This will hurt me...

Ducks on the move. Geilston Bay, September 2018. Hi there, long time no post! Some questions... 1. When was the last time you tried something new? I try to try something new every day! I’m trying a new vegan recipe just today. 2. Who do you sometimes compare yourself to? I try not to compare myself with anyone. I look to others for ideas, advice or inspiration, not points of comparison. 3. What’s the most sensible thing you’ve ever heard someone say? “Stop.” 4. What gets you excited about life? The possibilities… 5. What life lesson did you learn the hard way? Be careful about who you can rely on. 6. What do you wish you spent more time doing five years ago? Running and cycling. 7. Do you ask enough questions, or do you settle for what you know? I never stop with the questions! 8. What’s a belief that you hold with which many people disagree? That the signified and signifier are purely psychological, and that gett...

Inspired by Sunday Stealing , I'm continuing the new year festivities with a list of things I'm trying in 2016! A bad habit I'm going to break is not stretching enough before bedtime. A new skill I'd like to learn is cutting my own hair. A person I'd like to be more like is Primo Levi. Even when life was at its very nadir, and he was less than a slave in Auschwitz, he could see the power that each and every individual retained: the power to refuse our consent. A good deed I'm going to do is most likely one done without mentioning it. A place I'd like to visit is the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove in Kyoto. A book I'd like to read is Julian Barnes’ latest novel, The Noise of Time . A letter I'm going to write is going to be at least 145 pages long. A new food I'd like to try is a proper tom yum goong. I'm going to do better at cooking stir fry.

Boys in a ball. A Taste of the Huon, Ranelagh. March 2014. 1.] What was your favourite age? Twenty was good. 2.] Do you miss someone right now? Not particularly. 3.] What can you see North West to you? Rabbits. 4.] Do you like bowling? No. 5.] Can you pronounce Italian words? Non molto bene . 6.] Do you prefer black or beige coloured jackets? What an odd question. I like green jackets. 7.] Do you own a hoodie? I own a few. 8.] Do you like roasting marshmallows on a bonfire? I used to. 9.] Do you like cheesy puffs? Are they like Cheetos? I like Cheetos? 10.] What's your name without vowels? Krs. 11.] How many layers of clothing are you wearing? One very thin layer. 12.] When was the last time you got a take away? What did you have? Actual take away ‘take away’? I can’t remember. I’m sure that it involved chips. 13.] If you could climb any mountain or range which would you choose? That’s a good question. A long walk along the Carpath...

Everywhere I look, seagulls! Geilston Bay, October 2011. Another day, another Q and A! Today this is the Questions Galore Meme, Part 2 ... 21. What was the last song you listened to that wasn’t sung in English? If Laura Branigan's Ti Amo doesn't count, probably the '80s Soviet beat combo Кино ('Kino') doing Группа крови ( Blood Type ). 22. Do you let meme authors know when you hate their memes? No. Why? I just wouldn't do it. 23. What TV show would you like to be on? Something that pays well for very little. 24. What was the last video game you played? Madden NFL 2011 on the PSP. 25. Have you ever been in a musical? If yes, do tell. Alas, I have nothing to tell. 26. Do you follow your own style or everyone else’s? I have my own indomitable style. 27. What’s the last store you bought from? Coles. 28. In retrospect, have you ever let a person use you a lot? That has never been a trait of mine. Unless you count children. If you do, all the time. 29. What are you ...

As Australian Pied Cormorant lurking somewhere between Frederick Henry Bay and Storm Bay one Spring morning. Clifton Beach, September 2010. The pain from my tooth means that you get a meme. A meme All about Me! What time did you wake up this morning? 6:07 am. What do you like most about yourself? An acute sense of loyalty and duty. What do you like least about yourself? My low threshold for imbeciles. Can you sing? I think so. I like to sing. Can you dance? Whether one can or can’t dance is such a subjective concept. I’m better than Elaine Benes, worse than Mikhail Baryshnikov. Do you smoke? No I don’t. I tell people off for smoking at bus stops. Do you drink? Very rarely. Can you swim? Of course I can. I live on island. I would be stuck if I couldn’t swim! Year you were born? 1977, mere days before Star Wars opens in cinemas… Favourite colour? Blue. More specifically, the darker shades of blue. Even more specifically, I like Sapphire . Sleep with or without clothes? I sleep as nak...

The ties that bind... Sullivan's Cove, May 2010. I've long held that there are only two kinds of people: people who ask questions and people who don't ask questions. Oh, and mutes. I'm not a mute and I ask questions. That's the kind of people I am.

Just combine a frosty morning, some fog settled on the river, and a gradually rising sun; and you've got yourself an interesting photo! Straight out of the tin this one. At some point, ideas for blog posts must run a little dry. In the event of this, I feel it pertinent to break the glass and turn to YOU for ideas. So come on, what can I write about? Does anyone want to set me a challenge or ask me a question? You'd be doing me a favour...

The answer blowin' in the wind , Mr Zimmerman, but where is the question? A celebratory Theme Thursday today where I eschew cheap laughs and steer clear of matters flatus and share with you a photo of a windy Salamanca summer's day. Today I advance the bold hypothesis that Mr Zimmerman may well have caterwauled that "the answer, my friend, is leaves ". Can you guess the theme yet? That's right, it's WIND . So I was thinking Zimmerman's track, and was thinking what it was all about. Some poseurs posit that the song is nothing more (or less) than a series of rhetorical questions about peace, war, and freedom. The notion that the answer "blowin' in the wind" is merely a metaphor for the supreme "unknowableness" [the Germans will have a word for this] of such questions. I beg to differ. In order, the answers are: Eight. One. Trick question, the answer is never. Approximately fifteen million. Männer werden nie frei sein, bis er erst ...

