Well Here's A Laugh

No matter how sternly I told the kids not to, they kept putting this picture as the wallpaper on my phone. They regarded it as completely hysterical. It was not the most elegant pose I've ever been caught in. To the elephant we were just another bunch of tourists in a ceaseless stream; to us it was great fun, an adventure, an expensive luxury. While the kids, to my outrage, considering the cost, would occasionally complain of being bored, these were the times they loved the most - jet skiing in Phuket, go-cart racing in Bangkok, elephant riding in the mountains of Thailand. These were the times they still harbour as memories, things to boast about - high energy, high adrenalin, peak experiences, of course at peak cost!!

It's Mardi Gras night in Sydney tonight, and you can feel the energy in the air, the people already spilling out of pubs, everybody dressed up early for a night of nights. Mardi Gras is a uniquely Sydney event, the time when the city is at its best; comes into its own. Sammy was born in Mardi Gras night, as I think I've mentioned on this blog before. There's nothing more profound than the birth of your first child; and on that night it was windy, with squalls of rain and a unique feeling about the whole thing, bedraggled drag queens and a wild intensity. I remember going up from the hospital to buy chocolates and whatever else Suzy had wanted, standing in line, while giggling young queens staggered up the road, pissed and stoned and completely delighted. This was their night and nobody was getting in their way.

Having committed the ultimate heterosexual act, having fathered a child, a boy, my distance from what was happening in the street was total. Now it's 16 years later and Sammy's a young man, he's already got a job one day a week at a factory, which pays him $120 for the day, and while he groans about how hard it is, it's a great step forward into independence. As I've said before, he's turned out to be a really nice kid, God knows how, considering how much tumult and trouble and twisting turns their parents have taken over those years. I've just been up the farm; it's a six hour drive if you only make one stop and keep up the pace, but my bolt hole is still there. Last time I was up, in December, it was a desert, gripped in drought, everything wilting, a settled despair which had fitted my own mood. And I was thinking, God, what I have done, another mistake. But now, the paddocks are green, the ground is wet, and what was just a hideous surface full of prickles, impossible to walk on bare feet, is now lush grass with georgeous little finches hopping through it.

I was only up there 48 hours but I met more locals than I had met on any previous visit. They popped by to check what was going on, or having a coke in the pub they were instantly curious, what are you doing with the place? What are you doing down there? We haven't seen you. I got all the stories, the one just up from me is allegedly the town slut, sleeps with anyone, they constantly tell me. So when I met her, this time round, I was surprised to find a very pleasant young woman, a single mum with a seven year old boy going to the local school, who was well aware of her reputation. I've heard that, I'm sorry, I said, when they came down to say hello at 1am in the morning and I ended up at their house having a coffee and talking about anything and everything.

The whole town's full of ferals, she told me, it's best to keep to yourself. So one of the ferals tells me the same thing, the next day, the towns full of ratbags and you're better off keeping to yourself. Yeh, well, the population on the sign on the outskirts of town says population 103, and that's an exaggeration. But they're all quick to tell me the news. There's no copper at the moment so the pubs not so worried about closing on time. And they're happy to badmouth the cop who's just left; he was a lazy so and so who had a serious aversion to paper work. The only time he'd ever do alcohol testing on drivers was between eight and nine in the morning, to be sure he didn't catch anyone. And oddly enough, he'd just come from Redfern, my place of abode. He'd been bashed during the Redfern riots and had no doubt been sent somewhere quiet to recover. No wonder he didn't want to do much, after living here.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

In Iraq:

From Middle-East online:

Iraq launches hunt to avenge slain police
Qaeda claims it killed 18 kidnapped Iraqi police as Baghdad government finds bodies of missing police.
By Ammar Karim – BAGHDAD
Iraqi forces launched a mission on Saturday to kill or capture the Al-Qaeda insurgents who kidnapped 14 policemen, slit their throats and then boasted about it on the Internet.
The development came against the backdrop of massive US and Iraqi security operations in Baghdad and in the western city of Ramadi, the epicentre of Iraq's Sunni insurgency, which residents said was under siege.
Interior ministry operations director Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf said that 14 officers missing after their convoy was ambushed on Thursday had been found dead in the streets of Baquba, north of Baghdad.

From playfuls.com

One of the country's top civilian military officials, Francis Harvey, abruptly stepped down Friday as secretary of the US Army amidst a widening scandal over health care management for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. While Harvey's resignation appeared to be connected to an immediate crisis over care at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in the nation's capital, US President George W Bush ordered a system- wide investigation into possible problems at other facilities. In an unusual move, Bush released his weekly radio address nearly a day early to announce the probe and lament the "bureaucratic delays and living conditions" that have been uncovered at Walter Reed. The facility came under intense scrutiny after a series of articles in the Washington Post newspaper showed decrepit conditions such as mold and holes in the walls at a building that houses outpatients and detailed the problems of some soldiers seeking treatment. "This is unacceptable to me, it is unacceptable to our country, and it's not going to continue," Bush said. "This country has a moral obligation to provide our servicemen and women with the best possible care and treatment." US Defence Secretary Robert Gates announced Harvey's resignation, then expressed his disappointment in the leadership at Walter Reed, one of the country's main health care centers for the military.