I’m off to Wellington again in the morning for another PPTA conference. I’m not back until Sunday afternoon, so don’t wait up.

When I got home this afternoon there was a new fence in the place where previously there had only been a very old fence. I had been meaning to talk to my neighbour about doing this. As it happens, they had started talking to a builder, who’d had a cancellation on another job and was available to start straight away. They couldn’t contact me in time, so he came round during the day and talked to Karen, who correctly decided to let him on to the property. All I had to do was pop around to the neighbours and offer them what I thought was a reasonable share of the cost.

It’s a nice fence, and I seem to have acquired a ten centimetre strip of extra garden along that side of the property.

New Zealand politics has taken a nasty turn in recent weeks, with the Opposition party, previously moderate right wing conservatives, suddenly lurching into deliberately vague misleading rhetoric and occasional outright lies about Maori and the Treaty of Waitangi. The government has shown a disturbing lack of spine in not challenging the Leader of the Opposition to back up his weasel words with facts.

If you’re a New Zealander, take David Slack’s Treaty pop Quiz. If you read Russell Brown’s Hard News you will have seen this, but he’s right that it deserves wide distribution. Pass the URL on to your friends and relations, most especially those who’ve been sucked in by all this nonsense about Maori getting special privileges.

After some initial confusion caused by David Bowie, whose unconscionable concert planning mismanagement resulted in Darren having to go to Wellington instead of David coming to Darren’s flat, it was hastily decided at the last minute that the Funtime Comics workshop should be at my house this month. Given the panic and anxiety that must have been engendered by the change of location, I was delighted to see so many good people show up. Bob was there, and Tony, and Jason and Andrewkepple. Matt gave his apologies on account of it was Valentine’s Day and he has a sweetheart.

I sketched out some plans for further comics in the Let’s Learn Broken English series (“Chapetor One: Who is spaked the Broken English?”). And I finally got around to scanning in Art Gallery Comix and used Photoshop to remove all visible traces of cat piss. I’m not actually all that happy with this comic, but a lot of people seemed to like it, and it did get exhibited in an art gallery, albeit blu-tacced to the wall instead of framed. Also they put the panels out of order. But that’s what I get for writing a comic about how art galleries aren’t really a very good place for showing comics. If anyone can remember what year that was, I’d like to know.

Then Jason started building a pirate ship out of Lego, and I suggested that we use my digital camera to make a photocomic about space pirates and a ghost on skis. Andrewkepple helped plan a script. We were well underway when the batteries gave out, and Jason will be returning tomorrow to complete it.

Comics. Good.

Yes, I did put out the washing today. It was sunny.

Yes, it got almost completely dry.

And yes, I did decide to leave it out just a little bit longer.

So I’m sorry about the sudden outbreak of the torrential rain. And the thunder and lightning. And the hail.

Apparently it is not a safe assumption that everybody in a fifth form class remembers how to find the area of a rectangle. I feel the knowledge is in there somewhere.

I’m beginning to think that the washing on my line is not actually getting any drier. My usual one-day-it-will-be-sunny approach has turned out to be a spectacular failure.

I’m going to give you fair warning that I’m about to bring it in and run it through the drier. I recommend you all put on sunblock and go to the beach.

It has been a grocery shopping day, and once again I have chickened out on buying pie-in-a-can.

I have an ambivalent relationship with pie-in-a-can. I see it on the supermarket shelf and it is simultaneously enticing and scary. If I am honest with myself, there’s really no way that pie-in-a-can could possibly be a good thing for the world. But how do they get the pie into the can? And who surveyed the market for retail foodstuffs and perceived an empty niche for canned pie? Did they consider other pie delivery techniques and reject them, or did they just jump straight to the can idea?

I’ve only seen pie-in-a-can in my neighbourhood supermarket, never anywhere else. As far as I know, it is not available from other vendors. Sometimes I wonder whether it has been placed there just to tempt me, like a new apple of Eden forged from meat and pastry, its dangerous secrets sealed away. In a can.

Hack Hack Spurt Spurt resumes for 2004 in my office on Saturday, about midday. Come and write.

Today I mowed the lawn and planted a lemon tree and some ferns.

I just like ferns, OK? I can give up any time I like. Don’t get all up in my face about it.