This will hurt me...

That slide is a whole lot of red.

I found myself stuck on a traffic island, drivers to the left of me, cyclists to the right, when all of a sudden a bus comes hurtling straight at me and all I had to protect myself was this flimsy sign! Today's instalment of Saturday Festival of *someone else's* Poetry features an oldie, but a goodie. Love and Hate , by Ogden Nash Love is a word That is constantly heard Hate is a word that is not Love, I am told Is more precious than gold Love, I have heard Is hot But hate is the verb That to me is superb And love, just a drug On the mart For any kiddie from school Can love like a fool But hating, my boy Is an art

Ezra did his bit for the world today, with two vaccinations - chicken pox and swine flu - to give YOU [and me and Henry and Jen and your kids and their kids and their kids etc etc] safety from a number of preventable, but potentially deadly, diseases. Jen and I joined him in the fight against tetanus and whooping cough (plus swine flu); and Henry (a long supported of vaccination) went with the swine flu on his own. If the little grinning bloke above can do it, you can too! [I have spoken about this before , of course ...]

Summer in Tasmania means festivals. More specifically, summer in Tasmania means f art festivals. Of course, I am a loather lover of the arts. My problem, however, is that the current MONA FOMA - MONA Festival of Music and Art , which seems to have centred itself in Hobart's Salamanca district, has meant an array of LOUD art right outside my office window. The past two weeks has seen a [ahem] sandpit with a piano rigged up to four amplifiers in it sat literally metres away from my desk. The "art" [ahem] involves members of the public (and their children), banging on said piano throughout the day. Compounding my misery, there is a looped track consisting of rising and falling harmonies that appears designed to infiltrate ones head with the sole purpose of engendering an intense desire to extricate one's brain with a teaspoon. Art indeed!

Sometimes the process of lining kids up for a photograph can be a more interesting photograph of some kids lined up.

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.

Last night we saw Henry pondering in the dunes at Clifton Beach, today is Ezra sizing up his mother at Fossil Bluff in Wynyard. In the background there you can see Table Cape, which is, geologically speaking [ahem] a large volcanic plug .

Occasionally I point the camera away from small children and try my hand at artsy fartsy photographs. I took the opportunity to snap a few moody black and whites (with dirt magnets in tow, of course) at the railyards at the Don River Railway. I reckon that the top one has a Dorothea Lange-vibe about it. Whaddaya reckon?

Sometimes, all a bloke needs is a vast expanse of beach, some pebbles and shells, and a bit of time to compose his thoughts. Here is Henry at Clifton Beach doing just that...

How disappointed we all were when we made out way under the eastern end of the Tasman Bridge and discovered that there was not a troll in sight! That said, in my general working week, I am certain that at least seven percent of those I am in contact with have some troll ancestry somewhere in their bloodlines...

"For my next trick, I shall descend the slide... HEAD FIRST !"

I am so very, very busy today, so my apologies for the delay. This photo was taken at Fossil Bluff in Wynyard, one of the most important geological monuments of Tasmania. East and west of the beach and at intervals for many kilometres to the east is a low flat gray rock known as the Wynyard Tillite, which is about 280 million years old and having been formed in the age of glaciations while Australia was part of the super continent called Gondwana. The glaciers flowed from the south towards the north and when they were melting and reached areas of depression they slowed down, and dropped the rocks they were carrying. Over time, mud covered the rocks, which became a mudstone conglomerate. You can find granites, cherts, quartz, jaspers and agates in the tillite, and on the beach as small pebbles. Just behind where I took this photo is a sandstone Bluff, with layers of fossils encased in the stone. You can see the sandstone here . This Bluff was beneath the sea in the Oligocene geological ...

Two hunks for the price of one. I'm wondering why all those fashion mags haven't rung up looking for cover models. Perhaps they're too scared?

Here you can see the world Famous [ you're reading about it, ain't ya?] Japanese Garden at the Royal Hobart Botanical Gardens. Today's Sunday Top Five encompasses other, less well known gardens: 5: the Western Samoan Garden (but you can't see it wearing those shoes) 4: the upper Angolan Garden (machetes in dirt) 3: the lower eastern Lichtenstein Garden (stamps?) 2: the F.Y.R.O.M. Garden (figure it out) 1: the People's Republic of Democratic Change in the Former Republic of Zaire Garden.