Personally, I think I would have preferred a toaster.

The arrival, last week, of the latest heir to the Danish throne, prompted in this country a flurry of gift giving which rivaled the birth of Christ.

Because Princess Mary is a native of Tasmania, the Danish royal family have been reclassified as Australian by default. Therefore, any issue from her marriage to Prince Frederick is an extension of the Australian nation and, as such, is entitled to be showered with gifts. It should be noted, though, should the young Prince grow up to be a reprobate, the scorn heaped upon him will be equally as generous.

Amongst the gifts of soft toys and knitted items bestowed by rank and file Australians were the official gifts from the various governments. The Federal government presented the happy couple with a first edition of May Gibbs' Snugglepot And Cuddlepie, a well known icon of Australian children's literature. Not a bad gift in itself, although I do shudder at the mental image of the cover being used as a teething rusk. The Tasmanian goverment gave them a pair of Tasmanian devils, though I can't see the young Prince playing with them in the backyard; they're liable to eat his fingers off.

This brings us to the Victorian government's proffering. Somebody obviously gave a great deal of thought to the question; "What do you give a Prince who has everything?", and Bracksie must have been impressed with the answer when it was whispered in his ear. (Steve Bracks is Premier of Victoria, equivalent of a Governor in the U.S. However, less inclined to kiss babies) The decision was made to give the proud parents a Melbourne tram, similar to the one pictured above, but a lot cleaner.

In our household - as in many others around the State, I suspect - bottom jaws fell open when they heard the news. The immediate response was, naturally, what the hell is the kid going to do with a tram? Isn't it a bit big? Certainly too big to pick up and suck on. And where on earth are they going to put it? It's going to need one hell of a toy box. And you could understand the Prince's reluctance to put away his toys when told by his mother.

Copenhagen has a tram system of its own, so I suppose the tram will be placed in a special area, and brought out for special occasions; trips to the seaside, the zoo, that sort of thing. But, what about when the Prince turns eighteen. I can just see him and thirty or so of his closest friends, in a mood to party, terrorising motorists around the city on a Saturday night.

All this is moot, though. The day after they announced the gift of the tram, the Victorian government qualified their statement by announcing that the Tram was, in fact, a belated wedding present for Mary and Frederick. The reason it took so long was the vehichle had to be refurbished and made to look as authentic as possible. The cynic inside of me, who is always jumping up and down trying to attract attention, wonders whether the Bracks Mob didn't hold off on announcing their gift until the birth of the Prince in order to save on cost. A two-gifts-in-one kind of deal.

Still, putting all that aside, if this tram was to be truly authentic, a few items had to be included;

• An automated ticket machine that doesn't work ninety-five percent of the time. When, and if, it is working, the instructions for purchasing a ticket are to be incrompehensible to all except, perhaps, computer language writers.
• A total absence of any display of route information (zones, etc.) that may enable passengers, who have been able to interpret ticket purchasing instructions, to determine exactly how much they are required to pay.
• A group of three or more fifteen-year-old school girls who constantly laugh and squeal at excrutiating decibel levels.
• An old man who stands directly in front of, or right beside, the ticket machine, singing opera badly and reeking of urine.
• A roving band of ticket inspectors with a propensity for beating up on miscreant travellers.
• A passenger, male or female, who places their bags of shopping on the vacant seat next to them, then refuses to remove it for anybody who hints they would like to sit down, too.
• A driver who is totally oblivious to everything except the warning bell for the next stop.

What about a conductor, I hear you ask? That would be considered an optional extra, and is sold separately.

I hope the happy couple enjoy their wedding present. I guess they don't really have any choice. It's not like they can take it to the op shop if they decide they don't really want it.

Early morning wake up call.

Like many people, I quite enjoy the sound of birdsong. The warbles and twitters touch a chord, and it can be very relaxing and soothing, peaceful.

Just not at quarter-past-bloody-four in the morning!

One goal I don't mind not achieving.

S, my partner, has a book titled So Many Books, So Little Time. It's about a woman who sets out to read one book a week for a year, but fails to reach her goal. With my usual depth of consideration, I thought I'd see if I could achieve what she couldn't. Surely, it wasn't all that difficult to read fifty-two books in one year.

Now, with just over eleven weeks left until the New Year, and not counting the two B.C. comic books, the score so far is;

Books: 39 Weeks: 41.

Short of setting aside a couple of days for nothing but reading or, as S would say, selecting something fluffy that only takes a couple of hours to read, it's most likely that I, too, will fail to reach the magical target.

But whether I make it or not, it has been a wonderful journey. I've been able to catch up with some of the titles considered "essential reading", which have somehow managed to evade me over the years. I'm talking, of course, about such masterworks as Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World and Tuesdays With Morrie. Of the others, On Beulah Height was a stand-out, along with the Harry Potter series (although I have to admit the jury is still out on Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince; I'm not sure how I feel about that one yet). The Sand Pebbles was a wonderful surprise, and The Flight Of The Falcon was as good an introduction as any to the works of Daphne Du Maurier; her precision with the English language is a breath of fresh air. And when it comes to non-stop action, Ice Station leaves you panting.

