This will hurt me...

Same beach, different day. Yeah, we like this beach. The dunes can be fun to climb, but the tiger snakes can be a real downer...

Jen and Hen tackle the dunes. Calverts Beach, South Arm Peninsula. January 2012. One day I would like to live right on the beach. Global warming or no global warming! I like a good short poem that strikes, makes its point, and struts away. Gwendolyn Brooks manages that here. We Real Cool , Gwendolyn Brooks We real cool. We Left School. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

The colour of the day is... BLUE.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. And my wife. Alexandra Battery, Sandy Bay. January 2012. Friday Book Club sees me with just the two books finished this week, but what a two! First up is The Painter of Signs a novel from 1976 by Indian author R. K. Narayan. This one is a lovely little book that follows the rather unusual courtship of a proud sign painter in an ordinary Indian town and Daisy, a career-oriented feminist fanatical in her mission to make family planning available to all of India. Narayan has a keen sense of capturing the subtitles of human relationships and the rhythms and sounds of the city, the taste and smells of food, the colour and movement of the crowds. It’s clear that the city is growing and changing as the locals try to find some personal purpose within the juggernaut of “progress.” Torn between the traditional and the modern, the ‘hero’ of the tale represents the Indian everyman in a nation on the cusp of something far greater than the individual. This i...

Love at first sight!

Behold... SCIENCE . The kitchen, Geilston Bay. January 2012. Theme Thursday again and I am treating you to a unique VIEW of science in action ! In my VIEW Henry just hadn’t been pulling his weight in 2011 bread-wise. so Satan Claws and I had a little pow-wow and decided that the liberating force of science could be the secret to unlocking his money-earning potential. The big man in red did his part and on Christmas morn, Henry (as per yesterday evening’s post) found himself the lucky owner of this science kit ! Science , you see, is where it is at in 2012. You might think that it is little more than a systematic endeavour that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the corporeal universe. Well, that would depend on your VIEW. In 2012, science is big bucks. Science means shed weight™ , get fitter© , run faster® , stay harder™ and look younger® . Science is a business. A very profitable business. The experiment that Henry and I a...

Christmas morning and Santa leaves a dinosaur ?!?! What would Jesus do?

A kelp forest. Calvert's Beach, South Arm Peninsula. January 2012. A merry Watery Wednesday to all on this cold and grey Summer morning in Tasmania! In order to avoid the dismal truth that what should be the sunniest season is looking like a damp squib today, today's photograph harkens back to a week or so ago and a beautiful morning of a balmy 22°C - at 8am - as we rounded the cliffs at Goat Bluff.

Ez does his best impression of a giraffe.

Tuesday Q and A and I am back to stealing questions from Sunday Stealing . This week I am stealing The Never Ending Meme, Part One . 1. Song that always makes you sad? R.E.M.’s Try Not To Breathe . 2. Last thing you bought? A wheelbarrow. Unassembled. 3. Last person you argued with? Ezra. He’s a particularly argumentative chap. 4. Do you put butter before putting the peanut butter on? I’d shoot myself in the head before putting peanut butter on. 5. One of your stuffed animals’ names as a kid? I honestly can’t remember. This saddens me. 6. Did you ever at one time own a Barenaked Ladies CD? Barenaked Ladies? They had a song in Shrek , didn’t they? If they did, that’s about all the Barenaked Ladies facts I have. If they didn’t, I know even less about the Barenaked Ladies than I thought. If you’re talking about bare-naked ladies, I might get interested… 7. Favourite day of the week? Monday. 8. Favourite sundae topping? Fresh raspberries. 9. Did you take piano lessons? No I did not take ...

He does enjoy a scoot, this bloke.

Ezra tempts fate. Bellerive Wharf, Bellerive. January 2012. The Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (and daggering.) The following are some things that I've had a look at in the last week. I call this: a Compendium of Click-throughs for Monday Morning ... YouTube is taking over the world! Don't say "man yoghurt" in my house... Anti-establishment Berlin football club sells its soul [to its fans]... Traps shut, kiddies! You've never had it so good ...

It's like Grand Central Station down in Lindisfarne Village on a Sunday Morning....

Where she leads nobody knows. Mayfair Plaza Car Park, Sandy Bay. January 2012. Sunday means Sunday Top Five, which means cobbling together some kind of list. Hmmmm. I've got it! The Top Five Bowlers I've Seen Play Cricket To Be In My Side I Was Picking A Squad To Play A Test Against A Team Of Robots Programmed To Play Cricket Really Very Well! [In Batting Order.] Richard Hadlee Imran Khan Shane Warne Malcolm Marshall Curtley Ambrose Just missing the cut were Joel Garner, Glen McGrath, Wasim Akram, Michael Holding and Dennis Lillee. Backup spinners included Anil Kumble, Saqlain Mushtaq, Daniel Vettori and the bolter in Funky Miller. I can't bring myself to include Harbijhan Singh and Muttiah Muralitharan has been deemed ineligible. This line up gives the batting some depth, and whenever you have Imran as your workhorse, you know you've got a good attack.