BANKSY

BANKSY
Originally uploaded by paul le chien

Contemplating the jump...

Contemplating the jump...
Originally uploaded by Diggers Abroad

Dalat, Vietnam: My third free jump of the day and the one that gave me the most pause. When you jumped you had to clear some rocks and a secondary ledge before plummeting 11 metres into the waterfall pool below. It tapped into all my fears of heights and was eerily similar to a dream I had a couple of years ago. See my cliff jumping blog post from 2007.

Anyway its not quite the 60 to 80ft jump I failed to make in my dream with Tom Westman, but close to 40ft will do you right? Well, it'll do me for now...I was stoked. :-)

Sideline postscript: I just noticed while doing this post that Survivor Palau's

Tom Westman might be back for Survivor's 20th anniversary series Heroes Vs Villains All Stars

Acronymizable

Tone-A-Tronic's Electronic Muscle Stimulation TM is an advanced acronymizable technique used world wide for toning, reshaping, and firming thighs, buttocks, and for maintaining muscle definition. Tone-A-Tronic has been used for many years by professional athletes, physiotherapists, chiropractors, travelling tinkers and Bruce Lee. Home Ontological Muscle Orgonic Stimulation systems (HOMOSS) allow you to supplement your regular slump into depressive-body dismorphia, without putting stress on your joints, lower back or neck and shoulders. EMS machines are ideal for today's Nordic lifestyle. When time is limited and you can't get it up, you can hook up to your Tone-A-Tronic exerciser in the privacy of your home, classroom, super-market, office-toilet, while catching up on the dirty paper work, talking on the phone, watching TV or surfing porn. Tone-A-Tronic Electronic Muscle Stimulation systems are great for physically disabled people to prevent consumer atrophy. Many of these EMS units include a TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) to re-wire your versatile solution to living. The Tone-A-Tronic system works by sending minute electrical impulse(s) to the chosen muscle(s) and by depositing huge sticky wads of cash in a smashing little bank in Varosha, just south of the Cayman Islands. These impulses copy the message your brain (if you had one) would send to the muscle(s) to make them erect with ectoplasmic gear. Most units come with their own carrying minority hill tribe and larger models have briefcases with a Hemi-donk.

Get Yours Here

A Boys Will is the Winds Will

Toneatron and Carrot did a lot of work with stencils and paste-ups during an adventure on the West Coast in 2005. Mot of the work we did had been obliterated by the Thought Police within a matter of weeks. A couple of pieces such as the one above survive to this day. Kicking on to 5 years old now! ~ That's 36 years in Cat Years!
Dig on the way that this one has had a close encounter with someone with a pneumatic cleaning device. It seems they got half-way through erasure and had second thoughts....or maybe the Digger in them whispered ghostly... "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." - Longfellow

Max Flory Comments & Sympathy/Guestbook

G'day everyone,
For those of you who knew Max Flory and would like to leave a comment on my blog-page about him, this is the place to do it.


How it works is simple:
Select 'Comments' at the bottom of this blog-post leave your comment and details and I will add the comment(s) to this page.


Max Flory Comments & Sympathy book:


Your passing is a singularity in my world...Live in Perpetuity my old friend Florstar!!
- Denny

~*~

If we shadows have offended, think but this; and all is mended that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear and this weak and idle theme no more yielding but a dream. Gentles--do not reprehend if you pardon, we will mend. And, as I am an honest Puck if we have unearned luck. Now to scape the serpents tongue. We will make amends ere long else the Puck a liar call. So--goodnight unto you all. Give me your hands if we be friends.
(Puck) - "A Midsummers Night Dream" William Shakespeare.
- M.Louis Darling

~*~

Max, when the world trod on me till i felt less than a maggot on a carcass, you recognized the metaphysician in me and quietly palmed into my hand my first book of philosophy.
You took the deadly serious lightly, our insignificance playfully. This life is no more than a flash of lightning in the night. The reflection of the moon in a puddle.
Journey on brother. See you on the other side.
- Sam Robb

~*~

This star of yours Max, may have been taken from the night sky, but even while vacant, the place that it held still guides this ship of mine.

