Diary of a December

1 December to 21 December

Got busy. Worked on evenings and weekends to get everything done before Christmas. Got stressed and grumpy.

22 December

At last, work is over for the year. We finished work at 1.00pm and went to a very nice Italian Restaurant for lunch. I had planned to get slightly tipsy with the only one of my workmates who knows how to drink properly, but she called in sick so I limited my drinking to a single glass of pretty amazingly good cab merlot.

I have a simply rule for ordering food on the rare occasions that I eat somewhere classy, which is that Honey Bear and I can both cook most things pretty well (or in her case, amazingly well) so I always make sure I order something that we would not usually cook at home. This can end well or badly.

I had a theory about fish. I grew up believing that tuna came only in cans and had to be served with pasta, cheese and bad sauce and called ‘mornay’, or in some other equally uninspiring manner. Later in life, I discovered that good tuna served in restaurants was nothing like the rubbish I had been eating out of cans. My theory was that the same principle might apply to sardines.

Not on this occasion.

The polenta-crusted sardine fillets on wide mushrooms sounded like a good entrée but tasted exactly like tinned sardines rolled in cornflake crumbs. The mushrooms were good.

Fortunately, the kangaroo fillets with roasted pumpkin and a yoghurt sauce, followed by hazelnut chocolate cake topped with raisins and pear and some seriously decent Italian coffee more than made up for it.

Hooray, work is over for the year and I have two weeks off.

23 December

Well, not quite.

I spent most of the day at work, which is about the dumbest thing one can do on the Saturday before Christmas but sadly it was entirely necessary. On the bright side, no one else was there and I wasn’t required to be on time so I spent most of the morning playing with my beautiful sons while Honey Bear had the world’s most well-earned sleep-in. My wonderful parents came around for the afternoon which meant Bundle and Cherub were probably too excited to notice that I wasn’t around for a few hours. At work, the place was entirely empty and no-one could ring me so I got enough done to be able to go home at 4pm. Okay, now work was really over for the rest of the year. We ate take away pasta that a local place sells for less than it would cost to buy the ingredients and make it ourselves, and celebrated the end of a heck of a year.

24 December

We started our holiday with breakfast at our next door neighbours’ house. Everyone has a hidden talent or two, and in the case of my neighbour, one of them is making really good omelettes. They also have an espresso machine.

Our neighbours have two children, one is about three months younger than Bundle and one is exactly the same age as Cherub, give or take an hour. This meant there was a certain amount of mediating over who was playing with which toy at any given moment, but also some blissful times when the younger two children were sleeping and the older two were playing together nicely and we could all drink some more coffee.

After running madly round the supermarket buying all the stuff I should have been buying the day before if I hadn’t been working, it was over to my sister’s church for their Christmas Eve Carols for Children afternoon. It was a very pleasant afternoon consisting of a couple of the better known carols (Silent Night, Away in a Manger, O Come all ye Faithful) and some lesser known numbers including the “Bethlehem Bop” and a lively 12 bar blues number called something like “When Jesus was born down in Bethlehem there was a Sheep (Baaaa)”.

The “Bethlehem Bop” gave Cherub and I the perfect opportunity to bust out our very best chair dancing moves, and we did. It’s all in the shoulders.

After the carols were done, I took Bundle to pat the selection of sheep, cows, bunnies, chickens and such animals that the church had hired for the occasion. Bundle has often been a bit wary of petting animals. He loves to do this but in the past he often got nervous if a dog (or anything) made a sudden move or tried to lick him or something. On this occasion, however, he was more than happy to run up to a sheep and just start patting. He particularly liked the bunny that I managed to catch and hold for him, but by far the best moment was when I found him engaged in conversation with a chicken. It went like this:

Bundle: Bok bok bok bok bok

A chicken: Boooooook

Bundle: Bok [giggles a lot] bok

A chicken: bok bok booook bok [wanders off looking thoughtful]


We left the animals and went to hall behind the church where they were serving coffee and Bundle could run around like a maniac with his cousins while Cherub could have a good go at keeping up. Cherub is seven months old and yet to learn to walk, but the child can crawl like the wind.

We eventually dragged ourselves (and the children) away and spent a quiet and very pleasant Christmas Eve at home.

