This will hurt me...

All in all it’s just another brick in the wall. A wall, Salamanca Square, Hobart. February 2011. Yet MORE books... First is Letters from America is a compilation of essays drawn from Alistair Cooke’s weekly 15-minute radio series that ran for 2,869 shows from 24 March 1946, to 20 February 2004. Each ‘arrangement’ was presented by Alistair Cooke to a British audience, each week speaking of a topical issue in the USA, often tying together different strands of observation and anecdote. As such, this collection is a remarkable snapshot of ‘history in the present’. Cooke was a master at this primarily because he had a magnificent grasp of history. Each essay is remarkable in his ability to contextualise what he sees, drawing upon both a great knowledge of history, and a seemingly endless amount of casual contact with top politicians, authors and artists throughout his life. Moreover, despite the fact that each chapter was written for radio, they read wonderfully well. The art of constructi...

As my wife can attest, keeping a three-and-a-half-year-old and a two-year-old in one place at the same time can be a challenge. One solution: seek out large tracts of land.

Henry, Ezra and Jen checking out a wallaby. April 2010. It was delicious. It's Theme Thursday again, and this week another challenging theme: PET . It's particularly taxing as we don’t have any PETs in our house. There is simply no room, in both a physical as well as a metaphysical sense. You see, we have small children instead. Childless couples I know often compare PET ownership to child ownership. Most of them - if not quite equating the relationship - sail very close to the wind in that regard. Having owned a few PETs in my time, and now having racked up a few years of being punished blessed by children; I feel more than certain that the fissure between PET and child is immense. This got me thinking further. What about the advantages and disadvantages of a PET versus a child? Which is better? Yesterday evening, and well into the night, Jen and I tagged teamed off with our two children: her with a repetitively vomiting Henry and I with an intermittently wailing Ezra (I...

Henry, hard at work trying to crack the Da Vinci code. Quick tip Henry, it was Judas .

Here is Captain Charisma deep in thought the other day. Henry is my first born, and as such, has rightful claim to the mantle of my favourite oldest son . Ezra - who some of you may remember from previous posts - is my favourite youngest son . Yes, I have enough love in my heart for two favourites.

A little under four months and look at Henry show off that neck strength. Magnificent ! There is something a little odd about having children about the place, if anyone had of bragged to me about one's ability to lift their head, count to three or sleep through the night, I'd have repeated my [admittedly in poor taste] response to talk of the 'Special Olympics': "what's so special about it? I can do all of those things". Now though, it's not so uncommon to find me boasting about a particularly impressive burp, or wax lyrical about another human being informing me that they've done a poo. It's like a strange sort of brain damage, and I'm not sure if it a wholly good or bad thing.

There are a number of people that I had in mind to sit behind that desk, but chickened out and went with 'generic guy that kind of looks like Tom Cruise'. Similarly, I couldn't get the female character there that I had in mind (who herself nominated Rocky Dennis for the role), so went with Jeanne Garofolo instead. At three episodes, this comic strip gig is already two more than I had envisaged.

I figure that today I got the most authentic Father's Day gift possible. Real life, of course, is not generally the stuff of toilet paper commercials or Hallmark cards; thus it is only appropriate that this Father's day has entailed being kept up for much of the night by an alternating yelling/snoring baby, who eventually wakes up the toddler at half past five in the morning. That means the great weight of lethargy on the shoulders (with concomitant short fuse), still screaming baby, and a grizzling, whiny toddler demanding to be picked up every five seconds. I did get a book, however, which was nice. I have a nice Henry photo lined up for later on.