Opinion Australia

So the wife comes home and as we are outside ready to meet her we all troop in one after the other. Suddeny the kids come belting in yelling… “There’s a dragonfly in the house… a big one!!”

So I believe them? Well no of course not… until the wife shouts the same thing… so I go to investigate, and sure enough there is a dragonfly with a wingspan at least 5″ racing about the hall banging into everything in its way.

Eventually it charges into the toilet and after a bit more argy bargy settles on the air vent. Off goes I in ‘brave knight’ mode to find some equipment. I choose a wide plastic jug and some A4 sheets of paper.

The thing is easily caught, transferred outside and allowed to fly free.

Unfortunately… in trying to catch it, I slipped off the toilet seat, which broke… and now I have a mornings work going to get a new one and fitting it… grrr.

Was watching a concert the other day, and up popped someone playing the ’40 string Viennese Zither’. For anyone who can’t remember hearing one, you might have seen the old masterpiece “The Third Man” starring Orson Welles. If so, this is the instrument that plays the haunting theme constantly in the background.

The theme, released as a single, sold a half million copies in three months which was pretty good for a 1950 film. Apparantly it even made US$100,000 in royalties in the USA!

The player, Anton Karas become famous, if only for a little while, but the music and the sound of that instrument lingers on in many minds. Of course, its popularity was helped along by Australian born entertainer Shirley Abicair who made her name playing the zither… though I don’t recall her ever playing it in a ‘classical’ fashion’ (and I’m sure there are fewer each year old enough to remember her appearing on the telly )

No idea currently who the soloist was in last nights concert but he was damn good and the sound reminded me how many instruments out there rarely get an opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities in todays somewhat static orchestras.

Maybe some of the more ‘exotic’ instruments like the zither need to be given more of a look-in now and then?

Astronaut Lisa Novak has just been arrested and charged with, amongst other things, attempted murder. Seems she fell in love with someone who, whilst happy to do some horizontal aerobics with her, was actually in a relationship with a younger woman.

Lisa, who incidentally is married with three children is alleged to have wanted to ‘dispose’ of the other love interest and drove halfway across the USA wearing a nappy to reduce ‘pit stops’ carrying an assortment of weapons from rubber pipes to a ‘BB gun (essentially an air rifle for those in the UK).

Unfortunately for Lisa and fortunately for her rival, it all went badly wrong… possibly because the sight of her wearing dark glasses and a trenchcoat made the object of the assasination attempt a bit wary.

Don’t people do some odd things?

Congratulations to Ricky Ponting. Last night he took out all three of the major gongs at the Alan Border medal awards night.

He is the only player to have won all three awards and the only player to have won three times! He had medal wins in 2004, 2006 and now 2007.

The three awards he took out were as Australia’s best player of the past year, and the Test and� limited-overs awards. This follows his leading the team to a crushing defeat of England in the 2007 Ashes� whitewash, and their dominance in the one day series.

Ricky is quoted as saying “I’ve just had one of the greatest years of my life as far as cricket’s concerned.”

Can’t help but agree… well done Ricky!!

Wifey went off to work a little later this morning. We discovered a ‘direct’ bus that leaves later and doesn’t stop on the way… except for traffic jams of course. Only issue is that it’s no longer a short walk across the park to the bus stop. She has to catch it from the one point it stops… a 10 minute drive down the road.

Could be worse of course, we just need to rearrange things slightly. I’d begun to get used to taking the dogs for a walk after she’d gone to get some exercise and was (am?) concerned I might just not do it if the routine changes.

So far so good though. Kids decided to come along as well so we dropped her off at the bus stop, waited until we were sure she wasnt going to get chucked off then drove home and went off with the dogs. Of course the kids came too… riding scooters this time… and all was well. We got home without argument and the kids went off to school with no problems.

Interestingly… one of these lunatic kids decided it would be a good idea to not only wear her school blazer, but also her tank top jumper. She must have been baking… so she took it off after ten minutes or so

Nice little walk… we see rabbits and grass parrots etc… so it’s not too bad really.