25 December

Yay I love Christmas, despite the feeling of utter exhaustion from being up half the night trying to get a certain baby to go back to sleep and a headache that just wouldn’t quit. I barely noticed either of these things because we were having far too good a day.

After hauling ourselves out of bed around seven, we had just enough time to feed the children and unpack the very exciting Christmas stockings before it was off to a church way over the other side of town which Honey Bear and I used to go to every week before we had children. We went back because, despite having attended somewhere more local for the past couple of years, the church across town still feel like home whenever we go back there.

The Christmas morning gathering starts at 9.00am with breakfast. Everyone brings food, and the selection of cereals, home made croissant, fresh fruit and the like was wonderful. Bundle’s love for Christmas can only have been increased when we allowed him, for the first and possibly only time in his life, to eat Fruit Loops.

Breakfast was followed by a simple, and short, service, which was mostly Christmas carols and a brief message about the Christmas story. The minister talked about Jesus being born in a stable full of animals and spending his first night sleeping in a dirty feeding trough. The point was that some people have lives that are obviously dysfunctional, while others are much better at appearing to have everything under control. All of us have parts of our lives, or ourselves, which are out of control, dysfunctional, or perhaps best described as just messy. The message of the Christmas story is, in part, that by sending his son to be born in a dirty stable, God indicated that he wants to engage with the mess and dysfunction, hidden or otherwise, of our lives.

At least, I’m told that that was the point of the message. I missed that part because I was out the back changing a nappy. Perhaps this was a metaphor.

From the church it was straight to my sister’s house. My parents have just come home after living in the USA for eight years. I spent one Christmas with them in Nashville a few years ago, and I have seen my sisters on Christmas day a couple of times in the past five years, but this was the first time that all of us had been together for Christmas since my parents went overseas. The only immediate family member missing was my brother, who lives in Western Australia with his wife and their most beautiful daughter.

Cherub, having refused to sleep all through church, promptly crashed in the portacot and slept all through lunch, while Bundle was far too captivated by his cousin’s train set to need anything more than the occasional wavy hello from a parent, so we sat down to a rare ‘hands-free’ lunch with the family. Lunch was a most pleasant meal of turkey and cranberry sauce with a range of wonderful salads which my little sister had made (the one with the fried saganake cheese was a particular highlight). We also had a large bowl of pomme noisettes, solely because this was a family tradition when we were children, and some very nice Shiraz.

Lunch was followed by Honey Bear’s amazing plum pudding, which we made just over a year ago and my goodness had it matured nicely. It was accompanied by some truly excellent brandy cream sauce, of which I ate a huge amount.

It’s not every family that is lucky enough to be able to get together and simply enjoy each other’s company with no tension, no angst and no family politics. We are one of those very fortunate families. The only moment of tension came during a conversation about the possible uses for miniature donkeys in law enforcement.

Can we just pause for a minute, mention that my mother started this conversation, and consider how completely mad my family is.

Thanks.

Anyway, the only tense moment came when I suggested that the best use for miniature donkeys would be in preventing smuggling, because they would be particularly good at spotting drug mules.

My brother in law suggested, with more than a little asperity, that the fact that I was a guest in his house did not mean I was entitled to make appalling puns.

It would be safe to say that most people would probably have sympathised with his point of view.

Finally, it was time to take too exhausted and way over excited children home. We were going to open the rest of their presents when we got home but Bundle was well and truly asleep by the end of the 20 minute drive so we ate soup and left the pile of unopened presents sent to the children by various relatives for Boxing Day.

As for presents we had opened, I have to give credit where it’s due to my parents, who, along with some other lovely gifts, gave us one of these:





26 December

Boxing Day started with a most enjoyable session of setting up the largest wooden train track that has ever been constructed in my lounge room or possibly the southern hemisphere. And really, the fact that some smarty pants in North Dakota once built a bigger one does not really diminish the achievement.

I didn’t actually have to do much as Bundle has developed the ability to design and build surprisingly complex multi-circuit linked train tracks with bridges and other such features with no need for parents to do much except occasionally ensure that the pieces are linking together properly.

