Some pertinent revelations today as regards yesterday's writings - plants that stick to people are known as farmer's friends, and it looks like it's not Les that had all the drink-driving trouble described previously, but his dad (possibly also called Les). Young Les has a whole load of other problems with drink-driving, including a collection of fines of $10,500 to pay off for drink-driving, neg driving (presumably negligent, not sure what it entails but it seems he uses the term enough to make an abbreviation worthwhile) and stuff that involves narrowly missing a police car that was coming towards him as he flew through the air after cresting a hill at 220 kph. I spent much of today's pruning chatting to himself and Chris, which was enjoyable. Alas I had a bit of a pain in my gut and only got two and a half rows done - also the rows are getting longer as we move along the field. Before long this won't be so lucrative at all, I'd imagine - but still worthwhile for my purposes because I have plenty of time to spend at it, six weeks in total before I head back to Sydney for my Advanced Open Water course, assuming it's not booked up by the time I get some Net access and send word to Dizzy to book us in.
New arrival to coincide with the departure of the Spanish guy, whose last day was today. He turned up as I was preparing dinner, picked up by Tony from the bus stop. He's English and is called Stephen, and is an odd character indeed. He seems to be something of a philosopher, or perhaps just a complete stoner, but certainly in manner and appearance is probably everything you'd expect from the stereotypical backpacker, whereas your laptop-wielding martini-drinking fancy-shirt-clad narrator is not. He has some interesting ideas about the nature of communication (or at least I think that's what he was driving at) and keeps using the phrase "indigenous talking heads" which despite at least four seperate attempts on my part to get him to clarify what he means by that is still a mystery. One thing about it though, he sure does have difficulty getting his point across, and my suggestion that in counterpoint to his case that people strive to develop their own style of communication in order to put an image across, communication is a middle ground and we all have to meet one another halfway or we'll never get anywhere doesn't seem to have been obtuse enough to be taken as the hint that he should try to develop his ideas aloud in a form less resembling complete nonsense which it was intended. He professes to leading a minimalist existance, typically backpackery, again in counterpoint to my extravagant easy-come-easy-go approach to existance. Also he seems to be somewhat bitter about something, although is too easygoing to dwell on the subject much, so it just infuses his entire demeanour. Well, he asked if I had any CDs he could borrow, and although all my music is in mp3 format on my computer I did bring two blank CDs along, so because I tend to be lucky and privelaged in life and he seems to be pretty much the opposite, I burned him his choice of my music collection onto a CD (The Cardigans was his choice) and donated it to him. Also he talks slowly and in a meandering fashion, whereas I talk fast and try to get my point across with several quick jabs of information and examples. Actually the more specific points I think of the more wildly different we seem to be. Interesting. He's sleeping on the sofa-bed in the other upstairs room and seems to listen to music a lot. I spent the evening after dinner and the chat with him where I drew all my unfair conclusions watching Sharpe's Rifles. Nothing like a bit of Sean Bean kicking the merde out of some Frenchies.
There's a cat which like the dogs is exceedingly friendly. It looks like the one Blofeld has in the earlier Bond movies, but with dark greyish-brown patches on most of it, and it appeared earlier on and tried to get attention from me and purred a lot and was fluffy. Although I don't like cats in general, there was no saying no to this thing, and I petted it and didn't bludgeon it with a can of shaving foam when it stood on my computer, and let it go to sleep on my bed, and my eyes are itching now because I'm paying the price for my soft heart. Time to kick it out and go to bed.