This will hurt me...

Sunshine on my shoulder in my eyes makes me happy kind of annoys me.

Two little boats. Long Beach, Sandy Bay. February 2013. Today's Sunday Top Five is a very special one. Yes, it is Events That You Can Only Celebrate In May! May 7: C'mon . Don't make me say it ... May 9: National Lost Sock Memorial Day May 10: Clean Up Your Room Day May 29: End Of Middle Ages Day May 30: My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It Day

Not quite ideal stone-skipping technique...

You might have seen this somewhere before... The Derwent Estuary, looking over to Tranmere and beyond. July 2012. Theme Thursday ? Stormy, eh? Looks okay to me...

Handsome Henry hints at harmonious habiliment. He has his hypnopompic hibernation planned.

Henry's feet. Long Beach, Sandy Bay. August 2012. This week I'm introducing a new rating system AND limiting myself to one sentence. Vlad , by Carlos Fuentes: Dracula comes to Mexico City. Slight, but quite well done. B- Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman: The great Soviet novel. Immense. A+ They're a Weird Mob by Nino Culotta (John O'Grady): Aged well. Remains very funny. B

Handsome Henry harpoons harmless harlot's hearts!

Oh Henry, what big EYES you have...

Only love can break your heart.

Rock, as viewed from above. Long Beach, Sandy Bay. April 2012. For today's Sunday Top Five I thought that I'd visit the subject of orations. Yes, today I tackle My Top Five Six Favourite Speeches From History! 399 BCE: The Apology of Socrates , Plato's version of the speech given by Socrates, who was defending himself against charges of corrupting the young, refusing to worship the gods, and creating new deities. 1851: Ain't I A Woman? , delivered by abolitionist Sojourner Truth at a Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio. 1933: The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself , from the first inaugural address of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the heart of the Great Depression. 1949: The Light on the Hill by Australia Prime Minister Ben Chifley, paying tribute to the country's labour movement. 1956: On the Personality Cult and its Consequences by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, critical of the regime of Stalin. Also known as the "Secret Speech...

Ezra ponders the nature of "being" and nothingness. Either a thing is (or at least was ) or a thing isn't (or at least wasn't ). Can a thing ever be a not or a wasn't ? More importantly, can the answer be found in this estuary?

Ez does his best impression of a giraffe.

All right. Out the pontoon. Fifty push-ups. Out to the marker and back to the pontoon. Twenty-five push ups. Over to the eastern shore. A two kilometre beach run. Back to the pontoon. Fifty push ups. Back to shore. ... Now that we have done the warm up...

They aren't shy when it comes to lil' folk. Especially when there are adventures to be had...

Birds on a pontoon, Tranmere in the background. Long Beach, Sandy Bay. June 2011. Two very different books this week. First, Love and Death on Long Island by Gilbert Adair centres on the development of an obsession that in many respects greatly resembles Death in Venice (which I only read for the first time earlier this year ). There’s no doubt that the allusions to Thomas Mann’s classic text are quite deliberate. Like Death in Venice , the story concerns an aging, widowed and renowned ‘high art’ British novelist/academic with classical tastes who is somewhat out of step with the modern world. By a chance of fate, he encounters the figure of a C-Grade teen Hollywood heartthrob. Instantly enraptured by the ‘innocent’ beauty of the lad, and quickly becomes obsessed with the young actor. The concepts that have driven our narrator's life - logic and reason - are ultimately set against a concept that he has up to this point only ever really known in a philosophical sense: passion. Th...

Stand into the wind girls! Long Beach, Sandy Bay. June 2011. A very special Sunday Top Five today, The Top Five Individually-Viewed Blog Posts On This Will Hurt Me Throughout The Long And Storied History Of The Production ! Vile, Racist Ad! A big blue sky and a Drabble too! Animals in sweaters! Badly drawn tigers! Soviet Russia Henry!

Donger in the estuary. The view across to Tranmere from Sandy Bay. May 2011. Another big day out of the office today, but I’d really rather been marooned out on this here dingy with a warm coat, a thermos, a good book or two and something tasty to eat. I figure that you’d get a bit of peace and quiet, and while the southerly blusters can get mighty cold, it really is a small price to pay for a bit of space far from the madding crowd… Oh to be marooned on the donger with a good book and a plate of sandwiches. The view across to Tranmere from Sandy Bay. May 2011.