Bundle is currently obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine and was very excited to receive a few more trains for his collection, including his current favourite, James the Red Engine. For those who don’t follow Thomas the Tank Engine that closely, the railway line where Thomas works is run by a mysterious figure known as the Fat Controller.

So, having supervised the setting up of the train track, I then got to watch Bundle run his trains around the track. Occasionally a train would stop for a conversation with the Fat Controller, both halves of which would be supplied by Bundle. In the case of the conversation featuring James the Red Engine, it went like this:

Fat Controller: Hello James, what’s your name?

James: Red

[Beat]

James: I brought lots of coaches, fat ’troller

I could listen to that stuff all day.



27 December to now

Felt tired but really pretty good about my life.



I hope you all had a good Christmas too.

All I want for Christmas

It’s just a few short days until our first Christmas as a family of four. This year we will be spending Christmas with my parents and both my sisters for the first time in what seems like forever, and I am looking forward to it like you wouldn’t believe.

I went to church last week. The speaker told us that he had come to a new understanding of the concept of “awe” now that he has two sons. He said this is because his children use that word all the time, as in “Awwwww, look at that truck” etc.

As of last Sunday we have finally managed to put up our Christmas tree, so it’s starting to feel a little bit like Christmas is coming, at last. There have been a few moments of awwwww this week, but my favourite one was on Wednesday morning.

After breakfast, Bundle, as he does, pressed eject on the CD player and handed me the Missy Higgins CD that was in there, saying “Daddy’s CD”, in that special tone that makes it clear that to actually listen to this would be unthinkable.

I asked him which CD he wanted to hear, expecting that the answer would be along the lines of “Dooleys”, “Wiggles” or perhaps “Car song, daddy”. I was most happily surprised when he paused for a moment then replied “Christmas, I think” and we started the day by listening to Christine Anu singing “The Little Drummer Boy” and other such pleasant carols. I love this time of year.

I hope you all have a truly lovely Christmas, full of joy, peace, wonder and many many moments of “awwwww”.

A slightly eclectic Top 10 list

There seem to have been a truly surprising number of Top 10/ Top 20/ This is Australia’s favourite album type lists published recently. However, they all seem to conclude that bands who have had no impact on my life whatsoever are in fact everyone’s favourite. I neither enjoy the musical of nor particularly care about Nirvana, the Sex Pistols, or Radiohead. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones wrote song good tunes but generally this happened before I was born. And who on earth decided that a Pink Floyd album was number one in this country ever?

It struck me that there are many songs that may be their best in their field but which will never make it on to a Top 10, or even Top 100, list. So, it’s time to recognise some slightly quirky excellence.

The criteria for the following Top 10 is a bit flexible but it is something also the lines of songs that have made a significant impact on my life, songs that if I hear them on the radio now I would turn the sound right up and dance, songs that would get me to buy a whole album just for that one song, or songs that I just put on the list because I can.



10. The KLF - Last train to Trancentral
Produced by a couple of guys who clearly only had two ideas for lyrics and therefore included the phrase “Ancients of Mu Mu” in every single they ever released, this piece of stadium house still had the power to blow minds around the world with it’s sheer energy.

It’s here partly because I remember bugging the DJ to play it the very first time I ever went clubbing (at the Lizard Lounge in Prahran) and partly because I still remember hearing this while I was up at 2.00am writing an essay and listening to RRR. They played this as part of a set of three songs which also included “Hard Day’s Night” by the Beatles and a song by the slightly surprising combinations of Public Enemy and Anthrax. The combined effect of all that and too much coffee was that I collapsed on the desk at the final ‘over and out’ and could think of nothing to say except “Woooa”.


9. The Cure - Lovesong
I don’t know if anyone has ever published a list of the ten greatest basslines ever but if they have then this song should have been be on it. I learned the bassline during a brief and unsuccessful attempt at forming a band with a couple of guys who were clearly way more talented than me. It never went anywhere but hanging out and playing lots of Cure, Guns ‘n’ Roses and Baby Animals songs was a fun way to pass the time between semesters.

I was utterly blown away to find a bassline this catchy, simple and perfect anywhere ever. The lyrics are simply but heartfelt, from “Whenever I’m alone with you/ you make me feel like I am whole again” to “I will always love you”. And as a whole package this has to be one of the best songs to come out of England in the past 30 years. Or ever, really.


