Spudnik

Had a phone call from a friend a couple of months ago; she asked if I would like some seed potatoes as she had purchased some for her garden and realised she had too many, would I like the excess to put in my garden and grow to have for Christmas dinner?

Of course, without hesitation I said, “Yes please, that would be nice. Thank you.”

Consequently a small plastic bag of little, dirty, sprouting potatoes arrived at my front door a day or so later on the end of the arm of my friend.  A generous gift methought and accepted that plastic bag as one usually accepts a gifted chocolate box, with delight.

Only then did I think to myself, “Verna, you don’t have a vege garden.  Where or what are you going to do with these sprouting potatoes?”

“Immm…,” I thought back to myself.  “That’s a very good point.  I don’t actually have a garden really, let alone a vegetable garden.”

After friend left I stood at my kitchen bench looking out the window down at our very small back yard and viewed the clumps of flax-type plants arrayed in a sorta garden arrangement out there and laughed at myself.  What a clutz! Not only is there no real garden, but I live on the slopes of a volcano and the entire ground is made of volcanic rocks.  Even our neighbours bring in big rock braking machines when they want to dig anything up for house or garden additions.  How can I make a garden for these sprouting spuds?! 

When that phone call came the ideology of planting new potato seeds in a garden so they could be harvested for Christmas seemed such a lovely picture.  How delightful that would be.  Or so I thought at that moment, without thought.

Oh how Tony would be rolling his eyes and shaking his head at me over that. 

Imm… as Verna Cook-Jackson is so prone to do, I put the sprouting potatoes away in a cool, dark place and decided I would ponder on this conundrum at some later date.  Verna Cook-Jackson is an ace at procrastination – especially when situations appear to be in the too difficult, too hard to sort out category.  Thus a cool, dark storage place seemed the best place to put the conundrum items until some magic moment when I would think of how to solve the problem would occur. Or not.

Thus the problem was solved, until a couple of weeks later when the gifting friends happened to ask in mid-conversation, had I planted the potatoes yet?  Well, no, I hadn’t.  So I said exactly that.  “Well,” says she, “you’d better get them into the ground very soon or else you won’t have lovely, sweet, new potatoes for your Christmas dinner.”

“Yeah, I know that,” snarkily retorted the procrastinating one, in the hope the short retort would stop her enquiring further as to my yet unknown planting plans.

A week later I was about to see this friend again so I thought she’s bound to ask the question again, damn it, so it was time to stop the self-delaying tactics about what I was going to do with her well meaning gift of sprouting spuds for Christmas and actually do something about it.

So I went out to the backyard one Saturday and began to dig out some of the flax bushes.  I had by this time decided that those clumps of flaxy stuff would go and thus leave earth space for spuds. 

Well, one does not dig out a flax bush.  I can promise you, digging does not work.  One has to axe out a flax bush.  Dynamite would have been easier.  And quicker.   I thanked Tony for being such a DIY man that he had willed me a garage full of a wide variety of axes, saws, crowbars and machetes – all carefully stored over the years just for the day when his darling wife would have to seek them out and spend hours, and hours, and hours, and days, and days, and days, and hours, and hours and days and hours in hacking, chopping, mashing, axing the damned flax out.

And then the proceeding and resultant problem – so much of the chopped and hacked out bits of flax and roots and only one small green garden bin.  An extra bin had to be ordered.

Days and days later there was one shattered, almost broken, dirty, sweaty widow standing in a patch of dirt about 3 foot by 3 foot – without a flax leaf anywhere.

So.  You think that’s it done then?  One then just plops a sprouting spud into the earth now exposed? 

Nope.

You see, as mentioned before, I live on the base of a volcanic cone.  I live on volcanic rock.  One drop of the spade into the soil to turn the soil over and ‘clunk’ metal on volcanic rock.  Clunk, clunk, clunk.  Wherever I drop the spade, clunk, clunk clunk.  Oh that’s right, that’s why we planted the flaxes there 17 years ago – cause they grow easily in volcanic rock.

Nothing for it but to dig up the rock.  Days and days and days and days and hours and hours and hours later there is a pile of volcanic rocks ranging in size from ping pong balls to giant meteorites piled high in the other 3 foot by 3 foot piece of back yard.

