Plastic noise.
Lying on my back in the grass on the edge of a meadow in spring. The sun warm on my face. Wind rustling young leaves in the hedgerow behind me. The bleat of a sheep. The bark of a dog in the distance. The cawing of a crow flying overhead, and high in the sky, the melody of a lark …
Mist obscuring the horizon as waves gently lap the shore. Chill, with slight moistness in the air. Hidden in the gullies between the beds of cordgrass, the bubbling cry of a curlew, the whistle of the oystercatcher, the sharper call of the redshank.
Peace, though not silence. Uplifting. Soothing. Rich. Glorious.
Public attempts at acapella close harmony, best kept for an audience of private enthusiasm. Bulls-horn speakers blasting a message in 360°, so the world, not just the gathering in front of the platform has to hear, like it or not. “What was that you said? I couldn’t hear you.” …
Drunken revelling into the small hours of the morning, or even the not so small hours. A stereo with a volume control disproportionate to the size of building. “It’s ear plugs again tonight!”
Blaring. Invasive. Intrusive. Aggravating. Abrasive.
Noise pollution, like plastic, man-made. At least once the source is disconnected it doesn’t hang around for centuries.
Catching up has been the outcome of this week. Catching up, but not feeling caught up. There’s always another something-new that arrives, or an unexpected outcome from one of the tasks you thought you’d complete quickly, or the meeting that goes on longer than expected and now needs another meeting to complete.
Progress made, at least. The To Do list is shorter than it was.
Familiar territory is underwater. Conway, our home for 20 months in South Carolina is feeling the effects of the massive amount of rain dumped by Hurricane Florence. Ironically perhaps, Florence is a major town in South Carolina to which I often flew to practise instrument approaches.
We’re wondering how friends are getting on there. Nicki has just downloaded photos from news pages showing streets familiar to us completely covered by the flood. Waccamaw, Pee Dee, Crab Tree Swamp, all those low-lying, twisting rivers and creeks that sinuate their way across Horry County have burst their banks and flooded not just Conway, but other nearby towns as well.
One-way tickets home. It’s a strange idea after 25 years of return tickets. In 1994 one-way Thai Air tickets, the now obsolete paper variety, took us from Heathrow, via a refuelling stop in New Delhi, to Bangkok and then to Melbourne. Our first experience of really long-haul flight, and Philip being swooned over by lovely Thai stewardesses. In those days he was blonde and beautiful and very cute.
Since then it’s always been return tickets, even if the exact return date wasn’t known. But now, the one-way will complete our full-time service in PNG. Even if we do return for short-term assignments, a topic still under consideration, the return tickets will be UK to here and back, rather than PNG to there and back.
Mind you, the one-way tickets we’re considering aren’t exactly direct. The abbreviated version looks like this:
Hagen-Moresby-Cairns-Brisbane-Auckland-(then by car)-Tauranga-Napier-(back to the air)-Christchurch-(then car again)-Queenstown, Invercargill and Dunedin-Christchurch-(back to the air)-Melbourne-Heathrow (via wherever whichever airline we fly lands at to refuel).
Whatever we do, we do intend to be in the UK by early April at the latest, having caught up with some friends and seen parts of New Zealand that are on our bucket-list of places to visit. This will be several Christmas and birthday presents combined with our Ruby wedding celebrations overdue from last July.
Anything else we do in the future will have to find an equally good justification, but this trip looks like using up all the current credit vouchers we’ve stored up by not being very good at organising presents for each other.
Yes, I did kill my rhubarb by subjecting it to a sudden decrease in temperature. In retrospect I should have tried hardening it off by short periods in the fridge first, rather than plunging its ambient temperature by 70°C. That wouldn’t have done me much good either.
Before attempting to resurrect the rhubarb I did cover the bed with well-rotted compost. It appears that the well-rotted compost still had lots of seeds in it, many unidentified and now removed, but others that are definitely tomatoes. I therefore now have a bed with ten or so healthy tomato plants that I hope will yield fruit in their season.
May you have a great week unpolluted by plastic noise.