8. Cold Chisel - Misfits
This was not one of the songs that Chisel is likely to be remembered for, given that it was never even released as a single. It was apparently recorded for an ABC documentary that never even went to air. I found this on a greatest hits collection, and I’m very glad they included it. The song is on this list because it shows that Chisel, whilst thought of as the quintessential big loud Aussie pub band, actually had a real knack for beautifully crafted lyrics that could capture a mood or articulate an experience better than nearly anyone, whether it was “Choir Girl” about abortion, “Four Walls” about life in prison, or this song that perfectly summed up the teenage experience of isolation and alienations for those who just don’t fit in.

Most of the stuff written about various teenage experiences by bands who are somewhat older tends to be mocking or mean spirited (and yes, I’m looking at you TISM for that “homeboys” song, The Offspring for “Pretty Fly” and lets just mention Area 7 for the dreadful “Nobody likes a bogan” while we’re here). Chisel actually managed to write with empathy, which is far more difficult than taking cheap shots, and far more valuable.


7. Europe - Rock the Night
Along with Bon Jovi, this bunch of hair metal kings from somewhere vaguely Scandinavian helped get me hooked on big dumb 80s rock, and I will be ever grateful for that. This song was the follow up single to “The Final Countdown”, and it had the big advantage that it lacked any bizarre lyrics about headed for Venus and the like. This song was a wonderfully straightforward anthem for all of us who, in 1987 just wanted to “Rock now, rock the night/ Til early in the morning light”. Don’t judge me, I was 14 years old.


6. Michael Franti & Spearhead - Soulshine
I can not listen to this song (which is playing as I type) without remembering an early morning drive to Bendigo. It was a very bad week, with all the usual stresses utterly swept aside by an almost overwhelming concern for a close family member who was in hospital on the other side of the world with a hard to explain but life threatening illness. I had made the usual stop in Malmsbury for one of the local bakery’s truly awesome Apple and Golden Syrup muffins and a reasonably good flat white. Triple J was playing this song as I drove through a particularly pleasant stretch of the Calder Highway just south of Harcourt. The gentle invitation to “Take some time/ unwind your mind” was exactly what I needed.


5. The Waifs - London Still
Another song that I listened to a lot while traveling all over the place for work. The ultimate tribute to homesickness, Josh Cunningham’s guitar is heart tearingly poignant and the longing for home in Donna Simpson’s vocal reaches right out of the stereo, grabs you by the throat and won’t let go.

Only a piece of music this good could possibly get away with a lyric like “I miss you like my left arm that’s been lost in a war” but they actually do.

4. Redgum - Long Run
After ten long years of conservative government it is possible for we lefties to get a little depressed. This song was written during the Fraser years and performed with great enthusiasm on Redgum’s 1983 album “Caught in the Act”, recorded just after the election of the Hawke government. I bought this album in celebration of John Schumann’s achievement in giving Alexander Downer the scare of his life during the 1998 election, and I still play it whenever I start to feel like we will never get rid of this idiot government, and their policies, together with their disregard for any notion of responsible government, will continue to drag Australia down to the absolutely lowest common denominator until we are all stupid.

For great lyrics, it’s hard to go past “The sun streams in with power and might/ and you’re looking at your kids in a different light/ And you know in your heart as you kiss them goodnight/ It’ll be alright in the long run”.


3. The Bangles - Be with You
This was the clear highlight of the Bangles’ best album, “Everything”, released in October 1988. It’s slightly weird in hindsight that the Bangles were climbing the charts with “Eternal Flame” around halfway between the release of Guns ‘n’ Roses “Appetite for Destruction” in 1987 and Nirvana’s “Nevermind” in 1991.

I’m not sure what sort of angst other teenagers were feeling at the time, but in that period I was less concerned with feeling stupid and contagious, and more focused on the mad crush I had on a friend who clearly didn’t like me “that way” and on my awful teenaged fear of rejection that rendered me apparently incapable of so much as inviting this particular young lady to a school formal, let alone suggesting anything so radical as a movie or something.