Thus the next problem - disposing of the great pile of rock.  What does one do with a pile of rock that cannot be nonchalantly placed in the weekly garbage collection?  Well, one gets up in the dark early in the morning and carries each rock, rock by rock, from the back yard down to the park at the end of the street and carefully places each rock on top of, or alongside the volcanic rocks already carefully placed there by the Auckland City Council landscape gardeners to enclose all those giant flax bushes they so nuturingly planted some years ago.  My volcanic rocks are barely discernible.  But the well worn pathway between my back yard and the council garden is trodden well, as are my hands, finger nails and back.

All this was finally achieved by the Sunday just gone.  To late for Christmas dinner new potatoes for the family, but in ample time for mid-to-late summer new spuds to accompany the BBQs.  So, after a tortuous 100km bike ride in the morning I arrived back home about lunchtime and thought, “Hurrah!  Today I finally get those sprouting spuds into the ‘garden’.”

After unloading the car of all the bike gear, clothing and paraphernalia one seems to have to endlessly unpack after any major training day – I picked up the garden tools, wheelbarrow and hose and reel and headed to my piece of finely dug over 3 foot by 3 foot ‘garden’.  All dumped down there ready to plant.

Now to go get the spuds.  Ah, yes, of course, I now need the spuds don’t I ? … to plant them.  OK, into the garage to get the spuds.  But… are they in the garage?  Of course they are.  But where in the garage?  “I don’t know,” I mumble to myself, “somewhere in a cool, dark place in here.” I look everywhere in the garage – in every dark, cool space – and there are scores of them in my garage.  But they are not there.  But they must be!  But they are not.

Where have they spuds gone?  !!  An hour later after searching the garage several times, methinks that maybe I didn’t put them in the garage.   “So be logical Verna, where would you have put them as you know you put them in a cool, dark place?” That’s me, thinking to myself.  Ah ha!  Under the house, maybe  …. or in the laundry, maybe.  An hour later, no sprouting spuds.

I have a well dug over 3 foot by 3 foot spud patch, but no spuds.  Cannot find them anywhere.  Had I thrown them out by mistake?  Had someone else moved them? Nicked them?  Couldn’t have, there is no one else here?  Have the cats eaten them?  Have I?  Naahhhh….

No spuds. 

Come 4 o’clock that afternoon I packed up the garden tools, the wheelbarrow, the hose and reel and came inside.  I had given up.

And then I thought.... Verna ....you don’t eat potatoes!  Since Tony died you have not brought one potato.  You eat kumara.  Not potatoes.  So what the hell was in your mind to say yes to those damned sprouting potatoes!??  

Then I got angry, like an angry potato – boiling mad.  I was a boiling hot potato!  A potato head!

This was a good time to have a chip on my shoulder!

All this and I don't even like potatoes.  And I had no potatoes!  And no flax.  And no rocks.  But a 3 foot by 3 foot patch of well dug up and over soil.

Guess I will just have to fess up to my friend about having lost her potatoes.

And I did.  The next day – when someone else within my friends hearing distance asked how my potatoes were going.  I looked at him as though he were nought but a small fry (love puns!) and fessed up that my sprouting potatoes had disappeared.  But quickly added (in the hope of diffusing any major disappointment on her part) that I did now have a nicely dug up piece of garden.

Friend took it relatively well actually.  Surprisingly well.  She even offered that come Christmas she would bring me over some of her own newly dug up new potatoes.  How sweet.  Particularly as she must have felt a teeny bit hurt by my lack of custodial parentage given to her lovingly gifted sprouting spuds.  

What a gem.

So I can let her know now ….. that the potatoes have been found!  In a cool, dark and safe place.  In my dressing table drawer.

                                

Much Aloo About Something

There were bits of it everywhere on the floor. Bits here, bits there. There always is.  Every day. There always has been.  For years it’s been like this. 

And still they haven’t figured it out.  Figured out that trying to economise on the most essential pieces of equipment for human use usually ends up being the stupidest piece of enonomising.

And it gets on my wick.

Not that much gets on my wick.

Last month, for instance, the only thing that got on my wick, and still does (and always will), are all those people who just have to have the last word – those who know-it-all – who can’t butt out of a conversation without putting their ‘wick’ into it.  We have a lot of them around us.  They get on my wick.

