It was the first time I'd made lipbalm and it turned out beautifully.

Beeswax - about 2 tbsps or a chunk about 3cm long by 2cm
Rosehip oil (or any other oil) about 5 drops
Vanilla essential oil about a drop or two
Coconut oil (cold pressed) - about 2 tbsps

I just put the beeswax in a glass jar and melted it in a pot of hot water.  Added the coconut oil and melted that in the same way.  Then mixed in the other oils, filled a 50g container and a smaller one.  Allow to cool.

'I haven't posted in such a long time...what shall I post about baby?' 'Post about me'.  Ok.

So sickly sweet it'll make your tummy hurt.  But obviously, I'm kind of proud of them.  They're my presents for the Coombes handmade mid-winter-actually-now-more-like-spring Christmas this weekend.  Jars of peanut butter brownies for the boys.  Jesus, call me Martha Stewart, what's happened to me...where's my cigarettes and beer?

I brought back an Inca God-of-the-Home from Peru.  Actually I bought back two, one for my mum and dad and one for us.  Putting this little god in the home would keep the home-place safe, happy and free from evil.  When I unpacked them from the newspaper after four months of travel, one of them was broken.  I gave my parents the unharmed god.  Mine, I just propped up in the kitchen, in two halves.  We were infested with cockroaches first off.  Then a water-pipe burst, flooding our downstairs room.  We later found out the pipe was actually chewed through by rats who then took over the roof above our bed for two months.  Later on we were burgled (I lost my camera and kit).  The dryer caught fire, the mildew in the house spread to our bedrooms.  It was sometime between the rats and the burglary that I glued the god back together and I've glued him back together three times now.  Even when I put him away; in a drawer; at the top of the kitchen shelves; in a suitcase he gets dropped, caught on something or swept off.  What will happen if I bury him?  The inca's don't seem to have a forum on the internet.  Can I put throw him away?  Give him to the Sallies?  He is fixed at the moment, sitting on my bookshelf.

Philip Clairmont, Fireplace, 1970.

The Fletcher Trust Collection

It is the business of a poet, I think, to be destitute as well as honest. He may have money; but he should recognise that it is dirt. He may have prestige; but let him hate it and wear it like an old filthy coat. Then he may be able to stay awake a little better. Love will not harm him, though. It will slice him open like a fish, and hang him by the heels, and let the sun into his private bag of dreams and idiot ambitions. He will think he is dying when he is just beginning to wake up (‘Writing and Existence’, 18). James K. Baxter