Gentle readers, honoured guests, I had recently prepared an imposing post of 1250 words when it suddenly disappeared whilst I was typing, and went to zero word count. I had saved on many occasions but it just vanished into the virtual abyss. I came across a “Restore Previous Versions” button and eagerly pressed the inviting blue button and the text appeared in narrow columns inviting me to select one. Ain’t technology wonderful? I selected the latest and absolutely nothing happened. I repeatedly pressed the button in a fury of desperation. Einstein’s famous definition of madness applies here. “Madness is repeatedly doing the same thing, and expecting a different outcome”. That was the point I lost control.  The goal was tantalisingly close, transfer the text I could see from one window to the WordPress window.  Of course I tried ‘cut and paste’, but that gave a layout and format so mixed up and twisted I could barely decipher my own writings and squashed the text into narrow columns.  Frustration levels and blood pressure by this time had risen to such levels that when I came across a ‘delete’ button, the temptation was too hard to resist.

Reminds me of a case in the US where a man was accused of shooting his own computer with a shotgun.  I quite understand he had reached the same levels of frustration as me, and his actions were therefore entirely rational, and whilst there isn’t actually an American statute defending the rights of innocent computers, he shouldn’t have done it in his shop with customers around.  The charge was “reckless endangerment” and the judge acknowledged considerable sympathy when determining the penalty.  Fortunately, I don’t own a shotgun.  Thus saving myself from considerable expense.

The post was history about when my father dropped in for a couple of days whilst on a round-the-world business trip.  On a raging hot day, father in business suit, I proudly showed him Possum Valley.   I had only seen it a couple of times myself and I thrashed a path with machete through a kilometer of rainforest splashing through creeks to emerge near where Blackbean now stands.  I was bubbling with enthusiasm.  “Build a house here, put in a hydro generator there, garden for self-sufficiency over there”.  He thought I was totally mad but didn’t tell me at the time.  He was nearly right.  There were lots and lots of difficulties, not the least of which was access.  Then ignorance, then poverty.  I solved the problems in the only way possible …… one at a time.  If I had seen all the problems in one go, as my father had, I’d have given up and never started.

building 1976

It took a lot of hard work, actual physical labour, hard yakka and the occasional inspiration to overcome the problems and much had to be learnt.  And on reflection I’d “Do It All Again”.  I had many goals such as building my own house, power system, etc, but the important thing was I enjoyed the process of solving problems.  I like building things and I have the satisfaction of using them 4 decades later.

It is important to satisfaction in life to be achieving your goals (at least most of them as the veggie garden is my enduring failure).  But if you don’t actually enjoy the hard yakka of getting there, then you are doing the wrong thing.  My Daughter Alice graduated with a degree in microbiology and biochemistry, and work in the field for a couple of years but didn’t like the lab work and the office politics, so she threw all the cards in the air and got another degree in nursing.  She really identifies with being a nurse and its amazing human dimension.  Nursing is the nexus of science and emotion, the balance point where each are equally valid and important.  It makes particle physics look simple.  Alice did the right thing to change course because although she was achieving career goals, she was getting little satisfaction from the process.  In case you didn’t know, I have the greatest respect for my daughters.

Of course there were many items I would change if I could relive my life, and some failures of personal relationships, but on the whole I am content and relaxed, not worrying about ‘what if’.  Yes, I would do it all again.

A surprising number of guests arriving have commented how sad that I am closing Possum Valley and emigrating to Mars.  I am astounded that first, heaps of people read my last blog, and secondly, that some took me seriously.  It is evident that a lot of people who know me slightly, suspect I am crazy enough to want to do it, and those who know me well are quite sure I am off my trolley.  In the interests of good business, I should clarify the issue.

NO F***KING WAY WOULD I EXCHANGE THE ENVIRONMENT I CURRENTLY ENJOY FOR A PARCHED DESERT WITH 1% OF THE ATMOSPHERE HERE AND NONE OF THAT BREATHABLE.

