This will hurt me...

No smoke on the water. The River Derwent, Sandy Bay. August 2012. Two books this week. First up, The Death of Grass by John Christopher. This is a neat little post-apocalyptic novel that centres around the human response to a virus that kills off all forms of grass. While the swiftness with which society reverts to savagery strikes me as perhaps a little off, there is great power in the descriptions of man's culpability for the disaster. Indeed, this one is a very prescient book. Recommended. Second up is The Dying Animal by Philip Roth. For a book that is ultimately about sex, it wears out its welcome reasonably quickly. A couple of imaginative paragraphs aside - Roth can write, after all - you can't help but think to yourself, 'get over it, you filthy old bugger!' Only for the keen.

Thar be an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Cremorne Beach, Cremorne. June 2011. Strength through unity . Strength through duty . Strength through love . Strength through hope . Strength through logic . Strength through weakness . Strength through faith . Strength through fear . Strength through joy . Strength through muscle . Pick one...

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...

Another day, another shot of the surface of the water. Yes, it is the Derwent River again! In my world, it seems that the terrible twos have mutated into the wretched threes early, and we have one junior Idi Amin - only with less concern for others - on our hands. It makes for a pleasant day. I suppose that it could be worse, he could be Roman Polanski. If he were Roman, however, at least we could on Hollywood to stand by him ! It's a good thing that Polanski only raped a young girl, and not anything to do with dogs . The public's forgiveness has its limits, you know!

Okay, okay, settle down. It's another "surface of the water" shot. I can't help it that I like them . This one I'll call The Curse of Transcendental idealism or, Wer bin ich? . I don't like the label neo-Kantian . I am far more comfortable proclaiming myself a neo-Fichterian . I proudly proclaim that that self-consciousness is a social phenomenon, and that every subject's self-awareness is predicated on the existence of other rational subjects! Christ, I have to stop reading Kundera on the bus, it brings up all sorts of stuff I thought long buried...

High winds have a tendency to make the surface of the water do unexpected things. I promise that your regular service will return as normal from here.