Homage to the plumber

The story so far...
The water was shooting out at over a litre a minute, which might not sound like much but was enough over who-knows-how-many-months to start turning that corner of our garden into a veritable oasis and, once the plumber dug a hole in the right spot to reveal it, enough to create an underground lake for a fairly impressive Underworld Water Theme Park (mud wrestling a speciality). The Theme Park is an idea I need to hold onto because I've now got to raise enough cash to pay the forthcoming water bill. It's either that or selling the house... or skipping the country... except I've already done that once and there might be a limit on how many times a person can skip countries.

Anyway, all power to the excellent plumber. Ignore the drivel I made up about him yesterday -- he didn't pass out from dehydration at all -- but instead he turned up promptly, dug a few holes in record time (especially given that it was a sweltering day), found the problem and fixed it. Pronto. Tres vite. Excellento. Formidable.

In homage to excellent plumbers everywhere (and excluding that peculiar brand of plumber who never ever turns up despite assuring you he will), here's a plumber joke. I can never remember jokes usually, but my father-in-law told me this about 20 years ago and I still remember it.

A little old lady had some trouble with her pipes, so she called the plumber and asked him to come and fix them, which he promised to do first thing the following morning. Being a little forgetful, she forgot he was coming the following morning and went out to do her shopping and then play bridge with her cronies. When the plumber turned up and knocked on her door, her parrot squawked, "Who's there?" And the plumber answered: "It's the plumber, come to mend the pipes." When no one answered the door after a few minutes, the plumber knocked again, and the parrot squawked, "Who's there?" And the plumber answered: "It's the plumber, come to mend the pipes." Still no one answered and so, after a few more minutes, the plumber knocked again, and the parrot squawked, "Who's there?" And, once again, the plumber answered: "It's the plumber, come to mend the pipes." By mid-morning he was crying with frustration and by lunchtime the poor fella had died of exhaustion. That evening, the little old lady returned home and stumbled over someone as she tried to unlatch her door in the dark. "Who's there?" she said. And the parrot answered: "It's the plumber, come to mend the pipes."

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink...

Going to try something different with the blog for a while. More frequent, but shorter pieces. Am responding to the need to spend more time writing (Number Two specifically, novel and short story projects generally), without giving up the blog network, which is an enjoyable addiction.

Have been in Melbourne for a few days, which always provides an excuse to savour a couple more restaurants from this capital of restaurants (no kidding), and had an excellent Vietnamese banquet at Binh Minh on Victoria Street, Richmond. It's energetic, noisy and always seems a tad chaotic (so crowded three of us were standing at the tables they'd rustled up for our party of six) while one of the waiters went hunting for extra chairs. (Wild chairs can be seen roaming down the back lanes and alleys of Richmond, but it takes a trained Chair Whisperer to catch them.)

Was staying in North Melbourne, a suburb of cobbled lanes and wide streets I hadn't spent time in before, but am smitten with the architecture: lots of terraced workers' cottages with wrought iron filligree; small front yards with deep verandahs. Some of the double storey houses are more Italianate in style. And only a short walk from Queen Vic market, where I stocked up on tea from the wonderful McIver's: Ceylon BOP, Assam, Orange Pekoe, Queen Mary, Darjeeling and... being something of a doughnut and unable to juggle so much tea at one time, I picked up two packs of Queen Mary instead of including my favourite Irish Breakfast. Hmm.

I always try and get to one of the galleries when in Melbourne, and so called in at the NGV's (National Gallery of Victoria) Ian Potter Centre in Fed Square to have a squiz at an exhibition of photographs by Rennie Ellis (No Standing Only Dancing). It depicted an Australia of the 70s and 80s, which I didn't know, so was interested to compare many of the images with my memories of the UK and France during this period. I liked that Rennie Ellis adopted a similar philosophy to Alfred Stieglitz who said of his own photography: "Art or not art, that is immaterial - I continue on my own way, seeking my own truth, ever affirming today." (Interesting exhibition, but one of my favourite contemporary - and local - photographers remains Richard Crawley.)

Inspiration comes in many forms and I picked up an idea for Number Four when I was looking in a shop in Royal Parade. Have been chewing through it ever since, and I think it might just work. Am saying no more than that for the moment. Oooh, the mystery!

Back at the PC today (obviously) and it was my intention to get stuck into Number Two at nine o'clock. However, with the post came a letter from the Water Board. Thought it must be a bill, but it wasn't even that good. They were letting me know that they'd taken a meter reading recently and that it was unusually high. Very politely they advised me that either:

• we'd had more guests staying with us than usual and that not only had they all been showering at least ten times a day, but that their elephants had been showering at this rate too;
• our garden watering had increased to such an extent that we'd possibly be eligible for rice growing subsidies;
• we had an underground leak that might make Niagra Falls look like a trickle.

After some spectacularly successful Plumber Whispering, a plumber is in the garden digging lots of holes and looking increasingly in need of rehydration (it is high summer here, after all). I've considered taking a bottle of ice cold rain water out for him, but am convinced that he'll sniff out the source of the leak much quicker if he's very, very thirsty... and, besides, I now have to think of 10 ways to pay the forthcoming water bill, the plumber and all my credit card bills from the weekend.

Oh, he seems to have fainted into one of his holes. Maybe I should take that water out after all. "Hey, you can't lie there; that's not a garden bed." I'll just go and rustle up a chair...

The Day of the Indies

Here was a pretty cool Christmas pressie: the news that, supported by Arts Council England, a number of independent publishers and independent booksellers chose to include The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore as one of the Pick-of-the-Month titles in their inaugural Exclusively Independent promotion.

Phew! That was a sentence-and-a-half.

This promotion has been featured in articles at two trade posts -- The Bookseller and BookBrunch -- and, in more detail, at Legend Press, who were involved with initiating the project.