The sun: in London, they wait all year for it and it always takes them by surprise. In an annual tradition, the M25, the London ring road, melts. The bitumen occasionally snags slow-moving vehicles in a hot, black sludge. Outside the city, trains are brought to a standstill as rails buckle in the heat. Air-conditioning units fizzle, turning shopping malls and office spaces into sweating concrete and glass jungles. Within hours, everything is changed.

The people of London change, too. They can see the detail in their city, no longer hidden behind a veil of grey. They smile as they push past you to get to the pub. They're happy. The sun, brilliantly gold, warm and all-embracing, reaches in and opens a locked door to their hearts. Then - and the full horror of this may only be understood by someone who's seen any of the English naked - they begin to disrobe.

It may only be a jacket or scarf, but, as the day progresses, more of their clothes are left behind at the workstation or on park benches.

The streets are alive with bristling, pink flesh. It's all on show and most of it shouldn't be because this is a civilisation genetically predisposed to the muck and mire of the peat bog. Above the streets, it's worse. Workers, stripped to the waist, dance in celebration upon the scaffolding. Their pale bodies, like the underbellies of great whites, are not well acquainted with the sun. To protect their bonces, a handkerchief is knotted in each corner and placed atop the head. Over the course of the day, their lightly roasted skin, luminously pink, shines as a warning for those below.

But who looks up? Why bother with sunglasses in London? The temperature continues to rise. Violence flares. Old folks drop off the twig.

The following day, the miserable grey returns and, with it, normalcy.

Most head back to work, apart from those still fused to the motorway and the builders - the builders who, for the first time in their lives, are feeling every dust mite moving beneath them in their sick beds and are smothered in something called 'Allo Vera.

Occasionally, we get to see these events as "human-interest" filler pieces on our nightly news: "London brought to standstill on the hottest day of the year."

And, you must admit, you occasionally think to yourself, "How ridiculous to be caught out by a little sunshine". If the ancients had been so constantly surprised by the seasons, humanity never would've made it.

When you witness the mayhem a bright day can cause, it makes you proud to live in a nation so at home with the sun. We're educated to have an awareness of this difficult life-giver. We "slip, slap, slop". We know to wear long sleeves and wide-brimmed hats and, when we expose ourselves, know what we're doing. We've our lotions and creams and ointments. The sun is no stranger to us. We're prepared for the sun, but, by jingo, when it rains . . .

We wait all year for it, but it always takes us by surprise. Within hours, the recent downpours in Sydney blocked roads, flooded drains and changed the whole city.

The people of Sydney changed, too. You can't get them wet because, when they're wet, they become upset and capable of incredible violence. If they're in cars, they cut each other off, ride the horn, resort to abuse, aquaplane and make the acquaintance of trees.

On the street, their heads are bowed as they charge past to get to some shelter, usually the pub.

No one has dressed for inclement weather. Umbrellas appear from nowhere and, in the hands of Australians, become weapons. They're wielded with passion rather than practice and, while they're not as deadly as the classic brollie with a cyanide tip, they can easily take an eye out.

People resort to plastic bags to protect their "dos". Shoes get soaked through and have as much grip on the pavement as a set of rollerblades. A handful of foreigners smugly wander by, hermetically sealed in their all-weather gear.

Then there're the folk rescued by helicopter (vision we'll be forced to watch over and over again when it's purchased by an American cable show, packaged and sold back to us as "When Raging Rivers take Revenge"). Houses are destroyed. Beryl and Henry wade through their rumpus room; kids row in a tinnie boat down the main street; an old salt surveys the damage from where a mud slide took out half his home. Trains are brought to a standstill. Everyone and everything smells damp for a week.

The poor farmers never ever get any of it and old folks drop off the twig.

And you just know, in some parts of the world, they'll see it and think, "How ridiculous to be caught out by a little shower".

This sort of yearly insanity would never happen in city like say, Melbourne, where the weather makes as much sense as what's gone on with the GG.

It arrived in the mail. Just an envelope encouraging the householder to connect up with Foxtel. "Installation half-price" it boasted and my head swam with the marvellous variety of programs available to me. Programs would flood into my life at the touch of a button: programs that could give me purpose, bring me joy, restore my status. It was all too simple.

I surfaced from this daydream with a rumbling nausea as I recalled the last time I'd tried to have Foxtel connected. It was a few years back. I'd been working in the "industry" and needed a better world view - the sort CNN and BBC could provide. There were other benefits, too: cutting-edge documentaries, bizarre nature shows, sports channels and top-shelf British and American comedy.

Also, I desperately wanted to part with small amounts of money to watch endless re-runs of shows I'd seen for nothing as a child. I convinced myself Foxtel would have a positive effect on my life.

The truth of the matter is, I was greedy. Greedy for 24-hour entertainment and I wasn't prepared to lose any more sleep not having it. I made the first fateful call. The gent at the call centre was happy to hear from me, but admitted connection was going to be difficult.

My street was a problem for cables - a main street in a popular part of town. As I was renting and the first in my block to make the request, I'd need to get strata approval, maybe talk to the council. And, if it was no bother, maybe I could convince the other tenants to "hook up", the more the merrier, give us something to talk about on the way back from the laundry.

Oh, and, they needed aerial views of the property, the specifications of each unit, a blueprint of the sewerage systems, the load bearings of all structural supports. And had I considered a dish?

The conversation left me confused. It was more complicated than I'd imagined. My mates had called up and the whole thing was a breeze whereas I instantly descended into Cable Guy hell. Over the course of a year, I pleaded my case, but to no avail. No file could be found; the information I sent never arrived; I'd never called before; no one would give me their name; I had to speak to someone in "connections" not "ethics". Each call dragged me deeper and deeper into the Kafkaesque nightmare of this seemingly impenetrable bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, my friends were moving further away from me. I was limited to free-to-air chat, dull tales about Oprah, Big Brother and Steve Liebmann's foot fetish*. They had the gamut of existence to waffle on about from jewellery fashioned from the penis bones of weasels to market fluctuations in South-East Asia. I needed cable.

