August Newsletter

Hi, and welcome to my parched piece of turf where the wind blows hotter than hell on a sunny day. Wily weeds prosper, and all plants, bought and nurtured, choke and die as they wilt beneath the fiery furnace. It is hot, well hot, but no more than the rest of the world, I'm guessing. In summer, across the globe, a single spark combusts, and fire ravages tinder-dry landscapes, and in winter floods drown the parched earth, consume the homes built where beavers once ruled, and sweep us into the sea. Famine and pestilence will follow, I imagine, but something's wrong with nature. I think she's pissed with us.

The rocks in my path are doubling and have become painful on my soles. Boulders have slipped from the cliff face, my crumbling path hazardous to follow. I don't ask for the journey to be easy, but it keeps getting steeper, more treacherous, and crap keeps blocking my path. Two laptops with no life and one stolen. All in six months. Bizarre. Why? I don't own a pen, but I've had to buy one to keep my want to write active. My handwriting is a scrawl, not unlike hieroglyphics, but with no pattern or rhythm, and indecipherable to all archaeological types. Suffice to say, I spend as much time trying to read my writing as I do writing. I need to type. I need a laptop that works. Hence my absence from the world of social media. I've been sulking. Lying low and waiting for a device I can trust.

Meanwhile, a scorpion has moved into my shower vestibule. I’m a brave, fearless Aussie and well used to critters running about my life unchecked. I’ve wrestled Huntsman (bigger than your hand) spiders in my car and put them down without crashing the vehicle. I’m well adapted at getting critters out: the big old glass, the chain mail gloves and the piece of card to trap them and release them with a stern warning not to return. But a scorpion is different. They scuttle in all manner of directions, and they’re quick. And that tail points at you like it’s a ray gun ready to shoot, hurt, maim and disable. I don’t like them.

This scorpion moved into my shower vestibule a couple of weeks ago, and I tried to rinse it down the drain with some success, but it’s happy down there. It comes back out to taunt me. I can’t shower. I can’t use the toilet because I don’t trust it not to attack. Of course I could give it a right whack with the mop, but they’re crustaceans, right? They have a hard shell. I don’t think a mop would cut it. And can they shoot from a distance? How does that stinging tail work? The only thing I know about the scorpion is the fable involving a flooded river and a frog. That didn’t work out well for the frog because he trusted the Scorpion not to sting him, and you can’t trust a scorpion. I’m not making that same mistake. And last night I woke up in a sweat, with my body itching from an invasion of baby scorpions that had come to attack, hurt and devour. Can you get the pest control out for one scorpion? I could man up and beat the damn thing to death, spray it with bug spray, but that seems cruel and would probably anger the bugger. I swim every day, so I figure I’m clean. I’m playing the waiting game. It has to move out soon, right?