I'm with Germaine

I don't understand this. I absolutely agree with this though.
Steve Irwin - colourful character, yes - national icon and a shining example to all Australians? Please!!!!

Save all your kisses for me

As someone who once inadvertantly sent an email to my boss with kisses in it,
here's good news for me.

Chris. xx

I Love theguardian - reason # 193

Two jokes - one from yesterday:

Jean-Paul Sartre was busily working on Being and Nothingness in a Paris cafe. He paused to ask the waitress for a "coffee with no cream". "I'm afraid we have no cream, monsieur," she replied. "How about a coffee with no milk?"

And then a followup today:

Descartes in a coffee shop. "Would you like cream with that?" asked the waiter. "I think not," replied Descartes, who promptly disappeared.

And revealed today - Dame Stella Rimington, former head of MI5 (the intelligence agency, not a Tom Cruise (nutter extraordinaire) vehicle) comes out as a guardian reader.

Sometimes I Wish I was Braver

Last night, Damien had organised for Paul, he and I to attend a talk given by John Pilger, on his latest book, ‘Freedom Next Time’. He spoke very impressively (without notes) for about 25 minutes, then took questions from the floor on a variety of topics for another 40 minutes or so. I respect the stand John Pilger makes on various issues (Palestine, black poverty in South Africa, the tyranny and arrogance with which governments treat their voters and collude with big business, the plight of Diego Garcia, Imperialism etc. etc.), and agree with most of what he says. Sometimes, however, I can’t help but feel he glosses over some inconvenient truths if they don’t serve his argument.

Last night, for instance, he claimed that the Taliban had wiped out the afghan opium industry when they were in power. I didn’t think that was correct, and then today’s guardian had a story ,(purely by coincidence), about the resurgence of opium production in Afghanistan, stating that the Taliban had significantly reduced opium production in Afghanistan when they were in power, but not wiped it out, as Pilger had claimed. And I think that making claims in that fashion does his cause a disservice, because he does a great job in highlighting unfashionable causes.

Not that I'm saying the right doesn’t do manipulate the truth either, but I’d rather not be misled. I wanted to ask Pilger his opinion on China and whether he felt democracy would ever prevail, but I didn't have the balls to. Anyway, it was a very interesting night, so a big thankyou to Damien.

I Love theguardian - Reason #158

On today's front page:
'Does he or doesn't he? Moisturising secrets by Jon Snow (at Hay!), Nicky Campbell, Neil Warnock and David Cameron ' (boo, hiss!).

Be Still My Bleeding Leftwing Pinko Heart

As we hurtled at 60mph down another country lane in the west of England, in the pouring rain, tailgating the car in front, I made it clear to Paul that if I ended up a vegetable, I wanted the life support machine turned off. I tried to console myself that we were passengers in a German-made car, and they are pretty safe. But we made it to Crickhowell (pronounced Crac-ow -, I thought I was in Poland!) safely, with our limbs and breakfasts intact.

Wales was pretty miserable while we were there – but we had a great time at the Hay Festival. I thought I had died and gone to guardian-reader heaven. More left-wing, pinko, bleeding-heart liberals than I thought existed in the whole wide world were there. We’d booked a couple of events before we got there, but decided upon others as we went. The events themselves were an hour long – with a 40-50 minute talk (or interview), then questions from the floor.

First up was Germaine Greer. This was a last-minute decision, and one of the best talks we saw. I had seen her speak a couple of times before (off the cuff) and she is often on television over here as a talking head on review shows etc. I had never been that impressed with her comments, she always seemed to be saying the first thing that came into her head, and as a result of this, didn’t particularly want to go see her talk on ‘Poetry as Male Display’. She was great, dissecting a John Donne poem for us line by line, saying what a great poem it was, but illustrating how it objectified and subjugated women at the same time. All very interesting and intellectual. (‘She used words I didn’t know!’ someone said afterwards.)

The next day we saw Andrew Davies, who has adapted the Tailor of Panama, Bleak House, Brideshead Revisited and more recently The Line of Beauty, talk about his projects. He was quite the raconteur, and sprinkled his chat with references to other adapters (screenwriters? Who knows? There were lots of sage “Mmmm”’s from the audience – mostly I didn’t know who he was talking about.) His main piece of advice - ’Make sure sex is the spine of the story’.