I girded my loins, prepared to hit another wall of vacuous confusion, but, instead, I found a sympathetic ear. I complained that every time I rang, I spoke to a different person and they told me a different story.

All I wanted to do was watch TV and pay for it. Is that too difficult to understand? What could be easier than approaching a company to provide a service. Our market society is dependent on such transactions. It's symbolic of the failure of Western civilisation, I cried. The frustration was audible, it moved like a shudder through the phone line. Then, to my horror, the sympathetic ear volunteered her name - Helen.

A point of contact. A real person. She told me everything would be OK, just "Ring this number and ask for me". Finally, there was someone on my side on the inside. I felt elated. A day or two later, I called back. Helen wasn't there. She'd be back at work tomorrow. I'd missed her. I called again, she was on a break. Within the space of a week and a half, I'd called five times. Helen was as difficult to pin down as Foxtel. On the sixth attempt it happened.

"Hi, is Helen there?"

"It's him." A flurry of activity.

Another voice. Stern. Commanding. Male.

"Now look here, mate!"

"What?"

"Helen's had enough."

"But . . . "

"She wants you to stop calling her, stop pestering her. It's freaking her out. Otherwise!"

The accusations were intense; my denials ineffectual. I hung up.

Were they confusing me with someone else or had I become an unintentional stalker? Was there any real threat to Helen or was this a perverse act of cruelty by the women who man the phones? Was I a plaything to alleviate the boredom or were there truly foul things afoot at the call centre?

I could never call Foxtel again. In fact, I very rarely use the phone now. I'm content to watch what they laughingly call free-to-air, because, in the back of my mind, I know I've paid for it.

* The names in this story have been altered to protect the guilty. Apart from Steve, who's innocent of any foot fetish.

The sudden disappearance of Albert John Hawker has sent the small world of model-making into a frenzy. Was this "tip of a conspiracy iceberg" a victim of accident or foul play? An amateur model-maker from Oxfordshire, Hawker recorded shocking observations in his fanzine Puffing Billies of the Midlands.

"After watching the news (of the war) for several days, largely without sleep, I noticed trees lining the concourse to the presidential palace in Baghdad were oak, ash, beech and chestnut. This exact set of trees is available in Hobbicom, Set 14: trees of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. I was aware I was witnessing the work of a team of master craftsmen. What I understood to be Baghdad was, in fact, brilliantly rendered 1:25 scale models, and what I was seeing was actually happening under controlled conditions somewhere else. The reason for this duplicity I cannot ascertain, what I can say was that it was a definite mistake planting the trees in the same order as they were arranged in the Hobbicom pack."

He further noted the palace itself was a modified Ziggurat from Aztec Adventures, code No.3487, also from Hobbicom. Finally, he suggested the attack on Baghdad was actually shot in a shed on handicam, primarily using the "night-shot" function.

It's been suggested Hawker was suffering a form of delusion brought about by the inhalation of glue fumes, in particular a rubber cement used to fix moss and ferns to papier-mache. His comments were dismissed until a devastating find in the deserts of Nevada. A group of university students stumbled across miniature ghost cities. Rising five ominous feet (1.5 metres) from the desert floor were Baghdad, Basra and other strategic Iraqi townships. They were perfect in every respect save one - missing from the replica cities were the rails along which, Hawker suggested, tiny cameras may've run.

US intentions were clear. In the place of several mosques were fun fairs and scattered among the debris, balsa representations of franchised fast food outlets. The traditional facades of these popular eateries were given a touch of Eastern mysticism, their logos dotted with French fry minarets and golden onion domes. In a matter of hours the students returned with members of the press but found nothing there. The government, quick to quell rumours, suggested the "ruins" were left-over sets from Cecil B. De Mille's 1934 classic Cleopatra. They were unavailable for comment and the region in question has been sealed.

Meanwhile, on the Boston docks, two European oil tankers, the Svenlevenson and the Olaftoegetter, await special consignment. As pressure builds on the West to produce the weapons of mass destruction they assert Saddam hoarded, weapons to validate the pre-emptive strike, these ships are under close scrutiny. While other merchant vessels are moored at the port, these are the only ones under 24-hour guard, protected by Green Berets.

The containers being loaded aboard are "long and thin". The precise ratio, opponents have noted, as missiles. One protester who ventured too close was told to "go away", and a worker on the site reported soldiers removing identification markings from a "metal tube". In particular, he says, a painting similar in style to the work of Norman Rockwell. The work featured a near naked Betty Grable astride "Ren and Stimpy" with the tag, "Suck on this Uday, from all the boys in Company B". As the San Francisco Socialist trumpeted last week, "Is something being hidden in full view on crowded docks of Boston?"

Even the emotional turning point of the war is under attack. The extraordinary moment we all remember as angry "locals" and an American tank team worked together to bring down a symbol of oppression. The historic footage, seen round the world, of the statue of Saddam being toppled, is already being dubbed "The New Zapruder". The crowd scenes have been examined in step-by-step detail by video enthusiasts and have revealed not only a grassy knoll but other strange anomalies.

The first man to attack the column was large and heavy set. He wore a dark singlet with the words "Gold's Gym, Venice Beach" on the back. He's been identified by unnamed sources as none other than "Larry the Barrel". A wrestler from Idaho with the body of a barrel and fists like ham hocks.

Throughout the '90 he toured the US with a shonky circus appearing as "The Bearded Man" and in publicity shots is seen "constantly holding a SLEDGEHAMMER". Several members of the "crowd" have appeared as extras on The Jerry Springer Show. Why does the tank captain bear an uncanny resemblance to Tom Sizemore, a lesser- known American film actor? Is the flag of the "old empire" really handed to him by a pimply shelf-packer from Walmart? Why are several of the "mob" carrying plastic bags bearing the slogan "I NY"? And why every two hours did the rioting crowd take a 15-minute break to enjoy a Starbuck's coffee? Was this to comply with US industry standards? These theories, as frightening as they sound, my lead us to discover the awful truth, that the war was not played out in real time on a 1:1 scale.

