cricket score - day two of nz/india test match

india - 208 all out
nz - 280 (something) for 7

tonight's video

jackie brown

dinner

home delivery pizza - a truly wonderful late 20C invention

It's a good kind of tired you get from physical activity. Most of today and yesterday I've been out in the back section of our house hacking away at shrubs and small trees and hedges. I've got blisters on my hands, and scratches over my arms and legs and a little sunburn and my arms ache and my hands tingle and my legs are sore, but I feel great.

You don't really notice it as your garden overgrows. It's slow, stealthy, surreptitious. Until one day you can't get down the garden path without fighting your way through undergrowth. Or suddenly your view from the kitchen window is cut in half by the hedge.

Well, all that happened about a year ago.

I've been putting off doing anything since then, but something snapped on Christmas Eve, and there I was, garden shears in hand, shearing away at this hedge. There's an addictive pleasure in cutting away vegetation. It must call to some primitive instinct to conquer nature.

It's escalated since then. There was a branch that I just couldn't cut with the shears. Out came the small hand saw. Then I noticed a couple of small trees, just sorta growing there, in the middle of the lawn. I was oblivious to all but my desire to cut then down. Out came the large hand saw. Big thick cutting blade. Sawing through the juicy fleshsap of the trees.

And then your old methods no longer work, the rush isn't the same. I was down at the hire place as soon as it opened today. My mind focused on an electric hedge trimmer. Talking the talk with the hire boys. Getting it home, big shiny sharp blades, vibrating, snapping through the foliage, twigs and leaves flying in the carnage.

And then it broke down. Bad trip. Loose connection. Back again, petrol powered trimmer. Two stroke. More power. More noise. Yes. Cutting, fast, deep, more. Splattered with green sap, dirt, sweat, maniac grin waving the trimmer over my head.

Satiated at 5.00pm, I left the scene of my triumph. A section flowing a river green of dead and dying foliage. Already fading brown in the later afternoon sun. I love the smell of sap in the afternoon. The roar of the petrol two stroke trimmer ringing in my ears.

It's a rush like no other, man.

There's more tomorrow. There always is. You never really win. At best you stem the tide for a while.

I'll sleep well tonight though.