in the day ... 29th february 1940 (and a happy leap year)

A snippet of stuff from the past. A little jaunt down memory lane if you like. 

The older I get the more I hear myself saying that awful phrase, ‘back in the day’. When I used to hear an ‘oldie’ say it I would think ... ‘Ah shush about the old days already. Focus on today, mate’. Funny thing is that nowadays I hear myself saying it more & more. C’est la vie!

in the day ... on 29th February 1940 'the best movie ever made' was up for 13 Oscars 

What's your pick for the best movie ever made?

Try to be objective. It's hard with stuff like movies and music and art. But if you sit back and think, 'Ok, what's the best movie that's ever been made?' and you try to remove personal opinion like 'Brad Pitt's hot', 'I didn't mind Sharon Stone crossing her legs that time' or 'those Ewoks were kinda cute', what movie would you choose?

It's nearly impossible to answer, but then most really tough questions are. 'Is there a god?', 'is there life on other planets?', 'what's the point of Celebrity Big Brother?' are big philosophical conundrums that don't really have an answer, yet people are only too happy to offer you an opinion.

My favourite film is Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. 

It's a cracker. It's fast, funny, violent (not violent as in sadistic,violent in a silly way), full of great characters, has a great script ... and it has Vinnie Jones in it.  If you didn't already know, Vinnie Jones played for Wimbledon FC, a rather unglamorous football club that managed a few good years in the top flight in the 1980's. Back in the day he was the quintessential 'hardman' footballer. In the movie he pretty much plays himself.

The movie is Guy Ritchie at his very best. After Lock, Stock he did Snatch (a really good movie too) but then it was all downhill. He made Swept Away and cast his famous missus (now ex) in the lead role. Big mistake. Huge. It was dreadful, from start to finish. So dreadful in fact that it swept away a total of 5 Razzies - including Worst Movie, Worst Actress (Madge) and Worst Director (Ritchie). I kinda went off Ritchie after that. He was pipped this year in the most Razzies stakes by Adam Sandler. He managed 11.

But still, hats off to Mr Ritchie. He's made some shockers, but he also made my favourite movie.

But a favourite movie isn't necessarily the best movie ever made. Not by a long shot. Lock, Stock is good ... but it's not THAT good. It's not 'best movie ever made' good.

So, without further gibber-jabber, I'm proud to announce that I think the best movie ever made is ...

(insert dramatic drum roll here)

Gone with the Wind

I know. It's hardly a revolutionary pick. It's not 'off the wall'. It's not some obscure art house movie that no-one's ever heard of, or some French movie made on a video cam. Far from it. The Harris Interactive Survey and The Best In Film survey both voted GwtW their best movie ever. It beat off other crackers like Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Star Wars, Schindler's List and The Shawshank Redemption.  I think that, all things considered, it's right up there; right up in the no. 1 spot. Numero uno.

It was released in 1939. And it was huge. Massive. Literally. It lasted a whopping 3hrs 45mins and even included a fifteen-minute break. It was also the highest grossing film ever made - a record that it held until The Sound of Music was released in 1966. After adjusting for inflation GwtW remains the highest grossing film of all time.

Even before the film was made the book was a huge hit. It won Margaret Mitchell a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and then International Pictures paid $50,000 for the movie rghts. A record in the day. Talking of records, Clark Gable was paid the equivalent of $20million to play Rhett Butler. The entire production cost the studio almost $4million. In 1939! That's close to $100million in today's cash.

& then there is the famous line - the most famous of all lines - right at the end of the movie. Rhett has finally had enough of Scarlett's shenanigans. She pleads with him to stay, asking what she will possibly do with out him. Rhett, exhausted, exasperated, and pretty much over the spoilt brat says, 'Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn' and he walks away. 


The studio were fined $5000 for using the word 'damn'. Times have changed a bit since then!

I'm not sure what you're up to this weekend. If you're at a loose end for four hours and you fancy renting a movie you could do worse than rent Gone with the Wind. It's a bit long, but it's a classic. 


Of course, if you fancy something a little shorter, less classic and more contemporary - something with a bit more edge and with Vinnie Jones - then give Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels a nudge. Either way you won't regret it.

... on 29th February 1940, at the 12th Academy Awards (yep, in 1940 they held the Oscars on the extra day in a leap year), Gone with the Wind was nominated for 13 of the 17 Oscars on offer. It won a whopping eight & was later awarded two additional 'honorary Oscars'. 

It won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress (Vivien Lee). The $20million man, Clark Gable, didn't win. He was pipped for Best Actor by Robert Donay in Goodbye, My Chips. The Wizard of Oz won a few Oscars too. 


1939 was a pretty good year at the movies!

Have a great week. Pip pip.

The very last word must, of course, go to Rhett Butler ... 'You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how'.

Images from rajubutt.com & merely.com

dear mr president ... what's the go with guns?

