found the sun, and that night I took him back to the vet...

I didn't want the new cat - the inside cat. She had a tail for starters, and the outside cat had just started showing his face again. But it was hard not to smile at her tiny kitten tail quivering with ecstasy at her first taste of tinned fish.

Now she is walking back and forth over my keyboard, but she at least has the good manners not to actually tread on it. And when I pull the car up outside my house, she comes running.

Twilight? Not yet. Brideshead takes over.

I'm looking, no, staring, at the front page of Twilight by Stephanie Meyer and I just can't do it.  I will. ...just not today.

The problem is I've just finished reading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and, perhaps fittingly I'm reluctant to hurry the drifting away of that world from my mind by pushing another story in just yet.

This is the only of Waugh's novels that I have read, but, judging by other of his titles - A handful of Dust, Decline and Fall - there might be an overall theme to his work.  Certainly these two titles would be excellent titles for a review of this novel, which follows the descent out of the heavenly state of youth and into bleak adulthood for its narrator, and also the last years of a wealthy english aristocratic family.  The novel ends with the once grand house empty at the end of world war II, and with the last members of the family unlikely to produce heirs.  The glory of the twenties, both at Oxford, and in the lives of the privileged, so enchantlingly portrayed when the story begins, has drifted away like a handful of dust.

Charles Ryder, who narrates the story looking back from the point of view of a lonely middle-aged army captain at the end of the war, befriends the flamboyant Sebastian Flyte in their first year at Oxford in 1920 after Sebastian, passing by drunk, vomits into his window.  For the next two years Ryder, Flyte, and Aloysius - Flyte's teddybear - are inseparable.  Sebastian, the spoiled second son of a well-to-do aristocratic and catholic family, takes Charles home to meet his old nanny, taking care to avoid his actual family as it seems he is reluctant to involve Charles with them.  That involvement is inevitable however, and as Charles, who for close family has only his hostile and sarcastic father, becomes closer to the rest of the Flytes, Sebastian becomes more distant.  The story, painfully beautiful, gives the impression of an ancient edifice, with time, like a chill wind, blowing through it.

It's been three days since I began this post.  Stephanie Meyer has still not got my attention.  I went  back to read the introduction of Brideshead  and, though I'm a bit busier this week, have found myself halfway through it again.  It's completely put me off fantasy for the moment. Why do you need fantasy if a story on earth can be told so well?

Evelyn Waugh was a convert to Catholicism.  In part the story portrays the passing of an ancient family line; the end of the age of privilege with hints of the rise of mediocrity.  But as much as that it is about catholicism.  The six members of the Sebastian's family are - for want of a better word - infected with Grace, and each responds differently to its overwhelming presence in their lives.  From the eldest son, Brideshead's complete unquestioning, boring adherence to the tenets; Sebastian and Julias' individual rebellions; to their father's - who converted on his marriage -  complete rejection of it, Grace gets them all in the end one way or another.

The book brought meaning to the oft-quoted "once a catholic, always a catholic".  It echoed exactly the way my catholic sister describes her religion, and also came some way to explaining to me why the couple of catholic girls for whom in my late teens I had such deep but unrequited feelings were not interested even when at the same time they seemed they might be.

I haven't been affected this much by a novel for quite some time.  Most people I know think of the TV series from 1981 when the title is mentioned.  I've not seen it but I might have to now.

If you haven't read it, do.

Oh what a fraud I have been...

Isaac Albeniz.

Long ago, when the internet was still a novelty and hotmail was nearly new I decided to get me one of them e-mail addresses.  At first I used my real name, but as hotmail was only nearly new it had to be timrobinson_27 or tim_robinson3 or something like that, and after obsessively e-mailing all my friends and wondering why they so swiftly tired of replying I forgot the password and didn't bother again for a while.

The next time I decided that I needed e-mail, I resolved to choose a really cool and original handle for myself: one that reflected who I was and what I aspired to at the time.  Being a fan of the french composer Debussy, and vainly convinced that I looked just a little bit like him too, I decided that I was to be debussy@ hotmail. 

"debussy" was taken, the much less cool debussy27 or debussy36 were  available, but such also-ran alternatives were not for me.

I thought again.  At the time I had been enjoying crashing my way (badly) through a couple of the late piano works of Brahms...

By the way I love Brahms. His music is to me like great pieces of rough-hewn rustic oak furniture: big gestures drawn in big strokes.  Not pernickity like Mozart or Haydn, bigger than Beethoven, but despite all that as finely crafted as Bach.  .. and that reminds me of an episode where I excitedly played one of these pieces at one of our local composers, a man twice my age at the time, and him afterwards massaging his stubby fingers into the fleshy part of my thigh and telling me he thought I'd make a really good Brahms pianist.  I was a little shocked and leapt a little too fast out of my seat.  Perhaps he thought I was flirting when I told him I didn't really like Tchaikovsky as the indulgence of it all made me feel dirty...

Anyway, I digress... I was to be "brahms@ hotmail".  Much better.  Much less girly-sounding than debussy too (not that I think Debussy is girly, ...did you know that the freudian interpretation of L'isle Joyeuse is that it depicts the male orgasm?... just his name).

"brahms" was not available.  brahms27 or brahms_36 however...  you get the idea

Thinking again I remembered I really liked a particular piece of music I had found in a second hand bookstore earlier in that year.  The Godowsky arrangement of the Tango by Isaac Albeniz.  This is it:

That was nice wasn't it.  Apparently Jorge Bolet was a student of Godowsky, so if you think it was too slow or out of time you can (at least according to the comments in youtube) go jump...

