Tuesday, October 27, 2009

© text Don Diespecker 2009

The Earthrise Diary (1009, Oct.)
Don Diespecker

Midmonth. The goannas are out and about and the water dragons have returned from their vacations and now defend territory on the riverside flat that I’ve cleared and re-seeded (no doubt the dragons consider me useful in having cleaned up their flat).
This October has been fast, very fast indeed, and I feel as though the world has not only been whirling through space at an impressive velocity, but that the home planet has also been spinning and wobbling to such an extent that it’s all I can do to prevent myself being flung off. I’ve been working outside a great deal. The weather has been warm to hot with a few dull and somewhat cooler days and there were even showers on a couple of occasions. Big Lawn is emerging from the flood loam (which in places is as hard as clay pan; mowing produces horrendous dust clouds); regiments of weeds have leaped up in many places to compete with grasses struggling against suffocation; the Valley has had more than is fair share of smoke and dust and sometimes mixes of both at the same time; the river appears so meagre that it seems to be dying—although there is a wondrous great pool directly in front of my house—and the countryside, despite drought conditions, looks colourfully magnificent.
Oct. 26 2009. Some rain at last! There were storm showers several days ago and that got the plants squeaking for more. The sprouting new grass (kikuyu) on the flat to the right of the Belvedere (recently cleared of flood debris) grows apace perhaps because I watch it each day and murmur encouragement. Yesterday, a storm brewed and finally broke in the afternoon; it included hail that did its best to wreck the foliage of new plants like emerging dahlias.
Oct. 27: Breaking News: Lots more RAIN! The river has risen to within less than 1-m from the Plains Crossing Bridge deck. Although the storms and showers are now forecast to decrease, the present situation is close to that preceding a flash flood (the sweet/sour riverbank smells associated with a rising flood underline that possibility). I went to Coffs Harbour and to Park Beach early yesterday and drove in heavy rain on the way back, particularly along the return approach to Bellingen. I won’t be surprised to learn that there will have been low-level flooding around the town. How quickly everything changes! Not long after sunrise, when I was going down Darkwood Road, a young fox ran from, I think, road-kill of some kind and stood watching me with dark eyes as I went past.
The Belvedere has been raked and most of it re-seeded; the ‘old’ stone table has been re-birthed as parts of the stonewall surrounding the Dog’s Garden (recently completed). A new Paradise rose was carefully planted with the other roses in the Theatre Garden and in soil imported friable ‘new’ soil part-made from lawn clippings. Strangely, some leaves have yellowed and new pink leaves have also appeared. I’ve enlarged this garden, which now contains dahlias and roses, following further attacks on dahlia tubers by some night time intruder and one of the new p/t jobs is the removal of the menacing (Queensland?) broad leafed grass (it grows metres high) with a mattock; the grass, nettles and groundcovers are then separated, removed to the flat between the lawn and the walls in front of the house to dry in the sun where some will eventually be mowed into fragments and then burned, and some will become new soil. I’ve ‘stored’ the large diameter pipeline, minus its foot-valve, behind the Theatre Garden where it loops through the trees like a gigantic snake (and where it might deter the dahlia eaters, an area where goannas like to hang out and perhaps there to playfully ambush me. There has been much hand watering of plants (and I intend some dramatic bush plumbing to save me from that dawn or dusk job). I’ve disconnected the electric pump main line and plan to sell it; a new line from storage tank to the riverbank lies in a trench across Big Lawn (the scar now healing nicely), which means that I’ll rely on the fire-fighting pump in future. The f-f pump is heavy to lug around (I use the wheelbarrow for part of the lift) but easier to prime and to use. I’ve also begun demolishing the big decorative wall between the Belvedere and a resurgent Big Lawn (the wall traps flotsam during floods) and I’ll use the heavier stones along the fence line to (hopefully) ‘deflect’ some of the invading logs that batter their way over the road in high floods entering from the Deer Park. The mistflower/Crofton weed (a gift of the high 2001 flood) still grows everywhere—it’s particularly well established on the downstream bank (over my boundary) from where it generously distributes its tiny seeds in every direction. I’m also using heavy quarry stone fragments as revetment on the bank below the Belvedere overlooking Flotsam Bay; and this gives me better control of that area, including the Belvedere wall that has withstood floods for more than 20 years. As I write, the showers continue and the river rises higher; some of the logs and debris in Flotsam Bay are floating and beginning to swirl or eddy in the Pool.
A few weeks ago it seemed that the High Rise or Eiger ants as I rudely call them (small, black, always incredibly busy and apparently addicted to astonishingly high climbs in the big (hybrid) flooded gum in front of the house {the one with huge branches} had either died off or disappeared in the last three floods; however: these little fellows have reappeared and are as busy as ever. (‘Hey Bruce, let’s see how high we can get today?’ ‘OK Soames, what’s up there?’ ‘A bonzer view, mate!’ ‘Goodoh!’)
(Channelling insects is always informative, I say).
I’ve avoided using the power mower in windstorms: it’s too dangerous because I can’t hear branches breaking while wearing earmuffs. I saw a BIG branch drop at the edge of the re-emerging lawn below the campsite, viz, at the base of the Ancient Riverbank (it would have finished me off, without a doubt).
In the rain: there are new patterns on the river surface in front of the Belvedere.

