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1. Alex Duncan says:

   October 28, 2011 at 7:54 pm

   “Balls! I’ll take it and run a mile!”
   I’m glad to hear you’re taking it in stride.

   Reply
2. little jo says:

   October 30, 2011 at 7:53 am

   Hi everyone, hope u r not suffering too much
   .hope your mums looking afterq u.
   Look out for the post, you neverw
   Know what might be coming
   Yourq way. Just added to our family
   by buying a german shephrerd
   puppy,shes a really cuty, not sure
   what big dog makes of her yet.
   lots of love Jo, Dave and mob xxcfe

   Reply
   • Linds says:

     November 2, 2011 at 10:44 am

     Jo, thanks so much for the brilliant Halloween card, It really made my day. I tried a couple of times to send an email with a photo of me with it for the kids (using David’s work address), but it kept coming back with a delivery error. do you have an email at home I could try? Please say a big thanks to the entire creative team for a top effort – great graphics, and first class plastic bats. Halloween isn’t quite the same here as in the UK as it’s usually warm and sunny at 8pm in the evening in late October, but it doesn’t stop everyone dressing up and having a good time. Your card certainly helped put us in the right mood. Love to you all, and thanks again. Linds

     Reply
3. Steve Bicknell says:

   October 31, 2011 at 5:02 pm

   hi Linds,

   I replied to the biorythmic cycle back there where my shits fucked up, haven’t been keeping up with you since then as we moved and have been without connections whilst it all got sorted. Now living in leafy suburbia (Leichhardt)which has the added attraction of one of Sydney’s best butchers at the end of the road, and being the Little Italy of the city it has dozens of extremely fine Italian restaurants within crawling distance. The place is littered with deli’s with every kind of preserved meat, salamis , parma ham and all that stuff. I don’t want to knock the shaky Isles but that was always disappointment for me, the difficulty, nigh on impossibility of finding the real thing there. Forgive the insensitivity of mentioning such delicacies but I know you know how important these things are to me. However platinum tops parma right now, so keep up the good work, Penny sends her love, I of course as a staunch block have to send something else, but it is the same thing, Steve

   Reply
   • Linds says:

     November 2, 2011 at 10:38 am

     All staunch, repressed, red-faced and mumbling man-love gratefully received Steve.

     Reply
4. will atkinson says:

   November 1, 2011 at 4:56 am

   Hi Linds. Not sure if this post about ideas should be next to the other post about how ideas have us or if it goes here. Is there a kind of blogging protocol? I sincerely hope not.

   Anyway you may have read this if you follow Dave Trott’s blog. If you don’t I’ve copied and pasted below. It’s a really good take on ideas. And it mentions the constipation word once, though not, sadly, in the context of your current condition. I could also make a cheap gag about trott, trotts and constipation, but shall refrain.

   Anyway, you might find this of interest while sitting waiting.

   Keep on.
   Will

   WHEN IDEAS HAVE SEX
   Posted on 31 October 2011 by Dave Trott

   There’s an amazing TED talk by Matt Ridley, called ‘When Ideas Have Sex’.

   It’s about the procreation and interchange of lots of smaller ideas to form bigger ones.

   And the fact that we live totally in a world of these bigger ideas.

   And we don’t even know it.

   Our world consists solely of bigger combinations of smaller ideas.

   So nothing can be claimed by anyone.

   Because nothing is completely made by anyone.

   Not only that, no one even knows how to make anything.

   Sure, everyone knows a little bit about making a small part of it.

   Everyone contributes something towards it.

   But no one can make anything on their own.

   Everything is made by everyone.

   So nothing is made by anyone.

   He refers to a 1950s essay by an economist called Leonard Read.

   It’s called “I, Pencil”.

   It’s about how no one even knows all the parts of making something as simple as a pencil.

   How to grow and chop the trees.

   How to age, and mill, and prepare the wood.

   How to make the varnish to treat the wood.

   How to make the glue to hold the halves together.

   How to prepare the paint for the outside.

   (And all that’s before we get anywhere near the part that writes.)

   How to mine the graphite.

   Where to find ammonium hydroxide.

   How to make sulfurated tallow by mixing animal fat and sulphuric acid.

   Where to go for candelilla wax and paraffin wax.

   And that’s just a simple, standard old pencil.

   Probably the most basic thing that any of us have in our lives.

   And, even then, all that’s without the necessary tools and transport.

   Engines, oil, electrics, plastics, rubber, machinery.

   And even that’s without including the people who provide the labour: their food, their drink, their clothes, their medicine, their houses.

   And, if we know nothing about how a pencil is made, imagine how much we don’t know about all the other everyday things in our lives.

   Even as you read this: the lightbulb above your head, the walls and windows around you, the cars going by, the watch on your wrist, the carpet under your feet, the razor you shaved with, the makeup you’re wearing, the soap and shampoo you used in the shower, the shower itself, the banknotes and change in your pocket or purse, the glasses you’re looking through, the coffee you’re drinking.

   You can see we know virtually nothing about how anything in our lives is made.

   Sure, we may know the general principle, but that’s all.

   Just like a pencil.

   We know the sharp end makes a mark on paper, and that’s it.

   We don’t have a clue how the pencil, or the paper, are actually made.

   And that is Matt Ridley’s and Leonard Read’s point.

   We aren’t in a world where anyone can own an idea.

   We’re in an ocean of ideas.

   No idea that anyone can have can be anything but a combination of other people’s ideas.

   All we can do is help ideas have sex and see what they produce.

   Once we accept that, everything can move faster.

   Once we accept that, everyone is free to have more ideas.

   Without the desperate constipation of getting stuck in striving for the illusion of originality.

   We’ve long since passed the point where anyone can do anything from scratch.

   Every idea builds on something else.

   Every idea adds to something else.

   To create a new idea, two existing ideas have to have sex.

   Which then creates an idea in its own right.

   Which can then have sex with other ideas.

   We cannot create ideas on our own, from nothing.

   Anymore than we can create a human being on our own, from nothing

   Reply
   • Linds says:

     November 2, 2011 at 10:36 am

     Great post Will,
     you’re right, “The Tyranny of The Idea” probably warrants a page all of it’s own. I’ll give it some thought. I’d forgotten all about Dave Trot, he was a great hero when Lawrence and I were just starting out. We even went to worship him a couple of times at GGT in the early eighties. Gave Tom Russell “The Man With No Name” a spin. Pretty good, but maybe just a little too much Finger-In-The-Ear folk with a capital F for my taste, but will give it another go. Just downloading Lee Harvey Osmond at Jim’s recommendation as I write. Take care. It’s a jungle out there.

     Linds

     Reply
5. says:

   November 1, 2011 at 4:58 am

   The boy here still knows how to design a great tee.
   Stonkin’.

   Forgot to mention another great discovery “Lee Harvey Osmond” – A Quiet Evil.
   More snarly mysterious stuff from that famous Acid-Folk country, Canada.

   Off to South Africa for 2 weeks. Will keep up to speed on the iPad.
   Jimbo

   Reply