Anyway.  "albeniz@ etc" was available.  "Yes!" I thought to myself, and on the strength of one piece of sheet music which I couldn't really play I assumed my hotmail identity for the next ten years. 

Of course that made me look spanish. For the first few years I recieved many joyous "Hola Albeniz!" type mails with photos from people's vacations or of their new babies with all the text in Spanish.  Somehow I got signed up to something called "boletin el plural"  which still arrives weekly in my inbox because I don't know how to unsubscribe.

Worse than all that, when I started using msn messenger I had to always set my status to offline because turkish people would keep messaging me.  "salem" they would say... or "merhaba".. or both.  I would open messenger up and literally ten windows would pop open:

"salem"

"merhaba"

"merhaba"

"salem"

and they didn't understand when I told them politely in English that I didn't have a clue what they were saying to me. 

Eventually one did.  He explained to me that "salem" was a friendly greeting and that "merhaba" was slightly more formal. He told me that Albeniz is a very common turkish surname. Then he kindly posted me the link to the online medical journal in which the young student doctor he thought I was appeared...

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Needless to say I do feel I've misled the good people of Turkey and Spain for misappropriating one of their names for my online use that any number of millions of them have far more right to than me. (I'm not giving it back though.. I was there first!) 

What's far worse is that in all those years the only piece of music I've ever played by Isaac Albeniz is that tango, and that isn't even the version as he wrote it: it's been prettied up by Godowsky.  So when last month I was at the local library and browsing through their small collection of sheet music I found a way to begin setting things right.  There on the shelf was a collection of Albeniz piano music.

I've been looking at these two:

I had thought that one was originally for guitar but no!  twas originally a piano work,  and this one:

which will take me a while to learn.

There.  It's been a while since I posted anything much on here.  I did try, but was thwarted in my minor goal of using pianists exclusively named Jorge. I did make sure the last two were spanish however. 

Perhaps if I learn these pieces I will feel less of a fraud when I use hotmail in future.

all the best

The Gedle

Happy New Year!

I know, I know, it's nowhere near December but I'm staying in tonight.  It's not Matariki, it's not even the chinese new year, not an equinox, a solstice and the lunar perigee was a fortnight ago. 

But tonight the bars will (probably) be full. Grey suited men and women will have gathered in the hearts of our cities to nurse affordable cocktails and celebrate the passing of another year. Tomorrow is April first - the start of a new (financial) year - the accountants new year!

Yes tonight is (probably) the time when all true accountants will be out spending the last of the company allowance for deductible entertainment.  Later, (probably) there will be a bit of biffo over the relative merits of payments versus invoice based GST calculation, and after the collective box checking at midnight a few will (probably) linger on maudlin over the sad fact that nobody appreciates depreciation anymore.

In the morning, as they all stumble in late, on every desk will (probably) be a brand new, shrink-wrapped set of stationery...

Oh the joy in their darling hearts!

This is a festival few of us are aware of. If you see an accountant tomorrow, be sure to wish them a happy new year!

having trouble making sense of a few things

With a Fee Fie Foe!
Saw a widdle piney toe
And his eggy bobbing handy down the vine

Gone before his lunch
And no-one there to punch
he was teary, for his eggy he did pine

IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE!
Roared a Heckler from the floor
My hat is younger than your eggy-piner

If it's silly verse you want
Then go read Immanuel  Kant
For yourn eggy couldn't hide a moral finer.

Oh wibble, wailed the stealer
I'd spin my spurtle beater
But my piney toe is tangled in the vine,

And I cannot wiggle back
Nor can change this beagle tack
Until the eggy bobbing says she's mine.


Tim R

...run(ning) up a blind alley full of hatred and dark breath.

Listening to Afternoons on National Radio one afternoon last week I was lucky enough to hear Gary McCormack, a resident of Christchurch, reading this poem:

What the Drummer said to the Drum

Sitting in my comfortable chair in Dunedin in  the days following the earthquake I had felt an urge to write a poem in response. But in the end I felt that from said chair there was nothing I should say. 

At the time of the destruction of the world trade centre in 2001 I was enrolled in a poetry writing course at university.  That day in my comfortable chair halfway around the world I penned a poem.  It involved a sleeping Dorothy in a field of poppies, winged monkeys gnawing at her breasts.  The Lion roared. The Tin Man discarded his heart.  I can't remember what the scarecrow did. The imagery seemed so apt. I am still embarrassed by it.

When it comes, as Gary mentions at the end of his poem, to making sense of it...

There's a blog I read by a theologian-philosopher Glenn Peoples.  At times I feel compelled to argue with him in the comments over trifling points relating to larger issues he supports, but on the whole I respect his posts explaining various religious and philosophical subjects, and the depth of reading he draws on for these.  I don't go to church, but when I did, after the music, I did enjoy sermons interpreting the scripture. Where I live, the Bible is still the source of many of our ideas on morality, the nature of our existence, and how we cope with adversity, so even if you would take nothing else from it it's still worth appreciating. So I read him.

Anyway, in his latest post, Glenn quotes a verse about a man born blind. The disciples question Jesus about him and the response is given - “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Harsh if you're the blind man, but that to me is the function that disasters, whether in New York, China, Pakistan or right here on our doorstep and involving people we know serve for humanity.

Stories that are worth the telling are told again and again.  Shakespeare is re-presented and remade (RichardIII - High Noon, The Taming of the Shrew - Ten Things I Hate about You, I'm going from memory here, correct me if the titles are wrong) And every child that goes to Sunday School gets their chance to fill a role in the annual nativity play.