The freedom of the weekend is glorious. Wednesday, today, the perfect midpoint which allows us to bask in the glow of the previous two-day break while fuelling a hunger for the next. It's our time, hard won after the battles of work. A time to spend with family, with friends, to renovate the patio, take the children out shooting or just laze around like undignified bull seals enjoying the latest sports coverage. A couple of days to savour the simple joys of life unless you've transgressed the laws that govern society and find yourself on weekend detention.*

Rene Rivkin our own high-flying stockbroker has found himself in this predicament. Most of us are not personally acquainted with Rene, but the list of those who know him, and sprang to his defence, read like a Who's Who of Australia's business, entertainment and cultural elite. Tragically, their testimony that he was a sterling chap was not enough to keep him on the outside.

When he arrived at Silverwater jail a little late it was understandable. No one would be in a rush to go to the penitentiary, unless they were certifiably insane or employed by the prison system. As Rene swaggered across the bitumen, the dark leather of his coat flapping defiantly, you'd have to be made of granite not to soften to his position. He accepted the judgement of the court (almost) and was ready to suffer the indignity they'd dealt out.

Here was a man who had lived life to the full brought to heel by the system. Were we passively witnessing injustice? When we learnt his trademark worry beads were confiscated, we were shocked. How could this happen in a decent country?

Admittedly, in a den of thieves, little baubles of gold could be a temptation hard to resist, but would this balance the mental anguish of their loss?

Rene may've used them to ensure his safety or trade them on the inside selling them off, bead by bead, for cigarettes, tins of kidney beans or hosiery. Of all the times when worry beads could soothe a troubled soul, surely this would rank as one of the most crucial?

As the doors shut tight behind him, a tsunami of emotion coursed through the homes of Australia. As implausible as it sounds, we felt for Rene.

Dedicated fringe dwellers turned from saving the wilderness and battling the woodchip industry to churn out a limited-edition "Save Rene" T-shirt for the Sunday markets.

Even in ritzy coffee shops, the sentiment had changed. Gone were the crass jokes of the week before, replaced by an emotion akin to caring. Not since Lindy had someone managed to activate our cold, distant hearts.

And, then, he got a note from the doctor, missed his second week, and the houses of this nation breathed a collective sigh of "Awww, maaate".

What had gone wrong? Were the common people too common? Or were there darker issues at play? Had Rene fallen victim to "Australian Businessmen's Syndrome" (ABS), a recently diagnosed condition reported in the latest issue of The British Medical Journal?

Symptoms vary from patient to patient, but can involve the involuntary boiling of the brain or the need to be constantly surrounded by tapas.

Previous sufferers of ABS have included Christopher Skase and that much-loved, Aussie rogue, Bondy. Thus far, ABS has only afflicted the incredibly wealthy. Recent studies suggesting the poor and lower middle-class have an "embarrassment gene" that prevents them acquiring the disease. **

If only Rene had stayed cooped up, a new world could've opened for him. History and Hollywood are filled with tales of redemption during incarceration. A person with Rene's gifts could've reorganised the library, instructed other inmates on blue-chip investments, kept "the books" for the warden, or been instrumental in turning his basket-weaving class into a multi-million dollar industry.

Over the nine months of his periodic detention, he may've been "born again", allowing a suppressed creative side to flourish. You can picture him in seven months, his, by then, muscular arms working feverishly at the smelter, creating a giant set of worry beads in the metal workshop; or tending to the annuals and discovering the joys of dirt - that life springs from compost.

We've all been saddened by Rene's illness, but there's none sadder than an empty, little cell in Silverwater. This is why, Friday last, along the corridors and ramparts of that noble institution, hundreds of incarcerated choristers mournfully sang as one, "Don't walk away, Rene".

* This tribute to the weekend does not include shift workers, cab drivers, many in the service industry, the professionally religious and those detained at Her Majesty's pleasure who actually remain detained.

** Skase never became "Skasey" - the addition of a consonant being a sign of affection by the Australian people. We'll have to wait to see if "Rivkiny" is awarded this dubious honour.

Order whatever you want, in whatever order you want: welcome to the digital revolution.

Paragraphs 1-4

The digital revolution has not been a peaceful one: liberty, fraternity and modernity - it's impossible not to be swept along by the epidemic of technology as every second brochure trumpets electrical bargains.

Even from the page, the "new audio/visual products", encased in life-enhancing silver, taunt the monstrous TV in its coffin of black. Family, friends and children are quick to inform you that, not only have you not kept up with the Joneses, but the Smiths, the Nguyens, the Jacobins and the Vanderbuilts have all left you in their consumerist wake.

You're embarrassed to be the only person in line at the video store with videos, hiding the antiquated technology beneath your coat as you scurry back to your buggy. You want the wide screen, the flat screen, the multiplayer, a 5.1 speaker system while your sad ol' mono box still has teak inlay.

Pity the poor parents unable to keep up with the financial strain of the revolution as toddlers demand the full cinematic experience of the Wiggles. On chill nights, you can almost hear the struggling father's simplistic solution: "Don't tell your mother, but, if you want surround sound, just sit CLOSER TO THE TV SET."

5-8 And are they so much better? Many of us pick up our DVD's shortly after someone has given them an attentive cleaning with a lump of steel wool or used them as a beer coaster. Bear in mind, these are early days: what are the discs going to be like in a couple of years? Just a mess of interlacing squares resulting in emotional gridlock.

At least the videotape houses its visual treasure in a black plastic box. This outer armour protects the tape from the sticky fingers of brats and the careless caress of the brain-dead bogon.

Who knows where a disc has been or what the last hirer did with it? Outside the case, the disc is only protected by a plastic pouch. A pouch of the same rigidity as that used to hold a cheese slice. How's that going to protect anything?