I was looking idly at the early morning river recently—swirls of vapour drifting off the surface—drinking coffee and remembering something that Germaine Greer had mentioned on the TV program, Q and A; that something had to do with trees and with falling out of trees when we were kids. She may have mentioned, too, tree houses, but I’m uncertain. As I moved to put my coffee mug down I glanced at the Steven Noble jacket illustration on Alberto Manguel’s book, A Reading Diary. The design shows a young chap engrossed in a book while sitting languidly in a tree (although one arm is intelligently clasped around a stout branch). The book reader wears a striped suit, collar and tie and (I think) knickerbockers and lace-up boots; his hair is formally parted and he gives an impression of being a young fellow of perhaps the 1920s or thereabouts. And I remembered tree houses.
At about the time when I became a schoolboy in 1935/36 in Victoria, BC, I used also to roam the neighbourhood streets. 1129 Oxford Street was off Cook Street where the streetcar ran from the City. Sir James Douglas Primary School was 10-15 minutes walk in one direction and about the same distance from the ocean in another direction. I was on neighbourhood greeting terms with some kids around the first turn left from Oxford Street (we lived in the first block off Cook Street) which was on the way to school (the next turn right took me straight up the road to school). One of that family’s daughters was a classmate. Her older brothers were two of the neighbourhood Big Guys (one of them was licensed to drive a motor car) and they had built an excellent tree house. Being a school colleague of Dorothy I was tolerated as a sort of part time member of the tree-house gang. The tree house was disconcertingly located directly over the concrete sidewalk: tree house personnel had to be able to climb the tree (an old chestnut, I seem to remember). Nobody ever fell out of or from the well-constructed tree house that was, I’m sure, at least 5- or 6-m above ground.
The brothers also took us on safari to what in those days was a very big grassy vacant block up on Cook Street, there to hunt rats and mice with a Daisy air rifle (more accurately, they used a wire cage to catch the rodents then dispatched them with the rifle). Rodents were skinned and the corpses discarded. The skins were taken in triumph to the tree house where we tacked them to boards to dry (if dry is the word). I often wondered about the value of such skins. Fortunately for the wild life we grew tired of such murderous hunting and abandoned it (we were very young, after all).
The next tree houses were in the dense stands of black wattle that grew along the Blyde River* near the Joubert Bridge in Pilgrims Rest. I’m sorry to say that those Old Transvaal structures were less like houses and more like timbered platforms; they were also higher in the trees and at least one of them was built in the canopies of two trees. In those days (c 1940) I was as good a tree climber as anyone I knew. Each of us had carefully watched the Big Guys before they left Pilgrims to fight the Italians in Abyssinia and then the Germans in the Western Desert: we had learned how to take ropes to the seriously high branches of certain big trees that grew alongside the TGME** swimming pool and to use them to launch ourselves out and over the water. It was essential to Let Go of the rope at the furthest reach of the launch (in order to drop into the deepest parts The Pool from a great height). The alternative to not Letting Go was very nearly Unthinkable: there was the risk of returning, uncontrolled, into tree branches and then of slowly coming to a state of rest before risking broken limbs to drop on the softest part of the grassy banks.
Our house/launching platforms further downstream enabled us to construct alarmingly big catapults made from the thick inner tubes of old truck tyres. These medieval-looking war engines were capable of ‘firing’ missiles as big as half bricks over (or through) some of the trees and into the relatively distant river. These long-range shots required two cattie operators to load, draw and then discharge the missiles. Strangely, no one was ever injured, other than the canopies of trees. *The Blyde River, in these areas was downstream of the TGME Reduction works and the discharge pipe of cyanide tailings…and was lifeless, I should think, all the way to the Limpopo and probably beyond. In Afrikaans Blyde means happy or joyful (from the Dutch blij). The river was so-named when Voortrekkers received news of friends and families (believed to have perished) who had survived. **Transvaal Gold Mining Estates.
That reminds me of another childhood horror story: as a little kid between 1937 and 1942 I and other gang members used to ride our bikes to the local abattoir which was situated on Pilgrims Creek *** near its confluence with the (already polluted Blyde River). There we would watch the unfortunate cattle, sheep and pigs being slaughtered and dressed for the butcher. You may imagine where the unwanted animal parts were disposed of. ***Pilgrims Creek was successfully prospected and panned for gold in the 1870s; my paternal grandfather was then one of the First Era prospectors and diggers on the Creek. Pilgrims Rest is the oldest continuously mined (gold) area in South Africa (production ceased some years ago); mining of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) did not begin until 1886). Dear Readers: it was a long time ago and during the apartheid regime. I’m pleased to say that not all childhood memories are entirely of sombre days; some of those times in Pilgrims Rest were among the happiest of my life. For example, the Blyde upstream of the Reduction Works, was crystal clear; we used to swim (and drop from ropes) at Black Rock in water that was clean and beautiful; further upstream we used to picnic and swim and fish for rainbow trout…I could go on. Pilgrims Rest is in the Drakensberg, magnificent mountain country that my grandfather described as ‘the jewel of Africa.’
Fabled Anecdote (4)