This time we see our own countrymen taking up roles in the disaster story.

A woman is trapped in a collapsed building.  Her fiance waits outside while rescuers search the building. They were to get married that friday.  Miraculously she is rescued, largely unscathed.  The wedding goes ahead in a church unaffected by the quake and all the invited guests are able to attend.

A man's family see him on live television being carried, covered in soot, from a destroyed shopping mall.  Days later they have called every hospital they can think of and still have no idea of his whereabouts.

An "awesome maori guy" is caught on camera seconds after a building falls lifting huge blocks of masonry to rescue people from the debris. His name, by the way, from the Herald article, suggests he's actually a pacific islander in case he wanted that acnowledged.

Some dairy owners are reported as charging nearly double the usual price for bread and milk. (I seem to remember when something similar happened after the Edgecumbe earthquake, the shop owner in question was all but run out of town.)

A man whose family survived and was sitting at home wondering how to help is told just to sit tight. That wasn't enough for him so he canvases local businesses for donations of coffee and tea supplies and sets about providing refreshments to rescue workers. (Little things like this bring tears to my eyes.)

Families recieve texts and phonecalls from people trapped alive under ruins.  It seems that some of these texters will not be rescued.

And there are reports of looters and drunkenness.

From the best of luck to the cruellest of fate, from self sacrifice to selfishness.  Our people have found themselves arbitrarily cast in roles in a story that is retold on different stages around the world again and again and again.  As a child I was proud to be given the role of Joseph in the Nativity Play, and then disgruntled when I realised it wasn't a speaking part. We play the parts we are given, though how we play them is sometimes up to us.

In the end I can probably make no more sense of this than Gary, who was there.

Christchurch

Just yesterday morning I was listening to a news report about how people put out of their homes by last years earthquake in Canterbury were coming to the end of the accomodation cover provided by their insurance.  It set me to musing about something I had read about an earthquake that had affected Canterbury  in the 19th century.  I can't find reference to it in any of the places I thought I had read it now.

What I thought I read was that in the 1800s Christchurch was hit by a mildly damaging earthquake, followed within a year by a much worse one which knocked the tip from the Cathedral Spire.  Either I dreamed it, and am more of a prophet than I thought... or it's in "The Brick Book" which I borrowed from the library to research things for my studies in construction, and which contains a section on masonry performance in earthquake conditions.

Anyway, enough about me.  Whether I dreamed it and am a prophet, or I read it and noted something about Canterbury geology which nobody else has bothered to bring up, It happened again today.  I felt it, waited ten minutes for the geonet site to update, texted a friend to say I hoped they were ok and then turned on the radio.

This is the earthquake we were all so thankful we didn't get last September - everyone was tucked safely in their beds at 4:30 that morning. This time the town was busy, and the workplaces relatively full.  This time people died.

I'm not the sort that feels my sympathetic comments mean much in the face of something like this, but here, if you like, are a few things that come to mind that we can still be thankful for over this event.

12:50pm is right smack back in the middle of the primary school lunch hour, so the little kiddies were all (comparatively) safe outside in the playground.  I heard a report from one of the school principals who'd been in communication with the other schools saying "they're all safe".

Our building code has, for a signifcant time now, enforced the inclusion of bracing elements against exactly this type of event in new buildings.  We don't always get it right, but it was heartening to see behind the footage of collapsed historic buildings (and one relatively new one I do admit) a number of newer buildings still largely intact, and therefore capable of allowing the occupants out safely.   We take the earthquake risk seriously when we build and it does pay off.

We saw on the TV something of the stoic kiwi I identify with - people calmly helping each other out and showing comfort and affection to the distaught with little of the staged hysterics the movies have taught us to expect.  We still just muck in and help each other.

Alright... that's all I can think of.  I watched the news this afternoon and seeing one of our most beautiful cities strewn with rubble for the second time in less than a year; seeing the cathedral fallen; seeing people milling, wearing a mixture of shock and their own blood; and hearing of a rising number of fatalities has the whisper of tears pressing around my eyes this evening.

My best wishes to all affected  and to their families,

The Gedle

Can anybody help me?

Google has failed me.  I'm looking for the "nymph poem" by Sir Joseph Banks.  Anyone out there have a copy?

A few months ago I was listening to National Radio (IknowIknow - Radio New Zealand National. But why do we have to constantly rebrand everything?  How are we expected to know where we are any more) about the middle of last year and there happened to be a documenary programme about Banks and his life after the Endeavour.

From what I remember of it, Banks, in addition to being the botanist aboard on Cook's expedition to the antipodes, and later head of the Royal Society back in England, was the son of a wealthy landed family in Lincolnshire.

As a child he wandered the Lincolnshire Fens, at that time teeming with birdlife, fish and flowers and something of a foodbasket for the local people. It was this childhood that apparently gave him his enthusiasm to become a naturalist.

However,  when he returned to England after his travels and gained power and influence, he was apparently instrumental in making possible the draining of the fens for farmland. I can't remember if he was in parliament, but he lobbied for law changes and such, and as a result the flora and fauna of the Fens were replaced in a relatively short amount of time with grass and good British cattle.  I'm sure he made a lot of money.

Now, what I remember being so poetic about the whole story was that late in life Banks looked back on his childhood and seeing the changes to the Lincolnshire landscape he had brought about, felt a wee bit of despair.  The fens of his childhood were gone.
A short extract from a poem he was moved to write was read out on this radio show.  The Nymph of the Fens rises out of the water, described wonderfully, and laments the damage done to her home.