Not to mention I couldn’t find a Subway when I got fed up of cooking.  If I could cook.  If I could grow anything under the bubble.  If I managed to wring some oxygen out of the rocks to breathe.

I live in the most beautiful vibrant environment already, teeming with life and energy.  That anyone should give that up to go to a frigid dusty rock would be inconceivable, except perhaps if you were brought up in Mexico City.  Then the lifeless environment (apart from teeming humans), wouldn’t be such a shock.

So here I will stay and manage Possum Valley until I fall off my perch.  I have been further persuaded that a trip to Mars might not be the fun we imagine, by a recent article I have lost the link to, which suggest that high energy radiation encountered in space, especially cosmic rays, cause dementia.  It is really hard to shield against such radiation unless you have a spacecraft the size of the “Death Star” in Star Wars and only inhabit the central part.  Age and alcohol are already causing enough brain damage without long exposure to super-high energy zapping through my brain and turning it to alphabet soup.  Then you lose the alphabet and then can’t count your toes.

Some cosmic rays have so much energy you can see them.  They are typically the nucleus of a helium atom accelerated to very near the speed of light and cause a flash or streak of light in the eyeball.  The American astronauts in the Apollo missions kept seeing these flashes but didn’t know what they were so didn’t talk about them or report the phenomena until much later, in case they were grounded for ‘seeing things’.   To the delicate and complex molecules of the brain these cosmic rays are like a wrecking ball.   And given the lack of significant magnetic field, thin atmosphere and zero ozone, the surface of Mars doesn’t look much better than the spacecraft.  Best bet would be to live a troglodyte existence and develop a race of deep cave dwellers.

Which leaves us with Earth.  And the fact that we really, really need to look after it because the alternatives are so much worse, even if there alternatives at all.

Dear Honoured Guests,

It is with heavy heart and and many partings that I announce the upcoming closure of Possum Valley Rainforest Cottages.  I can assure those with existing bookings that they will honoured.  I am looking to the future and have decided to emigrate.  To Mars.  I have already emigrated the maximum distance around the planet Earth, and am now looking for another challenge.

It seems that the opportunity has recently become feasible and I should be able to buy a ticket sometime soon.  Until then please keep the bookings for Possum Valley coming in until I formally publish a “Cessation of Trading Notice”.

I think I would be ideally suited to be amongst the first to establish a viable self-sustaining colony on Mars as an engineer trained pioneer with some experience of setting up housing and infrastructure where none has existed before.  And my experience of trouble-shooting problems and creative use of adapting available resources to new uses should be an asset.  Think Apollo 13 and saving the world, a world, with a paper cup , a plastic tube and duct tape.  I will put in a special requisition order for duct tape.  I don’t think I’ll bother putting carpenter on my CV.

I am particularly looking forward to a reduction in gravity to about a third of Earth’s.  As I get older, gravity sucks.  More and more.  I realise this is a subjective observation, but would like some relief nonetheless.

For those of you who have not been advised of this opportunity by your travel agent, I enclose this link.  http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/spacexs-big-fking-rocket-the-full-story.html?utm_source=List&utm_campaign=73e2e2b448-SpaceX_BFR_09_28_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5b568bad0b-73e2e2b448-51575141&mc_cid=73e2e2b448&mc_eid=0099d237a7

There are enough characters in that address to define the position of every particle in the universe.

I am not packing my bags just yet, as the article points out the price should come down and of course I am waiting for a bargain.  Cheap flights.  Standby specials.  Wonder if I can get a window seat?

I came to live at Possum Valley in the dry season of 1976 and have been living here since then.  Michael Cheshire and I had bought the 156 acres of rainforest to do the hippie self-sufficiency thing, with half a mind of starting a colony of like-minded people.  Michael moved on and I bought him out of his half-share and I have remained and must admit to being complacently content.

