Wednesdays Words on a Friday - Garden Centre Gnomes

River prompted me with her Wednesday's Words on a Friday

Apparently (and this is lifted directly from River's blog) this month the words/prompts are supplied by Lissa and can be found at her blog

This week's words/prompts are:

1.heartbreak 2.cheeseburger 3.postcard 4.afterlife 5.beachcomb

Charlotte's colour of the month is Electric Rose



So -

He was chewing heartily when he began to berate me out of the blue - that's right, a total stranger, no pause to swallow, just multi-tasking his way through cheeseburger whilst in the queue at the garden centre.

"Do you know what happens to people like you in the afterlife?  Its not a picnic, you know.  Its not a postcard from Sydney, its not find pearls when you beachcomb - you would find dog turds." He ranted on.

 I had tuned out at people like me.  I was wondering what bucket of human I had been scooped from in his mind to be worthy of this diatribe.  I began to meander through the corridors of people who would make up the halls of the afterlife with me.

And then I wondered about the colours of his damnation.  No doubt rainbow.  Perhaps all greens.  Scarlet, definitely - but what about pinks?  From Fuchsia through Electric Rose - but Blush - would that also be damnable?  And the Sunset Yellow in the tin that I was buying - I would have heartbreak if that was the colour of my slippery slope.

Luckily the line moved forward and he slurped his soft drink and found another target. 

A Quick 11pm post

 Oh goodness. I just went back to this day (ish) 17 years ago.

Breath-taking

I had been going to post about how different this 11 o'clock would have been been way back when.

And then 18 years ago - Always looking on the bright side

And then I went to 15 years ago - (nearly) teenagers and (nearly) toddlers

Oh! 10 years ago and A Yarn from 1982 - or why my mother didn't have a breakdown then, I will never know.

 

Has anyone else done a drift back in time?

Give me a blog post from your past.

Poet's Garret in Paradise

Given the proximal habits of garret, poet and poor in everyday life, it is no small wonder that my need to send a concise response to a proposed real estate transaction has me tongue- (or is it thumb-? (in these days of using the keyboard on the phone)) tied.

Image: 7.40am view of the Pacific Ocean with the sun glaring off the water and the white bonnet of the car. For full context, invoke McDonalds breakfast bribe for both of us, an inadequate coffee reinforcing the stark realisation that you no longer know how to order adequate coffee - and Paris is this side of the frame, too)

I have visions of being so rich that I could employ someone to do it all - find a house, sell a house, be a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a niece, an aunt, a friend, a poet, a blogger, a cook, a driving instructor, a volunteer it support and hold down a full-time job while I read books and researched dead people and be me - whoever that might be.

Image: the beautiful "house panther" Gangsterrr.

Maybe that will all change.

Image - sunset view from the balcony taken (and shared here on this blog some years ago)

The ball, it doth roll.

No image as I found no balls...

Home again

 I have returned from a 36 hour round trip to my parents.

Dad's niece (my cousin) turned 60 and Dad's brother-in-law (her father) 90 later in the year.

I stayed with Mum (with my sister's help) and a good time was had by all.

Image - a found pair of reading glasses, a charging cord and a water bottle. Background is a vinyl tablecloth with a rustic check pattern and flowers in green and yellow 

I have finished The French Revolution (well, Series Three of what threatens to be several more - it has become a running joke) and was cast into the audio wilderness on my drive home.

Due to no internet connection for the majority of the trip, sporadic mobile reception and negligible radio reception I was reduced to downloaded books or my wits. 

Image - a roundabout, locally known as roundabout as opposed to the turtle roundabout.  If you turn left off this roundabout you go along the front, rightish takes you the other way, to the basin and the playground with the wobbly thing and around past the golf club to eventually meet with you should you take the righter turn - if you go back the way you came you'd get back to the little roundabout.

If we are using similes regarding deserts and entertainment options then the books that I downloaded were a dune and a butte - I would love to say that my wits were an Oasis to complete the triumvirate but life is never that neat.

Image: wooden walkway along the front. On the other side of that strip of sand is the Pacific Ocean.

There wasn't even cricket this time around. And what with the moon in the mirror and the mosquitos and the sleeping in a strange bed the night before I needed something to keep me awake on the drive home today.

My first book was about Marple - right in the nerdzone for me. And there were a lot of my "ooh, did I read that one?" (Grandma M's bookshelves were amazing) - but there is only so much fictional character development you can take before you have to grapple with the creator, and Agatha can be challenging - or is that Enid? I conflate them at times.

(Should you desire, here is an Instagram of some excellent Miss Marple moments)

My other was a romcom that has had a few too many clangers that caught my ear and took me on tangents.