In that context, “When I’m lost in a dream/ You are all I can see/ All alone in the night I’m waiting for you/ Every moment I’d die/ Just to look in your eyes/ The dream is alive I’m waiting” summed up my teenaged angsty feelings rather better than “Here we are now/ Entertain us” ever could.

Nearly 20 years later, I just like this song because it’s catchy.


2. Rebecca’s Empire - Atomic Electric
I found this on one of the early Triple J Hottest 100 CDs and I was hooked immediately. When I finally got hold of a CD player (a graduation present, so that would make it 1996), “Way of All Things” was the first CD I bought. It changed my taste in music forever and definitely for the better.

If there’s a song that works better as the soundtrack to a humid summer night in Melbourne, the type that makes you want to dance in a sweaty pub before wandering over to the St Kilda pier to sit on the rocks out past the kiosk and think about the world, I am yet to find it.

Shane’s O’Mara guitar solo is intense and fantastic and demands to be heard, the rhythm section is so tight you couldn’t separate it with a particle accelerator and Rebecca’s delivery of the lyrics is simply breathtaking.


1. Things of Stone & Wood - Wildflowers
This is the best, happiest, most gloriously optimistic political song ever. It should also win awards for being released in 1994 and predicting the rise of Hansonism, and subsequent adoption of said political phenomenon by our breathtakingly cynical government, with an accuracy that can only be described as “spooky”.

I love this song because it appeals to what is best about us as Australians and indeed as people, and despite the all too accurate warnings it is impossible not to get caught up in Greg Arnold’s enthusiasm as he sings “Hey Helen let’s ditch the car lets hide/ We’ll throw seeds of doubt at passers by/ They will cross onto our side/ We’ll sing our songs into the night”. Also, at a time when Hanson is trying to make ANOTHER comeback by blaming our problems on those nasty people from overseas somewhere who all have diseases, our increasingly divided country could use the reminder that “everybody dreams the same visions in the end.” And there has rarely been any better advice than “Everyone feels trapped and tired/ So if you see a strange door to your left/ Drop your things and run for it”.


So there you have it. Not the most comprehensive and definitive Top 10 list ever, but possibly one of the more offbeat ones. Did I miss any?

A slightly early Christmas post

Today's happy discovery was a section of the Diamond Valley Leader dedicated to letters from children to Santa about what Christmas means to them, and, of course, what they would like him to bring. Here's just a few of my favourites and what we can learn from them.


There are some children who embrace consumerism.

Dear Santa, My name is Nathan and I am five years old. I have been a very good bot during the year and now have a baby brother Lachlan. For Christmas I would like Power Rangers gloves, Transformer Cyberton, Star Wars Light sabre, Batman computer. We will leave a snack out for you on Christmas Eve in case you get hungry. Nathan and Lachlan, St Helena

And then there are other who are more focused on spiritual matters.

Dear Santa, I like Christmas because it is a religious time. The nativity is important because there would be no Christmas without it. I also like going to see other people's Christmas lights and decorations. One of the best times is being with my family. Lachlan, 8, Montmorency

I am all for children embracing the true meaning of Christmas, but that bit about the nativity in particular does make one suspect a bit of parental influence.

Of course, parents may have any number of agendas, not necessarily specifically religious ones.

Christmas means happiness to the world. I spend Christmas at night time we sit around in a circle and sing Christmas carols. I will play dinosaurs with my cousins. Christmas Eve I like to leave food out for you. I don't think we should give you alcohol because you might miss peoples houses and you might crash into houses. I think I will leave out carrots and grass for your reindeers and choc-chip biscuits and milk for you. Lachlan, 7, Briar Hill

I still can't work out whether the parents of this child are card carrying members of the Temperance Union or whether they just decided to make something up so they would not have to waste good alcohol by leaving it out for Santa.

In other cases, it is the child who has an agenda.

I like Christmas because you get lots of presents and you might see Santa if your lucky. For Christmas I want a Simpsons DVD a pet rabbit but my mum won't let me because I have a cat and two kittens and other stuff I can't think of. Glendy Boy, 8, Bundoora

And finally, one that I have to include simply because it made me smile.