In the first month of arriving at PV in a humpy

Blackbean a few months later

Yesterday my daughter Josie published a photo album on Facebook commemorating this historical event.  Not historical as in ‘important’, but historical in the meaning of long ago.  I was 26 when I bought the block and had no idea I would still be here all these decades later.  Thanks Josie.

I have no regrets about ‘wasting’ an Mech Eng degree, about not being rich and famous, and long ago settled for contentment over striving.  So I have been skint most of my life, but without debt and able to put food on the table.  My greatest achievement by far, is raising two beautiful daughters to become two beautiful people and to provide a stable physical and psychological concept of home for them.

Me, Alice and Josie just born

Now that  grandchildren are around, Possum Valley takes on the role of ancestral home and makes me the patriarch presiding over it.  I have had the satisfaction of doing what I like, which is crafting and building, and the luxury of mostly working for myself.  I really enjoy acquiring new skills, even though the difficult ones such as website building and understanding and cranking legal processes require a considerable period of frustration before progress is made.  I have had the pleasure of watching the wildlife doing what it wants to do and often attempting to plunder my resources.  I have met so many people much more passionate than me about observing the fabulous wildlife, from mites to tree roos, and I thank them all for educating me.

A week of chipping bark and sapwood for 45 Homestead stumps

Having mentioned the good things about 40 years living at Possum Valley, I ought to mention the difficult or downright bad.  I think most of you will know that in the monsoon season in a tropical rainforest, it rains a bit, or a lot, or absolutely buckets down seemingly endlessly.  They heavy rain causes damage to roads and other things such a wiping out the hydro and the water pump.  In recent years I have been treated to direct hits by category 4 & 5 storms which litter the road with hundreds of trees tied together with vines.  The 600m of power transmission wires totally demolished each time and had to be found, pulled out and re-erected.  Tough yes, hard work, lots, but nothing compared to so many Australians who live in flood prone

country kids growing up

or fire prone areas.  For many people there is nothing left to repair.  Another disadvantage which looms large in the minds of some of my guests is leeches.  Yesterday I spent in the creek underneath the meditation hut installing new joists after 13 Japanese lawyers crowded on it and cracked a few.  It didn’t collapse, but they beat a hasty retreat.  Probably as well it didn’t collapse.  If you own a structure and it does collapse and cause injury, then you don’t want it to be a scrum of lawyers.  Meanwhile, back at the leeches, under the meditation hut is leech central for the little buggers.  I could have sprayed some repellant on, but nah, can’t be bothered.  Just pick and flick every hour or two and hose off the blood when I’m finished.

That I have prospered in the material sense is a bit of a mystery to me, as it was never one of my goals, but I own three houses on 156 acres of rainforest and rarely been in debt and rarely worked for wages.     I run a business that doesn’t require me to get out of bed early, provides a decent living, gives me plenty of free days, doesn’t require commuting, I’m the boss and can change things at a whim, I’m in a beautiful environment and best of all I get to meet interesting people and introduce kids to a bit of wildness.

Alice and my 4 grandkids a few days ago

To those of you battling mortgages and expenses, city stress and vexatious neighbours, I’m not gloating, I am acknowledging my blind good fortune having followed a path where I worked directly for myself to build what I wanted.  Of course I needed money along the way, but that was the secondary input after my labour.

Now on a different tack, I contemplate the present.  I’m 40 years older and time takes it’s toll.  I’m slower and weaker but still battling on.  I have 4 grandkids from a few months old to three and a half years old.  For the last week, Josie and family have been staying at the homestead in Possum Valley.  Hectic and delightful.  Many times we got got together with the family of Alice my other daughter, and chaos reigned.  The full catastrophe of 2 families and 4 little kids.  I’m still looking for things which have been ingeniously distributed and concealed by those zealous agents of entropy.  Wouldn’t have it any other way.

As a young teenager, uncle Albert asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I think he was expecting an answer like fireman, pop star or astronaut, but I said I just wanted to be happy.  For reasons I only understand now, he seemed surprised and impressed.  As an older me, I have changed that just a little after absorbing some wisdom from others, such as the Dalai Lama who said that happiness is beautiful but fleeting.  Having a base of contentment makes those joyous moments of happiness the icing on the cake.