Love,
Archie Brown

~*~

Hey Denny I'm really sorry to hear about Max. I remember him as a good guy and I'm absolutely amazed he is still not with us. Stay strong and remember you've got lots of support.
- Stewart Hay

~*~

Max was quick with a Simpsons quote, and i always enjoyed trying to find one he might not know. No matter how obscure, max always knew it. And his cat's breath smelt like catfood.

We'll miss ya mate, but your legacy will live on.
- Hugh Ford

~*~

Found this late but the loss of Flory is timeless. He was a gentle man. I always enjoyed talking with him. I had thought I would see him again some time. He's missed. He's missing. The world is missing out. I miss him.

- Adam Ford

~*~

A monkey, ready to be shot up into space, ready to sacrifice himself for Project Mayhem.
- Tyler Durden's words coming out of Simian Hoods mouth.

~*~

I regret that I didn't know Max all that well, but he did make a massive impression on me in high school for the time I was there. I remember him best for being a lovable goof but I know, in my heart & through reading other's comments, that there was so much more to him. I wish I knew you better. You will live on in our memories Max.
- Wanda

A Salty Salute

Disarm the settlers
The new drunk drivers
Have hoisted the flag
We are with you in your anger
Proud brothers
Do not fret
The bus will get you there yet
To carry us to the lake
The club is open
Yeah, the club is open
Hey, the club is open
A-come on, come on, the club is open
Cmon, cmon, the club is open
Cmon, cmon, cmon, the club is open...

- Guided By Voices.

Thanks Toneatron

x

Vale Max Flory

 
“He had an incredibly finely-tuned and rapidly-delivered sense of erudite tangential humour that would bring great mirth to people of our ilk, but I suspect it could have caused total bewilderment to some others.

[...] he wrote (and wrote, and wrote) for the sheer love of writing itself rather than as a profession. Whenever there were troubles among our social circle, he had a ready ear and sound advice, and whenever physical assistance was needed he had a ready hand. He brought a little magic to the lives of all those he touched and he'll be remembered with great fondness.“

- Lev Lafayette

Lev Lafayette's journal

R.I.P MAX FLORY 1973-2009

"...and then we'll be Kings and then we'll be necessary"

Bottlo *

So many people I see in this bottlo appear to be alive only because there’s nothing else to do. At least that’s what they might think. What is the point then?

I found myself just the other day watching a bloke as he left the bottleshop. I couldn’t help muttering out loud to myself “what is the point of your life?” You see it gets to you after a while, the endless parade of hopeless souls.

- “Where’s the other bloke?” Here’s another one on the back seat of a car load of hopeless souls, having just secured their pre-lunch 6 for $10 bourbon-n-cola cans.

“I don’t know who you mean mate” He’s looking for some sort of discount or deal. I’m really not in the mood for this.

“You know…the other blokes?” He gesticulates in description. Indicates two blokes to me.

“They’re not here”

They drive out of the bottlo. When I’m sure they won’t hear me I mutter “Actually mate, I know where they are, they’re around your mum’s house working on a new mong race”

I don’t think I used to be this unsympathetic.

Is it every man for himself? Is it? It must be. Because otherwise what else could this all mean in a society where so many people are struggling through they’re lives. What am I referring to by ‘This’? The hopelessly under-educated and socially dysfunctional people I see every morning. They’ve got no money but they spend it on grog anyway. They limp and drag their feet slowly up the hill toward us. Like a scene from a zombie movie. The Dead Living.

How can we be so rich and have failed so many?

A Young guy left his wallet on the bar last night. It’s gone. Well actually he’s not sure where he left it. He’d had more than a few. He checks in the bottlo the next morning. Has anyone found it or handed it in? He had $300 in his wallet last night. The entire remains of his social security. After the young guy has left the bottlo, I’m standing there wondering how he could be so bloody stupid as to “get on the piss” with all the money he has stored in his wallet. How could anyone be that stupid? As if on cue – enter stage right: his dad. His 68 year old pensioner alcoholic father has come in to pick up his pre-breakfast 6 for $10 bourbon and cola cans …but more from him in a bit.

Why does…how can…such a wealthy society fail so many of its people?

This morning I just want to cry.

I feel paralysed by rage. What is my rage about?