I remember thinking: "Gosh, that was quite good. I must look it up"

Anybody out there know what I'm talking about? ...or am I actually going to have to trudge down to the library and look in an actual book? (and-that-reminds-me-return-a-bunch-of-overdue-ones-while-I'm-at-it...)   

No wonder I tried to lose that question sheet...

Well, Clive Barker is playing bridesmaid to US10039 measurement-residential, assessment part one, question two - plasterboard linings.

As far as I can make out, because all it says on the specification page for the plasterboard linings trade is that stopping to achieve a level 4 finish is to be carried out wherever the surface is exposed, BUT, under the painting specification it mentions applying lining paper to walls in areas S2, S3 and S13, I should measure for stopping to level 3 in those areas.

No cornice of any type is mentioned in either the plasterboard or the interior-joinery-and-trim specification, and, looking at the cross sections a square wall-ceiling junction is shown with no description. I'll assume that this means I must measure for stopping a fair internal angle at the wall-ceiling junction...  in metres.

Now... Now that I have looked at the cross sections I notice that the ceiling angle changes in rooms S1, S11 and S12 half way between the external wall and the lines on the plan marked "beam over" so that's another thing to measure... and the "beam over" in question will require plasterboard sheathing (sheathing of beams and columns must be scheduled separately in metres... no wait... only if they are cast in one piece) and also an extra value item for working in narrow widths less than 300mm.  

I don't think I have to worry about S1 which is specified to be lined with James Hardie Villaboard, at least on the walls... but I must remember to measure for a gib ceiling. 

Everything else seems fairly straightforward, except that I'll have to check back and forth to the bracing plan on sheet 8 as the gib-standard will have to be substituted with braceline wherever shown on that drawing...  

Now that's an interesting question... as an interior wall lining should I be measuring the villaboard in S1 along with the plasterboard trade? Fibre cement sheet is not covered as an interior lining at all in NZS4202...

Danger

I started a book last night and it could be a problem. Reading one I mean.  It was late when I started and there was a bit on my mind and despite that it was starting to grab me even though I knew I had to go to sleep.  It's just lucky that somebody woke me this morning to give them a lift somewhere and I didn't get time to lay my hand on it then or that would have been me till bedtime tonight.

After I'd given that lift I came home to discover the rim of the toilet bowl had broken off again.  I glued it together with superglue about three months ago, because at the time the landlord didn't sound that keen on replacing a broken loo, so it's done pretty well really.  (As an aside I can say from this that toilet duck doesn't clean under the rim). Anyway it's not that much fun ringing up to hear the landlord wince at the thought of maintenance, so I decided there and then that I needed some araldite.   We also needed  bit of school uniform from town and some cricket gear and apparently some shelf brackets for shelves I'm going to put up, from Mega. So those of us that were left bundled into the car to go foraging. The book, for now forgotten lay by my bedside waiting.

It was a short trip, only about two hundred dollars long, and when we got back I put together some toasted sandwiches for lunch.  While I ate them I thought with distaste about gluing the loo back together.   I decided (buying some time) that I might be able to do some of the assessment for that QS course I'm doing by correspondence if only I could find the bit of paper with the questions on it.  I had, for the moment, forgotten the book, which is by Clive Barker. Clive Barker is one of those authors I don't read often, but can't put down once I start reading.

Sadly the piece of paper was exactly where I thought it was.  I had no choice. I laid a dirty towel on the puddle in front of the loo to kneel on and began drying out the broken pieces of rim with an heat gun.  Then I mixed up all the araldite (my dad used to be so measly with it) and smeared it over everything I could think of and pushed the pieces back into places.  My hands were all over it when somebody came in and asked me if I would make some more toasted sandwiches when I had finished. Do you really want that? I thought, looking at where my hands were.  The book lay waiting.  Do you know somebody once gave me a trilogy for Christmas and I didn't speak to anybody until the day after boxing day?  No books for me at Christmas please, save them for the winter holidays when there's more of an excuse.

Well, it all seemed to be sticking and the araldite had filled them holes from missing shards quite nicely, so I got up and made those toasted sandwiches.... no wait... I got up and washed my hands and then made those toasted sandwiches.  Then I sat down with the question paper, the plans, the course book, the take-off paper, the calculator and my copy of NZS4202 to look at the assessment.  It consists of taking-off-quantities-for-sheet-vinyl-flooring-in-an-amenities-building-making-allowances-for-extra-value-over-coved-upstand-skirtings-and-enumerating-all-internal,-external-and-irregular-mitres-and-for-cutting-and-fitting-to-openings,  all laid out neatly according to the conventions described in the standard and not missing anything out.  I got up to find a pencil.

You know obsessive reading runs in the family... I remember when I was eight or nine my brother would come home  from university exhausted.  After sleeping for thirty hours or so he would rise and make his way to the bookshelves in the hall.  When he'd selected ten or twelve books he would return to the lounge, pausing only to grab the fruit bowl from the servery, and lie face down on the three seater couch, his feet dangling over one end and his head over the other.  To one side he would stack the pile of books and to the other he set the fruit bowl.  I remember watching for hours on end in fascination as he rhythmically turned page after page. The pile of unread books gradually got lower and lower, and the stack of read ones grew.  By dinner time he'd read them all and emptied the fruit bowl too.