I will now decorate the cake with photos from ancient times and very recent times.  My webmaster Robert, thanks Rob, early on advised me to do the text first and add the media later.

I read as lot of books, a couple a week at least.  I have bought about 10 books in my life.  Those of you with advanced mathematical skills will notice a discrepancy in the numbers.  This shortfall in books purchased can be entirely accounted for by the fact I am a skinflint, and the existence of FREE public libraries.  Amazing!  I have been able to read thousands of books I haven’t paid for???  For those of you who haven’t discovered this amazing resource, I suggest you demand answers from your local council.  Sometimes this facility is hidden under the guise of “Cultural Center”, as is the case in Atherton where I ruthlessly exploit this treasure.

Last week as I was leisurely browsing this cornucopia of literary delights, I made a random pick.  Heck, at that price, I can afford it.  Like everybody else, I usually select books, media, news sources, friends, age group, philosophy, and company of people who agree with me.  This is satisfying as it re-affirms my view that I am right and the rest of the world is sadly mistaken.  But it is not stimulating, as it mostly doesn’t contain any new radical challenging ideas.  Hence the random choice.  A book I would never seek, am put off by its topic, and already disagree with from the blurb on the covers.  Most of my random choice books I toss aside before the end of the first chapter.  This one I finished.

‘Primates of Park Avenue’.  A memoir by Wednesday Martin.  She and her family move house and find themselves in a totally different culture and have to learn the rules to survive.  Yes, she moved all of 4 miles on Manhattan Island to find themselves in a tribe of the uber rich.  I have come across such cultural divisions in Ethiopia where you can cross the street and they speak a different language and have different customs, but I didn’t expect it in the USA, let alone on a tiny island.

The author has a PhD in anthropology, and deliberately and amusingly dissects the culture in distant academic language, often comparing the status and power structures with chimp and ape societies.  To great effect.  Then admits being seduced by the tribe and conforming to its mores and giving a very personal account of the stresses involved in motherhood in that society.

I have travelled in about 50 countries on a low budget which gets you in contact as you have to bargain and barter in the local markets.

Hama girl in Ethiopia

I have never come across a culture so alien as described in this book.  I have deliberately made my own life choices to remove myself from such pressures and stresses that are rampant in the society described.  I have come to value things such as silence and nature over wealth and status.  I cannot understand the desperate, exhausting strivings of these mothers to conform to the expectations of others.  It was my glimpse into the rarified world of the world’s uber rich.  I am glad I don’t live there.

In Ethiopia, I shared shelter for half an hour under the eaves of a hut with this girl.  We didn’t speak.  We couldn’t.  Not a word in common.  But I am sure mI have more in common with her than the tribes of Manhattan.

Today I was reminded of the privileged and luxurious lifestyle I enjoy.   I am not talking about wealth or status, but the rich environment I enjoy.  I had a birdie guest staying for a night who took me for a walk through the rainforest.  She was so enthralled seeing the birds she had never seen before, it reignited my appreciation of the wonderful environment I enjoy here.  Thanks Lynn.  She saw two golden bower birds at their bowers widely separated.  I was with her when we came across a rifle bird just 20m from my house, practising his moves.  It was sitting on a power pole just outside my house.  In case you don’t know, it has the most amazing display by forming a perfect umbrella with its wings and dancing around hopping from side to side and flashing brilliant plumage colours.  A rap dancer in technicolour.

Yesterday I came across a 1.5m children’s python near one of the cottages.  It was moving very slowly because of the cool temps.  At breakfast I was entertained by a Lewin’s honeyeater that caught a large moth in the bathroom and then brought it into the dining area just 2 meters away to thrash it about to get the wings off before devouring it.  A few minutes later a white-browed scrub wren was hopping around the floor looking for tiny morsels.  They keep a respectful distance of a couple of meters away, but have realised that compared to their speed and awareness, I move at glacial pace and am not a threat.  I am quite prepared to sweep up discarded moth wings and other occasional deposits.