My rage is about my inability to make a life with meaning. I can’t even just ‘blah’ on about financial goals and rewards anymore. Because I can see it’s not gonna be enough to just make money. On its own that is not going to give me meaning. Although as the comedic like to observe, it might dull the pain of the emptiness.

“You want a bag for that bottle mate?”

“Nah mate. We’ll smash that before we get home!”

I flew into a rage before. I’ve been doing some boxing training for a couple of years now. Just to get fit. My ex-girlfriend said to me recently that I seemed to her to be “more violent” than I used to be. “More aggressive somehow”… funny thing is, that little argument I had with her just made me want to cry…I mean I was sitting there trying to defend myself against her assessments and then that welling up in the eyes, a slight feeling you might choke, then a calm…a loss of self and then a strange sad remorse. Things lost. Things once, now gone.

“Did anyone hand in a wallet?” Now the Dad’s doing his bit. “My son was in the bar last night. He had $300 in his wallet. Says he put it on the bar. When he remembered to look, it was gone.”

I want to jump the counter and shake this poor old man. Ask him what the fuck he’s doing, why is his son a moron? What sort of fucking example are you setting by buying booze before breakfast every morning?!

I’m so full of rage at the moment. It begins to consume me.

Maybe it’s just because I have been recovering from a flu. It’s been a while since I wanted to punch anything. I came close to punching the duty manager this morning. Fortunately for us both, he scurried away. Unfair weight advantage. I guess I am more capable of violence than before. Better able. Maybe my ex was right. I felt the boxing drills this morning. I felt the boxing hands pour out of me. I was sick last night, but the hands exploded out of me. Flurry and fury. I had to write up five cans and 2 cartons to breakages.

The training probably has made a difference.

“You got any specials on beer mate?”

“Slabs?”

“What the bloody hell else would I want?”

“Just there” I wave my hand across, indicating the long line of display slabs and blocks six feet from his car window. The ones covered in paper signs marked “Specials”.

“How much is VB?”

“$38 mate”

“Bullshit” He drives off.

“Yup nice one. Petrol is $1.50 a litre mate. Enjoy that $2 you're gonna try save!”

Later though, when I think about it more, I develop some sympathy. I can’t really blame this guy and his ilk. I mean all they want is some beers after work and the price keeps going up every three months. Then they try to remember the last time they’re wages went up.

After I punched some boxes, punched a door, pushed over the ladder and kicked the shit through a beer sign, I did some primal screaming…

Well all I really wanted was to have a cry. I must be depressed. Isn’t that what they’d say?

Rage and feelings of futility, inability to cry…or inability to stop crying. It’s gotta be a textbook outline of depression. Doesn’t it?

Fuck all that. I just want some meaning.

- “Has your son asked the bar manager if they have found a wallet this morning?”

“Yeah well I dunno you see…my son was so angry….so angry… he was screaming and yelling and carrying on. Blimey… I’m only a pensioner you know. I told him there’s nothing I can do. I’m broke. The boy’s smashing stuff up. Stupid boy does his whole fortnights money in a night!” He stares out of the bottlo at nothing in particular. We share a moment of silent contemplation.

-“What was he doing with all of his money in his wallet?” I ask.

The father taps the side of his head with his finger. Rolls his eyes back and pushes his tongue out the side of his mouth. He repeats these actions several times. I’m not sure who he is referring to but apparently somebody isn’t right in the head.

I’ve started having daily chats with this 66 year old alco' who lives across the road. He’s a nice enough bloke I suppose, but he’s bloody hopeless really. I’m pretty sure the only reason I think he’s nice enough now is because his age has taken the edge of his ability to be an aggressive drunken asshole. This is my male role model.

Where have all our fathers gone? We lost our fathers in the War. What fucking war?! Well there must’ve been one and we didn’t notice, because there’s scarcely a viable male leader in sight. I’m pretty sure I could benefit from the counsel of a male elder. There simply aren’t any though. Maybe I’ll evolve. Maybe I’ll become my own male figure, my own role model and my own source of inspiration. Or maybe I too will break apart, or be absorbed by consumption. Fade away… or whatever it is that happens to the men of this generation.

I’m scrambling for some meaning here… but this is and has become the whole point hasn’t it?

I shut the shop and go home. The lights are on but nobody’s home.

