I’ve kept paper journals since age 14, and still find them really nice places for writing freely, as well as excellent practice for writing without drafting. Also, there’s something about the ritual of pen and paper, and about producing neat handwriting in this age of typed screens, that appeals to me. Occasionally I will share …
Desperate Ditties From Owner-Building
These are some comic relief ditties I penned when we were in the thick of our owner-build in 2012-2014. Every hands-on owner-builder will know exactly the feeling. OWNER BUILDER BURNOUT The house conundrums made me flatFlatter than the mat on which the cat satOne day a week I am depressedShould I be getting some …
A Country For The Big Boys
A reprint of a rant I sent to Grass Roots Feedback, which a reader told me I should air more widely. Thanks, Val! 🙂 Here goes. We GR people already know how it is – but sometimes, when you hear of yet another incidence of new and idiotic regulations, doesn’t something just snap in you? …
Groundhog Day In Pearl Bay
I am a big fan of the SeaChange series that ran at the turn of the millennium, and have watched it many times, revisiting it like a favourite snuggly piece of knitwear when in need of comfort in life’s rough and stressful stretches in the twenty years hence. It always made me laugh, it always …
Tasmania By Campervan, Easter 2009
We’re looking forward to finally making another trip to Tasmania next year, for the first time in ten years… having meanwhile bought a farm, built a shed and outbuildings and farmhouse with our own hands, planted thousands of trees, looked after animals, planted an orchard and permaculture garden, etc etc. In celebration of that, here …
Magazine Articles – August 2019
It’s magazine time again. In newsagencies this month I have an article in The Owner Builder No.214 on Successful Downshifting. It’s about how we found ourselves in our 40s, suddenly waking up every morning on a gorgeous little farm in the country (complete with 50 hectares out the back of extraordinary Gondwana which we will …
The Ride That Wasn’t, Electric Fence Blues, Broken Glass And The Deluge That’s Coming
We have a huge cold front coming in, just sitting off the West Coast, and are scrambling to get ready for the gale-force winds, torrential downpours, cold and hail forecast to go on for the better part of four days. The gales arrived this morning, the deluge is coming overnight. Brett and I finished some …
Falling Off, For Nerds
To Isaac Newton, with love. 😉 Just a little aside about falling off horses. Using Newtonian physics, we can break down the fall into a horizontal component and a vertical component. Horizontally, the rider continues in the direction taken at parting from the horse. In the absence of atmospheric friction and gravity, the rider would …
Magazine Articles – June 2019
In newsagencies this month I have articles in Grass Roots No.253 (Podcast Pandemonium) and in The Owner Builder No.213 (Low Waste Building Site). Podcast Pandemonium is an article aimed at the less technology-savvy part of the DIY / self-sufficiency community, not all of whom have grown up with IT, and not all of whom understand …
Red Hot Sunday, January 2014
(In Praise of Farm Dogs Everywhere) The day was red hot, and you could tell it would be a scorcher at dawn. The sun stung like a bluebottle at 8am, and the birds were silent. Horses and donkeys queued up at the paddock gate for fly veils and release onto the common, which is surrounded …