The Life and Times of Peter Green
Archive: 1 January - 15 January 2012
January 1stWelcome to 2012. A late night last night, but fun, very romantic. Nice to know that romance still exists!A hot Australian Summers day, and our friends across the way are still away so I'm into the swim spa, with their blessing. NICE! Sucks I did not win the $31 million on tattslotto.! A sad start to 2012, our friend Alison calls and her mum passed away. A lovely woman, I remember her opening her house to us when we needed somewhere to stay. A classy lady who had our respect. January 2ndTemperature hits 40 degrees so hot. You can't help but think of bushfires, we try not to worry about it. Otherwise we'd be living in fear up here in the national park. Our loungeroom nice and cool, it's about 17 degrees, always tempted to sleep on the couch.Spent some of today wading through reel to reels, did I really find a lost Enz demo session, will have to get it transferred and find out. January 3rdWe hear from Stephen Jones a politician from Wollongong who will raise the issue of gay marriage in parliament in February. Mr Abbott once again fails to allow the Liberals a conscience vote, what a gutless tool. There are so many more important issues, people will look back on gay marriage with the 'what is all the fuss about' in years to come. Just let it happen.Mark swaps the Macs over in the office, only loose some minimal amount of information. Our office opens in a few weeks so we'll have our more updated computers to work with. Greg Skyhook sends us Spartacus on bluray. The first 2 episodes are a bit average but after that it's great, really really enjoyed it. Created in NZ. Mark tells me a third season is being released in the USA soon. Sad that the Spartacus lead died of cancer after season one. It gets everyone doesn't it? The Big C! January 4thI book the Honolulu , Pittsburgh segment of the next trip. Will be excited to see Miss K and of course Mr Ant. Mark says he doesn't trust him.January 5thI guess a wafer thin victory for Mitt Romney (who the fuck calls themselves Mitt!!!) is slightly better then homophobe Rick Santorum. What a sad bunch to choose from, none of them would make a good USA president. If anyone believed Obama could repair all the years of Bush's crap running of America in the ground they would be fooling themselves. If America once again becomes the brilliant country that it was it will take decades.Bic Runga's BELLE slowly creeping towards Platinum. I hear she is already working on new songs. Wonder if she will start recording another album soon? January 6thWell Mark the Oracle was right, Adam Ant is not to be trusted. The arsehole blew out the USA dates. I can't believe his lies that it's because his new album was delayed by 10 months, get real Adam it's lack of ticket sales- at least be honest about that.Annoying as I now have a $1500 airfare floating about. Think I'm going to put back the mainland USA segment, which sucks as I was excited to see Miss K and Jeannie. GRRRRRR January 7thGood to see Warwick and mate at lunch. A nice afternoon.Tim Finn is still not back in NZ, I need the 2 Finns and Eddie to be in the same place at the same time to get the Time & Tide cds signed, so I will have to learn to be patient. Hopefully not much longer. January 8thCall into the general store and have coffee with Nelly. Nice to sit and read and enjoy a decent cuppa. Some Japanese tourists are lost, so i drive them to their destination. I wonder if my Sea Shepherd sticker on the back of the car freaked them out? Probably thought I was going to murder them.January 9thWe are in our black suits today, off to a funeral. The mum of a friend. It's close by, which is good and we have a few things to do afterwards so we'll probably do some sneaky striptease somewhere. Tania and Rosemaree join us, at the funeral not stripteasing!!! It was a nice funeral, and I found out a few things about Bobbie (our friends mum). I am so glad it wasn't a catholic funeral, so tiresome, so overdone- if any of our catholic friends die we probably won't attend. Yieks. Anyway you should enjoy your friends when they are alive, funerals are usually for those left behind in many ways.It saddens me when I see my friends so sad, Alison was fantastic and it was classy, just like her mum. Still rips me in the heart when I see them crying. We are in the car park and no mourners so we manage to strip into our jeans. Rosemaree comments how brown I am , I never really noticed till now. It's probably all the mowing and garden work. Good to keep active, I so don't want a life in front of a tv set on a couch. Plus it's bad for my back, so out enjoying what our property has to offer. Life is too short to sleepwalk through it. As we head off the hearse pulls out, we are the only 2 who see it, I give Bobbie a wave goodbye- such a nice lady. January 10thA huge storm crashes into the mountain in the early hours of the morning. I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that the massive lightening hit tree will come down today. It's lasted 4 plus years, so no idea why my instinct tells me today is D day. I hassle Mark