Car parks, as a general rule, incredibly ugly. If you're after symmetrical lines though, they can be a source of many photographs. I was going through an old notebook the other day and spotted a quote that I'd scribbled down no doubt three sheets to the wind that I wanted to reflect upon. The source was a - in a sad, pathetic, Hobart sense - a hipster doofus. He was arguing about being lumped in with a cohort that I assumed he identified with: "Yeah, I know those guys, and yeah, we like... we do drink with them pretty much every night of the week, but it's not like I'm part of some uni bar scene." See, for mine, nightly gatherings in the same place with the same people pretty makes you part of a scene. That said, I'm pretty confident that the closest to a "scene" that I frequent these days is a Playgroup scene. So I'm interested, are you part of any scene? Would you care to confess to the world your involvement in any "scenes" in...

Here is a typical Hobart lamp post in the middle of the day. I like the way that it sits against the sky. Which is worse, having no idea or not having any idea that you have no idea?

Here you can see the view up from Salamanca place to Davey Street. This is where the nobs can be found hob nobbing with other nobs day in day out. The past week I have been snatching moments here and there to revise the old Curriculum Vitae . Revisiting one’s CV and the all important “skills set” is always an experience that I loathe. I’m not sure whether it is the usual cringe that accompanies blowing one’s own trumpet [fnarr fnarr], or whether it is reflective of a deeper cold hard reality. However impressive the list of positions, tasks, roles, responsibilities, actions, functions, actions or achievements looks on paper, the fact of the matter is that I am unable to reconcile the present situation with the unanswerable question as to how I have managed to drift so far away from something that I would much rather be doing? Moreover, after drifting this far with the current, how on Earth does one manage to swim back upstream to get to where one might rather be when the weather looks ...

Here's a nice Sunday image of an empty jetty down on the Sandy Bay/Battery Point border. Someone was going on the other day about music that constituted a 'guilty pleasure', and then cited three or for acts that I just consider a pleasure. So, for the record, I'd like to state that I am happy to admit that I enjoy Carly Simon's Jesse very much. Moreover, I take delight in Rick Springfield's Jessie's Girl , and happen to think that Dragon are pretty good. I can't see why any such admission would bring forth embarrassment. Do you have any guilty pleasures? Or maybe you know of people that do, but for which you carry no guilt. Feel free to share.

Taken a little after Christmas, here is Henry looking bemused after I reflected upon a tale of lessons learned long ago. Here I found myself and the little bloke standing outside a licensed establishment that sometime ago had a somewhat less than wholesome reputation. I remember one incident clearly, just before closing, with only the tired and emotional flotsam and jetsam that remains after a big night . Of course, at this point flotsam is threatening to smash jetsam's head in with a bar stool over some trifle incident involving the relative merits of Ian Botham over Imran Khan. Kinky Friedman summed up Friday nights like this better than anyone else I can think of when he observed Friday night was the night most people thought they were supposed to have fun. Trouble was most people didn't know what fun was or how to have it, so things usually ended up pretty ugly. So this particular Saturday morning was the ugly child of another Friday night when this 'lady' with cut...

Some time ago I revealed my secret that I am a bit of a flag fancier. It was this covert hobby that led to question three in the series of questions that I threw out into the abyss a couple of months ago. The questions were simple: Do you have a favourite flag? Is there a flag that makes you blush at the blatancy of its fashion faux pars? Now it's time to tally the results! Well, there were no clear winners or indeed losers, just a list of favourites and not so favourites. In terms of favourites, we had a couple of people nominate the flag of the United Kingdom, the illustrious Union Jack . Other popular picks were the standards of Israel , China , Botswana , Kenya and Italy . The now-defunct Soviet flag (a favourite of mine, I will admit), also secured a vote, as did the city of Denver , Colorado. But really, like the endless parade of dull karaoke shows that grace our TV sets these days, the real action can be found in the shockers. I was glad that someone supported my embarrass...

Here we have some fine looking cockatoos grazing at the top of a hill. I wanted to get a photograph of a smaller mob of galahs, but they weren't playing ball. I think that they were playing gin, but maybe that was just the effect of the gin I'd been drinking. You might remember that all through last week I was asking some very important questions, they're still open for for answers, but I will start reflecting upon them soon, so don't miss having your say. So, whether it is your favourite accents , your ideal gang name , thumbs up or thumbs down on flags , the casting couch for the most appropriate movie star , or indeed the tastiest creature on god's green Earth, click on the link and vent your spleen.

All right settle down you lot up the back. Yes, I have blogged about this building before . For my money, it is the best example of the triumph of function over aesthetic that seemed quite common in the 1960s (tie-dyed jeans, anyone?) Yes, it's the infamous Tasmanian State Offices Building again! Like Henry to a flame, I am constantly drawn back to this quite unimpressive building. In many ways, I think that it may have something to do with my exposure to the souls that can be found in such characterless buildings. As you have probably noticed, I have been experimenting of late with a bit of black and white. I especially like it when it comes to this sort of functionalist monstrosity. When I look it this photo, it makes me think of the late-sixties, early-seventies. Of course, I wasn’t alive then, but the period to me doesn’t evoke flowers in hair, free love or going to San Francisco. No, I’m thinking more economic down-turn, energy crisis and an emerging angry disenchantment wit...