Dear Santa, I like Christmas because it is so fun. I like the Christmas lights at the houses. I would like Ice Age 2 please. Could you give Ebony (my cow) a bell please. Will, 5, Plenty

Diamond Valley is clearly a happy place with a richly diverse community, united by a shared appreciation of Christmas in all its glorious aspects.

This does not explain why exactly 50% of them are named Lachlan.

Cuteness update

It is a little bit hard to believe that my younger son Cherub is already seven months old. This happened very fast. Not only has he been crawling for a few weeks, his favourite thing to do at the moment is to crawl to the couch, the bathtub, a wall, or anything halfway convenient and pull himself up to a standing position. And then perhaps take a few steps, usually while still holding on to the couch, although he likes to keep his parents alert by occasionally letting go of all supports and standing there grinning.

Cherub's other favourite things include splashing his brother in the bath (We hear the phrase "Enough splashing now" from an indignant two year old at least once per night), smiling and giggling at whatever ridiculous noises his parents make to amuse him, blowing raspberries and of course fuzzing (which involves rubbing the hair on his head against his brother's hair and is possibly the cutest thing ever).

Although we occasionally forget this when we spend three hours in the evening trying to get him to sleep and when he finally goes to sleep he wakes us up at 2.00am anyway, this child does embody absolute gorgeousness.


Bundle, now aged two and a bit, also does his bit to keep us entertained (and to keep us guessing).

I suspect that this child is reasonably bright. I notice it at such times as when I am reading him a Noddy story and it goes something like this:

INC: And then Noddy got in his car and went out to look for passengers

Bundle: Noddy runs a taxi, daddy


This child is also very persistent in his beliefs. I own a T-shirt witha picture of a wombat drawn on it. I bought it for $2 at the Salvation Army Store on Smith Street. I was there with a young lady who was quite resistant to the idea of dating me and I thought she might find it cute and endearing. Her reaction when I suggested buying it was so overwhelmingly negative that I bought it anyway just to annoy her. You can probably see why that relationship never got off the ground.

Anyway, about three months ago, I was wearing this shirt and Bundle looked at the picture and said "Puppy!" Being a little bit pedantic at times, I told him it was in fact a wombat. He disagreed, which was really fair enough since it could be any number of animals (a sleeping koala would be a reasonable guess too) and I only know its a wombat because it has the word "wombat" written on it. Bundle insisted it was a puppy and we changed the subject, since as far as I knew he didn't know what a wombat was anyway.

A couple of weeks ago, I was wearing the T-shirt again. I hadn;t worn it in the intervening two and a half months. Bundle got up that morning and after delivering the usual "State of the household" report ("Bundle have long sleep", "Cherub not awake", and "Time for apple break'ast daddy") we proceeded to the kitchen, where the following dialogue takes place:

Bundle [noticing INC's shirt and pointing] Puppy!

INC [deciding not to start the day with a fight particularly when that picture could be anything and this child surely won't remember our last conversation] Yes lad, that's a puppy

Bundle [in the unmistakable tone of one who has finally settled a long running and vexatious dispute] Not wombat any more.

*Bundle wanders off to set up his train track looking very satisfied with his day's work so far, INC Laughs helplessly*


There is no risk of ever getting bored with these two children in the house.

Things I discovered this week

1. Cricket can be by far the most hilarious of sports

2. If you see a sticker saying “Real Aussies drives utes” and that sticker is on a light blue Holden Astra hatchback, it is possibly to spend hours wondering why anyone would do this and still be as confused and unsure as to whether they are just kidding as you were when you first saw it

3. The word ‘coconuts’ is also surprisingly funny

4. If this site is to be believed, then this blog is now the most expensive thing that I own

5. Sometimes a situation will arise where it is simply necessary to run from the house to the clothesline whilst completely naked

6. It is fortunate that I am so buff

7. If you stare at your own eyebrows for too long, they will start to look weird and you will freak out

A very rare post about sport*

I was going to add another item to my wish list in the previous post, along the lines of "Australia will win the Second Test", but with England having declared at 6/551 and Australia 3/65 in reply, I decided to leave it out on the basis that people would think I was just being ridiculous and failing to take the whole thing seriously.

"That could not possibly happen" they would have said mockingly, "You are no good at predictions and should just go and buy coconuts or something."

