Say What?

Kensington Gardens squirrel

Image Sourced: Lamppost Pictures

Human beings are human beings. They say what they want, don’t they? They used to say it across the fence while they were hanging wash. Now they just say it on the Internet.
~ Dennis Miller

Don’t dick with the Dikbun

Red bull ant

When I was 6 years old, whilst on a camping holiday I inadvertently placed the leg of a camp chair smackbang on a bull-ant’s nest.  Understandably pissed-off, the soldier bull-ant’s launched a ferocious defence of their home.  I only recall jumping up squealing, then waking up in a tent with a lot of worried adults encircling me.

I recently read that several dreamings from the Northern Territory highlight ant’s ability to sting a dead person back to life.  That’s rather interesting: three years earlier my mother had attempted suicide and was none too happy to wake up and find out she was still alive.

Mayhaps the very real possibility that I could have succumbed to the bull-ant venom was the wake-up call for my mother to emerge from her zombie state of self-absorption. To get some gratitude going for what she did have in her life, and to cease mourning for what was gone.

As for me?  You betcha I’ve never sat on a bull-ant’s nest since and when I come across a nest, I leave a little pool of water for them……and then I run because these buggers chase you.

Dikbun (bull ant) by Colin Andy

About the painting

Bull ants are fierce little creatures. The sting of a bull ant is not barbed and does not remain in the victim, unlike the sting of a bee. The bull ant can sting again and again repeating its dose of nasties. The bull ant’s stinger is located in the abdomen. The jaws of the bull ant workers are quite gentle unlike many other ants. They feed on other insects and things such as honeydew from scale insects. The queen bull ant leaves the nest at night to forage and supplement the food supply of her progeny. (the baby bull ants) These ants have a red head and thorax but the abdomen are black. They make their nests underground and have quite extensive tunnel systems. You can usually identify a bull ant’s nest by the mound of dirt with rather large opening, sometimes several openings at the top. The dirt is loosely scattered around the mound and two or three bull ant guards (soldiers) can often be seen in the immediate area keeping a sharp eye out for any possible intruders.

The Travelling Vintage Show

Kangaroo Ground, Victoria

The History of Trish Hunter Finds.

Since I was very young, I’ve always been playing shop, though I never treated it like a game.  I took it very very seriously.  It was business after all! I remember reading a diary entry where I’d sold Dad a pet rock and I made a note saying “Reminder, get 25c from Dad” The next day’s entry was “Got my 25c from Dad”  So so serious.

I was doing anything and everything to create little businesses, from dog walking for $3 per hour, to holding market stalls selling beaded jewellery and doing wraps in other kids hair.

I remember in perhaps year 7, buying two garbage bags of books from the local opshop which cost me a whole $2, and lugging them up to the second hand book shop selling them for $40. It was always all about business.
I always wanted to be a shop owner.

I began to take the idea seriously about 6 or 7 years ago. I wanted to start a shop selling vintage band t-shirts with a cheap recording studio out the back.
It was about the same time that I began seriously trawling the Opshops finding cool things for myself. It quickly got to the stage where I’d bought so much that I couldn’t move in my house. The vintage band tshirt shop idea morphed into a vintage shop, and there the dream began to unfold.

Vintage Blythe Doll

Dreaming of owning a shop for my whole life, gave me a narrow view.
Every shop is in a building! That’s what you do, and that’s what I was aiming for. I didn’t consider that there could be a different way to do things, which was very unlike me – I was always one to think outside the square.

So about two years ago, I finally had a lease for the shop I’d always dreamed about, in my hand and ready to sign, however in the end it fell through.
Being denied the shop of my dreams, though completely devastating at the time, opened my mind up to new things. My narrow view widened.

I remember before I even had my drivers license, bringing up with a friend the idea of  selling out of a caravan, taking the shop with me everywhere.  That was kind of laughed off at the time, and forgotten about until…

I began to have regular market stalls, to clear out some of the vintage collectables and clothing that I’d accumulated over the years.
I did quite well.  So I had more stalls, and more!

It almost became a little shop!
I had regular customers, and I got to continue to do what I love which was to buy and sell, however there were flaws. I was constantly being rained on, blown over and having stock get ruined. I couldn’t do marvelous displays that I’d always dreamed of placing in shop windows, or dress mannequins in stunning evening gowns & fur stoles.

Then, that idea I briefly raised those years ago about the shop in a caravan was brought back and not laughed off. See, I was trying to come up with ways to further my stall, and also still had the dream of having the shop in the back of mind, it became clear what I had to do –

The shop in a caravan!

Ding!

[read further]

Woke up this morning,
from the strangest dream
I was in the biggest army,
The world has ever seen
We were marching as one,
on the road to the holy grail

Started out,
Seeking fortune and glory
It’s a short song, but it’s one
Hell of a story, when you
Spend your lifetime trying to get
Your hands on the Holy Grail

Well have you heard of the Great Crusade?
We ran into millions, and nobody got paid
Yeah, we razed four corners of the globe,
For the Holy Grail.

All the locals scattered,
They were hiding in the snow
We were so far from home,
So how were we to know,
There’d be nothing left to plunder
When we stumbled on the Holy Grail?

We were full of beans
But we were dying like flies
And those big black birds,
they were circling in the sky,
And you know what they say, yeah,
Nobody deserves to die.

Oh I,
I’ve been searching for an easy way
to escape the cold light of day
I’ve been high, and I’ve been low
But I’ve got nowhere else to go
There’s nowhere else to go

I followed orders
God knows where I’d be
But I woke up alone,
all my wounds were clean
I’m still here
I’m still a fool for the Holy Grail
Oh yeah,
I’m a fool for the Holy Grail

~ lyrics “Holy Grail” ~Hunters and Collectors