~

* "Bottlo" is an extract from a semi-fictional novel-in-progress of the same name. While it is based on some of my experiences it is not about me so please do not be alarmed ;-)

'Bottlo' First published on the creative arts blog Fabulist Savannah

Listening to: The Ramones (Mixed Mp3's) whilst brambling with a scythe in Normandy! True story ;-)

Savendi At Large

Dearest M.L Darling,

What day is it? I am awash in sensory input. The heightened sense of experience that some travellers get when the sensation of days stretch out and become as if weeks. Experiential time dilation kicks in and your head is spinning and you are left wondering when it was that you stepped out of the airplane and into this stream...this current that has ripped you along in so much broiling froth and light - a rub-a-dub dub. And sound-n-sounds and people from worldwide and imagining no countries. So much water having swept under the proverbial and now I turn to you in full flow and ask...in all sincerity...how long has it been? What day is it today?

Oyes...of course now that I actually pause to write this large upon the screen sat in Phnom Penh netcafe it gives me a small-space to remember it's only been 3 days. Mad Plumber will definitely remember this phenomenon from our last Thai expedition. Experience so dense that the normal sense of linear time bows out so that you cant remember anything but a head full of blessed experience... Stand up, fall down...a moment on your knees - And give thanks that you can experience the luxury of such travel. For I know that we are blessed just as Mad Plumber and I knew we were blessed in Thailand. Just as I'm sure that everyone who has been mad-awake in travel has taken a moment to reflect... Filled their lungs and pushed out on an eddy...into a small and gentle bay to take brief pause...long enough to catch up with oneself a moment. Bundle into a netcafe and share and give and write thanks. Love to you all and to all of you who have in some way helped me or encouraged me to persist and press on...to go and go and go...

I soldiertostandupsoldiertostandupsoldier - For this I thank you, for in its way it has helped me to here...Blessed.

You know who you are.
~
"Savendi at large" As titled by Mad Plumber, First appeared on the creative arts website Fabulist Savannah

Toneatron & Tommy-R-Us

The two stars of this exhibition poster are my old chums Toneatron and Tommy-R-Us!

Hell Gallery: Lisa Radford and Friends Go To Hell

You've got to love MELBOURNE!

Hoi An Balcony View

Chrome balustrade. Yellow starred red flag flapping in the wind. Cao Lau stall on Tran Cao Van. Scooters and bicycles. People wearing surgeon face masks. Fruit stall on crazy little intersection with no stop sign or lights or stop and go paraphernalia...no lines no lights just go and go and go. Huge dinosaur eggs some dark like rotten, guess there's gonna be some streetfood I'm never gonna try. Coconut palms on the near distance. Sea breeze is in and blowing. Cyclo cycles through. Swat and H20 tees. Great big dirty green tents. trad garb...old school new school and no school. Shirtless man in thongs with a necklace and jade pendant. My back aches. Wires and dark stained walls built out of mould. Painted mould. papadum snack bigger than the kids head. Strange sweet savoury mix we find so alien and common here. Hoi An coolsie kid on black rimmed peddler. Ochre paint jobs. Old lady with walking stick and hunched up back...moving pretty well though. I haven't see them smile much the old ones. Bright red mod scooter. Tourists on $1bicycles. Kids eating noodle soup and cao lau with fast moving chopsticks just off the road corner stall of red plastic chairs and tables all low down like a kids tea party set. Ice buckets, steaming buckets and a paint bucket someone left on the roof above them. Mint leaves and some salads i cant discern from here. I discover Macbook's photobooth...we stare at each other and I shoot ten photos of myself in black and white.

* 'Hoi An Balcony View' first appeared on the creative arts website Fabulist Savannah

Listening to: Bowie - Aladdin sane

Night dreams, sense and recollection.