It's still possible, I suppose, to actually get fifty-two books read before the New Year, but even if I don't make it, I've sure as hell had a great time running the race.

And there's always next year, right?

Headline translation.

Last week, one of the major daily papers in Melbourne had an article in it under the headline;

OBESITY CRISIS LOOMS FOR WOMEN

The article then goes on to describe the results of the latest finding on obesity in women, and proposals for preventative actions and such. I think the meat of the article is really just a smoke screen for the actual meaning of the headline.

Australia is in the grip of Grand Final Fever. The two major football codes in this country have reached that week when the season winds up with the match that determines which team will be crowned champions. Actually, one - the Australian Football League (Aussie Rules Football) - was decided yesterday. Rugby League has their grand final next weekend. This brings us to the true meaning of the aforementioned headline.

Whilst it looks innocent enough, it is really a warning for women, written in "womenspeak". What is really being said is this;

WOMEN BEWARE! GRAND FINALS ARE ON, AND THERE WILL BE A LOT OF OVERWEIGHT MEN LOOKING FOR SEX!

You think I'm kidding, don't you?

Just ask any woman.

When the subject is tired and Warne.

As a spectator sport, cricket does for me what Angelina Jolie does for spousal fidelity; nothing at all. And I certainly don't consider the off-field antics of Australian spin bowler, Shane Warne, as anything newsworthy. Yet, "reporters" of the various media feel they need to expose us to his pecadilloes as often as he exposes himself.

The latest offering comes from the recent tour of England in which Australia lost the Ashes series. It was the last match of the series. Warne was due to bat the next day. Australia's hopes to save the match were pinned on his ability to slash his bat around with the same abandon as his other appendage.

It now comes to light that Warne met a woman the night before. They apparently engaged in a night-long session of sex. The woman is now laying (no pun intended) claim to making Warne so tired that when he came to the crease the following morning, he got out for a duck - no, that's not a misprint - and England thereby clinched the Ashes series. For non cricket types, "out for a duck" is when the batsman fails to score any runs.

Whilst I find the whole episode trite and and hardly newsworthy, it does bring to mind something I came across when researching another subject.

A woman's lot in late nineteenth century England was not a happy one when it came to the bedroom. Sexual congress between a husband and wife was for the purpose of procreation and to satisfy the rights of the husband as a man. If a husband demanded conjugal rights, the wife was supposed to just lie there and take it. Quite often, the woman found no enjoyment in the process. Religious dogma also stated that it was a sin for women to enjoy the act of procreation. Because of this, on the day of their wedding, many mothers imparted the following warning about the upcoming wedding night to their daughters.

"He is entitled to this because he is your husband, and it is your duty to produce an heir who will go on to become a valuable member of society. It is not a pleasant task, but it must be done. So, lay back, close your eyes, and think of England."

Hmmmm.

Often, when something is said in jest ...

When the questions stop and the smile falters.

Are we all going to wake up one day and discover we have forgotten how to to laugh, to smile? Are we going to be so immersed in the problems of the world that laughter is only going to be a faint echo resonating in a distant, ancient cranial canyon?

It's easy to see how we could forget to laugh. With everything that is going on in the world today, is it any wonder? Every day we're bombarded with news of disaster and war and economic catastrophe; an endless litany of negativity.

A megalomaniac exploits a loophole in Islamic law and as a consequence, two planes slam into the the World Trade Centre towers. Now, a quarter of the world's military are involved in trying to find this creature.

A despot in the Middle East (who coincidentally happens to be sitting on the world's largest oil reserves) is finally targeted by the FOG (Forces of Good) and flees. Eventually he is captured, and a large third of the world's military are concerned with trying to keep the peace in his devasted homeland.

In 1980, another despot came to power, but the fact that he behaves in exactly the same manner as his Middle Eastern counterpart doesn't seem to matter. Because his land has no economic or commodic value, he is totally ignored by the FOG and is left alone to do as he pleases. It would appear Zimbabwe's only hope now, would be the fortuitous discovery of a large deposit of fossil fuel.

Closer to home, the news doesn't seem to be any better; innocent children dying because their parents can't get along; our youth inundated by a tidal wave of so-called recreational drugs; evidence of corruption by people who hold positions of societal responsibility; road rage; phone rage. The list is added to every day, and more and more, we are afraid to get to know our neighbours.

The media must accept most of the responsibility for this. After all, they are the ones who deliver the doom and gloom to our lounge rooms daily. But we, as individuals, must also take some of the blame. We seem to be all too willing, almost sycophantic, to accept what we see and hear without question. And the more sensational, the more we believe, or so it would seem.

Stories of murder, rape of babies, looting, were recently plastered on our consciousness in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. These stories were given major headline prominence, and were the lead bulletin on the nighttime news shows. Yes, some of the things reported did happen, but it now appears many of them were unsubstantiated rumours. Did the media rush to make sure we heard that bit of news? To date, I have only seen a couple of lines in two leading newspapers. No headlines, more of an afterthought. "Death and destruction continued today ... blah ...blah ... blah ... oh, and by the way, some of it wasn't true."