And they keep going missing. It's inevitable that the cost of these "protect sheets" will be passed on to the consumer. Are home owners hoarding them, quietly thinking "that'll come in handy for something, like safeguarding those renegade slices"?

9-12 Already, fathers and some of the heavier mothers, unable to take the strain, have dug out the decaying Hawkwind and Budgie records.

They've grabbed the portable, battery-operated, colour TV, a set of rabbit ears, a Betamax recorder, an eight-track, a turntable, an old valve amp, crammed them into a P76 and taken to the road. The future might not look so bright, but it's going to sound great.

Special Features

The special features menu contains deleted scenes, bloopers, alternate endings and/or anything considered special. In DVD language, "special" knows no limitations. Promotional material, trailers, bits of offal from the catering vans - nothing is excluded.

It may not have occurred to anyone constructing the discs, but there's a reason certain scenes are deleted: it's called "editing". Was it wise to include with the Ben Hur release 17 hours of unused Roman bathhouse material with a raunchy commentary by Charlton, aka, "The Gun" Heston?

Was it necessary to include as a special feature "Stuart Little's breakdown"? Where the plucky budgie, caged again after a hard day of shooting, freaks out and continually attacks his own reflection?

And, in the recent BBC production of Oliver, does it aid Dicken's vision of darkness to include "Oliver and the strawberry ice cream" and "Oliver at Seaworld"?

It's a good thing the makers of books have not jumped on the DVD bandwagon by including deleted scenes, notes and commentary. One can only imagine the horror if the 1312 pages deleted from Anna Karenina were shoved back in as supplementary reading. Once the book was finished, if you so desired, you could dip into Anna's subsequent recovery after being eviscerated by a train. It's a lengthy process, but what wasn't in Imperial Russia?

Subtitles

Subtitles and language selection can be a minefield for the novice DVD owner. If you can't manage to control the control, just pretend you're on SBS. It has the added bonus of making you appear culturally superior. The other option is to play the art card. Enthral guests by watching Blue Velvet in Czech; marvel at Arnie's grasp of Cantonese in Terminator; or witness the wordy wonder of anything by Mamet in Arabic.

Scene Selection

Read the numbered paragraphs above in whatever order you choose. Or you can choose not to read them! With this function you can "create" your own article or revisit your favourite sentence instantly.

Commentary

This is where I talk about my feelings and observations while writing the column. I know I was easily distracted while writing because I was feeling creepy and guilty about having a go at Rene last week, the same day his brain scans came back.

But, then, I was really grateful I didn't include the joke I wanted to include because it was so cruel. But I have to tell someone so ...

The fusion of ice and theatre is one of the most daring and innovative concepts of modern times. These productions have revitalised the flagging spirits of theatregoers around the globe and not since its marriage to scotch has ice been so warmly received. The Ice "Spectacular" or "Extravaganza" has returned (how pitiful our language! These words, as noble as they are, are unable to convey the magnificence and magnitude of such stellar celebrations. It's oft been said we do not possess the vocabulary to do justice to the "ice thing"). Once or twice a year these events collide with our drought-stricken isle, entrancing our youth with the promise of water. They are the culmination of years of work, welding skills as diverse as singing to figure-skating and costume-wearing to figure-skating.

In giant arenas over ovals of ice, men and women float atop silver blades in perfect unison conquering all obstacles in their glittering pursuit of love and pure unadulterated entertainment. Yet it's not only the skill of the talented frosty folk or the beauty of the artificial landscape that so captivates the viewer, it's also the ever-present threat of danger. For at any moment a dancer, dangerously weighed down by a poorly designed costume, might "spin out, taste the rock" and leave their face behind. Just another poor little princess coming to rest, broken and ashamed, with 10 metres of burning pink flesh trailing them across the frozen fake tundra.

Theatre can be a harsh world, a cruel world - it's difficult enough to entertain a crowd without placing other obstacles in your path. When the idea of performing entire theatrical productions on ice was first voiced by Knut Pedersen Oudenaarde (1827-1910) in 1870 it was met with "howls of protests". A writer, poet, performer and visionary, Knut had held high office in the local council and was determined to witness his dream. He began by staging pageants and small nativity plays set in the frozen lakes around his much-loved home in the lowland town of Muut.

The plays grew in popularity despite the hardship suffered by all involved. In 1901 he pushed the boundaries of entertainment and safety when his production of Peer Gynt skated on thin ice. Half the cast was lost. Knut spent his remaining days imprisoned, his dream of ice spectaculars melting into a slurry of misery.

With the arrival of the modern refrigeration unit in 1927, safety for the cast was ensured, while transportable fridges enabled the idea to flourish outside the tiny village of Muut, now famous as the home of the ice spectacular.*

Since that day this combination of high art and great skill has been an unstoppable juggernaut. The latest titanic undertaking to hit our arid isle is Disney on Ice#. Once more the creators have deftly defied logic not once, not twice, but three times by setting all three jungle adventures - The Lion King, Tarzan and The Jungle Book - on ice. This brazen disregard for reality is essential in making these shows work. Thankfully for Australians, a people blistered by the sun, anything on ice apart from a cold one requires a suspension of belief.

Over the years brilliant productions have graced our shores. The showstopping purity of Cinderella and Snow White was balanced by the raunchy but ever-popular Grease on Ice. For every show that's failed to translate to this snowy world (The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Endgame) there have been numerous success stories. The sleazy and jazzy grandeur of The Miles Davis Story, the winsome tale of flight in Birdy and the glorious JCSuperstar. This was a marvellous piece revelling in the festive joy of the story of Christ on ice. Who could forget Our Lord as a manly hirsute sackcloth slipping and sliding with 12 good rocking buddies across on the glaciated Lake Galilee (although this made the whole walking on water scene a bit of an anti-climax).

