Nourish your child's greatness

No doubt about my wife. She's good. Sylvia has always had the kids' school achievements up on the wall. Art, medals, certificates. I've never minded; it's nice.

And all three are stars, in their own amazing ways.

And what I see now is a canvas with a lovely painting of my beloved dog, painted by Edan. A great use of colours that I would never imagine, capturing her sad, loving happiness in uncanny fashion.

When I walk out bleary eyed at 5am I'm startled that my Halie is looking straight at me. And then I'm impressed by the brilliance of my kids and thankful for the way my wife has helped them become so great.

Mullets and Moonshine: The Doc is Dead

Well there it is. Bernard Doc Neeson is dead. Strange that as a kid in the 1970s and a youth in the 80s, how much this guy permeated my life. In the late 1970s as I would catch the bus from Salisbury into the city I'd pass the Bridgeway Hotel and they'd have a sign with a live show billing - "The Angels - playing November 19 (for example)". He began with "The Moonshine Jug and String Band", then "Keystone Angels" and I hear they played a Para Hills High School social a few years before I did my schooling there.


Doc was a showman. An amazing frontman. Theatrics and theatrical lighting made him an unstoppable stage presence/ I remember at Memorial Drive when they played a song called "Marseilles", Doc climbed the scaffold - 100 feet above the crowd, mic in hand - and sang the chorus as he sat up there, with the crowd going wild.

I'm sad, but I'm not sure what I'm sad about. A good guy that died, a part of my past. A few things, I suppose.

The same tent 11 years later

Wow. I went to a DZ in the US back in 2003. It was a lovely sunny day when I arrived but I saw the storms beginning to roll in. I was 40 minutes from any city at 4pm on a Saturday, so I got a taxi out so I could buy a tent, quickly. All they had was a rock climbers tent, ultra light and high performance.

Then it rained for four days. The four days I had allocated to jumping. Everything I had was wet, and I was miserable. But the tent worked pretty well, the one on the left.

And here I am at a DZ 11 years later. The tent still works perfectly and so does the global network of friends.

No dogs allowed

The mixed message here is a little odd.