Anyway I've now got half of that assessment done, and a list of questions for when I ring the tutor in  the morning.  Everyone's in bed and the lights are all out and I've just remembered that book.  I won't be able to find it in the dark... but when I get home from work tomorrow it will be waiting...

All the best,
The Gedle

Terrifying Tim

For anyone who's interested the hedgehog problem seems to have been contained.  The cat-biscuits are now on the shelf in the pantry, and, at least while summer lasts (Ha! Summer...) both cats are being fed outside.

I just went out there to get something.  The tortoiseshell (Coco) was sitting looking quizzically at me through the glass of the door as if I ought to do something.  Then, when I stepped out, there was a clunk by my foot of her dish returning to position and a desperate scurrying noise as the small hog tried to force itself in the dark into another too small bolt-hole.

It's nice to know I'm that awe-inspiring.

Under siege

I have to remember to shut the kitchen door as soon as it gets dark now.  There's not just one anymore.  I swear I'll wake up one morning and find a whole crew of them lined up on the end of the bed looking at me.

What?

Hedgehogs. That's what.

As well as the enormous one I was telling you all about the other night, there's also a smaller one.  The smaller one is not very bright. It turned up in the middle of the day the other day - snuffling along - it ambled out of nowhere into the conservatory as I was sitting with my afternoon coffee.  Completely ignoring me it went straight into the kitchen and tried to force its way into a gap under the kitchen cupboards about the size of a matchbox.
Maybe it thinks it's an octopus? Did you know an octopus, regardless of its size can squeeze through any hole large enough to fit its beak (the only solid part of an octopus) through? <shivers> This is not true for hedgehogs. 

Anyway hedgehogs in the kitchen are disgusting.  (They're riddled with disease you know) And there was this one with its nose wedged under the pot cupboard door.  I wasn't sure how I would move it, and whether it had got any of its spines through and if they would act like the barb on an arrow or a fish-hook and the thing  would be stuck there forever.  I didn't want to touch it, so I got a couple of paper towels and laid them over it.
"I'll just put these over you, stupid thing," I said.  "I hear you're riddled with disease."
It tried to force it's way further into the matchbox sized hole. The spines came straight through the napkins of course, but it wasn't stuck and I gently picked it up and took it out and put it down with its nose in the cat dish full of biscuits.
"There," I said.  "If you're going to steal food you should at least start in the right place."
It sat there immobile until I went away and then immediately scurried away behind the nearest plant pot it could find.

The big one is smarter.  It can get in the cat door and knows exacty where the pantry is.

So last night I was sitting at the computer in my wee alcove in the dining room and heard a snuffling. I looked round.  There was the same small hedgehog, coming my way...

It's just not on you know?  Hedgehogs are outside thingies. What business have they snuffling their way around the food scarce regions of a people house?

I didn't bother with paper towels this time.  I put my open palm down beside it . When it started to curl up with my other hand I rolled it onto the first. This handful was all prickles except for the soft fur of its cheek against the tip of my index finger. Once I had it I took it down the hall, through the kitchen - dodging the small trail of slimy hedgehog turds - and back outside.  That done I shut the doors and checked the open pantry to see if it had been in there.  Nothing.  Just the open bag of cat biscuits and the flour bin on the floor.

I went back to the computer.

After about five minutes I heard crunching sounds through the wall. I thought I shut that door I thought to myself and went back out to the kitchen. 
I looked in the pantry again.

There, in the shadows between the flour bin and the biscuit bag, was an enormous round shape.  I opened the door wider.  In the light I saw my original nemesis, the one from last week, one shifty brown eye regarding me.  He had to go too.  It's a bit harder picking up a larger hedghog because they're a bit more bolshey, and while the spines don't actually pierce your skin, the extra weight pushes them that bit further into your palms.  Unlike the small beastie, the big one stank.  Holding him at arm's length I put him where I had put the other one, and shut the pantry door.

And then, dry retching, I cleaned up the turds which I had been planning to ignore.

Oh they're darling little things.

and I was going to add "at this very moment there's one..." but there isn't.  It's just the cat hunting a leftover bit of steak.

Bloody Vermin!!

They have ridiculously long legs if you ever get to see them, they're "absolutely adorable" if you listen to the Queen of Night, and "riddled with disease" if you listen to anybody's Mother.  This one... has left a collection of turds all over my pantry floor around the big bag of cat biscuits.

Don't get me wrong.. I thought it was absolutely adorable too a couple of years ago when it started.  Little did I know that that was the thin end of the wedge.

"In summer when the nights are long..." I like to recline on the tattered old couch in what passes for our conservatory, in partial darkness, reading by the light of the bathroom window.  One night, though I had heard scratchings and crunchings previously, I heard a noise and looked over the edge of my book to see a tiny hedgehog pushing its way in through one of the diamond shaped holes in the trellis.  Entranced by the nearness of one nature's little miracles I sat there quietly and watched as, once through, the little darling circumnavigated the conservatory.  Never straying far from the wall, it ambled the longest possible route to the cat's dish. It then pulled itself by the rim of the dish on to tippy toes and poked it's nose down towards the alluring smell of the biscuits.

crunch crunch crack crunch crackle crunch.

Every night in summer the dear little thing would visit.  I got into the habit of leaving small handfuls of cat biscuits on the floor nearer the trellis for it so that it wouldn't have to walk too far. And often as I got up in the night to go to the toilet I would smile to myself  as I heard it through the wall at its dinner

crunch crunch crack crunch crackle crunch.