Lying on my back in the grass on the edge of a meadow in spring. The sun warm on my face. Wind rustling young leaves in the hedgerow behind me. The bleat of a sheep. The bark of a dog in the distance. The cawing of a crow flying overhead, and high in the sky, the melody of a lark …
Mist obscuring the horizon as waves gently lap the shore. Chill, with slight moistness in the air. Hidden in the gullies between the beds of cordgrass, the bubbling cry of a curlew, the whistle of the oystercatcher, the sharper call of the redshank.
Peace, though not silence. Uplifting. Soothing. Rich. Glorious.
Public attempts at acapella close harmony, best kept for an audience of private enthusiasm. Bulls-horn speakers blasting a message in 360°, so the world, not just the gathering in front of the platform has to hear, like it or not. “What was that you said? I couldn’t hear you.” …
Drunken revelling into the small hours of the morning, or even the not so small hours. A stereo with a volume control disproportionate to the size of building. “It’s ear plugs again tonight!”
Blaring. Invasive. Intrusive. Aggravating. Abrasive.
Noise pollution, like plastic, man-made. At least once the source is disconnected it doesn’t hang around for centuries.
************
Catching up has been the outcome of this week. Catching up, but not feeling caught up. There’s always another something-new that arrives, or an unexpected outcome from one of the tasks you thought you’d complete quickly, or the meeting that goes on longer than expected and now needs another meeting to complete.
Progress made, at least. The To Do list is shorter than it was.
************
Familiar territory is underwater. Conway, our home for 20 months in South Carolina is feeling the effects of the massive amount of rain dumped by Hurricane Florence. Ironically perhaps, Florence is a major town in South Carolina to which I often flew to practise instrument approaches.
We’re wondering how friends are getting on there. Nicki has just downloaded photos from news pages showing streets familiar to us completely covered by the flood. Waccamaw, Pee Dee, Crab Tree Swamp, all those low-lying, twisting rivers and creeks that sinuate their way across Horry County have burst their banks and flooded not just Conway, but other nearby towns as well.
************
One-way tickets home. It’s a strange idea after 25 years of return tickets. In 1994 one-way Thai Air tickets, the now obsolete paper variety, took us from Heathrow, via a refuelling stop in New Delhi, to Bangkok and then to Melbourne. Our first experience of really long-haul flight, and Philip being swooned over by lovely Thai stewardesses. In those days he was blonde and beautiful and very cute.
Since then it’s always been return tickets, even if the exact return date wasn’t known. But now, the one-way will complete our full-time service in PNG. Even if we do return for short-term assignments, a topic still under consideration, the return tickets will be UK to here and back, rather than PNG to there and back.
Mind you, the one-way tickets we’re considering aren’t exactly direct. The abbreviated version looks like this:
Hagen-Moresby-Cairns-Brisbane-Auckland-(then by car)-Tauranga-Napier-(back to the air)-Christchurch-(then car again)-Queenstown, Invercargill and Dunedin-Christchurch-(back to the air)-Melbourne-Heathrow (via wherever whichever airline we fly lands at to refuel).
Whatever we do, we do intend to be in the UK by early April at the latest, having caught up with some friends and seen parts of New Zealand that are on our bucket-list of places to visit. This will be several Christmas and birthday presents combined with our Ruby wedding celebrations overdue from last July.
Anything else we do in the future will have to find an equally good justification, but this trip looks like using up all the current credit vouchers we’ve stored up by not being very good at organising presents for each other.
************
Yes, I did kill my rhubarb by subjecting it to a sudden decrease in temperature. In retrospect I should have tried hardening it off by short periods in the fridge first, rather than plunging its ambient temperature by 70°C. That wouldn’t have done me much good either.
Before attempting to resurrect the rhubarb I did cover the bed with well-rotted compost. It appears that the well-rotted compost still had lots of seeds in it, many unidentified and now removed, but others that are definitely tomatoes. I therefore now have a bed with ten or so healthy tomato plants that I hope will yield fruit in their season.
May you have a great week unpolluted by plastic noise.
