This month’s back wall is bought to you by the word “plagiarism” and a Maoist sense of heavy labour. More than 25 man-hours in the making and still lacking completion. Thanks to those who stayed late with me over the past few days and filled in the necessary spaces.

I find myself asking strange questions that nobody else would care about: “Does it sit well on it’s end?” “How much does it weigh?” “Can you move it with a sack barrow?” That is what matters to someone who is so intimately involved with Gran’s old furniture.

Anyway, when you buy a couch, you often get two chairs with it. The couch is useful to me and the chgairs are not. As such, I have an over supply of chairs. I also have a couple of two seaters that are redundant now that the caravan in on-site.

So, to anyone that wants free chairs, in really good condition or a couple of couches in OK condition, come in and grab them. First in best dressed. get them while they’re free.

This month’s back wall was done by local late-career artist Silas Manhouse. Using a racehorse metaphor, Silas has explored the relationship between New Zealand binge-drinking culture and the iconography of the gambler. The work that has been produced exemplifies the dichotomy between compositional desires and challenging people’s understanding of what constitutes a back wall.

Surely this is the most significant artwork created this century.

In exciting news, we now have new gates and roller-doors for the outside area. This means no more lugging furniture in and out every day. While this may sound particularly unexciting to you, to Tim and I it means getting to bed an hour earlier every day.

The gates were installed in true bodgie fashion by brother-in-law Greg, who told me that looking away when grinding is as safe as safety glasses and closing your eyes when welding is safer than a welding mask. He also wanted me to state for the record that he purposely did rough welds to fit in with the “rustic theme”.

Here he is grinding while looking away.

Tim has been so sad since his pheasant was stolen that I have decided to locate some new birds for him to stuff.

As his attention span is fairly short, we are looking for small dead birds like sparrows, tuis etc. Our plan is to stuff a whole lot of them and hang them from the ceiling like a museum that sells booze.

So, if you find a freshly dead bird, bring it in and we will swap it for a pint of lovely Bodgie Beer. The caveat here is that if I suspect you are killing birds to trade for beer you will not get your pint, a bird holocaust is the last thing I need to get involved with.