I remember the last night it came through the trellis too.  I was out reading on the couch again and heard the familiar scrape of spines.  I looked over to see my hedgehog had grown some, and was struggling to force itself through its customary hole like Pooh after eating too much of Rabbit's honey.  Its head and its forelegs were through, and the more it pulled the more balloon shaped the leftover hedgehog mass on the other side became.  Eventually it had to give up, but it soon found another way in now that its legs were long enough for it to climb up the edge of the garden.

Crunch crunch crack crunch crackle crunch.

When a hedgehog eats cat-biscuits it does it much louder than a cat does. It sounds like little shards of pottery breaking in its jaws.  That sound ceased at the end of summer, but returned the next along with my now respectable sized, full-grown hedgehog. My wife began to complain about the little black turds around the floor of the conservatory especially around the cat dish, and sometimes in it.  I had long stopped leaving extra biscuits around for it.

Crunch crunch crack crunch crackle crunch.

Well, summer came again and once again we are enjoying our conservatory.  These days I don't so often sit out there late however.  I'm often inside at the computer of an evening.  With the weather warm however it's easy to leave that door open until the final lockup when I go to bed.

We have two cats.  One for inside and one for outside. 

The inside one is a dainty tortoiseshell female who we have had fixed because we don't like the idea of having kittens. She gets fed in the kitchen in a nice clean pair of bowls and sleeps on the end of our bed keeping our feet warm as her way of saying thanks. The outside one is a longhaired ginger tom who we never got fixed, I guess because we don't mind the idea of other people having kittens if they want them.  He is wild and free and often quite inexplicably soaking wet.  He gets fed in the conservatory, shares with the hedgehog and leaves hair on the old couch there as his way of saying thanks.

Anyway as I was saying I haven't been sitting out late, but I've been inside and leaving the door open till I go to bed.  I've been hearing noises from the kitchen through the wall.  It's not uncommon for the outside cat to come in and investigate the contents of the rubbish bin, especially when we've had chicken for dinner.  So when I heard a scrabbling noise I thought nothing of it.  Poor fellow needs some perks.  Then I heard a familiar noise...

crunch crunch crack crunch CLUNK crunch crackle crunch.

... and I had to see.

I walked out to the kitchen to see an ENORMOUS hedgehog, far too big for its boots sitting in the inside-cat's tiny dish.  When it saw me it shot me a guilty look and leapt out of the biscuit dish and into the water bowl.  Then it gave up and sat there, regarding me.
Now I had no wish, at that time of night to go picking up a large, wet hedgehog. I'm told they're "riddled with disease". So I shooked my head, wagged my finger and left the room, hoping it would see sense and leave of its own accord.   A few minutes later I heard more scrabblings and crept out to see again only to find this enormous ravenous beast nosing its way around the rubbish bin and obviously heading for the bag of biscuits in the open pantry, leaving filthy wet footprints as it went.
This was too much!  I showed it my foot, at which it began curling itself up into a basketball.   Oh no you don't, I thought, and with my foot spun it round on the slippery lino then gingerly presented my toes to its rear.  That was all the encouragement it needed. Showing me the full length of it's ridiculous legs the monster skittered out the kitchen door and back into the night.

But I can tell it's been in since. When I have to wash the dirt out of the cats water bowl. And when I regard the pantry floor. And sometimes in the night I still hear it...

crunch crunch crack crunch crackle crunch.

Hiatus in creative activity

Big Sigh...

The days of me relying on my employer to keep me busy were cut short at the end of last year.  This doesn't mean I'm not busy.  When I saw it coming I got on the phone and rang a bunch of people I knew might have something for me to do and announced that I was worried.  Not one of them had anything for me. 

Shortly after that the phone started ringing... people I have painted or plastered for before (none of whom had any connection with the people I had called) or people who had got my name from someone else started calling.

"Would you have time to do a skimcoat for me?", "We're doing up another room, are you at all free", "that job I was hoping you would be able to do, can you do it on the twentieth?"

Obviously I do a good job. 

Now I have two houses to paint, a gibstopping job (which I might get to paint too) and a couple of tiny things to get through.  Work till the end of March at least...  The problem is the headaches, trying to work out if I can do all of this in time suitable to the people who want it done, organising in advance, talking people through their choice of colours.  Don't get me wrong, I like making people's houses look nice, but when the work floods in and you get a bottle-neck (three-jobs-that-should-take-a-fortnight-each-to-be-done-preferably-by-the-end-of-the-month) my heart rate increases semipermanently by twenty percent, my head aches, and I find I can't relax at all unless I'm up a ladder with a bush or a trowel in my hand.  Can't but very nice to live with huh? That's why I quite liked having an employer.

so... the prospects of my producing a poem each Sunday, or getting my hand near a piano look dim for the near future - at least until I can calm myself down.

Maybe I should announce to the world at large that I want a nice, quiet, desk job... perhaps the phone will start ringing a different tune if I do...

Love Tove Jansson

These paragraphs from "The Spring Tune" out of Tales from Moomin Valley get me every time:

"It's the right evening for a tune, Snufkin thought. A new tune, one part expectation, two parts spring sadness, and for the rest, just the great delight of walking alone and liking it.
He had kept this tune under his hat for several days, but hadn't quite dared to take it out yet. It had to grow into a kind of happy conviction. Then, he would simply have to put his lips to the mouth organ, and all the notes would jump instantly into their places.
If he released them too soon they might get stuck crossways and make only half a good tune, or he might lose them altogether and never be in the right mood to get hold of them again. Tunes are serious things, especially if they have to be jolly and sad at the same time.
But this evening Snufkin felt rather sure of his tune. It was there, waiting, nearly full grown - and it was going to be the best he ever made.
Then, when he arrived in Moominvalley, he'd sit on the bridge and play it, and Moomintroll would say at once:  That's a good one.  Really a good one."