It's Sunday, so it's confession time. I’ve never fired a gun. 

Not a real life, shiny metal one anyway. I’ve never looked down the barrel at a target or a silhouette of a person, or even an empty coke can, and slowly squeezed the trigger. I was on holiday a few years back and some of my male mates whizzed off to a shooting range on hired mopeds. I wasn’t interested. The sun was shining. The bar was open. And I had no burning desire to fire a Kalashnikov. 

I flicked on the TV a while back and caught a bit of one of the Republican Primary debates. (Trust me, catching 'a bit' of a republican primary debate is really catching too much of a republican primary debate). The debate had degenerated into which of the candidates - the ‘Mr President wannabes’ - did the most hunting, and when they had all last been hunting. When they had last fired a gun at an animal in the woods. Seriously, that was actually what they were arguing about! On the ‘suitable to be President' scale ... care factor? Well-below zero. Surely.

I was recently in Hawaii with Picky and Pearl (are you 'in' Hawaii or 'on' Hawaii? I have no idea). It’s easy to forget with Hawaii but, whether you’re in it or on it, you are in fact in the good ol’ US of A. It doesn’t feel like it. I’m not sure what ‘feeling like it’ means when it comes to being in or on other countries, but Hawaii feels much more like a tropical Pacific Island than the 50th State of the Union. 

Well, it’s both I guess, but you get my drift. It doesn’t feel American. Not that there’s anything at all wrong with ‘feeling American’. I love the States and the vast majority of Americans I’ve met in my life have been totally sane, normal and rational people. I recently had a couple of American ladies work on an event for me and they were super. So, I have no issue at all with America, or with Americans.

But, I really do have to ask ... what’s the go with guns over there? Over the USA? 

Guns are everywhere. Not real guns. Well, they might be everywhere too, but if they are I didn’t see too many on the streets of Hawaii. I'm sure they are everywhere on the streets of New York, LA, Detroit etc. In Hawaii it’s ads for guns that are everywhere. Guns and gun clubs. Not only that, the ads are aimed at kids (kids!!) and at families (families!!). Kids that look about 7 or 8 (see the real live ad above) are used to entice you, and your loved ones, to the local gun club. The kids are kitted out in shooting gear, with headphones, protective glasses and...of course...a nice, big, shiny gun. 


The smaller the kid, the bigger the gun, the better the ad! 

Someone told me that it's a Glock she's holding in the ad. I have no idea. I wouldn't know a Glock if one was shoved in my face. Unless of course it happened to have 'Glock' written on it when it was shoved in my face. But I'd have fainted before I noticed the brand of gun that was aimed at me noggin'. Whatever the brand of gun that the sweet little girl is holding in the ad above, the whole thing scares the living daylights out of me. And whilst we're on the ad ... I assume that the 'live fire' line is supposed to attract me to the gun club. Yeah right. There's a bunch of kids with not-yet-developed brains lined up firing real bullets around the place? Woo-pee-do. Where do I sign up?? Grab me a membership form and and a pen. I'm in. 


It's scary.

But if you want really scary there’s always ... Walmart. 


We had a look around one on Hawaii. I was after a running watch. No luck I'm afraid. But guns ... take ya pick. And ammo? Load yourself up. Arm yourself to the teeth. Seriously. No watches to let me time a gentle trot around the local neighbourhood, but if I wanted to shoot that neighbourhood up ... I could go right ahead, fill me boots. It couldn't be easier. If you want a gun and a pocket full of bullets look no further than your friendly, local Walmart. They're all just over there, past the chocolates, turn right at the cuddly toys, toddle passed the tents and you'll see them all shiny and enticing on the back wall. Guns. Lots and lots of guns. A gun for every occasion. (Disclaimer - I'm sure Walmart do ask for ID and a gas bill with your name and address on it before unlocking the gun cabinet and letting you go nuts. At least I hope they do!).

Look, i’m not a social scientist. I don’t even know if you can actually ‘be’ something called a social scientist. I get the impression that social scientists just teach social science to kids who want to be social scientists so that they can teach social science. But surely someone, somewhere has connected all this gun stuff with all the gun-related bad news we see nightly on TV. It seems so obvious. Does a kid of 7 or 8 really need to know how to fire a Glock? Do families really need to pop along to the Royal Hawaiian Shooting Club on a Sunday arvo to let off a few rounds? Family fun, with a gun! Come on. As a great American with a different kind of weapon in his hand, used to say, 'You cannot be serious!'

I know, I know. There’s the Constitution and the the Founding Fathers said that the right to bare arms was a fundamental human right, and so they wrote it down and called it the 2nd Amendment. But surely that was then, and surely this is now. 2012. It's not the Wild West! Wouldn't it be far better if everyone just put down their guns, Walmart stopped selling them and kids stopped advertising them?