I pray I'm not alone in hoping the day will come when every aspect of life can be presented on ice. The permutations are endless: from night-clubs, school fetes and house auctions to news reporting and reality shows. Even major war events, such as the recent skirmish in Iraq, could be presented entirely on ice. The colour, the movement, the spectacle would almost be enough to drive one to peace. It's only a half-pipe dream at the moment but there will come a day when there's ice for everyone. Until that day arrives we should all drink to it.

* Our country has been slow to seize the theatrical applications of ice. We may have even missed the boat on staging our own productions. But there must be hundreds of surfaces as unfeasible as ice on which to perform: a plateau of ancient rocks, the Gibson Desert, nickel, natural gas, fleece. The only benefit of performing on ice is that it virtually rules out a tap routine. We are "girt by sea"; why not invert this concept? Build an indoor ocean with constantly breaking waves where talented singers and dancers surf their way into our hearts and memories. Let us give something back to the world.

# Not to be confused with the book of the same title - a tawdry unauthorised biography claiming this hero of animation was addicted to a grade A narcotic.

Some believe the school years are the happiest days of our lives, but why should they be? It gives us nothing to look forward to. Education in this new century has to be about more than the development of the individual. There's too much at stake.

Thankfully there are several thought-provoking, challenging options on the table, including lengthening school hours, enforced weekend study and the return of child labour.

Most of us who can read the paper are a dying breed, schooled more than 10 to 60 years ago when education was deemed important. Every study shows that Australian schoolchildren are becoming progressively dumber. The question is: Why? The answer: "There's just not enough time in the current school day to learn."

Most students only have a few minutes of "real education" sandwiched between little lunch, big lunch and time-wasting art, craft and sport courses. The most effective and immediate way to improve a child's education is to extend the school hours from the conservative 9-3 to the modern 9-9. This would also allow working parents a much-needed drink or two before picking the kids up.*

A child's mind is a sponge, processing and collating information at an incredible rate. Why waste those precious years on rest and relaxation? There's more than enough time for that at the other end of existence. At primary school age (6-11) they're at their most receptive. It's essential, in these developing years, full advantage is taken of this innate ability to learn. (An ability lost at the onset of puberty, when the mind becomes a demented, flesh-obsessed cesspool of vulgarity with the reasoning faculty of a squash.)

Children have enormous stamina. Before the stupidity of Victorian legislation, "babes with brains and brawn" were breadwinners and allowed their creative tendencies to flourish on enormous cotton looms. These little tykes greased the wheels of industry. They changed the world until the British Government, terrified of their united power, passed laws in 1802 to regulate them. The glory days of working kids ended with the Factory Act of 1833.

Later, in the 19th century, the introduction of compulsory education virtually obliterated child labour. How can we expect the Victorian English to have got anything right? We're saddled with these pompous laws that form the base of a pyramid of dilemmas afflicting our society. The problem, as contemporary experts see it, is the separation of education and work. Why must one exclude the other?

It has been claimed this divorcing of elements has led to the current climate of dole-bludging and ingratitude on the part of our fame-obsessed youth (most of whom would trade the mateship of the coalface for the fawning adulation of the masses and the loneliness of super stardom). **

The Factory Act may be the first over-protective stumbling block in the creation of a "hard-working, law-abiding, multi-skilled citizenry".

It is essential for children to realise their place as productive members of society. A radical new plan that would relieve the pressure on parents and government is being conducted under close scrutiny in several primary schools.

By the age of four, children can do a lot more than watch the Wiggles and look cute. They can work. And there are many hidden bonuses for those on the program; you'll always have sandshoes, weaving skills never go out of style and if your little baby girl has been stripping engines from the age of four, it's going to make it a lot easier at rego time to get that pesky pink slip.

The most amazing aspect of the trials, was after months of obligatory labour, the kids were possessed with a profound desire for knowledge. There were no distractions, the "troublemakers" were subdued (some would claim comatose with learning), the classroom was heavy with competition and the fear of eternal manual labour drove students ever onwards to greater scholastic achievements.

This result would have been visible in the final exams if any of the children had managed to stay awake. Children, our greatest natural resource, may, in time, become our most dependable energy source - let's milk them for all they're worth because unlike other renewable energy sources, they're fun to make, at least in the short term. ***

* Child labour has been given a bad rap, and is always associated with words such as exploitation, but there's no need for histrionics with the proposed government guidelines that prohibit any kiddie union.

** See Australian Idol - Idle - a thesis on the seduction of youth.

*** Expect those customary ill-informed voices of dissent to rise up and waffle on about the personal cost to teachers. It's important to realise teachers are motivated by a higher goal - the transmission of knowledge. If they'd wanted money, funky clothes or to be treated with respect, they wouldn't have become teachers. And regardless of low pay, interminable hours and a continual lack of support for them on the part of the community and the government, they'll plough on. Well, they always have in the past.

The Sunday markets are a joy, a place where corruption flourishes. A place where imitation is the inspiration and nothing is ever what it seems.

To stroll through the markets is to take a walk on the wild side. These are not those sanitised markets in groovy suburbs filled with the same generic dross but the second-hand markets where the beguiling gather to sell their wares.

From watches and electrical goods, to plants and fruit, hardware, toys, unashamed pornography and just real, weird broken stuff. The second-hand markets have everything right there under one sky.

We were on a mission to find things that weren't the things we thought they were. Our first stop was the perfume stall. Here, on burgeoning shelves, everything was a copy.

Not only were there the fake-famous brands with their distinctive packaging, at unbelievably low prices, but there were the "our" version perfumes. For those not familiar with the "our" version range, they're the same - same but different of the fragrance world. There are some perfumemakers, innovators, dilettantes, and olfactory geniuses who pit their noses against the tenacious flower to develop a fragrance to enhance existence. They delve into the complexity of chemicals constructing pathways to perfection, finely tuning scents to create a parfum to bewitch, calm, encourage.

Then, once they've realised their goal, other people rip them off.

