Change

I blandly announced six days ago that I was 'back on the planet' and that normal service was about to be resumed. Normal service was to be commenting on wastes of space in who pretend to govern this country, going fishing and keeping a weather eye on the cricket. Well I have achieved none of the above - oh, I did have a bit of the cricket on for a while this evening. England's wicket keeper, who is about to score a ton, will be a good player when he leaves primary school.

It is the middle of March and I haven't been fishing this year yet. Am meant to be going for my regular 'best week of the year' on Saturday but forecasts of 25-35 knot sou'easters would seem to say otherwise.

What of SWMBO, Cullen, Keith Locke, Bovver Boy, Chris Carter and the rest of the wastrels? I see they are all behaving as badly as ever. I see they are lying like flatfish about anything and everything. ING has stoppped paying out on some of their products and History Boy assured us that the US sub prime collapse wouldn't affect The Peoples Republic of Aoteoroa. More evidence, if it were needed, that he is an incompetent git - and I hear talk that he is plotting to roll Helen. I read of all this and I really couldn't give a stuff.

The change in life from suburban beach to rural is more profound than I thought it would be. We are only twenty minutes (if you travel at 0330) from our previous whare but the difference is vast. It is not so much the fact we are in the country and it is quiet (oh, is it fabulously quiet) and the nights are proper dark (it is blacker than the inside of a cow once the sun goes down). The thing that is fascinating me is the mixture of the old and the new. The balancing act we now have to perform between the rural traditional (what is the interval between spraying glyphosate and it being useless in a rainstorm) and the absurdly hi tech. I have spent $900 on cabling for one TV today which boosts the price of a high end LCD telly just a tad (but the result is stunning). I am swapping out a huge mulching mower (and I am talking seriously huge - it would reduce a field of telegraph poles to sawdust) for a pasture topper. I thought a pasture topper was an ice cream three weeks ago. And then I gave up trying to get a network printer running through the high speed switcher and decided to use it as a USB device and make it a shared printer wirelessly. I purchase a pair of Red Bands on the same trip as I get a fax machine.

I am loving it all (I even did a couple of hours of daytime job this morning) but I have come to realise that I couldn't give a fat rat's backside as to who is going on a junket to the Czech Republic. They are welcome to it I'll happily stay on my 11.8 acres north of Auckland and make some lures in my barn, or do a spot of spot spraying or get the tractor out or wirelessly listen to Kirsty McColl on the Polks in the rumpus room.

'Old' normal service has not been resumed and is unlikely to be. I am not sure what 'new' normal service is going to be. Early indications are that it will be much more betterer.

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