The weather forecast all week has been saying rain on Sunday. Not showers, rain. It was disappointing when I woke that there was no tinkle on the roof. There was a fog which had cleared by the time I reached the main street, leaving the young Canary Island oak planted in the pavement a few years ago dripping water to the ground from its satched leaves. This tree is jumping away, remarkable given its position.
The sun is shining brightly now with no indication that rain will come later. After a record dry September and a similar October, which has not had publicity with so much else going on in the world, the last thing we want is a dry November. God help us!
My walk was exceptionally pleasant today. Sundays are good as there's less early traffic. There were a few cans for Jod along the way. New people have moved into Richard and Sandy's, although I haven't met them yet. It looks like people have moved into the 'McMansion on the gouge', twelve months after the first excavation. A 'For Sale' sign went up on the acre block next door to it a couple of weeks ago. I rang the agent, they're asking $245-275,000. Out of my league, but if I won Tattslotto I'd buy it and put a shed and small eco friendly house on it with a BIG water tank, and plant it out with useful trees and shrubs for food, blossom, foliage and firewood and mulch. I'd let Jod live in the house.
Jod has a new cat, Musket. It's a dear little stray thing that he found at the back of his flat a couple of weeks ago. He took it to the vet, then the farm, where Elvie's looking after it. It had a tapeworm and was starving weak. Jod told me on Friday it must have been sent to him. He'd been sad thinking about Tumbleweed, really miserable, and suddenly Musket turned up.
"Why did you call it Musket?" It semed a strange name for a cat.
"Because just before I went outside and saw it around the rubbish bins looking for something to eat, I'd been standing looking at the photo on the wall of Daniel Boon and his musket. Stupid name for a cat, I know, but there you are. I owe Mum the money for the vet's bill, we're going halves. I was so pissed off this morning. I went all the way down to the recycling depot to sell me cans, and the bloke said he could give me only 20 cents a kilo, or $22, as he weighed 'em as 110kg. They were worth $1.10 a kilo two weeks ago, I would have got about $120. Fuck that, I brought 'em back. I'll keep 'em till the price goes up."
"Have you got room to store them?"
"Yeah, sort of."
"Do you want me to stop bringing the ones I find, for a while, I could store them in my shed?"
"I tell you what, that'd be really good, if you could do that, I don't have a lot of room. But keep gettin em, you're my best supplier, the price'll go up. If I'd left 'em there and took the $20, those bastards would only hold 'em till the price went up and make the profit. The bloke that works there told me that. He's a rough bastard but it was good of him to tell me. He said 'bring 'em back later'."
"That's a huge drop in price", I said, "when you think about it."
"Yeah, it's because of this global crash, metal prices have gone right down. Copper was worth $8 a kilo, that why blokes were knocking it off everywhere, now it's worth $2. I reckon now would be the time to buy into these big mining companies, while the price is down. The big ones will survive and the price will go up."
"The trouble is we don't have any money."
"No, but at least I saved the little cat's life."
"Hey, Jod, can you wait a minute? I found a bird's egg, or half a one, while I was walking a few weeks ago. It's in the van glove box, I put it there after I found it again in my jacket pocket. It got a bit squashed but you still might know what bird it's from. I keep forgetting to ask you."
I went out to the van, came back and showed him the egg. "That's a currawong's egg, they're not easily found. Where'd you find it?"
"On a seat on the the Puffing Billy railway station."
"I wonder how it got there. You can see the baby hatched, there's traces of blood. Yeah, a currawong's egg."
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