Our little Pearl is a little girl. This quirk of reproductive fate will probably mean that guns won’t be too much of an issue as she’s growing up. She’s 20-months old now and she’s definitely not pretending that her fingers, the newspaper, or any other inanimate object is a gun. She's too busy pretending everything is a baby. Thankfully. 


I hear that boys like to do 'the gun thing' from a very early age. I've seen boys playing at soldiers and guns and I can't help but think that it's a bit sad in some ways. Of course, in the vast, vast majority of cases it's totally harmless. It's just playing. It has no baring on anything at all. I know that. But still. I kinda think it's a wee bit sad that 'play' needs to involve things that in non-play situations are violent. Maybe I'm just being over-sensitive. Maybe I just need to toughen up. Maybe that's just 'how it is' with boys. Girls have their Barbies and My Little Ponies and boys have their plastic rifles and replica Glocks. And then some of them grow up and want a real one. Just like a girl might want a pony that's not pink when she's older. Maybe that's just 'life'!

What’s your view? Is it really just boys with their toys (their toy guns) ? 

Is it an issue, or am I just shooting from the hip here? Shoot me your view on guns & kids, & kids & guns.

pip pip


(The photo is from google images but it was an ad shown freely all over Honolulu in Dec 2011) 

Friday, I'm in love ... Manly (Sydney's very own Blackpool)

I moved to Sydney on May 1st 1997. It was a Thursday. I'd waited all my life to live in the UK under a Labour Government and I left England on the very day that Tony Blair was elected. I've heard mixed reports about how he did...


Moving to Oz wasn't really a difficult decision. I was working for a big company in London and they offered to transfer me Down Under. I'd never been to Australia, but I’d seen Crocodile Dundee and Neighbours so I pretty much knew the score. Plus I’d had the odd pint of Fosters over the years. So, I knew the beer too. But the main thing was that I was over London. Over it.

I know that the English have a reputation for moaning about the weather, but to be fair to us - to them - the weather is bloody awful for a good proportion of the year. For me it was the drizzle, the fog and the frost. In that order. And that was just your average summer's day! I will say one thing, the English actually don't moan about much in general. It’s a total myth that they (we) are whingers. We're a pretty stoic bunch. But the weather? That's a different story entirely. English weather has the ability to sap all hope, to exhaust all energy, to drain all reason, to fuddle your brain and leave you angry, frustrated and really rather peeved and miffed. Most weekends! Multiply that by 52 - and throw in Wimbledon (it's guaranteed to rain during the Wimbledon fortnight) - and you can go a bit doo-lally in Ol’ Blighty. Things can get a bit unpredictable, with cancelled plans, poorly chosen clothing and lost umbrellas. It’s a very stressful way to live. 

I knew the game was up when I spent an entire day at Wimbledon huddled under an umbrella. Just as I thought it couldn’t get any worse, Cliff Richard appeared in the stands and started singing. Live. Well, as live as Cliff Richard gets. That was it. When the rain rains and Cliff sings, it’s time to call it quits. To pack up and move on. 

So it’s true. And it’s fickle. I moved to Sydney - all 10,600 miles - for the weather ... and also to be by the sea. My whole life I'd wanted to live by the sea. I'd spent plenty of rollicking weekends as a kid in Blackpool (see pic 1) - the closest beach-town to my home-town - to know that the beach and seaside was (is) the place to be. 

Somehow, life has a habit of seeming to be that little bit better - that little bit brighter - by the sea. When I was growing up there was nothing better than a summer weekend in Blackpool, especially when the Illuminations (fancy street lights) were on, and the Pleasure Beach (fancy fun-fair) was in full swing! It was magical.

So, with Blackpool on my mind and with dreams of soft sand between my toes and a permanent stick of rock in my mouth, I packed my bags, hopped on a plane, set off for Sydney and promptly ... lived no-where near the beach. Doh!

I have no idea what I was thinking. I honestly don't. I think I was in a state of perpetual jet-lag. It lasted for 12 years. Don't get me wrong, in the course of those twelve years I visited the beach hundreds of times. I only lived a few kms  from some of Sydney's best beaches. But I chose to live closer to the inner-city - to the city center - than the sea. Even now I can't explain it. I went all that way to be beside the seaside  - and I ended up missing by a good few miles. 

It’s not like the beach is hard to miss. Sydney is full of beaches. Most of them are pretty accessible, close to the action, safe and relatively affordable - at least compared to London.

& then I met Picky. 


We met on Chaweng, the main beach of Koh Samui, Thailand. We were both on holiday. She was living and working in Sydney. We were together in Sydney for a year before Picky went back to Germany to study. We did that whole ‘long-distance thing’. For three whole years. Australia to Germany redefines the ‘long’ in long-distance. When we eventually became a couple in Sydney, Picky asked me why we weren’t living near the beach. I didn’t have an answer. I was mute.

