Maitland, one of my aboriginal neighbours, burst into tears this morning when I told him about Boy. So I ended up comforting him, which got me all teary again and I finally had to pretend to go inside to answer the phone. I had to put his outdoor blanket away, I keep thinking he's lying on it and wonder why I can't hear his silly tail thumping against the wall. Honey's been looking for him too. I buried him out by the pond, wrapped in his snuggly winter rug.
On a brighter note, Gary and I went over to George's to work out the purchase arrangement. This was a highly complicated, ludicrous process which took two phone calls, a very long visit and an overly-detailed explanation of something to do with the plumbing which, as a protective measure, I blanked out.
As I am the one drawing up the purchase agreement, I wanted to find out if the place had an actual address. George has a phone out there, so naturally (silly me!) I figured that the phone line would have to be billed to the address, but this only works in certain dimensions and not the one George is living in, apparently. George also said he'd found his original sale contract, so Gary and I figured that there must be some kind of legal or vaguely informative details on there. Ha ha!
So when we get to the bush compound and (after another long explanation of how he'd fixed the toilet) I manage to get George to sit down and sort of focus on things, he proudly brings out this very, very old, dirt-stained, torn-and-sticky-taped-back-together bit of paper which has clearly been scrawled out on the bonnet of a ute and is basically just a list of sheds and things like "the old 3-way cistern rotundulator", signed by "George" and "Dave" and witnessed by "scribblescribbleWoodsy". Seeing as how the usual outback method of sealing a deal is by handshake, having an actual piece of paper with writing on it is fairly impressive.
Then we tried to work out how George had managed to get the phone on. We still don't understand, but part of the story involves "Pete came and just disconnected some a them wires from the racecourse main building over there and now where is it oh there buried under the trench that wire there that's me phone line". Gary was standing behind George and made a silent "snip snip" gesture with his fingers at me as I tried not to laugh. The place has no actual address, so the purchase agreement basically uses photos and identifies the place as "the shed compound 300 metres southwest of the racecourse buildings".
So the whole thing is hilariously outback and dodgy and pure "Meeka" - but we take possession on June 1st, at which point we'll be easing George into his caravan and then perhaps to a room at my place, once Gary gets the power and some kind of heating going at the compound...after we fix the caravan up...and cut the dangerous branches off the old dead gidgie tree...get the old ute going...finish renovating my house...ummm...wayyyyy too many projects. What could be better?
The pump ops course in Geraldton got postponed, which is probably a good thing as we are both pretty buggered from such a crazy week. After my hostel shift tomorrow we're going to Mount Magnet overnight for one of Gary's Satanic Lodge meetings, then Gary is my indentured slave on Sunday to get the last of the angle grinding done. The front yard is now planted and looks great, but I need to relent and hire some labour to move dirt and get cracking on the painting so I can be free to rush out to the bush camp and make sure Gary and George don't make any ghastly bloke-like "improvements" or try to sneak their stuff into my "personal" shed. I can tell Gary's really excited about the bush camp, because he talks to me endlessly about 12 volt LED lighting plans and how he can use salvaged barbecue grill parts to re-route a 20 mill gas line to a heating unit modulator and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz mmm hmm mmf? oh yes honey that sounds great zzzzzzzzzz
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