Platypus , thanks Fiona

I see wallabies/paddymelons/betongs/other little brown hoppy things many times in a day.  Often from my house.  Even in their relaxed moments when they are scratching and grooming, they are totally aware of their surroundings and any non-familiar sight sound or smell arouses them to the alert state ready to flee.  Halfway through that last sentence I heard a possum in the kitchen and went to evict it.  It was wary when I was 2m away but stayed put.  It was anxious when I moved closer but didn’t move if I advanced very slowly.  Finally we were looking at each other from 1 meter away, nose to nose.  Then I politely asked it to leave and it bolted.  The wrong way.  It couldn’t remember the way it had come in and ran to closed doors.  I had to herd it out of the only open door.  The birds are smarter in that respect.

In the world now more than half the world’s population live in cities, a large proportion of the rest in major towns, and sizable villages.  I cannot imagine what it is like to raise kids in a city, on the 11th floor of an apartment block with hardly a living thing in sight.  I am so lucky to live in such a spacious, dynamic and wild environment.  (A lot of people think that luck just happens.  Actually it usually takes a lot of hard work to prepare the space for it to blossom).  I am so pleased to be able to raise my kids in such an environment, all their lives until they went to uni.  In the forest, in the rain, in the mud and sometimes even in the sunshine.   I think it was a good exposure to a reality outside the human constructed domain.  They in turn take their kids to places where the mud can ooze through the toes.

I was asked by the blog magazine, Broad Oak Magazine, (theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com.au) to make a contribution a few years ago. I did so and the offering is below.  It was intended as an example of how side-stepping the conventional career path can be a viable option as long as money isn’t one’s primary goal, but seems to have turned into a brief autobiography.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Australia: Alternative Economics

I was born in Manchester England in 1950. My mother a housewife, my father a salesman in an engineering company but steadily rose to high management. He was quite conservative but could entertain any idea and judge its merits, and he liked to debate. He was quite willing to be devil’s advocate and would make a spirited defense of ideas he didn’t adhere to. That was when I began to question just about everything and started my career as a rebel.

I failed the 11+, a single test at age 11 which purported to determine if a child has academic potential. Somehow, in my last couple of years at school, I got sent to an age-old part-boarding grammar school. It was super conservative and the teachers still wore gowns and mortar boards. It reeked of tradition, privilege and snobbery. This was where I honed my and hardened my rebellious streak. I was in the headmaster’s office at least once a week. At university (mech eng), I toyed with joining the Socialist Society which was the most radical group, but they said and did such silly things, so I joined the Peace Society and got to do demonstrations (peaceful of course) and started to pick up some flower-power, hippie ideals of sharing and caring, love and peace man! I began to see how unfairly money is distributed in a country and around the world. It still is, worse perhaps.

I managed to do enough work to graduate with honours, but did not want to get my nose to the grindstone of a career, so worked a couple of months in a warehouse stacking boxes and headed off on the overland hippie trail to the the antipodes. A couple of years and many adventures later I found myself in Australia. I was now an expert on living on a shoestring and out of a backpack. Suddenly, due to a genocidal maniac called Ida Amin in Uganda, the Commonwealth changed all the immigration rules. By immense good luck, I was entitled to be a permanent resident of Australia, just by being in the right place at the right time. It has been very difficult to come to Australia since that time.