Like why was the main character going on about how the other main character was Australian, but obviously from her accent she too was from these fair shores and most of the book (well, 40% of what I have heard) is set in Australia 

Tomorrow is a day off work for house stuff and appointments. Today was a public holiday. We had pizza for dinner and didn't put any television on because the last night of school holidays can be watershed moments - can you believe Paris is within 2 years of finishing school?

Image: omg more stuff to pack and move before photos. A ladder, a surfboard and another stepladder.

And both V and I worked out that we have been in this house for longer than either of us have ever lived anywhere. For me 19 1/2 years!

What's your record?

A post about a post and a stick

 It is all kicking off soon...

The house sale process was going to happen a while ago but factors far beyond our control meant that we had a few days to get ready for Go Time on the house.

Of course, with my life being what it is at the moment, it really is only a few days.

A very few days.

Image is a black cat with a pink collar and yellow tag - very Carla Zampatti this season - laying on an old local newspaper and amongst unwrapped china. The green eyes evoke a defiant answer of wilful ignorance - or is it anarchy?

I work full-time - although chance and appointments have managed to break up every work week for the first five weeks of 2026.

My work has, through a business model imposed by their client's structures, required me to completely change a lot of rather nerdy things... But that wasn't what forced our delay.

Image is of a flood plain, lush and green and bisected by a large flood drain. There is a road with a right hook at a little bridge cleverly hidden by a power pole. There is a grey metal box that is something to do with the internet.

This weekend is a long weekend here. Monday is a public holiday and on this particular public holiday there is always a festival type thing at the public beach within walking distance of our house. 

So tomorrow a sign is being hammered in to our front yard to advise.

Image - this is not the sign that will be put in front of our house. The picture is of the local Catholic church up around the corner. I walk past it on my morning walk. The light behind the cross flicked out just after I took this picture earlier in the week. I don't know why - some people may theorise but not everything has to have explanation attached. Maybe just because.

However that handful of days that we had available to prepare did NOT include tomorrow as tomorrow I am travelling 200km to be with my beautiful Mum and lovely sister as my father will be celebrating my cousin's 60th and my uncle's 90th in a town 350km further on.

It's a lot of moving parts right now.

Image - the view the other way isn't bad either. Next doors wall accented by Alf's tree. Alf was our neighbour and the most interesting elderly Italian Guerilla Gardening gnome next door. When I first arrived 19 years ago he gave me tomato seeds but his last years were dedicated to his flame trees in council gardens so that his line of sight to the beach was marked well. A very lush lawn that honestly has grown since you were looking at it and in the distance an apartment complex.

And we too would love to see our new place - but we ourselves haven't found it yet. We have found a few places that will not be our new place.

Not a lot of them about either.

But I have confidence. It will happen.

6

Image: this is not a picture of current real estate prospects, rather appears to be a painting or print that my mother has had in her house for at least the majority of my life. It is an old weatherboard cottage surrounded by trees - there may be a water tank? It's on a hillside and the signature appears to be G Draissord?

I have been listening to a podcast on The French Revolution - I am on episode 4 of the third series and we have been lurching from one disaster to the next.

I can get through this.

Image - a meme stolen from the internet - I just googled and I am not the first to do so. Text says "One of the grand tragedies of history is that Maarten Nieuwenhove had a face born to wear an oversized Metallica t-shirt that smelled of weed but was forced to live in the 15th century" - nothing to do with French or Revolution I know. And unfortunately for Maarten, the only thing that he now known for unfortunately - a bit like Dr Guillotine I suppose.

BTW - things got interesting here while I was writing - a large stick insect had crawled through the slatted windows above the toilet. A BIG stick insect. 

V was advocating technology with a long handle via the vacuum. 

Paris had tried valiantly to be brave and capture it into a shoebox but her bravado failed at the last moment and so I was deputised (deputed?). 

I am the short one of the family and the slats are very tall. Unfortunately when the stepladder was brought in, the toilet blocked me horizontally so the tall ones had to work something else out. 

What worked in the end was a bigger stick for it to crawl upon then be moved back outside - it was last seen shaking it's fist at Paris - quite fitting.

Image - a meme. Text exchange between people approaching middle age that is somewhat amusing regarding technology and keeping secrets. Actuallychloehaseyes has typed "serious question for the millennials... my older cousin said she used to 'burn' cds for her crush. like... with (emoji of fire)?
was that a ritual? did it work? you guys were literally practising witchcraft just to get a text back? I'm scared of y'all (emoji of scary stuff)" beingiakezal responded "The old magic will not be discussed with the children of the new"