Sleepy

(Pictures)

I am not a happy wombat. It's a warm fresh autumn day and I just want to sleep.

Finished a thingy of work yesterday. A numbered list of 327 things wrong with someone's precious thesis. This is not job I recommend to the faint-hearted as it often involves dealing with the woolly-minded and the long-winded.

I don't do academic ghostwriting. That's a different kettle of fish and a naughty one. I do editing. I read through the thesis (or article for publishing or whatever) and email them stuff like 'Section 30, paragraphs 4-17: Extraneous' and 'Suggest re-think of theory behind Sections 57 & 108'. Then they open the email, read the list, feel faint, have a little cry and perhaps work on some of my suggestions.

The main qualifications for the job are an ability to detect bullshit disguised as theory, the ability to say 'that's very interesting but it won't get you a pass mark and I'm not doing it after March the 15th', and the ability to resist the larger fees for doing actual ghostwriting, even when said fees include headjobs.

(Yer bog standard, non-academic ghostwriting is perfectly legit. Some poor hack is forced to listen to an inarticulate sports star or other celeb then put together an "autobiography" of that person. The ghostwriter does the work but the author on the cover is the celeb. The other common use of ghostwriting to reproduce the writing style and substance of a bestselling but now deceased author.)

Anyways, I did this job and I did it well and it was a Bad Thing. I took the bigger fee for doing a rush job and I worked on it long and hard. Which is how I got sick in the first place. That and injudicious applications of beer and pizza.

I'm pissed off. I slipped back into old habits after I promised myself I wouldn't. I've barely had time to scratch my arse for weeks, it's taken a month to read my blog list and anyone who rings me does so at their peril.

On a chirpier note, it's a beautiful day, I can have a snooze on my balcony once I've posted this and I've got some more sunny Saratoga photos:



Willaroo Road comes of Steyne Road and down to the sailing club. On the right as it levels out there's Saratoga Oval and on the left there's the tennis club and the Saratoga Wetland. The oval has a cricket pitch on it and a couple of climbing thingies for kids at the water's edge. It's a quiet spot to sit and enjoy the warm autumn sun and the quiet sound of the waves among the mangroves.

Sitting there at the water's edge Mount Pleasant, the hill of Saratoga, is behind you. Ahead is Koolewong with its aerial. To your right you can see along to western shore of Brisbane Water up to Gosford. Then the bulk of Green Point sitting at the water end of Kincumba Mountain blocks your view of East Gosford. (Map)


(Embiggen)

A slow muddy stream through the Wetland and ducks silently floating. The houses are on Steyne Road and the hill is Mount Pleasant. The walkway through the Wetland goes from behind the tennis courts on Willaroo Road to the end of Marian Street. For most of the walkway you can see only the mangroves and the top of Mount Pleasant and Blackwall Mountain over at Woy Woy. There's a lot of walks like that around Brisbane Water. I love it.


(Embiggen)

A pleasant house on Henderson Road. I particularly like how it's overcome its seventies origins with a nice not-seventies colour scheme and a not-seventies veranda. And the garden smelt good.


(Embiggen)

This photo captures the sleepy mood I'm in. Warm sun, quiet, gentle rhythm of the water lapping and little else. In more practical terms we're looking at the back half of Pelican Island on the left, Waterfall Bay behind it across the railway line and Koolewong in the middle.


(Embiggen)

The tide was low-ish and the seaweed floated near the surface. There was nary an uneaten rock oyster to be had (as usual). There were a few dozen tiny brown fish, like whitebait only brown. Over at Woy Woy Wharf and hour earlier whitebait had been moving about in the green water around the piers.


That's yer lot for today and I'm off out to my balcony with a quilt and a cuppa tea.