I then put in the longest period of work by far in my life. Two whole years! Doing exploration work in central Western Australia. With one other guy, or sometimes on my own, I did 4-6 week projects in some of the most open and deserted landscape on the planet. The job paid labourer’s wages, but food and swagroll was provided, and there was nowhere to spend money. Great way to save. I spend the money to buy an empty block of land at the other end of the country. From flat, desiccated, blistering desert to hilly lush rainforest in far north Queensland. 156 acres of cloud-forest on top of the great dividing range. Now to really become a self-sufficient hippie recluse, maybe even start a commune! No money left, no knowledge of how to build, grow anything, live etc, no road in, no tools …….. no problem. I invested my last few dollars in a machete so at least I could get to the place. I worked a couple of months out in the bush to buy a 1962, 3 geared Toyota landcruiser for $750. The exhaust valves were blown and many other things wrong but got it going again. I got stereoscopic aerial photos centered on my block and used skills I had acquired doing exploration to see the land around in 3D so I could spot a possible route in. 4kms long and totally unmade, it went mostly through a neighbouring farm.

I started building a house with very little money, no idea how, no plans, not even a sketch on the back of an envelope, no power and of course no council permission because it didn’t even occur to me. I used a considerable amount of discarded scraps from local saw mills, bush poles for free, secondhand doors and windows, scrap fencing from the tip to reinforce the concrete stumps, discarded 1 inch thick boards from 3 inches wide to 20 inches. They were used in two layers for the outside cladding and cost $10 per ton on average. A local planing mill sold reject packs of planed wood such as floorboards at a fraction of the retail price. So I built myself a house of 90 sq m for $1400 complete with plumbing, wood stove etc etc. A third of the cost was the tin on the roof. 35 years later it is not only still standing but has not required any maintenance beyond a bit of paint. You can check it out if you like at www.possumvalley.com.au . It is now called Blackbean Cottage.

I built a hydro-electric system utilising a 20m high waterfall and knowledge I acquired at university. I built a water system to provide water to the house utilising a smaller waterfall and a ram pump to deliver what most take for granted:- water coming out of taps. I built sewerage systems to deal with the stuff most don’t even want to think about. I enjoyed all my successes at the most menial things. I love getting things to work.

I got married, have 2 daughters, started doing wood craft and carving to sell at local markets, and whenever I required money, dug spuds for the local farmers. Hard work I can tell you. Anytime the farmer looks round and sees anyone on the digger with any time to spare, he finds another gear until everybody is flat out. Tractors have a lot of gears. When I started digging, spud bags had a nominal weight of 70 kgs. They mostly weighed 75 kgs as they were packed by volume and hand sewn with twine and a 6 inch needle. It was quite a skill as they mustn’t leak spuds in all the handling on the way to market. On average they were filled, compacted, sewn and stacked in 11 seconds. I liked it though. It was satisfying. There is no product more important than a potato. There are products of equal value like an avocado or a cup of rice, but the humble spud is my personal favourite.

So at last, I get round to the subject in the title. Alternative economics. At 63 years of age, I can now analyze my chosen path in life for its economic and social benefit. I have worked for wages perhaps a total of 4-5 years. I have paid tax in only two years when I did exploration. I have also worked as a builder’s labourer, a carpenter building a school in Darwin (which got flattened 6 months later by cyclone Tracy), and perhaps the best was as a ski lift operator in New Zealand. Great…. the spell-check has never even heard of New Zealand. I still don’t earn enough to pay tax. I now use two houses to earn a living at B&B. It is to my great personal satisfaction that people mostly have a wild and real experience at my rainforest retreat.

I have mostly worked directly for myself, building things I need without the overheads of tax on what you earn, other taxes, fees, insurance, travel, profit and other costs which multiply when you employ someone to build your house etc. And of course interest on the mortgage you require to get started. So my strategy has been not to go into debt. If you haven’t got the money, don’t do it. I have always valued my freedom and debt is the antithesis of freedom. I have maintained my financial freedom throughout my life by being debt free which enabled me to pursue many opportunities. Of course having children is a lifetime commitment with no remission, and which I undertake gladly. So I am not free of obligation or responsibility. Please, if you escape the rat-race don’t think you will have freedom. It will just morph your responsibilities onto a different landscape. Perhaps a better landscape, where your concerns are family and friends rather than money and debt.