This month that which is getting on my wick is those damn bits on the floor, everywhere.

Bits of loo paper that is.

Over the past decade it seems that commercial businesses have come up with ideas about how they can cut costs to the bare (literally) minimum – by cutting costs on loo paper.

Don’t you notice it?  All these public and commercial loos that have either:

1)  Jolly great big tinny-plastic-roundy-oval fixtures on the wall next to the loo and somewhere inside them are ginormous rolls of loo paper for the general public to use when doing necessary functory functions.  These inside rolls of loo paper are affixed to a central pivot point which, in theory, is supposed to allow the ginormous roll of paper to roll.

But it doesn’t.  It jams itself rigid onto this spiral pivot and the roll of paper is so heavy that it just does not turn.

This in turn means that when requiring the necessary paper to allow one to complete one’s purpose for sitting on this lavatory, one is then sentenced to the purgatory of spending more time planted on the loo seat trying to extricate a decent amount of paper to complete the task.

But can’t.

Because the damn ginormous roll of paper will not roll – which explains the reason why there are already an array of pieces of paper spread around the toilet floor where all those previously frustrated poor souls have been desperately contorting their arms to reach up into this giant cylinder to somehow unrolls that spool of paper to get the bare amount of required equipment to finish the task off.  And all they get is tiny pieces that rip off in their fingers – smaller than a postage stamp.  They get dropped on the floor.  Scores of them.

Then – when one does finally get 4 cm of the white stuff in the hand – one finds that economizing also runs into the thickness of the damn stuff.  You find that the loo paper has the thickness equaled to half the density of tissue paper.  And therein lays the next problem.

One has to then contort oneself further up the big tinny-plastic wall fixture with one arm, while, with the other arm trying to extricate another 4cm of the stuff just to have a band aid  size piece of paper to pretend to finish the task.

    2) Or- if it is not one of the great big tinny-plastic-roundy-oval dispenser, one finds the loo has the alternative dispenser - those rectangular see through boxes screwed to the wall which allows one to see regular rolls of loo paper stacked inside them on the other side of the see through plastic, on top of one another.  The theory of these loo paper dispensers is that the usual domestic style roll will dispense itself with one little tug of the end of the paper and then roll easily toward you and allow you to gather sufficient quantities of the required material to complete your task.

Not.

Inevitably these dispensers have:

i)             Had some pillock who refills them stuff so many loo rolls in the dispenser that the whole pile of them are jammed down and immovable.

ii)            Had some pillock who refills them stuff the jolly rolls in the dispenser backwards, so they effectively roll toward the wall.  Try pulling some of that paper out from that.

iii)          Had some pillock who has got frustrated at trying to get paper out and finding it won’t, break the lid on the top of the dispenser and use the first available roll on the stack.

Consequences of either of the 3 above means there are bits of loo paper all over the floor around the porcelain.

    3) But wait!  There’s more!  

    There are those tissue-box like dispensers, screwed to the wall, that have those stupid square boxes of paper that feels like it’s made out of recycled gum leaves and plastic buckets.  I guess the purpose of installing this type of paper is the hope that no one wants to rub their private parts with crinkly-gum-plastic-like paper so will therefore use less. 

They probably do, but in their frustrated efforts of pulling these crinkly sheets out of the box there is an inevitable 2 or 3 further sheets that come out with them and end up on the floor. That’s great economy.

Come on now, doesn’t all that get on your wick too?

It doesn’t?  You think I am irrational?  Well then.  Think about this:

Whenever I go into the loos with these stupid, uneconomical loo-paper dispensers, it is no wonder I  then loath leaving the loo after all that time of contortionist practise.  Because  I know the only way out is to put my hand on the door latches to allow myself out.  The same latches that have already been opened by dozens of others who have gone before me, and how many of them would have actually spent the time acquiring the correctly, socially conscious amount of loo paper to do their private task effectively?  Very few.  After all, in this particular loo that I was in today, they are all gym bunnies who are rushing off to the class they are late for – they don’t have time to contort, twist and hope, and then ponder scrunching or folding, from front to back or back to front – they just want to get to their class.  They’re in a rush.

Come on now, doesn't all that get on your wick too?