The first problem with "our" version perfumes is they've been named by someone with little or no understanding of the English language. Products have been labelled with words of similar structure or sound. For example, the popular scent Escape has been poached and renamed Exit.

Escape conjures up images of freedom, of winsome flesh, of a heroic Steve McQueen. It's gutsy, without being ballsy. It's an open door, an invitation, a breath of fresh air, new life. Exit, by comparison, has connotations of death. It's merely compulsory signage. It conjures images of the squiz-eyed Sartre, of people madly scrambling as disaster strikes. It is a closed door, a feeling of desperation, a choking atmosphere. Similarly Polo Sport has become RugbySport. The box features a snap of two stocky men tackling each other. Who on earth could've thought that was a good idea for a pong? Scent of Man Sweat. CK1 has become the vulgar FU2, VSL VPL, and Obsession has developed into Neurosis.

We left the perfumes and made our first purchase for the day. The Chupa Chup that wasn't. Designed to deceive the eye by adopting a similar look, this cunning little market sweet was anything but. The enticing lollipop was named GINGA, a slur for anyone of ginger complexion. It claimed it was strawberry but it tasted like a chemical spill.

"In fact, the faces of all the dolls drooped on one side, perhaps the victims of a mass stroke at the Taiwanese plastics factory."

Next was the toy stall. Hundreds of useless, broken objects sat beside one large box filled with slightly wonky dolls. Her name was Slavka, but she looked exactly like Barbie if Barbie had been left on the grill overnight and half her faced had fused to the element. In fact, the faces of all the dolls drooped on one side, perhaps the victims of a mass stroke at the Taiwanese plastics factory.

We left the bevy of sad, deformed non-Barbies and found our hands rummaging through the CD and record bins. It took a while but we found what we were looking for - Britney Spears. But not Britney Spears by Britney Spears, rather The Sound of Britney Spears by the largely underrated vocal copyists and sound-alikes Jivestar. The CD featured someone who looked like Britney on the cover and presumable someone who sounded like Britney on the inside. The weird thing when we asked for the price - it was just as expensive as the real B.S.

Then came the plant stall. Hemmed into a tiny rectangle between a blanket filled with old shoes and the strange sunglass seller whose virulent manhood dripped from his Gucci copies was a sparse collection of indoor plants, climbers, orchids and green angels. The stallholder was trying to convince a visitor to our country that the ceramic monstrosity she held was handmade. It had to be handmade, there is no way a machine could fashion anything as ugly. *

The curving chunk of clay featured a thin, puce glaze with well-rendered curling turds at the centre. In days gone by it would've been recognised as an ashtray. (Ah, happy times. When we made ashtrays for our parents in pottery class. How proud we were as they sat lopsided on any surface? The ashtrays, not the parents. How are hearts swelled when someone ashed in them? How impossible they were to clean?)

And there it was, the find of the day. Brilliant appropriation, nauseatingly beautiful in its simplicity. Almost lost beside a pile of punnets was an old margarine tub. On the side of the tub it read, "I can't believe it's not butter", yet it was filled to the brim with pond moss. Sometimes you just have to dig into your pockets and go with the feeling.

* With the exception of the Taiwanese doll company.

In the realm of the profoundly disturbing, at its very epicentre, sits the new post-life interview program. It's a phenomenal concept that requires, at the very least, a suspension of disbelief or, at most, an unassailable belief system.

Desperation and a lack of funds often combine to create new formats of horror. The most recent is a type of televisual grave-robbing, except the soul miners are stealing something more personal than body parts.

It began innocently enough. John Edward, the American psychic and medium, managed in each of his shows to neatly locate everyday people, who were admittedly dead, and unite them with their loved ones. It's a great idea for a chat show because the loved ones always have questions, and the dead are always more than happy to answer them. Every episode, those who carked it helped their past lovers, partners and siblings to locate old car keys, ornate hat pins and missing relatives. The dead do not give up their secrets easily though, and even with some gentle coercion from John, were genuinely unconcerned with the greater issues facing humanity.

All the defunct really wanted to do was placate the living, tell them everything was OK. Which is a little unbelievable, a trifle escapist and suggests guilt issues can be stored up in ectoplasm. The shows were perversely attractive, defied logic and dull. It wasn't long before the wisdom of executives and the clamouring class intervened. This is all well and good but if we have the phone book to Deadville (population: heaps) can't we speak to someone interesting?*

Diana, recently deceased princess, was first cab off the rank. In an act of inspirational barbarism against the corpsed - Diana was contacted. Assembled around the seers' table were a number of people who could authenticate Diana and it mattered little that none of them seemed particularly authentic. Di was probably just kicking back on a cloud when the call came out of the blue, and in the discussion that followed, it became apparent her global concerns had become far more personal. You'd think after contemplating eternity you might have a few pithy bon mots to throw around.

You might want to give the location of those pesky landmines. You might be annoyed your sleep of ages was disturbed. You could be a bit angry these psychics, soothsayers and fortune tellers hadn't warned you earlier about Parisian tunnels.

That's the problem with ya modern seer - too much hindsight, not enough foresight. (Foresight is those courageous crinklies tattooing Do Not Resuscitate across their breasts. If only it was so easy to safeguard yourself in the next life from these soul poachers.) Diana was haunted in this life by the gutter press, with this idea she can be eternally hunted across the cosmos.

And just imagine the show when the rest of the family join her. Charles, Camilla, Dodi, the corgis and the Queen Mum all confessing royal secrets to a frump in a floral dress with a crystal ball in a caravan somewhere near Leeds. We're in danger of creating a world where the dead are defenceless. Unless, of course, it's all true. And then what does the future hold for this type of entertainment?

Negotiations have already begun with Michael Parkinson's management. It's felt in many quarters that the clairvoyants are fine for making the connection, dialling up the daisy pushers, but they don't possess the interviewing skills necessary to get the good grit. The public wants the good grit.