I had this dream last night. AC and I were standing just outside of a doorway that led into a grand internal courtyard. Let me describe it further by saying: imagine an enormous Elizabethan style mansion, almost a small castle or a keep and tall with at least 3 stories. The mansion was so sprawling that it had vast internal courtyards contained within the building. Open to the sky, but flanked on all sides by the high stone walls of the mansion. AC and I were stood on the edge of this internal courtyard, next to a door we had just stepped out of. I didn’t see this, in the dream sense of “seeing”, but I sensed it. Evidently the storyline was already well underway, when my brain decided to start recording it to the forward memory that I now relay. I sensed the back-story within the dream, much as I sense now the atmosphere of what had transpired just previous to my sudden jaunt into dream consciousness (dig?). It was night and a dark one at that. We had been exploring the grand old building. It wasn’t a ruin, it was very much in use as if it were lived in by some rich family or up- kept by some historical committee or better yet as if we were back in time…in the mansions prime…suffice to say the place was alive with it’s own presence…and that works nicely leading into this next insight, which is that AC and I were pursuing a ghost or ghosts. We knew something or some things supernatural were active in this enormous building. The hair on our arms and necks stood on end. Something very old and powerful was there. We were scared, but elated. Driven by a desire to confront and maybe understand… a desire that overcame the feelings of fear…that malingering unnameable terror that welled up within us as we moved through the sprawling dimly lit mansion. Apparently we had been in somewhat of a chase. Who was chasing who I cannot say (I wasn’t there (winks aside) but action was afoot. In that moment we enter the dream AC and I were taking a breather…a moment or two…we were discussing what had been transpiring, there was a sense of brevity between us…wry smiles and quiet chuckling. We were being humorous, but our skin was bespeckled by goose bumps and the radiant atmosphere had us rubbing our hands together, shifting feet to-and-fro and shivering… although not from any cold. We had found something…a spirit or a ghost and its very existence filled the dreamscape to the point of overflowing. Elements of its energy seemed to spill into the real world. It’s corny to say, but it was as if we knew we were in a dream, but more still…it was as if we were in its dream. In unison we both looked up at one of the narrow windows high up on the wall that overlooked the courtyard. The window was open. It had only just opened and a dark slip of curtain fluttered out from within. No one could be seen in the window but we knew it was the Presence. Maybe out of fear, I don’t know why, I started to crack the wise. I heard myself say something loudly like “yeah yeah very dramatic, very spooky…just what we expected” AC joined in. We were stirring it up…giving that supernatural force a rev up...letting it know that the Diggers weren’t afraid. Something spoke up, spoke back to us. It was something unnatural. In our heads or out loud…maybe both at once… It said “Third floor NOW!” We charged back inside, off to confront this thing. Round a corner and down a wide ornately laid out corridor we ran. The atmosphere was charged with preternatural energy. I noticed a large tapestry hanging on the wall. The tapestry bowed outwards as if someone or something was crudely hiding behind it…I could see the floor beneath the tapestry and there were no feet to be seen. AC yelped as he’d seen the same thing I had. I was terrified but I pushed behind the tapestry. In that split second I let out a terrible noise like a low mournful howl, immediately followed by another a second later. It sounded a mix of exhilaration, suspense, tension and fear. It was not a pleasant sound, and I know this because it woke me up in bed. In that last millisecond within the dream I found there was nothing supernatural behind the tapestry, only an ill placed game hunters mounting. But the noise of my howl was a collision of dream and reality. It was almost as if the mansion had kicked me out of the dreamscape. AC and I had been charging into the unknown…headed for some stairs up to the third floor, summoned, challenged by some unspeakable unknown force. The shrill terror of it all…the terror was a power surge that overloaded the dreamscape…shorted out the link and left me sitting up in my bed. It was about 1am…pretty early for an intense dream in my experience. I thought of how AC had got on…did he charge onwards to the third floor? Did I disappear in front of him? Whose dream was that anyway? In the dark of my room the heavy shroud of the dream still hung heavy, refused to let go to reality…I determined to go back in. I was still groggy. I lay back down and tried to re-enter the mansion. I still felt the force of the Presence…palpable as if it really had spilled out into the room with me. There was something major and unresolved still moving me, pumping through my adrenalised heart like a possession. I lay down and before I blacked out again there was a fleeting moment of reflection, like my own third person narrator saying…this doesn’t look right…is not the same place…or is it? Then the darkness and the forgetting.

*Special love goes out to: M.L Darling, Petri Ivalo Sinda and the Mad Plumber of Fabulist Savannah, where this piece first appeared in 2008.

Listening to: Pnau

Rabbit Hill painting - Denmark

More progress on the Rabbit Hill painting. This is it for the week!