Her question stirred-up all those old feelings. Those weekends in Blackpool at the Pleasure Beach came flooding back. The kiss-me-quick hats, the Blackpool rock, the donkeys on the beach, the striped deck-chairs. The fish & chips. With mushy peas. The lot.

We sold up & moved to Manly beach (pic 2). 

When it comes to the beach in Sydney it really is a toss up between Bondi and Manly. I'm not a 'native' so I don't get involved in the 'Manly's better / Bondi's better' debate. I reckon visitors to Sydney should see both and spend time in both. They are both stunning. Both beaches are terrific. 


But I love Manly and I love Manly beach. 


It's probably just because it’s where I live. It's where Picky and I live and, of course, it's Pearl's very first home. So it’s special.

Manly Beach. 


It's a little slice of picture-perfect paradise. It's the place I call home, the one place where I really feel ‘at home’. You really can feel ‘at home’ in a place. I’m sure you have too at some point, or perhaps you do right now. It might not be at the beach. It might be in the mountains, in the countryside, in the city. Wherever. But there’s no feeling quite like the feeling of being ‘at home’. It’s a unique feeling.

It took me a long time to find my way to the beach. Too long. Or maybe not. Maybe you have to miss something to really appreciate it when you finally have it. Or maybe you just have to meet someone special like Picky. Someone who leads you ‘home’. 

Manly beach. I bloomin’ love it!

Have a great weekend.

Pip pip

Ps ... I've got guns in my sights. I’m taking a pot-shot at the subject of guns and the USA over the weekend. It might be a tad controversial. I’m in ‘one of those moods’. I’d love you to have a read and maybe comment ... particularly if you live or have lived in the good ol’ US of A!

in the day ... 21st February 1958

The very best logos are the simplest ones don't you think? Apple, Facebook, MacDonalds...you name them, their logos are simple, instantly recognisable and worth an absolute mint.

Sometimes we forget how important logos and symbols are. The fact that we can so easily forget about them shows just how important they’ve become in our lives. They’ve just become part of our consciousness. They’re just there. They conjure up memories, moments in time, songs, people. 


Show someone a logo and I bet you get a story! A cross, a crescent moon, a swastika, the golden arches, the apple logo, the ford logo (pity it’s not the ferrari logo, hey?!). 

The peace logo must be one of the most powerful symbols ever created. This might be because it’s not really associated with a brand, a product or a company. It symbolises a movement, a feeling, a desire. It’s not really ‘owned’, so in that sense it’s hard to give it a value. As I type this the facebook ‘f’ logo has a value of about $100billion and Apple’s cute little apple symbol is apparently heading towards being the first ever $1trillion logo. Not bad, hey? For a couple of little designs that were probably created on the back of a fag packet!!

But the peace sign. Wow! it’s universally known and it conjures up a heap of emotions, thoughts and memories.

For me, it brings to mind the 1980’s. That was when nuclear disarmament was the issue of the day, especially in England. I’d joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). They used to organise marches and protests. These were in the days when people marched and protested about stuff they were passionate about. Before Facebook petitions and twitter. One march in London saw more than 100,000 people walk from Blackfriars Bridge to Hyde Park. The Style Council and UB40 played a Ban the Bomb concert in the park. I was there with a few friends and we'd all been taken there by a teacher at our school. I’m not sure that teachers these days would be allowed to take a bunch of their students to a Ban the Bomb concert in a city four hours away. There’d be a few insurance issues, I reckon! Pity, hey...

Anyway, the universal peace symbol is instantly recognisable. It's also really quite   clever. It was designed by Gerald Holten. It’s a combination of the semaphore letters N & D ... for nuclear disarmament. His original drawing of the symbol is on display in the Peace Museum in Bradford, England. 

Just so you know, in these times of brand-protection and mega-lawsuits, the peace symbol isn’t copyrighted or protected in any way at all. It's yours! You're free to do what you wish with it. Pop it on a t-shirt, a mug, or tattoo it on your chest. Go for your life.

The clever chap, Mr Holten, designed it on February 21st 1958. I wonder if the Facebook logo or that little twittering bird will still be around in 55years??  

Peace be with you!

pip pip

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.The ski-school edition.

I’ve only ever read one self-help book. Only one. And I only read it cos everyone was talking about it. It was the BOTM ... book of the moment. It was everywhere. It was supposedly revolutionary. 


Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. 


It said that men and women are different. It took 300 pages to get there. If that isn’t enough to cause a revolution, I don’t know what is. Arab Spring eat your heart out. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti self-help books. It’s each to their own in the world of self-help. They’re just not for me. But then again, neither is massage.