Our willingness to accept without question all we are being told is the very basis of fundamentalism, a field which propaganda, terrorism, fanaticism, censorship, and few other nasties, find extremely fertile. Yet, we increasingly pass our fate into the hands of the noise makers, and allow ourselves to be led blindly wherever they choose to take us.

"Their's not to reason why,
their's but to do or die:
Into the valley of Death
rode the six hundred" *

We must never stop asking questions. And the best question to ask is that one known to every parent around the world; the one that your child asks and is so annoying; why? The more we ask, the more likely we are to discover just how irrelevant some of things we take so seriously really are.

That's where laughter comes into the equation. It allows us to not take life too seriously. To quote the consummate Peter Ustinov, "Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious." It allows us to examine that which we find important or threatening, and take the edge off it. Mark Twain said it best; "Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place." Comedy allows us to question the motives behind a political experiment in a way that's less confrontational physically, but has the surgical prescion of a scalpel mentally. It's a "rubber sword which allows us to make a point without drawing blood".

The ability to laugh at ourselves; to poke fun at our frailties and inadequacies; to find something funny in a tragic event; this is what allows us to get on with our lives. Without that release of tension, it wouldn't be long before the entire world population was stressed beyond breaking point.

"Total absence of humour renders life impossible."

*From The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Where do you go to, my lovely?

Ever woken up in the morning, only to discover you're more exhausted than when you went to bed the night before? Makes you wonder what the Hell you get up to when you're asleep, doesn't it?

God knows what I was doing last night, but I'm stuffed this morning. Feel like I've run a triathlon, topped off by fifteen rounds with Hulk Hogan. My right arm feels like it's been wrenched from its socket.

Reminds me of that story about the Scotsman who attended a wedding in his traditional dress.

Staggering home after the reception, he realised he wasn't going to make it, so lay down under a tree beside the road and promptly passed out.

Two women, coming home from a nightclub, spotted him lying there, and began wondering if it was true about what Scotsmen wear under their kilts. So they took a peek, and discovered that it was indeed true. Satisfied, they left him lying there, but not before deciding to play a little trick on the Scotsman. One of the women tied a blue ribbon around the object of their curiosity.

Upon waking the next morning, the Scotsman needed to answer a call of nature. He lifted his kilt, and imagine his surprise when he saw the ribbon.

"Och, Laddie!" he exclaimed. "I don' know where ye've been, but I see ye won first prize!"

The lights are on, and someone's home. They just might be out back, though.

I have described the Retreat as "a sanctuary for thought", yet considering the scarcity of - and long periods between - postings, even the most casual of visitors could be excused for assuming that I don't do a lot of thinking.

Not true.

My days are filled with observations and reactions to continuing events, and I am constantly thinking about them. The problem is, they all get jumbled and tangled, and I generally don't get a lot of time during the day when I can sit down and sift them thoroughly. I have gotten into the habit of taking a book with me to work, to jot down thoughts as they attack. Unfortunately, ideas and responses tend to hit at the most inopportune time; eg. when you're carting around 20 kilogram (43lb) cartons and you can't stop what you're doing.

So, the thoughts fade and swirl around in that part of my brain that is always foggy until one day, possibly months down the track, they step into the sunlight and are ready for scrutiny.

Sure, it would be easy to simply write the first thing that pops into my head, but I feel that would be bordering on the outskirts of fundamentalism which is dangerous country. It's no good saying you believe in something without being able to say why.

And that's mostly why I take so long to formulate a response to something that many people would consider warrents immediate attention.

That and the fact that I am easily distr.... Wow! I didn't know John Wayne refused the lead role in the television series Gunsmoke because he didn't want to be type-cast as a cowboy...

The ripples of a Sand Pebble

Finished reading this book, The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna, a couple of nights ago. Anybody who has been paying attention to my reading list will have noticed that there has been a fair bit of time elapsed between this book and the previous one. That's because Sand Pebbles came as somewhat a surprise, and demanded a bit more attention than most.

I came across this second-hand copy at the annual OXFAM giant book fair in Eltham. The book was only fifty cents, and I freely admit that I bought it for all the wrong reasons. I thought it would be a real boy's book, with lots of bang-bang-shoot-em-ups and lusty interludes. Instead, I found a well crafted story that gives us a unique view of the birth pains of a nation.

The tale is set in China in 1926 - 1927, just before, and at the beginning of, the revolution that was to shape China into the nation it is today. It tells of an opressed, disenfranchised people struggling to find their identity, of a country steeped in the feudal ways of warlords, ready to explode. Chiang Kai-shek will write his name in the pages of history.

And in the middle of it all is the gunboat the San Pablo (Sand Pebble) and her crew, the Sand Pebbles. Their transition from opressor to opressed is as inevitible as the annual flooding of the Yangtze River which they patrol, and equally as unstoppable.

Well worth the careful read. And it inspired me to look up and gather some more information on that period which, in turn, has led to a better understanding of where the China we know today came from.

Just goes to show. When you throw a pebble in the river, sometimes the ripples become a tidal wave.