Parkie, the man widely regarded as the world's greatest-living interviewer, can't be that far from falling off the twig. He's practising astral travelling, and once he's crossed over he'll become our man on the other side. He'd be re-united with some of the great guests of yore.

Does Ollie Reed still enjoy a cleansing ale? Is Tallulah Bankhead still turning heads? Parkie could convince Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Denver and Aaliyah to be the house band. Ask Linda what she thinks about Paul's new lady. With Parkie on the case, the afterlife could become a hotbed of intrigue. He could get the real dirt from Marilyn Monroe, ask JFK who he thinks pulled the trigger, query the dictators, now freed from the restraint of the flesh, on what on earth possessed them to behave like such arseholes.

And why restrict Parkie to this century? Ask Hannibal who really came up with the idea for the elephants, find the missing link and discover who, if anyone, is running the show up there. One religion could hit the jackpot. A show of this nature has endless possibilities. Yes, there'll be many hurdles to overcome, many problems to solve: Where will it be shot? Can it be shot?

How many guests per show? Should it be live? Or is that an insult? Technology may struggle to keep up but oh, happy day when ghosting becomes something you desire on your television set.

* I, for one, doubt anyone involved in this production was guilty of chicanery, deception or duplicity. Though why chat to Di? The best way clairvoyants can help society is to put to rest questions surrounding the health of Osama and Saddam. Clearly, if the lads answer - they're gone. Discussion over.

I've been shaking for days after speaking to my accountant. My heart, the sad, impure thing it is, rattles in my chest. It's shrunken to the size of a pea, large enough to fill the ribcage of a sparrow, but lacking the strength to move my monumental frame with any enthusiasm.

I was told by my money man to sort out my finances.

Thus, I found myself late last Tuesday with a business associate moving funds around at a major, metropolitan bank.

The sun played off the marble columns and the ornate ceilings dripped with gold leaf and delicate plaster work. I could be more descriptive, but I've no photograph of the Victorian interior of the austere money lender.*

The first unusual occurrence involved a young security guard (YSG).

He was standing on an oak bench smirking and waving to someone on the far side of the room. We were filled with confidence watching this youth clambering over furniture as we loitered at the inquiry counter.

It was a ghost bank - nothing moved, A4 paper sat listless on desks, pens dormant in coffee mugs, a gentleman peered from behind black venetians and quickly closed his door. The rest of the bank lacked the privacy of his office and was divided into smaller work areas by a series of low partitions. The only thing one could ascertain from this clever use of space was that there was no one around.

We waited. As we did, my eye caught sight of a small screen behind the counter. Illuminated in large green letters was the word "WAIT". Even for the bank, it seemed exceedingly blunt. Above the word was a series of dots, 40 in all, arranged like so:

ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo

ooo oo ooo ooo oo

ooo ooo ooo ooo

My first thought - Braille. My second thought was that my first thought was that of an idiot. A flat screen suspended behind a counter at a height of six feet is the last place the wandering hands of the vision-impaired might stumble.

My third thought - there's more to this than meets the eye. Think, Conan, think. Then it struck me: the vertical dots were absent leaving only the horizontal. The word "PLEASE" was malfunctioning. Had the machine become self-aware or was it expressing the true emotion of its programmers? I needed to capture this adumbration and as, luck would have it, I had a camera. I was just about to snap one off when the YSG came over and, incredulously, informed me that I couldn't take a photo in the bank.

I felt like saying, "Well, you can't climb all over the furniture to wave to your mates, but it doesn't seem to bother you." I restrained myself opting instead for reason.

"I don't want to take a photo of the bank," my voice a-quiver with excitement. "I want to take a photo of that screen. The one that's found its own internal truth."

He seemed to have trouble following the concept.

"Just one snap?"

"No."

"C'mon."

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"Then I'd like to speak to the manager."

Within seconds, a svelte, impeccably dressed young fellow approached. I explained the situation.

"No."

He could watch me frame the image so no important "robber type" information (location of stairs, vault, lack of staff) was accidentally included.

"'No."

"Please?"

"No."

"Just for own personal amusement?"

"No."

"I opened a Donald Duck account at the age of three. I've never invested in another bank. You're my bank. That bench your man was standing on I paid for with a lifetime of fees. It's not like I'm asking for a loan."

"No."

"Would you even have noticed if it were a mobile phone?"

"NO." Then justification: "It's not me. It's the people upstairs."

Had my ticker not been so weak from the encounter with my accountant, I would've given those stairs a shot. As it was, we skulked towards the exit.

"It's not like we're villains," I said to my companion. "What would happen if villains were here snapping away?"

The OSG (older security guard) who'd shepherded us to the last remaining open door chipped in, "I'm not armed, but if I had me a Glock 7, I'd blow 'em away."

We all laughed. Two of us very nervously and the other with assured cackle of someone who knows what a Glock 7 can do to flesh and bone. And so, between the brash bench-hopping bravado of youth and the wisdom of age, I sensed my money was safe, even from me.

My final thought as we left the scene of the non-crime was that I may not have a photograph, but I can certainly paint a picture in words of the word I could not picture and the strange events that followed.

* I cannot name the bank. To do so would be wrong. It does not affect the tale to mention which bank. Indeed the mere mention of which bank, due to what I am about to impart, may cause heads to roll. Was the D.D. account a give-away?

PRESCRIPT

Forgive me this indulgence. I'm in Edinburgh for the festival with the comedy group GUD and for the next few weeks will attempt to become a travel writer. Hopefully, my personal observations will allow some genuine insight into the traumas and joys of this unique festival. (This is day 1-4.)

THE TRIP

You don't want to know: 30 hours in the air, delays, holding patterns, strange looks and stranger smells. It was clear after the flight that God never wanted us to fly. If he did he would've made the world a lot smaller, encased it in tin and forced you to eat just outside your toilet. The high point was the Lancastrian gent returning home from the oil rigs of Kurkistan. He drank, exhorted the dangers of Russian women, and in a delirium of chatting and snoring, made the journey a real joy. The fact he was purchasing a high-powered crossbow to slaughter deer did nothing to diminish his charm.