© text Don Diespecker 2009

La Jolla Dreaming

Don Diespecker

Two senior water dragons, Darius and Dinny were taking their ease in the late afternoon and resting comfortably near the Old Gardener’s (aka ‘Agdor’) rose’s for the very good reason that they were well-placed to overhear confidential midge conversations. These conversations were of course privileged and very private indeed; however, Dinny and Darius had become the forerunners of what they believed was fast becoming a most sophisticated Intelligence-gathering network (one that, so far, consisted entirely of themselves) and one, they asserted, was entirely unknown and even unsuspected in Midgeworld; and surely not even the Midgeworld Secret Intelligence Service (the MSIS) had any inkling of the existence of the Water Dragon Secret Intelligence Service (the WDSIS). In their cheery self-deprecating way the dragons sometimes referred to the WDSIS as the Water Police. Thus, while Darius and Dinny lounged about enjoying the late afternoon spring sunshine they were also honing their fast-growing tradecraft skills while simultaneously and shamelessly practising the dark art of spying. However, and despite their dragon reasoning, virtually all the Local Life Forms—including the far from subtle humans—rigorously maintained their own Secret Services: Darius and Dinny were themselves being watched by a myriad of LLF Secret Service organisations simply for being what they were: a water dragon proto Intel-gathering group of—thus far—two water dragons.
‘Din, you remember the strange conversations we, er, accidentally overheard during the spring festival?’
‘Um, yes, old boy, why?’
‘I forgot to mention that I heard one of the midges, Rick I think he was named, farewell his friend with a peculiar saying—and I’m sure that you’d fallen asleep at the time. Rick said, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”’
‘Old man, a chap has to snatch 40 winks when and where he can, you know. “Here’s looking at you, kid” is an intimate sort of Hello or Good-bye. And although some human males say it affectionately to lovers or to certain other of their female friends the greeting seems also to have pejorative shades or implications, to whit, it may also be a somewhat chauvinistic expression.’
‘Oh, OK I’ll try to remember,’ Darius murmured. ‘Returning to the sleeping thing, we really ought to be awake and fully conscious when we’re both supposedly on duty gathering Intel, eh what?’
‘Darius, old horse, together we make the rules, you and I make the rules together; nobody else because it’s our very own Secret Service.’
‘That perhaps suggests that we may never become fully fledged as an Official Local Midge Secret Service because there will be only two of us.’
‘You want more agents?’
‘More Indians would be nice—so long as we remain the chiefs.’
‘Heh, heh, jolly good and of course yes, absolutely. Hang on, I think I can hear sub rosa midge voices again but not the same ones we heard previously—listen.’
And this is what the two dragons heard:

