This will hurt me...

Breakfast! The kitchen bench, Geilston Bay. August 2103. The Things They Carried , Tim O'Brien: a loose collection of vignettes centreing on a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. Some people really do hate this book, others love it. Count me with the latter. Harrowing. A . A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick , Jonathan Swift: Political satire at its best. There is a reason that this is considered part of the canon. A .

Self-portrait. At home, Geilston Bay. July 2013. Wordless Wednesday.

With all due respect to Machine Laundry Café – part coffee bar/part laundrette – the pancakes that I make are never left unfinished…

"Look dude, I'm just trying to enjoy my Vegemite on rye in peace. Enough with the paparazzo s@%t!"

Christ Almighty, Theme Thursday already?!? I haven't even had BREAKFAST! Nor have these slightly dodgy looking seagulls lurking about Franklin Square this very morning . Dudes and I had a bit of a poke about in the turf looking for the odd grub, but coming up with little more than a discarded cigarette butt. Thus, far from the Bacchanalian feast envisaged, we are left looking at a mess on a public lawn with an empty belly. The problem, you see, is that seagulls (love 'em as I do), are well and truly pococurante . As I'm sure you know, the pococurante have a tendency to perendinate . Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae are without doubt perendinacious pococurantes ! BREAKFAST!

I will wager that these two fellows have told their wives: "Love, I need some exercise. It's not good enough that we go about living our empty, sedentary lives, eating rubbish, drinking too much wine and generally carrying on like teenagers. No, things are going to change ! That's why I've invested in these top of the range high tech, carbon fibred sneakers! They way I look at it, the three hundred bucks I paid is an investment ." Then they opt to powerwalk down to the local greasy spoon and feast on a fry up. BAH!

A fresh roll liberally spread with butter, with a cold bratwurst sausage and Camembert on the final day of its use by date. GLORIOUS! Even better, the Camembert was one third of its usual price because of the use by! Food tastes so much better when you get it on the cheap.

A shot of everyday life from me today. Here is the cold rack of the Salamanca Fruit Market just down the road from where I work. Each morning I usually get a tub of Tamar Valley yogurt (from the lovely North West of the state, where all the best things come from). This and a couple of pears generally get me through the morning. It generally works. For those interested, I went with honey today. I like to mix the flavours up a bit, but if my hand is forced, I think that mango is my favorite. As this current project that I am working on is winding up at the end of the month, I applied for a new job today. We'll see how it goes. [If anyone from Tamar Valley yogurt would like to send me a free crate of yogurt, I would happily accept!)

The topic for today's first post came to me while preparing Henry’s breakfast this morning (and helping him eat it), I got to thinking about a topic that has crossed my mind on other accessions in the past, and has yet to be satisfactorily resolved. What do people feed their kiddies for breakfast in other cultures? Now, Henry probably has the stereotypical Australian breakfast: Two Weet-bix (albeit with rice milk); Toast liberally smeared with Vegemite; Water; A little bit of the raspberry cake that I made yesterday. This was a reward for being a good boy this morning, and not standard practice. I might be wrong, but I have in my mind convoluted ideas about French kiddies gnawing croissants and fancy pastries; Sami kiddies tearing at dried reindeer; Mexican kiddies scoffing breakfast burritos; German kiddies nibbling on cold meats and boiled eggs; Inuit kiddies gulping down seal; Indian kiddies eating daal and naan; Kenyan kiddies chowing down on some sort of maize porridge; Swed...