Where else would it go? Said the man as he pulled the god-knows-how-long-it-has-been-there cooked pie smothered with sauce from the cupboard above the fridge in the homeless shelter. Still looked good enough to eat.
Why wouldn’t you sleep in the park, in the freezing cold, in the rain when you have a perfectly warm bed here, said the woman in the homeless shelter as two other people left to sleep in the park, in the freezing cold, in the rain.
Why can’t you just be kind to people? Said the woman in the Mission to the staff member who asked her to pipe down after a 45 minute outburst screaming at everyone for being cunts. Such cunts in fact that all 14 people were sleeping when it started, such a beautiful kind woman for letting us all know.
Paid for a room today, $20 owed from a little while ago when I stayed with a beautiful man named Christian. There were two sleeping options, one looks like a big cot, to get in you have to crawl in through the end and underneath a book shelf, the other is about 4 foot square. I choose the square one because it is a better overall space.
Christian tells me to stretch out my legs, it’ll be right. This seems impossible but sure enough I do and they stretch right out, I do not understand. I look up and at the end of the bed my feet, up beyond my knees, have disappeared. There is a hole that goes under some furniture and continues under Christian’s bed, just perfect to stretch out for a comfortable night’s sleep, pure genius.
There’s a few people sitting around a campfire. A pianist is playing a funky tune and turns to the guitarist, this is called Rag Time. A bit of time passes and the guitarist starts plucking away, ‘what was Rag Time again?’ The Groundskeeper cannot help itself, ‘It’s the time after your Dad’s old shirt time.’
The sign read ‘43% of Australians will experience a mental health condition in their lifetime.’ The Groundskeeper laughed, the other 57% are just narcissists.
Gumtree draws a line when I attempt to hire a brushcutter in exchange for cannabis, the ad lasted about 10 minutes, not even. The previous one, the one advertising psilocybin and ayahuasca sessions lasted about two months, priorities I suppose.
There is little to no fashion sense in the Solomon Islands. It comes with a good reason, a majority of the clothes sold come in big bales from othber countries, mostly Australia and New Zealand. These bales are just complete excess to the second hand shopping scene at home, they are not sorted just excess, some gems can be found among them.
There are very few retail outlets. The best shopping day is the one when the new bales arrive and are cut open on the shop floor and people go berserk, happens weekly. All of this combined with the fact that most people only wear clothes because they have to makes for some funny sights;
- The man walking onto a bus smoking a cigarette wearing a quit smoking t-shirt
- Our boat driver, a maybe 30 year-old ripped black man, standing at the back of the boat steering us to some exotic destination wearing a pink nightgown that read Daddy’s Little Girl
- More to come, my brain just stopped on this one.
In the Solomon Islands it is not uncommon for a parent to nominate a third party to name the children. Sometimes they themselves are to blame for the names. English is kind of adopted but not really, pidgin is a mashup of local dialect and some form of English, it is easy to learn. The problem is people just like certain words and don’t know what they mean. So when they are nominated to name a child often these are the words that are used:
- A taxi driver named Chief Justice
- The blackest human being I have ever seen, maybe 10 years of age, a kid who makes the ace of spades look like it hasn’t seen sun for nine months with the name Albino
- As per the previous, more to come
Lorraine messaged me the other day, does Monday or Tuesday work for you for lunch? ‘Yes’, I replied, ‘in fact they are my new Sunday, as well as every other day ending in day. Except for Sunday, which is now Thursday, just for something different.’
She didn’t reply, and lunch has strangely been cancelled. No not really, not the cancelling part anyway.
Hanging out smoking cannabis with Mark at the property. We’re talking about the work needed and being done, specifically the big pile of weed matter I have created near the front fence. ‘How long did that take you?’, asks Mark. About four pipes. ‘Sounds reasonable.’
Same conversation, a little later. Mark enquires, ‘how do you tell if a child is a descendant of Jesus Christ?’ I don’t know, how do you tell? ‘Throw a bunch of kids in the ocean, return to shore and see if any walk back.’