to get ready so we can escape and get the car out. If it comes down the direction that I think it will, the circular drive will be blocked. So we will only have the 1 chance to escape.We grab some fuel, take the cross roads to KNOX, shop, call into Montainia for some lunch. If the tree comes down we are hoping the SES chainsaw the top which will cover the road. So we are basically avoiding it!!!! We call in to see Tania and I add some coil to her whipper snipper and repair it as best I can. Next stop 3 Ducks for a coffee... and 3 hours later we are heading home. We arrive on our road and see it is blocked off, I think my feeling was right. Power lines are down, 6 trucks are on the road all up near our place. Hell they haven't started chainsawing yet, not that our car could get past. So we head off to Olinda. We run into Rosemaree and Katja outside Mangana. Decide to head home and use the secondary entrance to Ailsa Craig. Yep the big tree is down. It's taken all the power lines and is so large it's crashed over the road onto the property opposite. I spend an hour clearing our neighbours drive so they could get in. Oddly enough the power lines are not broken and power in the house is still running. The impact crater is several feet deep, and inside it, old glass bottles from the 1930's, mostly intact. The original house owners must of buried them, well no recycle in those days, so a small treasure trove, which is cool. We are astounded by the mess one big tree can make, it will take us a month to clear. Front fences crushed, but the Wollemi Pine was more was lucky and escaped unscathed! There are only 100 adult trees in the world and our small tree is thriving up here. Considering it dates back some 200 million years I had no doubt it would survive!!! The power is eventually switched off , and not back on till 2.30 in the morning. Apparently trees have taken out all the other grids on the mountain so candles are the go up here tonight. Oddly enough if any tree had to come down I am glad it was this one. Since it was hit by lightening 4+ years back I always worried it might be unsafe, so I'm glad it took a fall. Plus the right direction, ok no power but at least it didn't crash into the garage or art room or squash the chickens. The noise must of been LOUD when it crashed, the chickens seem shell shocked. They stop laying eggs for 2 weeks! January 11thChainsaws are out, and off we go, imagine the largest pile of tree limbs, leaves, vines and wood, as tall as you can pile it...now times it by 50. That is what we have to do! In the words of Dexters sister- "Fuck me sideways"!January 12thSis calls and my mums in hospital for a few days. So I am checking on her. I call her and the nurse walks a phone in. Always feel a bit useless being so far away. Still nice to know she is in good hands.January 13thGreg Skyhook gives me "Comrade Rockstar". The story & search for Dean Reed. The all american boy who brought rock and roll to the soviet union. Reggie Nadelson penned the book, it's a fun read. Was he killed, a mystery really.Loving the goodies that arrived from Jennifer NYC... just added some colour and fun to our day. Still trying to figure out where the Dexter blood splatter shower curtain will end up! January 14thAnother hot day, and we are out working in it. We had some friends just turn up and help out. Big thank you to Kera too, did my heart good to see you with your leg all bandaged just spoiling us and even picking up those endless gum leaves. I almost felt guilty that you were helping but it kept us all going. I've kept a list on who has helped and will spend this year spoiling you all and returning the favours. Anyone else can go whistle when they need something done.Tania called and said she would help, "some good exercise" she said, really she's helping some mates but just good that she did. Warwick called and said he could organise some chainsaws. This is what friends do and we appreciate it guys. Handy that Greg Skyhook can grab some of the wood he is carrying, for his fire. So he is easily rewarded. The various neighbours came over with their kids, and several pulled out chainsaws and we cleared some of the road area. The girls grabbed some gardening gloves and even leaves and twigs would of filled up endless wheelbarrows. Mark is amazed at how patient I am when the chain comes off the cutter, at least 12 times, I calmly restore it, clean it. A group of us sat around, had a few drinks, some food, really nice night, think I have some debts to repay. Thank you to our wonderful friends. January 15thDiary was late (again) my fault, been away from the office, sidetracked by the damn tree and my mum. At the time of writing Tim Finn has just blown out his USA shows, keep reading it was illness related. So I've emailed to make sure he is fine. I need to get his signature on 200 TIME & TIDE covers but will wait till he is feeling better. I'm sure everyone understands such delays. Still annoying the USA shows have gone, (I'm assuming they are not put back) he plays so few.Anyway 2012 off to a very strange start....... it will improve , I hope. Live life! Peter |