This will hurt me...

Late afternoon. Looking north from Lindisfarne. June 2013. Alas, stealing again from Sunday Stealing. Have and Q and A: The Unlucky 13 Meme 1. On average, how long does it take you to get ready for work/ school/ a day or night out? Three minutes. 2. If you could ask your favourite author one question about the book(s) they wrote, what would it be? I'm never that keen to spoil the mystique and step inside the sausage factory. I would be keen to ask Antony Beevor for some tales about working in the Russian archives. 3. What do you think is the hardest thing about growing up? Ensuring that you do the right thing. 4. Who would you rather switch places with for a day: your favourite celebrity, or your favourite fictional character? I'm not in the slightest bit interested in celebrity. Wouldn't it be more interesting to step in (I dunno) Superman or Iron Man's shoes than some neurotic actor with attachment issues? 5. Who would you rather have point out a...

Jen and Ez await the arrival of the surf vampires...

Sunset over Bass Strait. Boat Harbour, Tasmania's North West Coast. April 2013. The Big Knockover and Other Stories , Dashiell Hammett: A collection of ten noir stories from the 1920s and 1930s. Uneven, but when he hits, he hits for the fences. C+ . England Made Me , Graham Greene: An early Greene 'entertainment'. A well constructed little morality tale set amongst the world of international finance and based in 1930s Stockholm. C+ .

Henry and Ezra do their very best impersonation of two shags on a very small rock.

Can you believe it? He's smiling in a photo!

Sunset, and the boys are thinking about ice cream. Boat Harbour Beach, Boat Harbour. April 2013. As you know, the Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (and RSS feeds.) 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... The Do’s and Don’ts of Photography The Strange Beauty of Salt Mines Hitler's Words Into Stone: Can architecture itself be fascist? 7 billion people on 1 page A .gif of a cat in a shark costume on a Roomba chasing a duckling Wonderful, horrible children's toys based on children's drawings Shady Characters: The secret life of punctuation Vienna, 1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in the same place A Point of View: Science, magic, and madness Russian volcanoes! 'Don't Think of Ugly People': How Parenting Advice Has Changed in the past hundred or so...

The view from the back door. Geilston Bay. March 2013. Theme Thursday and the SHAPES that come to mind all, for some reason, look like flames. It gets a little warmer. Geilston Bay. March 2013. Yes, SHAPES like that above. That was the view from the backyard yesterday afternoon. Getting in the washing while watching the flames whipping up behind the house is an interesting thing. Night-time. Geilston Bay. March 2013.

The real end of summer. Hobart as seen from Little Howrah Beach. March 2012. People who find breastfeeding offensive are idiots. Hope is the thing... , Emily Dickinson Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

The sun retreats behind Mount Wellington. Howrah Beach, March 2012. Sunday Top Five, and in response to the frightfully awful 'holiday' that is Easter Saturday, I present to you My Top Five Holidays That You Should Be Embracing This April Because They Are All Far Far Superior To The Nonsense That Is Easter Saturday! April 7: International Pillow Fight Day . Remember, this is International , so if you happen to see a foreigner, get the bastard! Quick bonus tip, a handy brick inserted into the pillow case gives you that little bit of extra power. April 12: Drop Everything and Read Day . What are you waiting for, get yourself a book and READ ! April 14: National Reach as High as You Can Day . A about setting and celebrating realistic goals. This is something that I can get behind... April 26: Hug an Australian Day . I know a couple of Australians who I might be hugging this day... April 27: Morse Code Day : .-. .. --. .... - --..-- / ... --- / -.-- --- ..- / .... .- ...- . / ... ....

He's a god now...

Watery Wednesday and I have opted for an afternoon delight ! Because, you know, my motto has always been ‘when it is right, it is right’. Why wait until the middle of a cold, dark night when everything is a little clearer in the light of day? And you know that the night is always going to be there any way. Yes, most of my day-to-day decisions are delegated to the Starland Vocal Band.

Watery Wednesday again and I revisit a pleasant swim that Henry and I had at Little Howrah Beach a few weeks back. Yes, the water was a bit nippy and a reasonably heavy cloak of smoke - from the fires raging the in Valley of Love - hung in the air, but events conspired for some halfway decent photographs...

The Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (as well as a lot of bacon.) 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... High in the mountains of Bulgaria some people discovered something of their Communist past... I really like these videos of people falling over ... A short, simple summary of the psychological research on misinformation, The Debunking Handbook is intended as a guide for anyone who encounters misinformation... Isn't it ironic, don't you think? Can Germany Help Central Europe Confront Its Dark Past? New evidence is emerging that confirms what we've known for a while now: boys and girls behave differently , and parenting practices should vary depending on the gender of the child... Ed Cowan has written a nice little piece on what exactly it feels like to play Test cricket...

Two stray waifs fleeing apocalypse.

Sitting on the dock of the bay. Geilston Bay, October 2011. Theme Thursday already? TREASURE is - in my opinion - much like 'beauty': very much in the eye of the beholder. I have railed before [and before and before and before ] against the conflation of stuff with worth . A case in point: while a small allotrope of carbon in which the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of a face-centered cubic crystal structure may well have a market value of X dollars/ rand/ euros/ baht/ bolívars/ dồngs/ kepings etc etc etc, it does not particularly appeal to me! [Well, the market value appeals in a fiscal sense; but that is more about the potential TREASUREs that might be secured through liquefying the asset. In and of itself, the tightly-packed allotrope of carbon atoms is neither here nor there.] Silence is TREASURE. An intense blue sky on a crisp Spring morning is TREASURE. A kiss and a cuddle when one gets home is TREASURE. The new Grand Theft Auto is TREASURE. Sitting at the...

Henry and Ezra re-enact the Battle of Rorke's Drift down on a dirt pile in Geilston Bay. We employed an assortment of bumblebees, grasshoppers and beetles in the role of the Zulu attackers. A wallaby played Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande. As ever, it was Victoria Crosses all round when the dust cleared!

Shoulders back Henry! Head up! Goodness gracious child, you walk like a peasant!

Late-afternoon in Bellerive is a lovely way to end the day. April, 2010. Three for the price of one today, and the bonus of a panorama! Bellerive , in the original French, means something like 'beautiful river bank' or 'beautiful coastline'. Any readers care to confirm or correct?

The sky as seen through the trees down in Salamanca last Thursday. Have you even had one of those mornings that kicks you in the face about, oh, a dozen times reminding you just how much it is that you hate about your job. Fair enough your face dulls to the kicks over the week, but by christ they hurt on a Monday morning!

Today's feature photo was taken yesterday in the early evening. I ended work slightly later than the norm, and made my way due north, towards a birthday do thrown in honour of one Master William Hunt, a keen young musician that I happen to know. Worth noting perhaps, his birthday song is "Bump N' Grind" by one R. Kelly (one hopes he doesn't pick up Mr Kelly's filthy habits ). Nice try Will, but as fun and bumping and grinding may be, it falls some way short of Hotel California! ANYWAY. The sun was setting, the moon already high and I'm running a little late. But presented to me was an opportunity to snare a halfway decent shot (for once). Yet I knew that the camera's batteries were low, very low . Could I possibly be audacious enough to try? What about the filthy graffiti that I would be bound to find on my journey? But the light is going and the colours are bleeding from the sky quickly. So I tell myself I must take this chance, I have a very import...