Well, my trio of literary followers... do you feel like that when you write?

If you liked the image the rest of the story is even better. Get the book.  I've also always been fond of "The Fillyjonk who was afraid of Disasters", "A Tale of Horror" and... heck all the rest of the tales in it.

2010 read of the year

My favourite book this year would have to have been Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

I know, I know I'm a bit behind the times. This book was first published in 1984.  But I often feel it's rude to chase after a book, and prefer to read them when they come to me.  This particular book was pressed into my hand, along with a bundle of others (which included my close-second best read for the year: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami), as the lender urged me to understand that these were her favourite books ever and I just had to read them.  Now... (private rant) there's nothing more rude when somebody presses a book in your hand in that manner than not to have read it by the time you next see them, or at least to have made a serious attempt to have done so.

The number of books that I might as well have given away in this way (it is rude to ask for them back if they haven't been read now, isn't it?) bah...! But I digress...

I'm a sucker for stories about immortality,  (I think watching The Highlander at an impressionable age set that off) and those that hint on some level just beneath reality where things are interconnected (the Murakami book I mentioned might have more to do with that comment). It's not that I necessarily want to live forever like the characters in these books, but the idea of in one existence witnessing any of a bunch of exciting moments in history appeals to me.  It's for that reason I also like John Masefield's Box of Delights, even though as a story it's a really odd shape. Imagine living to see Beethoven play and to see the Great Wall being used for what it was built. 

In Jitterbug Perfume the hero Alobar does neither of those things, but he and his partner discover a method for extending life which enables them to outlive civilisations.  In that time Alobar, an "eater of beets", among other things stays in a Tibetan monastery, lives in sixteenth(?) century Paris, and eventually moves to the New World taking time out on occasion to consort (my euphemism) with nymphs in the company of the god Pan.

It is the type of book which throws itself at you with the sort of force that makes you think it encompasses more than it actually does. It is a wild, fun and memorable ride, but I'd have to say one I'd only take once.  In the same way a ghost train in a visiting carnival is thrilling the first time, but on subsequent rides you start to notice the light bulb inside the skull or the rusty hinge on which the terrifying spectre swings, I wouldn't want to ruin the experience by putting myself into the position of seeing through anything.  I might read it again, but in a year or two, when the carnival next comes to town.

Before you go running out to read this because I said I liked it, take a wee pause and ask yourself "Am I a prude?"  If you think you might be, click on the link I've put in up top to the wikipedia article about the book.  You'll get a brief summary of the plot and its contents, and if you imagine the subject matter described written with a sort of puerile glee you might get a hint of what you could be getting yourself into.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

If you like a story so wierd that it requires you to not just suspend, but completely discard disbelief for the duration of your reading, because you know you'll enjoy it all the more for it, ...go out and find a copy.    

Boxing Day

The Queen of Night is busy making her own incense sticks on the floor of her bedroom.  It's eleven o'clock and she should be trying to get to sleep, but since she is genetically incapable of directly following a given suggestion she's doing this instead.  She's happy, even though she's forgotten two things. Firstly, she really should have spread some newspaper on the carpet, and second, she nearly died today.

'Twas the day after Christmas,
we left the tree's lights-on,
packed up our towels,
and drove out to Bright-on...

:)

We got in the car at one-twentyseven, in a bit of a hurry, forgetting the boogie boards and the sunscreen, because we had arranged to meet Nana there at one-thirty.  It's always good to be on time for Nana because she grumbles if she is made to wait for anybody.
Nana was also bringing the Queen's togs because they had been left at her house Christmas day when we thought it might be hot enough for swimming.
"Can I text Nana and remind her about my togs?" said the Queen, eager for a chance to use her new cellphone.
"Already have," said Mum.
"Oh..." said the Queen. "...ok.  Thanks".
And so we drove, not hurrying but I had my eye on the clock.  We pulled up in the carpark at Brighton Beach at one-fortyseven. I made sure to park right up near the surf club, right beside the path to the beach so that Nana wouldn't have to wait for us any longer than was absolutely necessary.  As I pulled on the handbrake Mum's phone buzzed in her purse.
"Mum says - running late - just having lunch now so maybe three quarters hour - no schedule today" she read out.
"That's not fair!" cried the Queen "Now He'll be able to swim and I won't be."
I looked over at The Slug*, who had wrapped himself in two towels and was trying to manoeuvre his way into his togs without letting anyone see anything.
"It'll be ok.  Nana won't be that long.  You can still paddle and we'll be here a while." One of us said.

So we trudged down the path to the beach, our feet sinking in the dry sand which made for hard going.  I wished I'd remembered a book, and started to wonder if I should have worn shorts.  The tide was low and the rocks, usually a long way out, seemed scarily close. Still, there were people in the water.  The Slug dropped his towel and ran down to the water.  The Queen stood and looked at her mother and me, her hands on her hips.
"Nana won't be long."  we said.  "Go see what the water's like."
The Slug was already running back as the Queen headed down to meet the surf.
"Too coooold!" he said, and proceeded to curl himself up in a ball on the sand and cover himself completely with a towel - to avoid sunburn.  He would stay that way for most of the visit - until we lured him out with the promise of ice-cream.

