on tuesday, i went up to the garden to get some leeks and the old bugger said he’d dug through his pile of fish molds and found two fish we could make. then he said he hadn’t even been outside yet that day since it was so cold so i took that to mean that he did, like i figured, need to have a bit more of a rest. there’s a fontinalis trout and a kahawai. i was on the verge of taking offense at the mention of a kahawai, i get that i’m just learning but a kahawai? then he mentioned that he had almost every other fish on his wall and we might as well put a kahawai up there too. the trout’s going to be a little more difficult though. they have a pretty interesting colour pattern on them and i think he was just going to paint it from memory so i googled some pictures of the trout on his phone and google absolutely blew his mind.
a few weeks back i collected a bunch of marram grass seeds with the aim of sprouting them and planting them on the leeward side of the beach. sometimes when there’s rough seas the waves come right over the bank and it seems to be both eroding and pushing the whole bank backwards. so i think if i plant a bunch of marram grass on this side of the bank it should help hold the shingle in place and also build the bank up higher. there’s one patch of this grass on the ridge of the bank and it looks to be the highest point on the bank. i was just going to do this in spring and transplant a bunch of already sprouted grass over there but i started to wonder how well the grass would survive being transplanted from soil into sand, or in some cases just beach shingle. apparently this type of grass can, if it needs to, send roots down up to two metres deep but maybe the roots would grow differently in soil. i have a ziplock bag packed full of these seeds in the fridge so i’ll still sprout and transplant some in spring but i also went and gathered a bunch more seeds spread them around this side of the beach and dug a bunch of holes and buried them. it took quite a while so i really hope they sprout this spring/summer.
on thursday the old bugger called and asked if id come and help fit a new pulley wheel onto the concrete mixer so i went and took the old wheel off, fitted the new one and got the belt around the wheel and the motor. i also dug out a thresher shark’s tail out of his fish mold pile which we’ll make at some stage. then we made a start on those two fish. i just have to get the two sides out of the molds and see how he joins them together and then we’re pretty much at the stage where we started on that rainbow trout. after that i’ll grab a salmon mold and bring it home and make it myself. you kind of have to rush setting the resin in the mold but you also have to be careful about it so i mentioned the big marlin and how much more difficult it must be making a larger fish. i knew if i mentioned this marlin it’d be a 50/50 chance of it ending with us making one so now we’re going to make one after he’s recuperated from his valve surgery. i’ve no idea what he’s going to do with it though, his walls are already packed with fish and i don’t really have any room here for a giant three metre marlin but i guess we’ll figure out that problem when we come to it.
early on friday afternoon i came home from brushing another coat of resin onto those fish molds to find peter here with his new car and a bag full of car cleaning products. he’d taken the afternoon off work because his car was dirty. so we cleaned and waxed it. then went into temuka to get some fish and chips for dinner. i drove since peter was on his… i don’t know but we’ll be polite and say his second bourbon. he was a bit chatty and he gets that way after a few. i don’t know if he only said it because he knew i’d say no but we’re driving down the road and he says “i dare you to lay a patch of rubber at this next intersection.” no, peter. we’re not doing that. although, if i had skidded around that corner then knowing peter even without the bourbon he’d have just been like “woohoo! do it again!” so maybe he was disappointed.
i sleep a certain way when i have a cold, mostly fetal, and i woke up on saturday morning in that position but i didn’t feel congested or like i had a cold. i still don’t. my throat is sore but mostly my stomach is upset and i feel shaky. so i’ve got some sort of bug. on saturday peter and i went into town to get a car cover, sunday we went and stacked a bunch of firewood for the old bugger then went back into town to replace the car cover with one that actually fits. we borrowed a tape measure from the store and measured the car that time.
late sunday afternoon the old bugger called to thank me for stacking that wood and maybe he’d had a whiskey or two because he was, uh, awkwardly affectionate. i told him since i had a cold of some type that i wouldn’t visit him before he goes in for his surgery because they might postpone him if catches it and he’s unwell. but i think the surgery is either going to be this thursday or friday, or the week after. i’m not sure he knows. but he does go up to see a cardiologist on wednesday and has another appointment with a different cardiologist on the 25th which might be a checkup appointment for after the surgery. i’m not sure.
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