Coronation Chicken

May 21,  2020

Day 61

Toady I spent most of my time being aware of the incredible beauty that starts right outside our windows and extends ever outwards wherever one looks. The green of the valley walls is bathed in burnished silver and gold, framed by the clear blue of the sky beyond. We hear birdsong and the wind moving gently through the trees, rustling the ponga fronds and making the branches of the rose bushes nod. It’s as if they agree that they are part of a masterpiece painted by a singular artist, available for viewing only in this moment and never to be seen again in the long sweep of time to come. The sun moves in its shallow arc across the northern sky and shines in the new double doors of the sitting room so that we have to close the curtains during lunch to cut down on the brightness. The quail visit, peering in the bedroom window to make sure we know they’re here and then retreating as I walk up the steps, welcoming them quietly, telling them they are loved. They seem to know we’ve cleaned the steps and signal their approval by working with the new program. Food will be placed in the clear area beneath the power box and next to the steps or in the grove now. They have it down. I give them two big cups of seed and back silently down the steps.

Later I throw open the doors to the workshop container and stand on the forest porch looking down at the ground below. I’ve got a huge job ahead of me clearing brush and saplings and building a facade to blend the forest into the vertical walls of the porch and the shipping container itself. The steps down to that area still need to be built and painted. Paths are going to have to be cut and levelled and all evidence of construction removed. When finished, the view from the porch will be of forest extending undisturbed from the deck all the way down the the stream that marks the valley floor. Lots of work. Plenty of time. It will be worth getting it right.

Inside I re-stowed tools left out after my last project and start in on a new one. There is a young possum that has taken up residence somewhere nearby and has begun eating the rose buds and tender shoots of the new branches late at night. It knocked over a watering bowl down on the bark in front of the verandah and might be what is digging up the leaf litter along edge of the path below the grove. The project of the afternoon was to make a new set of bolts for the crossbow pistol and have them ready by nightfall. The first step was to cut off the knurled tip of a metal knitting needle with a high speed grinder. This required safety glasses. One of the three pair that I keep stashed in various spots would have worked, but I could not find any of them. This led to a slow, thorough look through, around, over and under every shelf, desk, horizontal surface, box, bucket, bin and barrel in the shop. I found a pair of reading glasses I’d bought three weeks ago and lost, but it took another hour before I finally found the two spare pair of safety glasses in a new spot I’d chosen and then forgotten. One day, one day, one day, all will be organised. If I don’t forget.

Glasses on, I ground off the ends of the knitting needles, set one aside and sharpened the point on the other. Fashioned some flights from a plastic bin lid and glued them on with epoxy. While they were drying I test fired the crossbow for the third day running. It is still zeroed in, a fact that is going to lead to the end of one creature’s life and the saving of many others. Red of tooth and claw, I am a part of nature and I choose the roses.

Lights off, arrows collected, crossbow loaded and placed near my shoes by the door of the house, I step from the gloaming into a warm sitting room. Dinner was a chicken and rice dish that was so delicious I asked Valerie what it was called. She smiled sweetly, as if she knew that it’s name was synchronistically appropriate. “It’s called Coronation Chicken, created to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth…” I thanked her and smiled. We live on the Coromandel Peninsula hiding out from the Coronavirus and we’re having Coronation Chicken for dinner. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You can’t make this stuff up.

 

 

Another thing I can’t make up are today’s numbers. I’ll leave that to Turkmenistan and North Korea. They’ve got much better imaginations than me. Here’s what the real world figures are for New Zealand on this day…

Zero New cases. 5 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to probable and confirmed cases is 96.6%. Five Zeroes on the board. 30 people still infected.

 

 

 

 

A couple of hundred years from now people will jack into a museum feed and see pictures like this to try to imagine what life was like in the years before China fixed everything.

Thanks for visiting. This exhibit is closing now.

Stay safe and Goodnight.