After a while of lying on the sand enjoying the warmth of the sun, The Slug comfortably wrapped up in his towel, The Queen busy dancing the waves, as deep as she could possibly be without getting the short shorts she got for Christmas wet, I decided to explore the rocks.
The rocks at Dunedin's Brighton Beach look like the rotten, worm eaten remains of some vast, ancient tree. But they are hard, brittle, and nearly as sharp as glass. My feet, thanks to my North island habit of wandering around barefoot, have soles like leather. So, with my jeans rolled up I wandered down and along the water, took a small leap over a puddle of swirling water and began gingerly making my way around the base of the rock hill on the right hand side of the beach, gripping the hole-ridden surface with my toes. I reached a point where I had a choice of path.  I could follow the low ledge further around the base of the hill or start an easy climb upwards toward the top. The ledge sat roughly level with the incoming water.  If I went that way the waves washing across its surface would pull at my feet and send the thick kelp that lay across it swirling menacingly. 

"Hi Tim." 
I looked, and saw the Queen had materialised at my heel.
"Where are you going"
"Just having a wee explore." I said.  Now I had company I decided on the safer path. "Shall we climb to the top?"
"No." said the Queen, and began making her way around the ledge, the waves washing her feet.
I began making my way up the other path.  I watched the Queen hoping she would see me, and that her own trepidation might make her choose to come join me. When we were just far enough apart that I knew I couldn't do anything to save her if anything happened, I did a silly thing.
I have said that the Queen is genetically almost incapable of following a suggestion. So what I said was sort of calculated, and probably true.  I wanted her to decide herself to walk back my way and join me on the easy climb to the summit.

"The tide's coming in." I calmly said.  "A big wave might sweep you off of there."
She appeared to be ignoring me, then the next moment she turned to the worm-eaten rock wall and began climbing the near vertical face before her.  If she made the full ten feet she would come off on the path ahead of me.  The rough, craggy surface gave her plenty of hand-holds.

I stayed calm.  When I met the Queen and her brother, nearly eight years ago now, they were four and five years old.  They were climbers even then.  At that time they would start in the corner of the kitchen, pulling out the drawers to make a staircase and climb on to the bench.  Then they would walk the length of the bench jumping the kitchen sink and tip-toeing across the stove top, which usually wasn't going, to the windowsill.  Hanging on to the net curtains for support they would make their way along the sill 'til they could reach and open the pantry door.  Then they would scale the pantry shelves and then hook themselves onto the ledge above and crawl along to the end where they would lie grinning at you, eight feet up.  As long as nobody closed the pantry door they could reverse the process and climb down again quite safely.
I quickly learned the trick was to remain calm.  If, at any stage in the process, you were to panic, reach out and cry "Oh My goodness what are you doing?", they would look you in the eye, let go of everything, and fall.  The resultant impact would entail far worse drama than a bit of dust on the knees of their trousers and the inconvenience of the drawers being open.

So today I stayed still and watched the Queen climb. Five feet... Six feet... Seven...

Finally she was near the top.  She reached her hand for the last hand-hold and I began breathing again.  Then, the thin rock broke off in her hand and I closed my eyes on the image of her lurching backward, arms flailing.  I imagined a cracked skull... bright blood swirling in the surf.

Then I heard the beginnings of a thin gentle wailing.  I opened my eyes to see her scrabbling to the safety of the ledge and immediately began making my way towards her saying "Wow! That was a good save.  I thought you were going to die..."
She had given her shin a nasty scrape, blood winked brightly out of a couple of shallow puncture wounds.
"The rock broke off in my hand"  she sobbed.
"I saw." I said. "But gosh you did well. Those rocks are sharp. You must be glad you didn't fall."
I told her the best thing for her graze would be the salt water.  She assured me it would sting.  I helped her back to our base and we showed the injury to Mum.
"You know the best thing for that would be the salt water." said Mum after a consoling hug.
"I can't! It'll sting too bad..." Wailed the queen.  She sat on the sand, hugging her knees, determined not to enjoy the beach any more.  The Slug peeked out from under his towel, checked his forearm for sunburn.
Mum and I looked at each other.  We suggested ice-cream.

After a bit of coaxing we made it to the shop.  The Queen and her brother ran to the tip-top fridge, seeking out the most expensive items.
"Can we...?" they began.
I nodded, sighing, and turned to order a frosty-boy. I always get soft serve at the beach.  The Queen and the slug deposited their mega-magnum-supernut-trumpets on the bench  and then watched as the lady extruded my much cheaper, $2.50 soft-serve.
"Can we get one of those instead?" they both begged.
I sighed, nodding, and they ran back to return their mega-magnum-supernut-trumpets.
"Make that three" I signalled the lady.

After that the beach visit returned to normal.   Nana arrived with the togs, and within twenty minutes the Queen was chest deep in the surf, dancing at the outer edge of the swimmers. The Slug was once again safely curled up under his towel, still happy, but complaining his shoulders had burned in the ten minute walk to the shop.  Eventually, when the Queen was cold enough, and the Slug bored enough,  we trudged our way back to the carpark.

So sated with ice-cream
surf swimming, and foam,
We climbed in the car
and we made our way home.
                                           
The Queen of Night is busy making her own incense sticks on the floor of her bedroom.  It's eleven o'clock and she should be trying to get to sleep.  She's happy, even though she's forgotten two things. Firstly, she really should have spread some newspaper on the carpet, and second, she nearly died today.




*"The Slug" is the Queen's brother. We might meet him in more detail if these bulletins continue.  It's possibly an unfair name considering he can do a back flip from standing (which I can't), and once hit a six for the school cricket team (which I never did).