The Great Gecko of Christmas Present

Two Great Geckos of my acquaintance set off for Copenhagen, the commune decided (encore!) to spray everything to kill off all the mossies. There are still lots of mossies but everything else is dying. There is no chikungunya ... yet.


The Great Geckos returned having reached the end of a coconut frond and reflected that humans trying to solve the climate problem was like expecting neonates to remove their own meconium. In effect, there is no climate problem there is a human problem.

However, this is the season of goodwill and the great stuffing of christians. The supermarkets here are bulging with uncarefully filed cardboard fillets of farmed fish. Everyone seemingly wants to eat salmon for the season along with foie gras. The latter a symbol of a perverse and bloated consumerism and the former a symbol of humanity swimming in it own fecal matter and desperately trying to devolve. On an island fecund and fruitful surrounded by seas teeming with unfarmed fish one would think that ...

... well if you want a photo of my carrapacio d'espadon.

You'll have to wait as the gecko is hungry and some "lcd" has destroyed its larder. Yep, some things are just black and white, even when they are not.

the forbidden planet

Whatever happens in life, do not fall into a droplet of water suspended on the frond of a palm. That being said the mango season has at last taken off and the price of such fruit is descending daily, as are the mangoes. Back with the Humble telescope and I have discovered the great star nursery and beyond the greater maternelle of galaxies :

Red dwarfs, pulsars, spirals, dinkumpoops, a whole wealth of cosmological growths are to be found at the market of St Pierre on a Saturday morning. Who needs the LHD, read a bit of Blake, drink a Phoenix and the origins of the cosmos are as clear as ....

... Well, as the mango eclipsed by Saturn



... and if any of youse should ask what life on planet is like. The terraforming is taking place but it is being constantly delayed by the human virus, who, being conservative by nature are intent on planetary and cosmological reversion to primal sludge.

Mango Cosmology

The first big rains have arrived and one can but wait for the cyclones that follow. All doom and apocalyptic doom if the current season in the Philippines is anything to go by. But, as Lawrence would have us believe, "a wild thing never felt sorry for itself" and Nature (big N!) is inherently amoral so ... Better stop trying to control the big N and respect it. Lots more of that humility before nature and humble pie is not currently being served in McDo. That, however, is another rant for a very rainy day.

Tired of picking sand out of my umbilici and all those worlds in grains of sand decided to hug a few trees. The fruit of palms suspended as whorls of galaxies, dust in the nostrils of god (small g because HE doesn't exist but the image is amusing.


Looking up at trees makes one's head turn, turn turn as some vinyl hit from the sixties, and then ...

I found a star chart inscribed on a mango - photo thanks to the Humble Telescope


Nothing left but to interpret runes on palm trunks.


About time we all stopped imposing meaning on life and just got on with living it. Happy Mango !

Postcards from paradise

Meanwhile back on the hot rock ...

Whilst slowly developing the attention span of a thirteen year old zombie I have found myself back on the hot rock with a large memory gap. I am sure I have not been abducted by aliens but used as a cobaye by the Umbrella Corporation, who although are fictitious have various nefarious and dubious means at their disposal to play hell with my neurons.

So, what is new ? The volcano is a rumbling but only like Mr Creosote after his hors d'oeuvres. There are more cars, more concrete, more supermarkets and more consumerism. More consumers as well and it is not all the Pope's fault. And, all that after only a few months.

Went out to supper last night at a rather jolly and termite eaten "cas creole" resto. These are becoming few and far between and if the fact that France, or rather the French, are Ronny McD's second most devoted fans Réunion has gone a long way to help. Not that I'd wish to turn the clocks back but just speed them up a little so that some apocalyptic catastrophe will arrive and (1) please all those religious fruit cakes and (2) wipe humanity of the face of the Earth so it can start again, or not...

... back to supper. Boucané ti-jaques with "graines" , rice and some spitefully warm rougail mangue. Needlessly, I should explain all these exotic culinary delights, but being both lazy and pretentious it is needless. Reminds me of my sulky youth trying to read Huxley (proto-pretentious period) and not being able to understand all those foreign phrases. Why couldn't he write in English for us poor peasants ?

Supper rinsed with a cold bottle of Bourbon beer - the beer is bland and fizzy but the marketing is sublime so one believes one is enjoying it and some exotic island culture !




and then ...

You can get free postcards here. Usually stupid marketing ploys or not too bad self promotion glitz. The island as a national park for instance, or art shows or ...

... plenty of ellipsis for emphasis , or, postcards of the latest main road, the route des tamarins only opened this year like an appendectomy scar. So, I am no longer sending idealised snaps of tropical volcanic isles but pics of concrete, tarmac and other crud. So this is the future ? No wonder that I am depressed.

Pollen - the snows of summer.

Dusky may well be the tendrils of the vine, but dusty, bien sûr, are the mandibles of the bee.

Summer has installed itself and the world has come to gawp. Except, that is Minou the famous cow cat who is more intent in becoming a threadbare rug.


Ponder for a moment the souls of myriads of insects humming along to the sounds of eternity in their short lived lives.


What music compared to the cacophony of human existence. Man that bloated, bleating megaphone of destruction.


There, I'm feeling better already. More mopané worm vicar?

The thorny question of the last bean ..

Summer may well be here but I have that feeling that Spring has only just finished as I have just podded and cooked the last broad bean. Afflicted by a plague of blackfly and stunted by a rather cold winter they performed rather well really.



Blend them in with a squirt of olive oil, garlic, onions, courgettes and tomatoes from the garden and voila ! Not quite, don't forget the essential chilli, fresh coriander, curcuma and cumin. Well, I'm going to eat this with a fine, if left over, "rougail tomate" from Saturday night's epicurean boucané.


Why should I mention this ? No idea, better get back out into the garden before I miss the Summer ...

Waiting for the great sky spiders of summer.

Everything is looking skyward.


Dragon's breath in the valley and there follows an enigma.



I posed the question to a friend who replied that the above photo was of "le sexe d'une femme". A rather Bauhaus interpretation but unless you can come up with anything more concrete and original it shall remain a great 19th century brick edifice consecrated to women, a Victorian Sheela na gig.

Oh ... I'm feeling all Freudian.

Pigs might fly ...

... or have they already flown ?





... or flew ?

Too late to contain swine flu ?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8021384.stm