My income for the last twenty years has come from 2 fully self-contained cottages. I don’t provide meals so the work is servicing, maintenance and washing linen and towels. I work perhaps a few hours in the day. It is a small non-taxable income but I have no debts and few non-business payments. I have few expenses, generate my own electricity, and the biggest bill every year is the rates. So I have a small income but nearly all of it is disposable at my whim.

It had been my idea decades ago, to opt out of the money paradigm altogether, but I soon found that is not practical. Most of my life I have had very little or no money, arriving in Australia with US $11 and knowing no one. It never bothered me. I have lived on rice alone for weeks. Now I live surrounded by a beautiful tropical rainforest with the nearest neighbour 5 kms away. I stay at home and other people come here, give me money and go away again with a large percentage returning. I have plenty of time to do just what I want. I have done many interesting things in about 70 countries around the world. My alternative economics has served me well.

This morning I was woken up at 4.15 am by a fairly loud buzzing sound.  Not an alarm clock as I never use the things.  I have to confess I’m not at my best and sharpest around 4 am.  I groped for the light and discovered the sound was next to the bed in the corner of the room.  Next I noticed the acrid smell and black smoke curling up from behind a small bedside set of drawers.  My foggy brain accelerated from 5% functional to 95% function faster than a Tesla.  A hasty look showed the smoke coming from a power point.  So of course I ran in the other direction.  To cut off the power.  I ran outside to the inverter to shut down the whole electrical system.  Then quickly back inside to see if the wall was on fire.

By this time I had been joined by my friend Martin, guest for the night, who is a light sleeper and had heard both the buzzing and my pounding feet.  I removed the chest of drawers and gingerly pulled out the plug for the bedside lamp, which hadn’t been on or even used for months.  One of the brass prongs was burnt off…. completely missing.  The smoke was subsiding not growing and that was an encouraging sign.  A fire inside the wall could have been difficult to deal with.  Then we turned our minds what had caused the burn-up with the lamp not on and no obvious cause.  Then our eyes turned to the ceiling and directly above the powerpoint was a diminutive micro-bat.  Perhaps most people are too quick to blame some outside cause for their troubles rather than consider their own complicity, but we quickly jumped to the conclusion it had pissed on the powerpoint.  Ah ha! Caught red-handed!  You fiend!

A little consideration might have prompted us to think more kindly of the tiny creature.  When it pisses we must be talking a few drop here and not the copious flow of the town drunk against a convenient lamppost.  But other theories of why after 30 years of service it would spontaneously combust were hard to come by, so that tiny bat has become the official culprit.  1 or several microbats have been using my bedroom as a night rest spot for the last few years.  They have a permanent day cave to sleep, but use temporary cave-like night perches as well.  I always have a window open even in the depths of winter as I don’t like to be totally isolated from the environment at any time.  They do shit a bit, which is a nuisance, but fortunately roost in the corner, rather than directly over the bed.  I often hear them flying around my bedroom and it sounds a bit like someone flogging a tea-towel, but doesn’t disturb me.  I have a policy of live and let live unless directly threatened.

Martin’s advice was to leave the system shut down and deal with it in the morning with the benefit of daylight and fresher minds.  Sounded good to me so we went back to bed.  In the morning I asked Josh, my other guest if he had slept well.  Splendid, fine, he replied, blissfully unaware he wasn’t that far off from having been cremated.  I have seen a wooden house go up in flames.  It is quick, dramatic, spectacular and devastating.  There is a bed of ash decorated with tortured blackened tin.  It was many years ago as I drove home from a moon dance.  Yes, I was into these hippy gatherings.  I saw a light at 1 am and went to investigate and down an isolated road was a house totally engulfed in flames that reached 20m above it.  There was no vehicle outside, which in the country means there is nobody inside.  Perhaps there was an unpredictable electrical fault like mine, perhaps an insurance job.  So I gawked at it for 5 or 10 minutes and went home.  It was impressive how quickly the fire destroyed the house.

Moral of story:- do not let bats piss on your powerpoints.  For most of you this will be easy to comply with.