As a young bloke for a few years I had no car. Totally my fault. I’d trusted the girlfriend to use it, and the machine was returned blowing smoke out the exhaust. The once trusty old Datsun coupe, was no longer trustworthy, and got sold off. Being the last serious recession there was no spare mad cash for a replacement. Being canny and resourceful, plus young and full of energy, I just rode the bicycle – everywhere – for about two years. This strategy had the benefit of lower costs.
It’s funny how the mind adapts to circumstances. A 20km (12.5 mile) journey on the bicycle in those early days, became no big deal. My grandfather remarked that my youthful sticky-chickeness appeared to be a form of malnourishment. Technically speaking, he the unflattering description: Emaciated. Whatever, the comment was more about his concerns about ageing. But you sure do get fit doing heaps of kilometres every day and not owning a car.
In those days I ran middle distance for sport as well. My results for the 10km (6 mile) run were good, but there were always faster competitors with better endurance. Back then, mini triathlon’s were a thing. So why not give them a go as well? Sadly, strong ocean swimming is not in the natural repertoire of skills, and the time I lost on the swim, had to be made up on the bike and run leg, which was fine by me.
One cold morning, the organisers mentioned that they’d spotted Bronze Whaler (Copper) sharks off shore earlier and hey the breed were considered to be mostly safe with a low probability of attacking humans. It is worthwhile mentioning that according to Wikipedia, three out of ten shark attacks in New Zealand are attributed to Copper sharks. Nice. It was the worst swim ever as my mind was concerned about the risk of being eaten alive.
Another time, they sent us all out for a swim during a powerful storm. The waves were ferocious. Nobody could swim across that big surf. One second you’re plucked high up into the air, only to be dumped on the sand, rinse and repeat. Again, not a great swim. Then there was the jellyfish swarm. Were these ocean creatures poisonous? Maybe, they sure left a nasty rash. After that incident, I’d had enough and quit the sport, ocean swimming wasn’t for me, and my trust of the organisers discernment, had been shattered.
After two years on the bicycle, I’d saved enough money to buy an old car. It was $4,000 for a ten year old Suzuki Sierra (Jimny) soft top. It was so cool, in fact the removable vinyl roof meant that winter drives, were actually a very cold experience. Zippers on the vinyl, meant the machine was constantly broken into by any idiot who may, or may not, have spotted something to steal. It was all a bad idea, with no turning back. At the time, the purchase price, or mad cash required, was the equivalent of 10% of a one, or two bedroom apartment depending on suburb. A brand new Suzuki Dirt Rat back then cost about $12,000, which is almost a third of the price of an apartment. Sadly I was unable to afford a new Suzuki back then, it being the equivalent of half a years salary.
Turns out, that over three decades ago, mad cash clearly bought more house and less car. My how things have changed over the intervening years, and that story has now been totally flipped on its head.
Speaking of sharks and economics, it was difficult to ignore that this past week, the Reserve Bank lifted official interest rates. That number sets the tone for what borrowers are likely to pay on their borrowings. Not all by any means, but a whole bunch (i.e. most) of the debt in Australia is priced based on these variable official rates. Depending on how much debt a person owes as of this week, they’ll suddenly find themselves having less money to spend on other stuff.
Please excuse the pun, but in an interesting side story, I believe about 5% of all home loans in this country have fixed interest and fixed terms (down from an alarming 46% a few years ago). Those things work a bit differently to the usual mortgage, because generally it’s for a set period of time (1 to an absolute maximum I believe of 10 years) and the borrower has restrictions on paying off any of the amount borrowed. To me they look like a gamble that the house will be worth more at the end of the loan when it expires, and people may forget that the replacement loan then has to be reapplied for. The author Michael Lewis, in his book: The Big Short, used less flattering words: A rental with debt. Such an arrangement would make me nervous. To the banks though, these loans are probably a nice easy way to package the things up and sell off as bonds to investors.
What’s a bond, you ask? It’s an agreement to hand over mad cash to receive interest for a fixed period of time, and hopefully you’ll get the face value of the thing returned when it finishes. It’s like a loan, but in reverse where you are stumping the up front money. Banks issue the things. Governments and corporations do too. The market for this paper is enormous and complicated.
