This will hurt me...

As I'm tidying up my back catalogue of photos, here's one from way back in the new year period of Henry and Jen ry riding the rails!

Shell sorting on Clifton Beach, January 2010. Here's one from way back in Summer, when we were forever at the beach. Remember the shells yesterday, here they are being sorted by the gang... In Childhood , by Kimiko Hahn things don't die or remain damaged but return: stumps grow back hands, a head reconnects to a neck, a whole corpse rises blushing and newly elastic. Later this vision is not True: the grandmother remains dead not hibernating in a wolf's belly. Or the blue parakeet does not return from the little grave in the fern garden though one may wake in the morning thinking mother's call is the bird. Or maybe the bird is with grandmother inside light. Or grandmother was the bird and is now the dog gnawing on the chair leg. Where do the gone things go when the child is old enough to walk herself to school, her playmates already pumping so high the swing hiccups?

This little portrait was taken a couple of months ago. It interests me, as the little bloke has pretty much lost most of the chubbiness in his cheeks and arms. He's slowly morphing into a lean, mean killing machine .

Who left these shells here? Clifton Beach, January 2010 . Yesterday I had occasion to neaten the hair, have a shave and dust off the suit (no, it wasn't a court date). Anyway, I noticed the difference in people's responses to you when you're all professional-like. Not least of which was the verbal abuse you get from people being arrested. I never get verbal abuse from people getting arrested when I'm in normal clothes.

Windows everywhere... BEWARE .

Two blokes having a look under the bonnet. Salamanca, May 2010. Sorry I'm late but I'm busy, so will be brief. Theme Thursday ? Bugger! WHITE? WHITE is one of those words that doesn't say much, but kind of says everything. For most people, the opposite of WHITE is BLACK. For just as many, the absence of BLACK is WHITE. It seems that BLACK somehow sullies WHITE. Conversely, WHITE somehow enriches and improves BLACK. WHITE makes BLACK a little less menacing. That seems stupid to me. WHITE is WHITE, BLACK IS BLACK and BLACK is WHITE and WHITE is BLACK.

Play dough is always far better outside than in . Very salty, too.

Late Autumn out in front of Parliament Lawns. May 2010 Now that it is Winter I am missing the morning's Autumn light. It makes me glum, gloomy, melancholy, miserable, disconsolate and even a little bit discombobulated. It's a good thing that large and loud machinery sparks me up! Leaves in the gutter can be a bugger. May 2010.

Another day, another crab-hunting expedition...

Alternate slogan: " If the Kaiser can't kill 'em, we sure as hell will! "

The shadows of Ez and I pose for a self-portrait in front of the alpine and subalpine vegetation on Mount Wellington. May 2010. Mount Wellington is a lovely place. At the top, anyone there is subject to ice-laden storm winds, high rainfall and low winter temperatures, even if snow seldom lies for more than a few days. Thus, it isn't surprising that such an environment supports many species not found much in the world. Many of the species that you'll find up there belong to the Antarctic Gondwanan association. I’m not sure if there is a fee for membership, but that association is one in which our plants share a common ancestry with plants from New Zealand and South America from their time together in the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana. As you can see from the picture, the topography does provide some shelter, drainage is good and soil can accumulate, alpine vegetation is dominated by heath and shrubberies in which woody plants prevail. Many of these, such as scoparia, provid...

Poor little bugger, already in hand-me-downs... He never even had a chance.

Mucking out the mess at The Ball and Chain on a Monday morning. May, 2010. Their cleaning out the front steps of the restaurant and I have again returned to a meme to see me through the day; this time, a bibliographic theme... Do you snack while reading? I do read outside while eating on my lunch break. I don't eat nibblies while reading at other times, however. What is your favourite drink while reading? Coffee. Or orange juice. Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you? I have been known to mark pertinent points in non-fiction books that I own, but rarely fiction. I've been relying on the public library at the moment, so no messing with them! How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book open flat? Bookmarks of differing rectangular sizes. Fiction, non-fiction or both? For a long time I didn't read a lot of fiction. That has changed for the past three or so years. At the moment I'm reading maybe 9...

Continuing our mountain climbing series, here Henry explains to Ezra his ideal Schwangerschaftverhütungsmittel : snow down the undies!

Late afternoon over the Yarra River. Melbourne, April 2010. It's taken me a while to post some of the photos that I took on a quick jaunt to Melbourne back in April. I was fortunate that what was a foggy and overcast morning turned into a sunny day, enabling me to snap off a few shots of the city before heading back to the airport. This of course is an easy segue into today's potentially explosive and controversial Sunday Top Five, My Top Five Reasons Why Melbourne Is Better Than Sydney ! 5: They play proper football there. 4: By and large - Collingwood supporters/Jeff Kennett aside - Melbournians are friendlier than their uppity counterparts in Sydney. 3: Melbourne is easier to get around. The grid layout helps, but Sydney's suburban insularity and shoddy public transport (coupled with supremely unhelpful locals) doesn't help. 2: The lazy reliance on the harbour, an impressive bridge and a dingy opera house that can't actually accommodate large-scale opera and b...