‘Greetings and I wish you good health, Comrade. I don’t believe we’ve met? I am Cochise Marcello Midge.’
‘Great Scott! Surely we’re related? I, my dear sir, am Geronimo Cavaradossi Midge, of this Local Sector. I’ve lived here all my life. And if you are not a Local, may I ask how you came here, pray?’
Cochise seemed worried and confused. ‘I wish I could explain,’ he said nervously, ‘but I seem to have been on a long journey and I’m having great difficulty in remembering the details; I fear I may be wind- and air-lagged. But I do hear what you’re saying and it’s clear to me that we both have Apache backgrounds.’
‘Rest easy, Cochise. It’s possible you accidentally boarded one of those human flying machine things and were transported,’ said Geronimo soothingly. ‘You’re among friends here and we’re awfully well organised; we’re in Australia, you know. Does that help?’
Cochise was astounded. ‘Australia! Holy cow! Australia’s on the other side of the planet, on the tomorrow side of the Dateline!’
‘You’re truly from the yesterday side? Are you perhaps an American midge?’
‘Yeah, but only in human terms right? I mean, we’re all One in The Greater Midgeworld,’ said Cochise forcefully. ‘Say, how came you by your middle name?’
‘Cavaradossi? Your mentioning it is a huge coincidence because I have an appointment to meet our Local Big Mind and they promise to figure it out for me—you know, to grokk the fullness of any life mystery affecting me. We’ve got some really good Intel people here.’
‘I see. May I stay for a while, at least until I get my bearings and work out how to navigate homeward again?’ Cochise asked respectfully.
‘Of course, yes! Be my guest. I’ll show you around and explain our Big Mind—it’s quite the envy of all the local Life Forms.’

‘G’day, Geronimo, you’re a little early for your Discovery Appointment,’ said Raoul Socrates Midge, the Local Big Mind Director. ‘I’ve compiled a beaut program of questions for our Mind people. We’ll start early if you like; anything to oblige.’
‘Thank you, Director,’ said Geronimo, ‘I accept. May I present our new American colleague, Cochise Marcello Midge? I rather think we’re related.’
‘We are all One,’ said the Director with a winning smile. ‘Welcome Cochise—I say, you seem a little spaced out; no doubt you’ve been, er flying with humans, eh? I tell you what: if you’d care to sit and link with Geronimo we might be able to project, pitch and track you and Geronimo together. What say you?’
‘Sir! I’m honoured to meet you, and thank you it will be a great pleasure to participate. Forgive me; I’m uncertain as to how I came to be here, although, yes, it was probably in one of those flying machines.’
‘Jolly good!’ the Director said enthusiastically. ‘We’ll do our utmost to straighten everything out for you. Follow me. I’ll take you up the Big Mind Tree and the chaps will prep you.’
The Local Big Mind was quietly and efficiently assembling at the top of the Very High Flooded Gum: the Mind comprised ten thousand of the fittest, the most excitingly cognitive and astute of the Local Sector male and female midges. The gigantic group were attaching themselves with spider silk lifelines to the tree’s limbs and then linking their antennae.
‘First,’ said Raoul holding out a eucalypt leaf containing several drops of a clear liquid in a crease, ‘get this into you. It’s not, ha ha, hemlock of any kind; it’s Happy Juice—mostly squeezed ground-cover liquids laced with year-old lantana crushing’s and the mixture buried in emptied human-made Shiraz bottles and covered by damp earth for six months. Drink it up and rub some into your antennae, that’s it. Now if you’ll slip on a lifeline and sit next to these ladies here…that’s it, alternate genders all the way. –It’s a ripper view, don’t you think, eh what?
The Director shouted through a leaf megaphone. ‘Listen up boys and girls! We have an American visitor, Cochise Marcello Midge, the guest of our very own Geronimo Cavaradossi Midge. You’ve been briefed on Geronimo. Cochise isn’t sure how he got here—do you know the name of your local sector, Cochise?’
‘Sir, yes sir! It’s named La Jolla, California, sir!’