I just had to blog this piece of art in progress. I think its so great.

It appeals very much to my taste. Nice work pOps.

I'm In Denmark at the moment too. So there's a kind of continuity...dont you think? ;-)

Please check out the artists other work at his Flickr page.

Den's Listening to: Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours

Bottle Top Boat Racing

I’m working pretty hard today considering…
Considering I’ve got a flu happening…but I’m reminiscing even harder about old times and my old chum Florstar, when we were kids and bottle top-flotsam and jetsam boat racing in the man-made creeks of Sir Charlie Gardiner hospital’s parkland. It was so much fun. I remember enjoying it so much that it sears into the present now…
and I’m there, splashing water, warm air and clear blue skies. I remember a couple of little objects that became like champions to us…maybe a slightly crushed white plastic milk top and a stubby stump of anonymous orange plastic. These were vessels that won several races in a row…fast, consistent performers…continually in the top three of a race. One of our favourite flotsam-boats won again and again. The mythology grew, we had a little character here…our own private champion. Through the treacherous conditions they sped, gloried over by us as race stewards bounding nimbly across the rocky creek bed, along the slick grassy banks of the watercourse chasing fields of boats as they hurtled to the finish line. Magical play.
Then the time we lost one: A close race that put too many boats across the finish line too quickly for us to steward…too quick to gather them all, lost in the excitement of a probable dead heat, too quick to grab them all to safety as we’ve lunged and splashed… “Plastic Whiteys gone!” Shot through for a win or a place…it was too close…hit on through the rapids as we scrambled to grab the fleet…a great close race, four, five or even six vessels tightly bunched on the finish line and we’ve lost precious seconds in our roles as stewards and adjudicators…there was a race won, but by who?…Hearts pumping, paused mid stride hovered over the finish line, trying to pick the winner, then mad scramble, reports go out…The champs missing! The final collection of little boats normally a relatively simple affair…races where boats usually only came through on their own or in groups of two or three…but this whole fleet of flotsam & jetsam bundled through “race of the century!” Hair raising frozen with glee at the prospect of it all… lunging for the boats… “the boats… the boats!”
“Florstar! Have you got Plastic Whitey?”
- “Nup”
Splashing and cursing… Our little champion, our little genius piece of trash elevated to mythic nautical speedster in our minds…our new sporting world expanding with every passing second, but he’s gone…
we scour on, searching the reeds at the edge of the run through the rapids, out along the banks to the greater lake that the creek plunges into. “He’s gone through the rapids and gone out to sea!” We scan the surface of the lake but can’t see him. The excitement begins to give way to a mournful recognition that we’ve lost the champ. Reality briefly shines through the curtain of fantasy…but we were vigil:
All other races are temporarily called off. Proceedings halted. No more championship regatta till there’s been an inquiry…a reckoning. Renewed searches for the plastic fantastic Plastic Whitey. To no avail …we stop empty handed…
Everything is quieter for a few moments…just the popping and sploshing of the creek and the low distant hum of the hospital generators.
But the game must go on and there are new rounds of elimination trials to be held. Search for a new champion…up away from the creeks and reeds, by a lunch area with benches, looking for bottle caps and popsicle sticks, down by a drain entrance …push through the reeds for a bit of old rubber thong…or a shapely branch stub, or an old comb…Things we should have enshrined with notes, but time is not passing when your young and there’s no end to finding new bits-n-bobs to try their speed as grand rapids racers…and new days and new ways to celebrate our love of such story and high drama and competition…the uplift of the winners…our winners. The arvo dims and we head down Abedare road to the deli on the corner of Florstar’s street for pre-dinner hotdogs and cokes…Florstar has a twenty, he is the treasurer.

                                                                            

* Bottle Top Boat Racing first appeared on the creative arts website Fabulist Savannah

New rock is the old rock rolling…

Babel Fish

This one's for Douglas Adams I think:

Recently I got a beautiful email from our friends at A La Ferme B&B on Somme. One of the owners Jean-Claude doesn't speak a lot of English and so wrote to us in French. I had to use yahoo's Babel Fish in an attempt to translate it. The result was funny and off-kilter in a poetic way. Eli thought it would be interesting to compare how Google-Translate went with the same text so she ran it through that and got a similarly strange and yet lyrical result. Please see below the Original email in French and then the two attempted translations:

Original:

Hello les amoureux.

