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I like nature. I do. I like it's little twigs and it's sprouty grass, it's wavy trees and blowing winds it's droughts and flooding rains . I have been known to spend "time" outside - some may even have seen me frolicking happily in the "woods". But every now and then it all goes horribly, horribly wrong. Gather 'round children and let me tell you a story, a story of innocen ts ce lost, of heart-wrenching despair and all round WTF-ness. OH MY GOD TOM, I AM TOTALLY GOING TO FREAK OUT RIGHT NOW! It's OK, it's not THAT scary a story. Like, chill out dudes . It all began "back in the day" when Snooze and I moved into our frankly "righteous" pad in inner-city Melbourne town. Oh they were happy days. A commonly agreed "feature of awesome-ness" in this new abode is an outdoor area I like to call the "backyard", complete with pondage. For some months*, we assumed said pondage was just a stagnant cesspo

When I was a smaller person, we used to have summer holdiays at Dromana on the Mornington Peninsula. The house was (and still is) an old weatherboard beach shack that belongs to the extended family. They were wonderful holidays, seemingly eternal weeks of sun, swimming and beach. Fish 'n' chips, pizza, cordial with ice in it. No TV, lots of boardgames, cricket (endless cricket), tennis, bikes - just ace. While all that stuff was blissful, nothing was quite as exciting as getting taken by Dad to the brand new tennis centre to see the Australian Open. Looking back, it was an ideal opportunity to give my Mum a break - can you imagine the luxury of no kids for a whole day when usually there were at least three and often several more. We would get in the van and drive to Frankston, get on the train and sit impatiently all the way to (then) Flinders Park, a white, glistening, almost religious icon in the centre of the city. Tickets to the outside courts in the first week was st

It makes my heart swell with pride when friends of mine do extraordinary things. Sophie is not only an author of some note, but has recently turned her hand to nature photography with quite stunning results. I've been pestering her to post this for some time and now she has. So I insist you visit her site immediately, grab a comfy chair, settle back and marvel at her spectacular footage of the truly magnificent sea eagle .

I've been having a light hearted yet ongoing argument with Snooze over whether or not bells on bikes are compulsory. Well, turns out I'm wrong as Snooze has discovered courtesy of the Bicycle Victoria website . Traffic regulations require a rider to have a bell fitted. The penalty for riding a bicycle without a bell is $50. The penalty refers specifically to a bell. The old definition of an audible warning device no longer applies - so you can't argue that your voice meets the regulations. A bicycle for normal road use must be sold with 'an efficient bell or some other suitable audible warning device'. OMGWTFBBQ indeed! I can understand the point of cars being required to have horns, trams to have bells, trains hooters and emergency vehicles sirens, but bicycles!? OK, so a bell on a bike might be handy to warn pedestrians of an approaching bike, BUT RIDING ON THE FOOTPATH IS ILLEGAL, so THAT can't be the reason. So why else would you need be required at the p

That may come as a shock to some of you I realise, but not only does his smug private schoolboy voice make me want to smack him in his soft and spongey face, he has a habit of saying things that are so enraging that I...I...just can't even... Needless to say, I was pretty much floored this morning listening to an interview recorded with Downer on ABC radio . In it, he assured the Australian public that David Hicks was just fine and that there was "no suggestion that he was suffering from mental illness". If you haven't been keeping up, Terry Hicks, David's father, has recently been deeply concerned that David's mental health has significantly deteriorated in the last several months. It is a concern that seems to have been confirmed when David refused to take a phone call from his family at Christmas (an event that had taken months of arranging). They have had no contact with him since mid-2006. So it must be a great comfort to be told by that simpering fuck

I realise this is a couple of days late, but the excessive hysterics over the "ethnic violence" that "erupted" on the opening day of the Australian Open, has really annoyed me. According to news reports based on an evidently small group of witnesses, a bunch of young men of Serbian and Croatian backgrounds (or at least wearing the flags) decided to get stuck into each other in the grounds of the Tennis Centre on Monday. I've seen two lots of images of the "ethnic violence" - the only ones that appear to have been recorded. One is a series of still photographs from a Getty Images photographer, the other a more-or-less unviewable mobile phone video. In each case, there seems to be a large number of shouty boys standing around trying to look tough, and (at most) eight or nine people actually DOING anything. Not only are the numbers involved small, but the "ethnic violence" looks to me very much like the famed fight scene from Bridget Jones Dia

Terrible news! The most beautiful woman in the world and my not terribly secret love, Aiswarya Rai is to be married . Curse you cruel fate - I held out such hope. *sigh*

So, 2007 hey. How about it. Pretty exciting so far. If anyone has found my blogging mojo, please return it forthwith. Yours etc, Tom.