Words fail me

Good Golly!

It's about time the BBC and other left wing, chardonnay drinking, tree hugging loonies got a life and realised that, despite their tediously moronic outlook on life, other more well adjusted people do say things in jest, without one iota of malice and, more often than not, with a degree of affection.

People of a certain age (ie me, rural villager and, clearly, the Thatcher lady) well remember the golliwog stickers which came with every jar of Robertson's jams etc. They were part & parcel of our wonderful pre-polically correct life and it never ever crossed our minds that the golliwogs were somehow racially discriminate in nature.

In our family we have christened Andrew Symonds 'Golly' for obvious reasons, not because we wish to villify him (despite his recent well publicised problems) but because we like him and when we like people we tend to give them nicknames.

We have to put up with similarly stupid good-for-nothing pc nazis here in OZ and it's time we told them to shut up.

If I've offended you, then bugger off too!

Cool Thoughts

It's 10.30am as I write and already the temperature is 39C with a top predicted of 43C later today - that's 109F in the old lingo. It was 43C yesterday and another 43C forecast for tomorrow when Matron & I are going to the tennis - luckily our seats will be in the shade although they might well close the roof at the Rod Laver Arena. The photo was taken a few years ago at Byron Bay, NSW and features three of our brood all of whom would prefer to be back there today!

Hot Dog!

Yesterday we got our first taste of Summer with the temperature reaching 37C at our place. Today will see a cool change early afternoon but promises to be as warm or even hotter before a southerly wind brings down the temperature by about 12C in as many minutes. Gemma seemed to appreciate the ice on her neck and in her water.

2009 here we go!

Elder son with his big sister doing the 'Nutbush' while trying to ignore the fellow in drag on the left! 

 Meanwhile, Matron's got her man!

Happy New Year!

Give a dog a bone

Gemma was in seventh heaven when presented with this enormous bone. Younger son has joined his younger sister as a waiter during the school holidays at one of our local winery restaurants. He brought back not one but two of these near carcases from work yesterday, so both Gemma and our other dog, Zac, enjoyed themselves as we departed for New Year festivities. 

Leadfoot BigFoot

For those few of you (if any) who visit this blog, here is a rather intimidating photo of BigFoot in full charioteer mode barreling down the middle of a road somewhere in Wiltshire, the actual location being withheld for the sake of public safety and calm. This road does possess two 'traffic calming' chicanes not that that is of any concern to BigFoot who has been known to force the local school bus to take sudden and evasive action. To give you an idea of the speed at which the chariot is driven, that excuse for a flag was once a nice 3ft sq square of blue cotton, now reduced to a shredded crepe-like tatter. Not long after this photo was taken, she was apprehended by the local constabulary for conduct endangering life in that she was seen, through a haze of blue smoke, perfecting donuts in front of the village post office. Her excuse? "I got my crutch jammed in the clutch"!
I'm rather proud of this photo as I had to set my camera as if photographing an Olympic 100 metre final.

Foxhunting alive & well in deepest Glos

Our 90 yr old father (which art nearly in heaven) used to ride with the Beaufort Hunt, so I took him to the meet yesterday, a mile or so from Badminton. There were at least 150 on horseback (quite a few of them being children) and many more followers. I understand that numbers are on the increase given that they're supposedly not now meant to hunt foxes anymore. Well, the above photo was taken about 20 mins after they had started and about 45 secs after a fox had jumped down onto the road and run towards us, very closely followed by 2 or 3 hounds in full cry. Freddie and his followers crashed through a hedge on our left. We hoped that he got away. I'm glad to say that all the rest of the hounds plus all those on horseback had no idea where Freddie had gone and went past us. I have to say that the vast majority of the riders thanked us for stopping the car as they rode past. My father remarked that it was only the third time he'd ever seen a fox during a hunt.

I couldn't resist taking a photo of this Hooray Henry - what a poseur!