These days when you pop to get your hair cut in Sydney, they throw in a head-massage. I’m convinced it’s to justify what they’re charging you for snipping at the mop on your noggin’ for 15-minutes. Anyway, it took me about 6 visits to pluck up the courage to say that I didn’t want the head massage. She thought I was insane. I thought she was going to call whoever you call when you’ve got an insane person on your hands, or in your hair salon. (It used to be a barbers. They re-branded a while ago).  Head massages gives me the right royal gips; they make me feel antsy & stressed. I’ve got no idea why. It’s the same with body massages. I don’t relax at all. Not one bit. I just lie there feeling more and more tense, wishing the massage would stop. The whole time the masseuse is saying ‘you’re really tense, you’re probably working too hard’. I’m not working too hard. I’m tense cos I’m being massaged when I’d rather be at work, working. 

Back to self-help books. Men and women are different. I didn’t need a 300-page book to tell me that. I just needed a 10-day skiing holiday. I’m sure you’ve spotted the same gender differences in other ways and during other activities. Like asking for directions. Or reading instructions. Or building stuff from IKEA. 


Well, my epiphany came on the white slopes of New Zealand. 

I took Picky to Queenstown. It’s billed as 'the best skiing in the southern hemisphere'. Far be it for me to pour cold water on marketing campaigns, but lots of things in Australia & New Zealand come with a ‘best in the southern hemisphere’ tag. The clever marketing bods think we don’t all know that there’s not much in the southern hemisphere, except for Australia and New Zealand (apologies to Argentina, South Africa and a few random islands in the South Pacific).  

As holidays go this one was pretty significant. I proposed to Eileen. Popped the question, right there & then. She said ‘yes’, and the rest is history. Ah & something else. I’d never skied before. Ever. Picky had. She’s German. They go to school on skis in Germany. Even if there’s no snow. Over in Queenstown we’d booked 4 full-days in ski-school. Level 1.

Level 1 is basically for chimps, apes, other members of the monkey family, very tiny kids ... and me. Plus Eileen. She said that she’d do ski-school with me; to hold my hand. That’s the kind of couple we are. Plus I had an engagement ring with me, she suspected as much and was keen to get her hands on it later in the week. As such, she was staying very close with a keen eye on my pocket.

In ski-school, at the very start of the very first Level 1 lesson - right at the bit where the nice lady is saying that the long thing attached to the bottom of your foot is called a ‘ski’ - I thought ‘bugger this’. I started doing little walking circles. It wasn’t long before I was off, away, skiing all over the place. It was a piece of cake. Easier than ‘a piece of cake’. A doddle. EASY. With a capital E. I was up the moving walkway, off at the top and down the hill within ten minutes of the lesson starting. 

I say ‘down the hill’. It wasn’t quite a hill. Yet. Maybe in 300million years. If you’d have popped a spirit level on the snow, the little bubble would have just - just - moved ever so slightly to the left. Still, I was off. Proper skiing. No fuss, no hassle. Skiing. Easy. Take me to the black run. NOW.

Meanwhile, over in ski-school ... Picky was listening-up & doing exactly what she was told, lining up where she was told, taking it all in and generally being a right Miss Goody Two-Shoes. Goody Two-Ski Boots.

We went for lunch and Picky suggested that I might want to listen-up in the afternoon class so that we could enjoy an hour on the easy green run before we went home for the day. Easy green run?! She was havin’ a bloomin’ giraffe. Stuff the greens ... I'd seen the greens. And I'd already decided we could skip them. We could move straight to the blacks. The blacker the better.

The afternoon lesson was more of the same. Blah blah blah. Line up, wiggle your bum, bend you knees, transfer the weight. Hells bells. GET ON WITH IT. The chimp and the ape might learn at this speed, but not me. I was off again. Up the magic carpet and down the hill, up and down, up and down, up and down.   EASY    AS     PIE.

After the lesson Picky suggested we start ‘proper skiing’ on the really easy green run. Fair enough. She was clearly nervous. Rusty. They get like that sometimes. Women. Germans. German women. Fair do’s. I’ll whizz down a quick green, just to help with your nerves. Just to build your confidence. I gave her a few tips as we were waiting for the chairlift. A little pep talk. The benefit of my experience. I’d been whizzing around all day. She’d been stuck in ski-school bending her knees, transferring the weight and wiggling her bum.

It all started to go wrong on the chairlift. 

Picky was fine. She’d been in the lesson when they’d covered ‘entering and exiting chairlifts’. I hadn’t. I did manage to get off the chair-lift. Just. It wasn’t elegant, and the people on the chair behind us had to stay on, and go all the way back down the mountain, because I was lying in a heap slap-bang in the middle of the exit ramp. 

Standing at the top of the easiest green run, three things hit me like a train - like three trains; it was steeper than it looked from the bottom, it was all downhill and - the real shocker - it wasn’t straight. There were bends, corners, wiggles. I looked at Picky. I was white. So was the snow. I was surprised she could see me. I’d blended to the surroundings.