En Français

Merci pour votre très sympathique e-mail.

Notre amitié va toujours vers des personnes sympathiques et particulièrement

vers le peuple Australien qui a payé très

cher en hommes pour nous défendre lors de la grande Guerre.

Vous pouvez réserver bien sur dans notre B&B, par contre faites le plus

rapidement possible.

Nous espérons que Eli a repris des couleurs et que nous vous reverrons en

pleine forme.

Nous vous réserverons naturellement le même accueil.

Isabelle, Jean-Claude

Yahoo Babel Fish:

Hello in love ones. In French Thank you for your very sympathetic nerve e-mail. Our friendship always goes worms of the people sympathetic nerves and particularly towards the Australien people which paid very expensive as men to defend us at the time of the Great War. You can reserve of course in our B& B, on the other hand made as soon as possible. We hope that Eli took again colors and that we will re-examine you in full form. We will reserve the same reception naturally to you.

Google Translate:

Hello lovers. 

In French 

Thank you for your very nice e-mail. 

Our friendship will always friendly to people and especially 

to the Australian people who paid very 

expensive men to defend us during the Great War. 

You can book well in our B & B, made against the 

quickly as possible. 

We hope that Eli has taken the colors and that we meet again in 

form. 

We give you the same natural host.

Listening to: Dappled Cities 'The Price' (Download Free here)

Some random things I think of when I think about Eli:

• Eli is unusual and likes unusual things and yet when I tell her about the most mundane crap that I’m currently interested in she gives it her full attention and makes me feel ok about it. - This in turn reminds me that celebrations of life can be found almost anywhere and this I believe is key to how she lives. She loves things big and small, significant and passing alike; Eli’s passion for knowledge reminds me of what having an open mind can do.

• When I look at Eli I see the primal joy of living refracting off of her like a crazy fantastic rainbow. 

• Eli drinks water funny and it makes me happy.

• Eli smells like the future.

•  Eli laughs like a lemon might laugh if you gave it a little face or crossed it with a pixie (assuming you could find one of course. Eli would probably help you look), her laughter reduces me to childish exuberance.

• Eli’s way of being reminds me that innocence is neither contingent on naivety nor synonymous with weakness.

• Eli is a fem-fantastic warrior-poet and I love and admire her. It has been both an inspiration and a pleasure to know her and I am grateful for every day of it ….I sincerely hope to know her for many many years to come
  

French Bed & Breakfast for ANZAC Day

Eli and I were fortunate enough to be in France for ANZAC Day. We attended the Dawn Service at Villers Bretonneux.  

We discovered a wonderful bed and breakfast called A La Ferme 

"A Farm" I think in english...anyone? ;-) 

It's in a beautiful little village Bayonvillers about 8km east of Villers Bretonneux

Anyway this is a shameless plug for them because the owners Jean-Claude & Isabelle are wonderfully nice people and richly deserve success. They went out of their way time and again to help us. And made us feel welcome and at home with their warmth and hospitality. The rooms are lovely. Jean-Claude makes the best omelet I've ever tasted with farm fresh eggs sourced from their own chickens. They also provide mouth-watering bread, cheese and butter. Isabelle's homemade jams and marmalades are pure gastronomic genius. Isabelle gave us a whole jar of Strawberry & Rhubarb jam. Would have to be close to the best jam I've ever had in my life! Anyway I'd have no hesitation in recommending them to anyone. Especially if you are planning on traveling to the Picardy/Somme region for ANZAC Day (when accommodation can be hard to find) or visiting  WWI sites. Tell them Den and Eli sent you and experience the love!

"Isabelle (she speaks English) and Jean-Claude welcome you in their lovely farm, in Bayonvillers (Somme, France)."

http://www.a-laferme.fr/eng/

Old Banner Quotes 1.

"If you never get knocked out, then you ain't fighting the right people" - Matt Hughes

About me then

January - December 2009

I’m on the road finally after saving for about two years. I'm throwing my cards in the air, my dice on the ground, my hat in the ring... I has done all the dumb things innit .

These sort of things I hope to explore...