Working out how much interest is agreed to pay for any bond (the bond yield) is a process which is beyond my knowledge. But, one hears that the rates being demanded by bond traders in exchange for their mad cash, are going up. You’d imagine this situation was at the back of the mind of the fat cats at the Reserve Bank when they made their decision last week. To my mind, the bond traders are expressing a lack of trust in the paper their dealing. Hardly surprising given the Aussie government cracked the one trillion dollar debt limit a few weeks ago. Not to be outdone, our American friends cracked the forty trillion dollar line the same week. An impressive achievement.
Clearly mad cash has devalued over the past 30 years. But what is truly bizarre about the whole thing, is that governments spend more mad cash than they earn, thus necessitating the need for a bond market in the first place. It’s kind of weird. And all that borrowed money gets spent by the government within the broader community and presumably some also ends up in the hands of the bond traders. To me, the increased bond yields looks as if they’re worrying about maintaining the value of what they have accumulated over the years, so they decide to punish the borrowers the only way they can – by lifting their demands which increases bond yields.
And around and around it goes, where it stops, nobody knows. Tell ya what though, under the advice of others, I’ve swum with sharks, and it was not a relaxing experience. Far from it actually. What I learned from that experience, was that trust is hard won, and people in authority can be careless when it’s not their bits on the line.
It was an astoundingly wet week. A crazy storm originating from the tropical Indian Ocean dumped over three inches of rain. So much for the super El Niño. After the third continuous day of wet stuff falling out of the sky, I’d started to wonder if it would ever cease. It did not let up for one minute.
Water was running everywhere, and fortunately due to the infrastructure, that meant away from the house. At one point a natural spring began gushing water from a vertical clay surface.
No outdoors work could be done in that weather, but at the start of the week we did prepare and plant out the potato enclosure. Ideally, having grown potatoes in the large garden bed last summer, we’d have put them somewhere else this year. That couldn’t happen, so over winter we’d let the garden bed be over-run with weeds which may help the lack of crop rotation. It was pretty feral in there:
The powerful self propelled slasher was used to run over the tallest of the weeds.
The much smaller utility mower was then used to mulch up all of the weedy material on the ground into a fine layer of organic matter.
Then the scary old rototiller turned over the soil in the entire garden bed down to about a foot deep.
During rototilling I found many tubers from last years crop. Any that were intact, were replanted. The purple variety has grown here in various locations, for many years and is quite tasty.
The soil looked really good and deep, but why not chuck a trailer load of compost mixture onto the huge garden bed just to spice things up. I also added the usual things such as: Something from the sea + Gypsum + Garden Lime + Blood and Bone meal.
I’ve been told by reliable sources not to add lime to soil growing potatoes, but have never found this to be an issue. It is worthwhile noting that lime in my soils reduces the incidence of fungal disease. It is possible the advice is wrong, or not widely applicable. The compost was heaped on the uphill side of where the tubers were planted, and a rake can be used to hill up the vines as they grow.
The wet weather was hard on the forest critters, and Dame Plum caught a few unawares, like this hapless rat.
The two Kelpies cornered the largest wild rabbit I’d ever seen. It was well fed beast having been caught munching on plants in the rose and raspberry enclosure! What is weird, that at first Dame Plum was unable to see the rabbit – which was right in front of her. Check this out:
Meanwhile the rabbit played dead, and did not move a muscle. I chucked a stick at the bunny and it fled, and once on the move Dame Plum got it. I’ve seen other dogs struggle to spot rabbits at close range too and had always wondered about that. This time by sheer chance, I had the camera with me. Wild rabbits are a menace in this country.
The wet weather was a great time to finish off the work of restoring the forty year old Yamaha amplifier. The work makes absolutely no economic sense whatsoever. It was $200 to buy second hand with about $75 of parts, and ten hours of labour, when a brand new one of equivalent quality would be around $600. It’s a hobby, and the thing sounds great!
Sandra also used the time to make a batch of soap. Proper soap is a product of pure delightfulness, so much better on your skin than the detergents most people use.
In breaking produce news:
Apricots continue to swell and hopefully if we avoid a late frost, hailstorm, super cell, tornado, parrots, wallabies, deer, rats and some other stuff, we might get a good harvest.
The plums were in blossom as the heavy rain fell this week, so I’m guessing about only half have set fruit, but that might still be a good harvest, maybe.
In other produce photos:
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 11am is 13’C (55’F). So far for this year there has been 1,009.0mm (39.7 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 926.6mm (36.5 inches)
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