How do I turn? HOW DO I TURN?  ...       Before you go   ...       HOW  DO   I   T   U   R   N

Picky disappeared around the first bend.

Turning was in lesson 1 &  lesson 2 of Ski-School Level 1. It was important. Critical. That’s what all the knee-bending was about. And the wiggling the bum. I’d seen the chimps and the apes doing it as I was halfway up the magic carpet. They had looked like they were doing warm-up squats. I didn’t need to do warm up squats. I was warmed up from all the whizzing down the flat hill in a dead-straight line.

When you go down a ski run of any colour, and you have absolutely no idea how to turn because you’ve spent all day going in a straight line down a slope that really does the word ‘slope’ a major disservice, the only way to execute a turn is to fall on your bum to stop, get up, wobble down another 10m, fall on your bum...repeat to fade. Repeat all the way to the bottom of the easiest green run.

Picky knew this was coming. The ski-instructor had told her that some beginners are like this. Men from Mars mostly. There’s no major hills on Mars, so there’s no need to turn when you ski down them. Venus on the other hand is full of hills with very tricky turns. 

The following day, I re-joined the apes and chimps. Level 1, lesson 1. Again. I had to repeat. My tail was firmly between my legs.  I knew it was a ski that was attached to my foot, but that was just about all I knew about skiing.

Turning. It took me four days to finally get it. To finally do it without my bum being part of the manoerve. I still struggled with 'consistent inelegant exits' from the chairlifts. & of course we stayed green. I might give a black run a nudge next time. When I’ve learnt how to stop without swallowing snow.

Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus? I’m not sure. I know we’re different sometimes. That we often do things differently; approach things from different angles. At work, at home, with the kid(s). I suppose it’s about finding a compromise and learning from each other. Often there’s no actual ‘right’ way. But sometimes there’s an easy way and a hard way. 


The only exception is way up there on the ski-slopes. Then you’d do well to listen and learn. It’ll save you a very bruised bum and an equally-bruised ego.


hope you had a super weekend. pip pip

friday I'm in love ... with waffles of mass addiction

i don't care if monday's blue 

tuesday's grey and wednesday too

thursday i don't care about you

it's friday, i'm in love

it's friday & it's all about love. 

not the soppy stuff. well, maybe, sometimes. but mainly the stuff I love, you love, we love. 

why not? it's friday ... you gotta love that!

wwwcs


It's a fact. you have one, or even a tiny part of one, and you're hooked. With a capital H & a capital OOKED. 


They're from Barefoot Cafe in Manly. It's a tiny place. If you sneeze as you walk past you've missed it. If you don't sneeze and you spot it, you've discovered a little gem. A belter of a place. It's a simple coffee joint. It only serves coffee and chai latte. & waffles with warm chocolate sauce (wwwcs). The waffles are hot and crispy on the outside and warm and chewy on the inside. The chocolate sauce is ridiculously good. Belgian apparently, but who cares where something's from when it's that good. When it's too good to be true. But in this case it is true. & I've got a couple of lumps of lard on both of me thighs to prove it! 


When Pearl was really, really tiny, me and Picky quickly slipped into our little 'Barefoot routine. We'd wander down with Pearl in her pram for a coffee and wwwcs. Picky had chai cos she was breastfeeding and had read that coffee was bad. (is it really? I have no clue). Barefoot is about 15mins from our apartment. By the time we got there Pearl was usually asleep. 


You can go a bit barmy in those first 3 months. It can be a really hard slog - with skipped sleep, frayed nerves and short fuses. Barefoot saved us both from going loopy. The coffee would pep us up and the waffles would help to make the world seem a much better place. We'd go there alone, meet people there or just hang out whilst Pearl slept. It became a bit of a home from home for us. The haze of the first few months wasn't quite as hazy after an hour in Barefoot Cafe with a waffle and a coffee or 2.


We had a newborn baby back then. She was a perfectly good reason to eat them. I'm not sure what our excuse is now that Pearl is 20-months old. The one in the picture was scoffed only yesterday. By me. Don't worry, Picky had one too. I suspect she also had a mouthful of mine when I was taking the snap. 


have a super weekend. mine will include a wwwcs at some point, no doubt. I hope you have something just as delicious planned for your weekend. Whatever it is, enjoy!


pip pip


ps ... there's a little story about skiing and the differences between men and women heading your way on Sunday. Men, women and skiing. I thought I'd tackle something oh so simple!

in the day ... 14th feb 1977

A snippet of stuff from the past. A little jaunt down memory lane if you like. 

The older I get the more I hear myself saying that awful phrase, ‘back in the day’. When I used to hear an ‘oldie’ say it I would think ... ‘Ah shush about the old days already. Focus on today, mate’. Funny thing is that nowadays I hear myself saying it more & more. C’est la vie!

in the day ... 14th february 1977


There's cycling and then there's cycling.

