This will hurt me...

Say "Roquefort"!

All of us. The living room, Geilston Bay. July 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... Re-examining ‘the Elephant Man’ : Nadja Durbach questions the extent to which Joseph Merrick, known as the Elephant Man, was exploited during his time in a Victorian ‘freakshow’, and asks if it wasn’t perhaps the medical establishment, often seen as his saviour, who really took advantage of Merrick and his condition. The industrial age is over, so why are we still punching in? Rethinking Work . Drowning mercy: why we fear the boats. Soviet-era erotic alphabet book from 1931. 5 Things Men Will Never Understand About Consoling a Woman . While the natural sciences have evolved – new fields, discoveries, methods – the social sciences have stagnated, answe...

Ezra, Jen and Hen. Oozing sincerity. Boat Harbour. April 2013. Theme Thursday . ANZAC Day. INTOXICATE. Sad but true. Beer, flags, patriotism, narrow minded bigots. All the same.

The gang's all here! Shag Bay, Geilston Bay. December 2012. Another Tuesday, another Q and A stolen from the resurrected Sunday Stealing! This week, the The Deleted Meme Who is your favourite artist (Any field)? That’s far too big a questions to do any justice to! No, I just can’t do it. Let me limit to painters, and the list includes Caillebotte, J.M.W. Turner, Korovin, Marc, Aivazovsky, Boudin, Monet, Rousseau, Klee, Pollock, Schwitters and Larionov. Off the top of my head. Describe yourself: A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. How do you feel today? Pretty good. Describe the area where you currently live. Smokey. Very very smokey.  If you could go anywhere, where would you go? Somewhere nice and quiet where everything wasn’t on fire. Your favourite form of transportation: I do like a nice boat ride. Or a train. Failing that, my feet serve me well! Your best friend is: Already married. You and your best friends are: I said, married! Wh...

Waiting for something to happen. Intercity Cycleway, Cornelian Bay. October 2012. More questions, this time Sunday Stealing's Who Are you? Part 2–The Grown Up Meme ! Would you survive in prison? I'm quite certain that I wouldn't enjoy it very much, but I am aware of the odd trick to keep up appearances and pass the time. Will you keep your last name when you get married? I already did! When you look into the past, what do you miss most? Youth! Do you feel like you’ve lived this day a hundred times before? I think I have! Do you wear your shoes in the house? Only very rarely. I'm a bare feet kind of fellow. Happiness is a ________? Delusion. If anyone came to your house on your "lazy days" what would ya'll do? Bolt the door and hide. What are you naturally good at? Soliloquising. What irritates you most on the internet? The incivility of many. What is worth the pain? Bone marrow transplants (if needed). Transplanting marrow ...

The usual suspects. Clifton Beach. April 2012. A very appropriate Theme Thursday today, as I had lined up this shot of my FAMILY well in advance. FAMILY is a funny old concept. Some people say. “you can’t choose your FAMILY” but I am not convinced of that. Lots of people seem to be choosing their FAMILY. They have a FAMILY, change their mind, then bugger off and start a new one. It’s happening all over the place! However, I have already chosen my FAMILY. All up, they are a decent, dependable lot. I’m thankful that they’re all so good looking, because it does make the hard times more bearable. In an approach that we should have taken with rabbits and cane toads, we’ve kept the numbers down lest we be overrun with the buggers (they’re loud enough as it is) and my ethical object to polygamy has kept the marital situation in check. Anyone who knows anything about that television show that was not in the slightest about Mormons will tell you that one wife should be plenty enough...

Ezra, Jen and Henry contemplate their race to the Casino (and back)...

The gang is all here! Argyle Street, Hobart. February 2012. Maybe I posted this on Theme Thursday to get a REACTION. My face is so rarely seen on this here blog that it usually causes a flurry of judgements, whispers and swoons belly-laughs. Yet that little internal conversation set me thinking (understandably) about the third of Newton's laws of motion. You know, the one about how forces occur in pairs. Actio et reactio . "Every action is accompanied by a REACTION of equal magnitude but opposite direction." So then I wanted to write it down. First, I thought that it looks like this: Action → REACTION But then I thought that it might be better expressed like this: Action ↔ REACTION That is not right though. Therefore, I thought that it must be. Action → REACTION ↔ REACTION However, even that does not seem right. Ultimately, I have settled for: Action → REACTION ↔ REACTION ↔ REACTION ↔ REACTION ↔ REACTION ↔ REACTION [repeat to infinity] But I'm still not certain. Ar...

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...

Ez, Hen and Jen. Clifton Beach, September 2011. Flat. Down. Listless. Melancholy. Blue. Dejected. Despondent. Disconsolate. Doleful. Downcast. Glum. Grim. Lachrymose. Low. Moody. Mournful. Pensive. Wistful. Dover Beach , Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits - on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Fai...

We've had a bit of sunshine around these parts for the past week, so I thought it a timely reminder to post this picture of some cool cats sat up top of the local mountain. Check out the look on Ezra's face and tell me whether or not you reckon he's enjoying that blustery wind slamming into his face!

Just look at that look of absolute terror on Henry's face. Laurence Olivier eat your heart out!

Three people among many riding a train with tyres on an asphalt basketball court at Lindisfarne Primary School. How did this happen?

Getting some exercise. Seven Mile Beach. September 2010. Theme Thursday down on Seven Mile Beach back on Father's Day, and Jennifer awaits the arrival of her two sons. The nearer they get, the nearer that AGOWILT will strike. Anyone familiar with my children will have felt the kind of AGOWILT that simply being around them generates. There is a cruel beauty in the unbridled aggression. A harsh pleasure in their simple brutality. One typical toddler and one self-styled "big boy". Engage with them only if you are GAME ...

A guard tower? Risdon Brook Dam. August 2010. I made a carrot cake, and Henry ate carrots. What other vegetables can be made into cake? Which leads me straight to today's Sunday Top Five , My Top Five Vegetables Off The Top Of My Head ! Potato : can't go past the humble spud! More versatile than an egg, and prettier than a cucumber! Onion : these buggers can go in just about anything. I'm not a fan of them raw, but they cook up a storm. Pumpkin : no room for Jack 'o Lanterns, but whether in soup, baked, mashed, roasted or even pan fried, the pumpkin is our friend. Beetroot : you know what they say... Leek : we eat a lot of leeks, and we're not even Welsh. Just missing the list were cabbage, sweet potato, carrots, shallots, parsnips, spinach, broccoli, and cauliflower. I also have much, much love for those forgotten vegetables , rhubarb and ginger. Swinging nor' nor' east. Risdon Brook Dam. August 2010.

Do you remember all of those here today gone tomorrow Britpop beat combos that came in went in the blink of an eye back in the heady mid-90s? I think that this motley crew could have easily passed muster in the pages of Select or the NME circa-’96 from the mean streets of Torquay influenced by a heady combination of Paul Weller and Chrissie Hynde. All we need is a name for them…