Yesterday's pleasingly hilarious result in the cricket should serve as a reminder to all of us, but particularly to our cricket loving Prime Minister, that there is no such thing as an unbeatable lead.







*okay, it's really about politics. But the original intention was to write about sport. Really it was

Blogfirmations

In other news from last week, Naomi Robson resigned and Sandi Thom’s Melbourne concert got cancelled due to incredible levels of disinterest.

It may be pushing credibility way beyond any previously recognised limit to suggest that this post, this post or even this post had anything to do with these recent events,* but just in case I am wielding enormous influence over public opinion and major events in this country without knowing it, then let me just say that:

1. Labor, lead by Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, will win the next federal election in a landslide, after John Howard calls a surprise early election later this month

2. Howard, Costello and Downer will all lose their seats. To the Greens

3. Through an embarrassing drafting error in the latest legislation, which none of them will know about because clearly their staff never tell them anything about anything ever, all current members of the cabinet will receive no superannuation and will have to repay their salary from the past ten years.

4. For reasons that currently escape me, someone will deport Philip Ruddock.**

5. World peace

6. Kevin Rudd, in recognition of my enormously influential role in his victory, will appointment to his staff and pay me lots of money to blog full time.

If even one of these comes true, I’ll take it.





* particularly if you add up the number of comments on those three posts(one)

**And, for no particular reason except that this is my list, Tony Abbott.

Penguin enquiries

The report from the Cole Royal Commission into the Australian Wheat Board’s role in the payments of millions of dollars worth of bribes to Saddam Hussein was released this week. Looking at the findings I could not help but be reminded of Sir Humphrey Appleby’s famous analysis of public enquiries. Sir Humphrey once explained that such an enquiry is impartial in the same way that a train is impartial.

If you put down the track, that’s where it goes.

In the case of the Cole enquiry, we have, in effect, a situation where people became so concerned about the presence of birds in the State of Victoria that an enquiry was necessary. The Federal Government therefore gave Terrence Cole a train and a map of the Belgrave line and said there’s apparently a lot of birds out that way. We even hear there’s a picnic ground near Belgrave where people feed them. Take a ride out with a train full of lawyers and report back to us.

The opposition said they were sure that there were also penguins in the State of Victoria, and they were pretty sure that the government had known this for quite some time. They wanted the commission to be able to use other train lines like the one to Stony Point, and possibly a ferry.

The Government said they did not know their asses from their elbows what a penguin was or anything about them. When pressed, Alexander Downer said he heard a rumour at one stage so he called 11660 to check but no one answered.*

After considerable public pressure, the government agreed that if Commissioner Cole happened to see anything along the lines of a largish group of black and white birds walking out the ocean as the train was running through Upper Ferntree Gully, they would extend the enquiry to include a ticket for Puffing Billy, although in their opinion the cost to the taxpayer could not be justified (and anyone who’s been on Puffing Billy lately would have to agree with that).

Commissioner Cole agreed that there was no need for the Puffing Billy trip. A few government ministers were asked to jump on the train at Upwey and they were asked if they personally owned any penguins or if they or their staff, say, had one in their pockets right now. They said "No, and if they did, how would we know?".

Several months later, Commissioner Cole released a ridiculously long report that no member of the general public could possibly have the time to read, which could be summarised by simply saying “Dude, we found a few dodgy looking birds but after looking everywhere and spending $35 million, mostly on cakes from Queen of Tarts in Belgrave and wow those tortes were impressive, we can tell you there was not a freakin’ penguin in sight, they must be extinct”.

Only a rather dishonest government could possibly celebrate this report as conclusive proof that none of them know what a penguin looks like. But they went further and, with a new level of disregard for the concept of accountability and truthfulness in government, and with a spectacular level of contempt for the people of Australia whom they are elected to serve, this government DEMANDED AN APOLOGY FROM ANYONE WHO HAD EVER DARED TO SUGGEST THAT PENGUINS MIGHT EXIST.

People of Australia, I beg you, just for once have a little self respect and stop voting for these idiots who have been taking your money and treating you like idiots for the past ten years.




* I know that only Victorians over the age of 30 are likely to understand this bit. I’m putting it in anyway because it amuses me greatly. Tiddely-woo.