Cooking With Gas

Mana Marina (near Wellington)

Wednesday 1 April 2020

It’s strange, that a walk down the road, little more than 1 km, to replace an empty gas bottle, should be considered my highlight of the day. But such is the nature of social isolation.

We have two gas bottles on board. Solely for cooking, and when one runs out it’s a simple case of switching over to the spare, with the empty replaced or filled up at the first opportunity.

Not that there’s any hurry. A bottle generally lasts more than a month, and with me just cooking for myself, it would probably last nearly two months. But, better to be safe than sorry, and so I lashed the empty to my back, along with a small collapsible trolley, and headed off to the petrol station.

I really didn’t need the spare gas bottle for another month or so, but better to be safe than sorry.

There, through a mix of hand signals, and mumbled voices through the thick glass- serving-window, I was able to complete the transaction. Then, it was a slightly slower walk home, dragging the bottle-laden trolley behind me – those full bottles are heavy.

Although I had good intentions of doing the “gas job” before lunch, a combination of waking up late (it’s becoming the way of things I’m afraid) and starting to learn a new computer program, meant it wasn’t until mid-afternoon that I went for my outing.

On return, it was strange to see a bank of cloud move in; from the north-east I think. It was strange because normally you watch clouds – white or grey – track across the sky at a reasonable height, and either they keep moving, or they just get heavier and dump some rain. This cloud came in at grass-height, like a wall of brownish-grey in the form of thick sea mist.

I took a few photos, which hopefully convey the phenomena.

The brown-grey cloud came in at a very low level

In one direction it was closing in with low cloud

in the other direction it was still sunny

I wasn’t outside looking at the clouds long though. On my return from the shops I resumed my position in front of the computer, clicking and dragging the mouse through a video editing program, that I imagine has always been on my laptop, but which I’ve never had time to investigate; until now.

The old computer is a handy thing in maintaining communications and keeping the kiddies amused

In fact, there seems to be several video editing programs in the directory, (each of varying complexity and functionality) and after checking each one out … even Powerpoint – although I’ll probably regret saying that – I settled on one, called … surprise, surprise … “Video Editor”, because it seemed so simple to use … even for me.

It naturally doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the professional editing suites, if truth be told, this program barely has a triangle, but in less than 15 minutes I was trimming video clips, adding music, captions and titles – plus recording a voice-over. Give me a few more days of obsessive, screen-time and I’ll be a force to be reckoned with … in a media-kindergarten kind of way.

The main reason for looking more closely at video editing, is because it seems such a useful skill … which I currently don’t have. I have certainly amassed a lot of video, on various hard drives, over the years, and to date I’ve relied on the generosity and skill of my son Matt, to … “knock something together” … which he always does so professionally and willingly.

No more!! It’s time that I produced short films. Well, when I say that, I mean … it’s time I started learning how to at least combine video, audio, music and text into something resembling a film. And I promise NOT to use Comic Sans font, or gimmicky Swishes and novelty Magic Transitions. It’ll be plain vanilla productions or me.

As for uploading to Youtube?? That seems a bridge too far right now, but let’s face it… how hard can it be, really?! Particularly when you see some of the online content and where it’s derived … surely not all of those folks have a 33-year-old son called Matthew who’s always more than happy to oblige his father in producing a film for this or that purpose.

In closing, I was going to hold this piece of news over until I really had little else to write about. Till the cupboard was bare in the daily-activity department … well I think we might almost be there.

It concerns gnomes. Now gnomes are generally not the sort of thing you associate with boat marinas, and I’m really not sure of their origin, but the fact is, there’s a generous collection of gnomes here at Mana. Each one appears to be a proxy for a boat, or maybe a skipper, crewmember or past event, that has gone before; in something like a memorial along the side of the pathway. Certainly, a lot of work has gone into making each unique creation, with a story attached to each to be sure … to be sure.

I’ll include some photographs of a selection to give you an idea.