Word-whore. I write 'em. I talk 'em. Information, politics, media, and the cybers. I drink. I use bad words. All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris! Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
We’ve made it! Thanks to more than 50 supporters, there will be extra episodes of The 9pm Edict podcast over summer. With something secret and special added, because it’s, you know, summer.
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It’s hard to believe that just two weeks ago I was dealing with snow because this week, Monday 22 to Sunday 28 October 2012, included a day of working at Manly beach.
As you’ll read in a moment, it also included a series of digs at Australia’s law enforcement and intelligence communities. And it wrapped up on Saturday with the discovery that I’ve been suffering from a rather nasty throat infection. Which explains why I was so tired and irritable.
Penicillin to the rescue!
None.
The week begins tonight with a midnight recording for this week’s Patch Monday podcast. Then I have to complete a story for Technology Spectator by 1000 AEDT before wrapping up Patch Monday. And then I catch the train to Sydney.
I’m then staying in Sydney overnight so I can be at Microsoft’s Tuesday morning breakfast briefing on Windows Phone 8, and after that the rest of the week is as yet unplanned. Chaos is my friend. Stand by.
[Photo: Freelancing, a picture of my working environment on Thursday. That’s the Steyne Hotel overlooking the beach at Manly in Sydney.]
One core issue affected everything while we were living on our farm at Mount Compass: we were poor.
I suspect my father’s enthusiasm to have his own patch of land blinded him to the economic realities of trying to run this property as a dairy farm. He presumably bought it cheap after the drought of 1961, but I’m told the bank manager was sceptical — even though he still approved the loan.
The facilities were basic. The milking shed was a simple cement brick rectangle with a corrugated iron roof. The dams and concrete water tank were only constructed later, and initially the sole water source was the bore and its unreliable pump.
One image that stays with me is my father in the middle distance, striding through the overgrown bracken over to the pumphouse, often in heavy rain or even a storm, to get that damn pump working again.
The house was basic too, but more about that another time. And I’ll talk about the effects of being poor later too.
Today, though, the three factors that caused the farm’s continual financial struggles, and an explanation of that photo.