I've done the former and I don't do the latter. The former involves pottering around on a bike, getting from A to B on two wheels in however long it takes to get from A to B on two wheels. And not really caring. The latter involves pulling on multi-coloured lycra, a funny little hat, mounting a seriously expensive machine, dodging the dangerous traffic and giving the roads a right good nudge.

I'm not, and never have been, a serious, lycra-loving type of cyclist. And nope this isn't a rant against cyclists. Not at all. It's the exact opposite. I love cycling. From the sidelines. I'm a kerbside cyclist. I bloomin' love the Tour de France. LOVE IT. I'm a 'non-cyclist', a cyclist without a cycle, but I stay up to watch Le Tour every year. It starts at 11pm down here too, but I reckon it's one of the best sporting events on TV. 

The Tour is really amazing to watch. If you've watched it you'll probably know what I mean. If you haven't, give it a go. If you do decide to dip your toe into the 2012 Tour, try to catch one of the really hilly stages. I'd recommend Stage 16 on 18th July when the silly billies tackle 4 of the steepest hills all in one gruelling day. 197kms. Madness.


This year's Tour is the 99th, and it actually starts in Liege, Belgium on 30th June. It'll cover 3500kms through Belgium, France and Switzerland, before ending in Paris on the Champs-Elysee on 22nd July. The winner will lead the peleton (the big bunch behind the leaders) into Paris. That's the tradition. The last day is more of a celebration than a proper race.

There are three things I love about Le Tour de France - 


- The commentary. Phil Liggett is one of the best commentators on TV. He does the Aussie commentary on SBS, he really knows his stuff and he presents so perfectly for non-cyclists. He explains the ins and outs really well. 


- The hills. Seeing the cyclists - especially on the hill stages - is truly amazing. Look I know that the sport's a wee bit tainted with drugs and stuff, but to be honest, the speed they go, the risks they take, and the hills they tackle, I'm happy to pass over the controversy for the sporting occasion it produces. And finally...


- The scenery and the crowds. The French are (by and large) barking mad, and French lovers of the Tour are the maddest of the mad. Plus, the scenery is stunning. It always makes me want to hang a string of garlics around my neck, open a bottle of chilled red wine and eat smelly cheese. Chilled red wine? Apparently they do that in some parts of France. Told you the French are barking mad.

Ah. So why am I rabbiting on about a cycle race in France? I hear you ask. Especially when today is February 14th? Shouldn't love be in the air? It's Valentine's Day for heaven's sake. 


Indeed it is. But it's also Cadel Evan's birthday.

Cadel Evans - world mountain bike champ in 1998 and 1999. Only took up road racing in 2001. Finished second in the Tours of 2008 and 2009 and then won le Tour in 2011. He'll be back to defend his crown this year. He'll be 35. That's pretty old to be whizzing round the French Alps at well over 100km/h on a piece of flimsy carbon-fibre. 


Happy birthday and good luck, Cadel. I will be watching ... sans lycra!

pip pip & of course Happy Val Day to lovers and dreamers everywhere.

I broke The Golden Rule

I’ve been in two minds about this post. About this entire topic really. I’ve been vacillating wildly all week ... should I, shouldn’t I, will I, won’t I, can I, can’t I. It’s been a bit dizzying to say the least. 

So I wrote it, and then I left it. I slept on it. It’s sometimes best to sleep on things. I’m sure we’ve all done things that we later thought we should really have slept on. Sent an email, or a text or a dreaded fb message. And then all hell breaks loose. Whoops! Mostly there’s no going back. So with this topic I left it for a day or two. And then I thought, stuff it, I’m going to post it, because it’s really how I feel. Post it and be damned.

Parents can be a real nightmare! 

There I said it. 

Parents can be a real nightmare (I said it again. It’s quite cathartic).

We all know that kids can be a nightmare too. Frequently. That’s OK. Everyone knows that, but mostly people accept it because they are, well...kids. But parents? Parents should know better. Parents can give parents a bad name. 

So, I’m on the Manly ferry on a Friday afternoon with Picky and Pearl. The three of us have been in the City for an hour or two. 


Picky grinds her teeth. That’s by the by, except that she was at the dentist in the City to collect a plastic guard that will apparently stop the constant grinding at night. Teeth grinding is apparently a common problem. Everyone’s doing it. The world is full of people who grind their teeth. Especially at night. It's pretty much a nocturnal problem, like possums in Oz and foxes in London.

Whilst Picky's was with the dentist, I let Pearl run around Martin Place. She likes to chase the pigeons. To be honest they don’t seem to mind too much. In any case, she’s never caught one. 