‘That’s a cracker of a name,’ said Raoul cheerfully. ‘I’ve often wondered how to pronounce that: like Lah Hoyah, eh what? OK. Everybody ready, yes? All you two have to do is watch the river in the direction of America, remain linked and keep your minds opportunistically open. Everybody else: Eyes closed for these next few moments! Feel the vibrations, Mind! Feel the vibes of Geronimo and Cochise! Their energies know where to go so follow the energies!’
From their magnificent vantage point Geronimo and Cochise stared out at the beautiful serpentine river, parts of which were already in sunset and there were other glowing parts that reflected the green and gold colours of Midgeworld. Below the very high tree in the Local Sector thousands of awed midge spectators on the ground stared up to see their Local Big Mind begin its work; and even Agdor, the Old Gardener, awoke from his nap when he saw the waves of golden light begin shining from the top of the great tree and he also could hear what sounded like a most energetic dynamo-like humming as if a mighty power station had begun producing electrical power. Raoul now moved his tiny head slowly from left to right and with his eyes wide open. The sunset light shone on the river below and then Raoul took a deep breath and winged his way to a high point on a branch overhanging the river where he settled (without a lifeline). Bracing himself on a leaf that pointed to the northeast the Director fixed on an unseen target and he pointed so unerringly that both of his antennae quivered and then coiled dramatically together. ‘Project the names! Now sight and fix on me,’ he shrilled. ‘Fix now and pitch!’ The ten thousand midges opened their eyes, tracked with their antenna and together they cognitively pitched to an over-the-horizon target. ‘We’ll start with La Jolla Local Signal Station and they’ll patch us through to…let’s see now—to Arizona Central! OK Mind. On my mark, count of three then push out a Big One for me boys and girls! Here we go: One, two, three MARK!’
Cochise saw the golden waves emanating from his surrounding colleagues: the line of energy flashed out above the river, above the surrounding hills and travelling at the speed of light went directly to a stand-by crew of Intel midges on the roof of the University of California at San Diego where the transmission was split, one half going directly to a restaurant at La Jolla Cove, the other to a cave in Arizona—but the beam of cognitive energy was instantly deflected by the midge crew in Arizona in such a way that it bounced back directly to La Jolla! Raoul’s antennae unfurled; he staggered backwards; he reeled; he clutched at his whirling head with both antennae! Despite the low moans, shrieks and wailing sounds from the (Earthrise/Midgeworld) spectators (all of whom shrank back in horror), the Local Big Mind above them kept stoically to their task and the transmissions continued unabated!
‘Uh, ugh!’ gasped Raoul, falling to his knees at the edge of the leaf. The images that flashed through the Local Big Mind and through the Director’s mind were startling: individual minds saw, in sequence, horses with humans on their backs riding fiercely and hard in the strong light of the American plains, heard the war cries of the human warriors, saw, too, the dense clouds of midges high above the horses and men, when suddenly the images changed from day to night pictures of a restaurant in La Jolla. Pictures of a middle-aged man and woman emerged strongly; he was dark and battered-looking, she was blonde and beautiful; the female was blue-eyed, the man’s eyes were grey, and accompanying the pictures was the enchanting sounds of Claude Debussy’s music: an unseen orchestra played ‘The girl with the flaxen hair.’ Raoul struggled to stand. He placed his feelers on both sides of his head and swivelled ever so slightly, then he yelled: ‘It’s OK everybody! Continue! Our targets are all in the same place! Continue please! Situation is normal. I repeat situation is normal! We’re going to enhance now and look for our people. Stand by; stand by all stations! Focus on the tops of the two human heads! Enhancing now! Yes. There they are! Two of our kind: two midges. Let’s bring up the sound, please!’

