This will hurt me...

From the tail end of the cricket season, Henry and Ezra seem bemused by this thing called 20Twenty.

Or is it Twenty20?

TwentyTwenty?

2020?

The grand old dame™ at night. May 2010.

Poor old 10 Murray. Every cold winter's evening she awaits her fate...

Trendy open planned coffee shops and a wide screen television.

Again, Ez exhibits a 1970s vibe with the fat love beads and amber autumn light.

Zipping about Fredrick Henry Bay. March 2010.

Sunday Top Five, you say?

How about Five Interesting Battles For The Armchair Military Historian!

The Brusilov Offensive: Two million casualties and losses? And no-one's heard of it. Madness! Literally. Lenin should thank Brusilov.

Battle of Suomussalmi: In the dead of Winter, eleven thousand Finns embarrass fifty thousand Soviet troops.

The Battle of Stalingrad: You might have heard of this. Hitler comes a cropper on the Volga.

Third Battle of Ypres: Latterly this has become known as Passchendaele, but at the time it was the final instalment of the Ypres series, and a good example of why mud is not a friend of soldiers. The before and after shots of the town tell some of the tale.

Battle of Hydaspes: C'mon, elephants! An army of Greeks Macedonians stick it to 'em up their the Khyber Pass! A big win for the Greek lad, but it was to be his last...

As I'm tidying up my back catalogue of photos, here's one from way back in the new year period of Henry and Jenry 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, provide some rather fabulous displays of colour.