                                   

                                         

Going soft

Ah, out of the mouths of friends. 

In recently days have spent some time with various lovelies who, during their commiseration conversations with me, will come out with a one and only quote or sentence that is so unique to them that it sits in my brain for days, usually with warmth and gratitude.

A lovely old friend of Tony’s and mine – and I say “old” in relation to our length friendship, not her years – although, when you think of Tony and I, if we have had a long friendship with someone then they must be old.  Anyway, we were sharing memories, as I find myself frequently doing when friends call in, when she asked about how I was handling the process of grief.

As per my usual response to people I am honest and tell them I have good days and bad days but the bad days are not sinking me into as deep a despair as they were a few weeks ago.  And she came out with the quote, “Yes, it doesn't really get easier does it, it just gets softer.”

That is how it feels.  Every time I leak love the feeling of loss is no easier, it is just softer.

And today I had a moment when the impact of the loss hit me greatly, in a nano-second.

But the impact was softer.

I was in the garage – Tony’s garage – and moving around some of our numerous bikes.  Tony’s last good bike is a nifty, orange Avanti that he rode for his last three Ironman events, maybe his last four.  As I wheeled the bike around the garage I noted the bike computer still worked so stopped and checked what readings it had on it.

It told me that the last time the bike was ridden it had done 91 kilometres.  That it had done those 91 kilometres in 3 hours and 50 minutes.  When I looked more closely at the computer it told me on the last ride it went on it did a maximum speed of 56.8 kilometres an hour but the average speed was only 23.2 kilometres per hour. It dawned on me; that was Tony’s last ever bike ride.  The last ride Tony had on the little orange bike.

It was the last Ironman Tony did.  The 28^th New Zealand Ironman.

The Ironman that due to horrendous weather had to be turned into a half Ironman.  The Ironman where Tony had decided “… to hell with it, I am not going to race this thing, I am going to enjoy it …” Which he did.  He stopped at all bike aid stations and thanked as many volunteers as he could for being out there, helping.  He even helped a couple of tiring cyclists along out on the course by encouraging them up that last 7 kilometre climb.     On this little orange bike I was holding.

Standing there, holding the bike, clicking over the figures on the computer I found I had been leaking love yet again.  Some months ago I would never have been able to even hold the bike, let alone wheel it anywhere.  Today I did, I had taken it off the hooks it had been hanging on in the garage for the past 18 months, dusted the cobwebs off it and wheeled it outside for the first time since Tony had hung it up in March 2012.  

Doing this reminded me that despite “leaking love” I must be handling the loss better.  The grief has not gone away; it has just “got softer”.

                                                  

             Tony's with his orange bike racked at Ironman 2012 - with yet another fan!

I leak

It has been some time since I posted anything on this site. Seem to be doing masses of writing for various purposes recently but nothing for here.  

Yet there have been some truly interesting moments over the past period which could have made for interesting blogs that would create comment and discussion among many.  All good, all positive. Many funny.  Maybe they will be added at a later date.  Tony and I always said there is not enough funniness in this world, so it is always a splendid thing to add some to enhance a few moments for someone.  And I have had some splendid quotes and moments with friends lately.

Indeed, what I have found heart warming in recent times is the delightfulness of many friends in their spontaneity of some unique quotes they have given me.  Not quotes from the many books found in a library of famous quotations, but quotes that have been made offhandedly in conversation.  

One that lodged itself in my heart was from a lovely, lovely friend who, over a few moments of Tony recollections, could not help but see a tear or several fall from my eye.  When this happens now I do feel for whoever is in my company as I know it makes many feel awkward, or sad, or gives them a sense of helplessness in being able to console me.  

But not Kim; she smiled her infectious smile, gave me a hug (that currency of friendship I referred to recently), and told me I was not to worry about making her feel awkward because of my inability to keep the tears to myself;  that she was not uncomfortable as she considered that it was a positive thing that I was, ".... leaking love." 

Leaking love.  It put a warm smile on my face and perked me up no end.  

I love the term, makes me feel good every time I leak love.

    

Love it when friends send you inspirational quotes

Today's short reading from the Bible...

From Genesis: 

"And God promised men that good and obedient wives would
be found in all corners of the earth."


Then He made the earth round...and He laughed and laughed and laughed!