Another talk we thought might be dry was given by Antony Beevor , on ‘The Battle for Spain’. He talked about how the Spanish Civil War probably wasn’t the fault of either right or left, and modern Spain’s struggle to come to terms with it’s past. He managed to tie in recent events (including remarks by a Spanish general who basically said if the Catalan’s didn’t pull their heads in, then the army would have to take care of things in Catalunya. I was quite excited by that, because I’d read about it. ), so we enjoyed this talk as well. He related Hitler’s diary entry after meeting Greneral Franco and not giving him want he wanted in return for Franco’s commitment to enter WWII ‘He is the only person I’ve met who made me feel like a Jew’. Humorous, if slightly chilling, with the benefit of hindsight.

We then Saw Antony Gormley discuss his installation at Menzies, Western Australia, for the Perth Festival. It was interesting, but there was nothing of note to comment on.

Our last event was the guardian debate: Free to Offend? Joan Bakewell, (Chair) Madeleine Bunting, Ziaudin Sardar, Philip Hensher, Reza Aslan and Anthony Julius discussed whether freedom of speech overrode the right of an individual not to be caused offence. So two Muslims, a Jew, and a Christian and one other (unknown) discussed the recent controversy over the Mohammed cartoons, Jerry Springer - The Opera (7.5/10), and the withdrawal of a play in Britain, because it offended Sikhs. I don’t think they came up with any answers, but the points of view put across were thought provoking.

So that's about it for our weekend, we were lucky enough to get the train back, so there was no need for Novenas on the return journey. I'd have loved to have stayed and seen AL Gore (but he was charging £30!!), and the talk on Creationism v. Evolution ('Who are the monkeys? You decide.'), but obviously it's not possible to see everything. And my brain hurt on the Sunday after attending four events. Next year we'll be back, hopefully for longer and with bigger brains. More photos are here.

Nothing to see here...

We had a fairly quiet weekend, as our midweek trip to Wales midweek left us a bit knackered, and I was oncall. Which means we only went out and got drunk twice. As you do. Friday night saw us out in London's trendy London Bridge. We met the lovely Chris and Bernadette for a couple of drinks, then dinner at Brindisa, a great Tapas bar right next to Borough Market. Chris and Bernie were on good form, too, so we had a fun night. They headed home around 10pm, so we bravely ventured to a less salubrious south London bar for more drinks.

But I can't misbehaved too badly, as I got up and cooked ricotta pancakes on Saturday morning (Photo 2) and then made my famous tuna baguette for lunch Saturday (photo 1). The ricotta pancakes were made with raspberries and then I served them with honey, creme fraiche and strawberries. The recipe was taken from Nigel Slater's new cookery book (The Kitchen Diaries) - which I can't recommend highly enough (9.6/10). It's fantastic -written diary style, (whoever would have thought!) and he manages to impart a real love of food. I've never been a huge fan of his until this book.

We had wanted to catch a movie Saturday night, but I had placed M:I:3 on the banned list, as I think Tom Cruise is a freak, and the Guardian had given it only one star. So we went to see Confetti instead. It was quite good (7.4/10) - in a quirky mocumentary way. Stuart really enjoyed it, which is why we'd chosen it. It was followed by drinks at Rupert St, then a quick Japanese at Taro, then more drinks at the Friendly Society. Maria shouted me a G+T, after I thanked her for hosting our birthday drinks. Then she let us stay for a lock-in.

Sunday I was called for work, so had to do an hour's work with a throbbing head (oo-er, missus). Not as throbbing as Stuie's lip though, as he was mugged on the way home. They grabbed his wallet and new mobile, but he has grazed knees and a swollen lip. Unfortunately his inebriation meant he doesn't recall what happened.

Happy Birthday to me

The lovely Kirsten and Sharna , accompanied by Damien, took Paul and I out for our birthdays last night. We washed down some very good Chinese with some beer, and then were taken to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of ‘The Crucible’. It was excellent (8.8/10), with some great performances. It has to be a pretty good play to still be relevant some 50(?) years after it was written. Danforth’s line "a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it" resonated in particular.

In other Birthday news – my day got off to a great start with a special birthday breakfast from Paul and my ipod treated me to a very good selection of tunes:

Sorry (Petshop Boys remix)- Madonna
Girls on Film – Duran Duran
Careless – Paul Kelly
What You Need – INXS
I go to Rio – Peter Allen
Da Hype – Junior Jack with Robert Smith
L’il Love – Little Love
Dare – Gorillaz
Love Action – Human League

My day was going so well I expected to see the headline on page 23 of the Guardian 'Aussie PM resigns in animal-sex scandal', but alas it was not to be.

Why would you?

This is hilarious