The three of us then hopped on the Manly ferry and headed home. The ferry was busy. During summer they lay on extra ferries to transport hoards of locals and tourists between the Circular Quay in the city & the beach at Manly. I don’t blame them - the beach at Manly is stunning. I reckon that the Manly Ferry is probably the best journey on public transport anywhere in the world. I read once that the Staten Island ferry between Manhattan and Staten Island was officially given this honour. I’ve been on both and I reckon the Manly Ferry is better. It’s a close run thing, and the Staten Island ferry is free (or it might be a quarter these days due to the GFC). The Manly Ferry is $7.00 each way & it's worth every cent. Plus you get free wi-fi.

OK, so we’re on a packed ferry on a hot Friday afternoon, we’re sitting inside and there’s a couple of mums in the row behind us, each with a couple of kids - two babies and two aged somewhere around 5 or 6. The two older ones are playing. I say playing. Not really. They were playing at first. And then they stopped playing & started screaming. First at each other. And then at their mums. When I say screaming I really do mean screaming. Screa-Ming! As loud as they could. Louder than they could. They were trying to see who could scream the loudest. And for the longest. For at least ten or fifteen minutes. Neither was going to be the first to stop. It was a game to them. It was that good old 'which one of us can scream the loudest for the longest' game. On a packed ferry on a hot Friday afternoon. 

Their mums? Well, they just sat there, happily chatting to each other, two meters from their two screaming kids. To be fair, they did stop chatting when the screaming started. They had to. They couldn’t chat above the dreadful screaming. 

The kids weren’t upset, they hadn’t had an accident, they weren’t crying. They were just screaming at the top of their voices. As loud as their little lungs would let them. For fun. Their mums did nothing. Nothing at all. They didn’t ask them to stop. They didn’t tell them to stop. Nothing. They did laugh at their kids a few times. Oh and they pointed at them a fair bit. As if to say, 'that’s fun kids'.

Fun for them maybe, but not for anyone else on the ferry. There were lots of shuffling feet, eyes staring at the ground and glances between uncomfortable passengers.

& then this happened. This is the bit that I’ve been thinking about. It’s the part of the story that I question. I ask myself if I did the right thing. I could have just kept quiet. I could have said nothing and just got off the ferry in Manly with Picky and Pearl and headed home.  That would have been easy. But I can be a right gobby chap sometimes. 

Perhaps this time I shouldn't have been. But I was. I’ve been thinking about why I did what I did. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. I did it.

As we were making to get off the ferry, I turned to the two ladies and I said - nicely and calmly - but I admit it, I said it,

'Ladies, why are you letting your kids behave like that in public?'

That’s all I said. Honestly, that’s all. I freely admit that I said those exact words. No more. No less. Whoops.

It didn’t turn out well. I don't suppose it was ever going to turn out well. One of the ladies went ballistic. At me. I suppose the good thing was that her screaming at me drowned out the screaming of the two kids. But scream at me she did. It was clear where her daughter had inherited her ability to scream from; her mum.

I also freely admit that I have no idea what kind of day the two mums were having. I have no context to place the situation in, no history. I only know what I saw. And that was two parents of two kids allowing them to ruin a beautiful ferry journey for a whole bunch of people who didn’t deserve to have their ferry journey ruined. They didn’t once ask their kids to stop screaming, or try to distract them ... or anything. They just let them scream their heads off on a ferry. Inside the ferry. I think that’s what annoyed me the most. They could at least have tried to do something to stop the screaming.

I think as parents we owe it to others to do our best to make sure our kids don’t disrupt, destroy, run wild, run amok or cause havoc. Of course, all of these things will happen from time to time. That’s OK as long as the parents have at least tried to do something to prevent it. Surely we have to 'at least try'.

I’m a parent myself and I don’t think it’s acceptable to ‘just do nothing’. Doing nothing tells your kid that it’s perfectly OK to scream at the top of his or her voice for 20 minutes in a public place ... just for fun.  

Now you can see why I was agonising about posting this. I’ve gone and broken The Golden Rule. Parents stick together. They don’t question other parents. Not in public. Not with non-parents around. It’s us against them. 

Except it’s not. Sometimes even parents can be a real nightmare.

pip pip


Ps ... so what happened? how did it end? did the parents all end up as friends and go for a drink together in a child-friendly bar on Manly Wharf. Alas no, she screamed at me for a few seconds. It was all a little incomprehensible really. The gist was that the kids were tired, they had been out all day in the city and how dare I question their parenting skills. I was holding Pearl and so I decided to hold my tongue too. 


Picky, Pearl and I stopped at Chat Thai on Manly Wharf to grab takeaway. The 'ladies with the screamers' were met off the ferry by their husbands. They were a pair of big blokes. I could see them all looking around. Scanning the wharf. Were they looking for me? Seeking me out? I have no idea. I was hiding behind the counter in a Thai takeaway.


(photos from panaramio.com & sayhellostephanie.com)