Patience is a Virtue..

Titian - Sisyphus

Some days I don't know why I bother to get out of bed. It seems obvious that my day will be spent, much like Sisyphus, struggling uphill with a metaphorical bolder (which is just as burdensome as a literal one) only to have it roll down again. Do you ever feel like you are struggling uphill, and what adds insult to exasperation, is that commonsense appears to ironically scarce?

I am reminded of an incident a year or two ago, when I went in to a bank in St Ives in Cornwall with a friend. We were on holiday and wished to withdraw some ready money. My friend handed over his passbook and a correctly completed withdrawal form, but the teller was insistent that he could not withdraw any money because the computer said that his passbook was still in the post. The fact that said book was on the counter in front of her did not seem to matter, because the computer was telling her that it ought not to have arrived yet! This is the level of frustrating absurdity that One is having to trudge through at present with resource consents, building permits, environmental assessment reports, traffic analyses, geotechnical disagreements, and cruelest of all: budget over runs.

Having [hopefully] sold our house, we now have four months in which to get these problems solved. If not the build will need to be postponed further. Sadly, I fear the latter may be the most likely situation.

Still, one tries to remain cheerful. At least the gardens are coming along nicely and the animals don't seem to give a tinker's. My task for this week is to install the irrigation system in the potager garden (update to follow), and to build a farrowing pen for our sows, all three of which appear to be well gravid.

Alexandre Denis Abel de Pujol - Sisyphus