‘Hey, Mimi, this is a bit different to the University basement—and I can smell food, good food!’
‘Take it easy, Musetta, these two humans are interesting. My feeling is that we can learn something from their interactions’.
‘Learn from humans? Hey, this girl is hungry. Oh, those two Dudes who were stalking us all day at the workshop have followed us in and Mim, what’s the big deal about this Gestalt therapy thing, anyway?’
’It’s good for learning about yourself, Mu…and…and relationships, you know?’
‘Mim, I already know what’s good for me. These two guys flying around us want to learn about us.’
‘No Mu, they’re trouble and they’re flying too close to the humans.’

‘This is a swell place, don’t you think?’ he says.
‘Sure it is. But Americans don’t say, “swell” any more; they haven’t for years,’ she says crossly.
‘I know they don’t, but I do and I like the word,’ he insists, smiling.
‘This place is called La Belle Aurore. What’s it mean?’
‘It means, I think, The Beautiful Daybreak, but I could be wrong. From the movie, you know?’
‘What movie?’
‘Casablanca, remember?’
‘Oh, no, I didn’t see it; I was learning to be a brain surgeon in those days. And you?’
‘I was looking for Paris.’
‘And, I seem to remember, you found it.’
‘Sure,’ he says. He smiles wistfully. ‘We don’t need to get into back-stories, you know. The workshop’s over now and I want you to come to Australia with me.’
‘You know I can’t do that, Rod. I’m an old married lady; settled, kids grown, my wealthy husband retiring.’
‘Norma, I’m the crazy university teacher, looking to retire happily, looking to find the love of my life at my side when I do.’
‘And we’re both getting older by the minute while you play the artful opportunist. Oh the music! It’s Debussy, isn’t it?’ she asks.
‘Yes. When I first saw you in the group I wanted…you; I mean, forgive me, I wanted to—‘
‘We both got what we wanted. Let’s listen to the music.’
‘Let’s be honest.’
‘I am being honest. You’ve never explained how you got from Paris to La Jolla Cove in a restaurant with a French name.’
‘I’m a romantic. I still want to be a writer. And I have a weakness,’ he says carefully, ‘for beautiful women, for art, for life.’
‘Paris is your beautiful woman. Or maybe La Jolla is.’
‘No, you are; you’re everything to me. I went to Paris because I read The Sun Also Rises when I was a teenager and knew I’d be a writer but I got involved and married and changed directions and then there was a family—‘
‘And you diverged into psychology so you could learn to write better but it didn’t work. You don’t want to get involved with me; I’m an old married woman who once wanted to sing, to be a diva.’
‘Maybe La Jolla is the place for your heart. Are you mad because you’re a famous and wealthy surgeon and I’m a university teacher?’
‘I’ve made lots of bad choices,’ she says gently, her tone softening. ‘I’m angry because I’m middle-aged and wealthy and well married and respectable and all because I changed direction.’
‘Norma, where are you heading, right now?’ he asks intensely.
‘Here come our drinks, very dry Martini for you, Manhattan for me.’
‘Just like in the movies,’ he says. ‘Where the hell are you heading?
‘Into obscurity.’ She manages to sound bitter and anxious at the same time.
‘Damn, there are mozzies flying around my head.’
‘What?’
‘Bugs,’ he says, suddenly annoyed and irrational. ‘Flying critters are hunting me.’
‘They’re all God’s creatures,’ she says laughing. ‘If you’re really who you believe yourself to be and have the guts for it, stay here in California!’
‘To hell with your glitzy California! Come with me tonight and we’ll fly to Australia!’
‘Damn you, you know I can’t!’
‘I know you can! I’ll get the waiter over and we’ll leave!’‘
‘All right then, you fool! Take me to Australia!’

‘Musetta! Stand by! We’re going where they’re going!’
‘Mimi! WHAT is going on with you?’
‘Mu, we’re going to Australia! I can feel it! We’ll slip under the collar of his jacket and be protected there. We’ll hitch a ride and be safe. Humans spray chemicals in their machines. I know about humans flying! He’s going to fly and he’ll take her with him!’
‘Oh my goodness Mim you’re nuts, but what the heck! Life is short! OK. Let’s do it!’
‘Where are those two creepy guys who were stalking us, Mu?’
‘There’s no need to worry about them, Mim. The human guy whacked them both.’

‘I think I may have dozed off,’ said Dinny. ‘Did I miss anything?’
‘Not a lot, old boy and I’m sorry to tell you this but this Local Sector of Midgeworld has lost it’s Local Big Mind Director. Old Raoul Socrates was sorting out a local problem for a Local, Geronimo and a visiting American named Cochise and it must have been too much for him. He succumbed to the cognitive exertions, is what I heard.’
‘Is there any good news, Darius?’
‘Sure, Din. A couple of humans turned up to meet Agdor—he’d been asleep also—and guess what? Two American midges were with them and they both dropped off here just before old Raoul fell off the twig. They’re Mimi and Musetta and they’ve been meeting some of the Locals. If only we could open a dossier, but we’ll just have to remember the details.’
‘Let me guess,’ murmured Dinny. ‘I’ll bet they met the local Geronimo Cavaradossi Midge and the American Cochise Marcello Midge and a colourful time was had by all.’
‘I say! I thought you were asleep?’ said an amazed Darius.
‘The good Intel agent never sleeps, old boy, not entirely anyway, although I seem to remember exploring parts of a graphically interesting dream.’
‘Well done, indeed, old chap!’
‘We’ve heard it said, remember, that fair dinkum knowledge emerges with good dialogue and fair dinkum questioning,’ Dinny murmured.
‘Indeed we have, yes. And awareness is all, eh what? And sleeping with one eye open could be our motto,’ suggested Darius.
‘That’s a splendid notion old man. We may have reptilian brains but they still work splendidly.’
‘What’s more, Din, the midges lost one and gained three.’
‘And we have two more humans in the area now, Dar. That’s another four legs and four feet we can hunt from!’
‘This sure is one fine day, Din, old buddy!’
‘Just swell, Dar old pal!’

This is the 109 October 2009 Diary. DDD October 27 2009.