Where do we start? The royal we, the cliché? Why not? I'm lucky in a sense I'm not that well read, and that much might become more than obvious as I stumble through this. Already it's nothing like the various speaking in my head stuff that rambling through my brain yesterday when I got to know this idea of actually writing a book. Shit, I've hardly even started and already I've most probably made every mistake imaginable which might comprise lesson one in how to write a book school.
So yeah, being not that well read means I can use loads of clichés and be none the wiser whereby it's the alarms goin' off in your head, that I'm outclassed by my own sense of possibility, and not in my own.
But, as this stuff did kinda form in this bone encircled idea thingy, my brain, it was somewhat difficult to know where to start, and it wasn't as I have, now I actually get down to tappy tappy, one particular point in time did make a kind of sense.
Facebook. It was a facebook post and one of my liked pages, NZ gardeners, felt like a quite reasonably, and potentially paradoxical, spade stuck in the earth to start this particular hole... I did say clichés were goin' to feature.
It was a photo of Comfrey and someone asking what it was. It's very similar to Borage, a favourite of mine already growing wild here where I am, and people did, in the post, suggest it was Borage, but then it got interesting when some clever Harriet mentioned that Foxglove was also involved... therein my ears perked as it them made a trinity and I love the trinity. Well, I'm jumping forward a bit as with the mentions of Foxglove I went googling and found it as a strong, yet potentially dangerous, heart stimulant... brilliant, and heres the trinity bit, that we have Borage which stimultates the kidneys, and to an extent the liver, and Comfrey which is great for our bones then, low and behold, here comes Foxglove to aid the heart... wow, I'm sold, I'm putting my name down, and her what enobled the faith, the clever Harriet, she mentioned a book - and twas even a NZ written one - called companion planting... and I've even some money so 'can I find it available for the day's adventure, can it appear as the flung spear to start this day?'
And yes it was as I then googled the book and one copy, it's now (as I did this) 8.45 in the morning, at timeout books in Mt Eden. They don't open 'til 9 but theres the phone number on the website but maybe someones there earlyand I'll be able, as in right now, get this nailed down, sorted, put to bed.
'Cause what enthused me, made a silly bugger Sean sense, was that I'd had dealings with timeout in the past, even the way backs when I was having fun in town and running about like a lunatic building stuff, when a designer had found me and wanted me to do some work so I pretended I was really busy and might not be able to do the work for them so they had to pay me a thousand bucks up front to enable me to fit them in... so they did, but then something happened whereby someone else ended up doing the work so they asked for their money back and I'm like fat chance (politely though) but how about this chair?
What then also made this really interesting, oh sorry, it worked and they took the chair in lieu, was that this particular piece had gone down, with some others, to Otahuhu Hard Chromers where there was this really neato chap in charge, who was a chemist, and he'd copper plated and chromed a few of my other bits but he'd said these ones were too jagged, too dangerous, to be put into the rubber lined tubs they drop shit into for the miracle of chrome plating... but he did have a retarder solution he'd made up and he could paint them in that to at least keep them rust free for a little while.
Now, decades later, this stuff which went under his wondrous solution is still essentially rust free, well not totally, but it, this coating of whatever he used, has completely defied what is the normal result of steel, not laden in oil, being served up to the elements whereby it just wants to start rusting straight away and go back into the ground.
Going back again a few years after this I'd gone back looking for this fellow but he was in Prison, for a hinted reason I can't actually say, and the new owner, a quite garrulous chap in a certain type of South Auckland doesn't need to be spoken 'take heed' speak relayed to me... stop looking!
Anyway, that's how it is for me. When with one little facebook post theres this almost avalanche of association comes in so I know, deep down in my yet to be Foxgloed heart, that this is where the fun for today will be. All the stuff is coming in and creating a big and shining pointer about where to start forgetting anything actually makes any sense.
This though, this meandering collection of odds and ends, got me into the car and into Mt Eden, and I think I'll come back and fill some of this out later, once other connections are made, but for now, I got to Mt Eden, got my book and then wandering back to the car I finally, as I passed them by on the way there, though I had gone into the shop but... again anyway, noticed the baskets out the front of the charity shop and there, being lit up this time round, past, was a tablecloth, blue and cheap it was, which had been made in 1998 for a Fijian Police convention and that's just got to be the sort of ironic stuff my old friend Ema, who is Fijian and an artist, is going to be able to use.
And that my friends is what started, allowed, the idea of this book. That piece of blue cloth screen printed for some gathering way back in the past and on an Island Ive never been to, yet has associations I can grab, got me, after I'd returned home and decided I was going to take my chainsaw to Ihumatao, which is a whole other story, to drop off this fabric to Ema, at her house within an Olympics athletes javelin throw of the Dominion Breweries headquarters on the corner of great South Rd and Bairds, and so almost force me, the route to unfold, to go the way to Ihumatao from The Monument, next to the old house where David Lange was brought up, and not incidentally his brother who've I've also ended up meeting and enjoying the company of, all the way across the backbone of Mangere, which, as I drove told me, in no uncertain terms, that this book, though here I am at the beginning of it, wants written... Mangere rd.
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