The use of history as therapy means the corruption of history as history.

It is Summer in Tasmania, and that usually means two thing: enormous cruiser liners filled with wealthy retirees kitted in gold lamé tracksuits dripping in diamonds; and rain, rain and even more rain. Take a look at these green leaves, can you tell that we're in a drought?

I attended a VIM [Very Important Meeting] today. No cake, no biscuits, no fruit. Just business, and a few thirds of baguettes packed with salad presented lovingly on a platter caked with lettuce leaves. I wish that I had the nerve to take a photograph, but that would risk sending the dogs to the door of this blog, and I'm not sure that I'd want that just yet.

You can always tell the difference between a VIM and a CAC [Casual Aggreable Chat], and it can often be found in the nibblies. One organisation that I deal with regularly cater their CACs with pizzza (an accommodating mob, they usually go a supremo and capricciosa, which allows me to be generous upon the appearance of that abomination of the pizza world: the Hawaiian).

Of course, you'll never see a pizza at a VIM. Similarly, you'll never see sausage rolls, cocktail saveloys, scones, chicko rolls, hot chips or dim sims at a VIM. You never see Tim Tams, Iced Vo-Vos, Monte Carlos or Kingstons at a VIM. VIMs are far above biscuits out of a packet.

I'll be honest with you, I've never even seen cake at a guaranteed, bona fide, fair dinkum VIM. Truth be told, I've never seen anything that I would broach eating at a VIM.

VIMs you see, are not about eating. Pissant talkfests are about cake and biscuits, bitching and moaning. That's not what VIMs are about at all. VIMs are about big wigs pow wowing with VIPs. VIMs are about interfacing. VIMs are about linkages. VIMs are about strategic partnerships between movers and shakers.

VIMs are not about ordinary people.

VIMs are about lots of cucumber, discretely tucked away in napkins on boardroom tables because you can't stuff a thousand dollar suit full of cucumis sativus. That's not what VIMs are about.

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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