THE FESTIVAL

A month of madness every August. Performers, artists, writers, musicians, students, backpackers, punters and truckloads of old folk descend on the city from all over the world. It's a frenzied celebration of the human desire to create. The shows, much like the experience, can be inspirational, tragic, baffling, awesome, frightening, bizarre and often blurry. Because there's drinking. And drinking. And well, you know the Scots.

THE CITY

Edinburgh is a beautiful city growing organically from a labyrinth of tenements beneath a giant rock. A rock now sculptured into Edinburgh castle. Beneath this monumental fort, cobbled streets, lanes, passageways, terraces, crescents, closes and bridges effortlessly interweave. For the tourist and novice map reader, it's a maddening, multi-dimensional Gothic puzzle. For the street-savvy native, born with the secret ways of the city imprinted on their bones, it's a breeze. A trip that takes a wee local lass a few minutes can have grown men in tears of rage wandering in circles for hours.

THE FLAT

Once your destination has been reached you'll want to shower, so the first port of call is "the accommodation". There's a booming business in flat rentals and, generally speaking, Edinburgh flats are spacious, high-ceiling affairs with three or four bedrooms. It's always a lottery, but within hours of arriving you'll hear tales from the smug mouths of friends and enemies who've found the perfect living quarters for the month. Homes with stupefying vistas of the city. Homes containing functioning electrical goods, Smeg appliances, fuzzy logic washing machines, luxuriant leather furniture, libraries bursting with first editions of Joyce, Spinoza, Balzac and Rowling, with Eames chairs and rich wood cabinets holding cut-glass decanters filled with the finest malted Scotch.

By comparison, the "home" we've secured has all the trappings of a recently-deserted crack house. We even received a notice on the first day addressed to us - the occupier. Without even producing any waste we'd contravened, the Housing (Scotland) Act of 1987 which "sets standards for houses in multiple occupation". Apparently we've been putting rubbish out whenever we feel like it, which has angered the "environment and consumer services of the Edinburgh Council". We wait anxiously for the "enforcement officer" to return. There are four of us in the flat.

The flats are always at the very top of the block. There are never any lifts and at some point everyone develops an irrational hatred of stairs. I secured a large room but in my frenzy to gain the space barely noticed the construction site directly outside the window.

It wasn't until the following morning, with dawn's first light, that I became acutely aware of the four storeys of scaffolding and the dedicated Scottish workers all wearing ear protection. The room is musty and decaying.

I've never been clumsy, but when objects are placed in close proximity to me I tend to accelerate their natural entropy. I moved a table in the bedroom and the leg fell off. I tried to close the curtains and the wooden railing snapped off and hit my head. No curtains now, so I turned to close the shutters only to discover they were held in place by a single hinge setting them at an uncloseable 45 degrees. The next morning, the entire shower arm came loose from the cracked tiles, shattering the plastic shower head in the bath. And there are no instructions for the frugal off-peak hot water system, so we've had cold showers since we arrived.

I've also been itching for three days and I fear something microscopic is breeding furiously in the carpet. Also, I discovered, beneath the bed, a pentagram painted in blood with chicken giblets arranged to represent the horn'd god. That last bit may be a slight exaggeration, but you get the gist. Don't get me wrong: this is quite decent accommodation for the festival and normally there'd be 13-20 more friends, family and tech staff crammed in here. So it's all going well. And tonight it begins.

A report from the Edinburgh Festival (Week 1)

The festival has started, accompanied by a heat wave. The town is bloated with stinking, sticky humanity. There's no room anywhere, but, next week, the number of people will double. The pedestrian traffic is so intense, if you take a wrong turn, you find yourself another piece of the human gridlock.

And, if you're not trapped in a quagmire of sweat and disappointment, you're slowly shuffled against your will in totally the wrong direction.

When you're not walking, you queue. People queue everywhere. If you stand still long enough, it's inevitable a line will form behind you. You must also take care to never pause at the start of one of these columns. If the punters have been waiting in the heat to see the work of a lauded Portuguese mime company interpreting the songs of Marlene Dietrich in Hebrew, they can become insanely abusive.

It's summer, but the last thing anyone expected was that it'd actually be hot here. The M25 is melting (again), the train tracks are buckling (again), and people are being carried out of shows fatigued and breathless.

It's an Australian high-summer heat: the sort of heat that urges you to find a beach and brilliant white sands. Tragically, all that exists here are brown mud flats, donkey rides and pathetic, lapping, tan-coloured waters.

But, if you're desperate, you could always stretch out ya towel on some red hot cobblestones.

The air is cooler at night, but then you have to contend with The Clumps. They're most noticeable between the hours of 11pm and 6am. The Clumps are groups of wanderers. They come in any number (two to five, eight to 15 or more), any combination of nationalities, and any conglomeration of occupations and skills. During these hours, thousands and thousands of these groups exist, all in search of the same thing. It's neither a show nor a good time, a diner nor a drink - it's a cab.

Years of experience have told me that you never see a free cab until you reach your front door and it usually takes about 20 to 30 minutes of walking and self-denial until you realise your small, luckless group is just another meandering clump.

Meanwhile, above the city in the towering Gormenghastique beauty of Edinburgh Castle, an event attracts a different crowd. They come in droves from all corners of the world to witness the Edinburgh Tattoo, that marvellous celebration of all things military.

It seems the recent skirmish in Iraq has had a positive flow-on effect, for this year the Tatt is proudly boasting record attendance. I've never seen the Tatt live. I've only ever watched it on the ABC when I was a kid and I must confess to always being a bit baffled. Is it just my memory or was it the dullest TV ever?

Once again, those damn cobblestones play a major role as high-stepping lads in kilts "accidentally" flash their fellow combatants while some army band plays rigidly strict Oom-pah-pah music. This idea - columns of men all dressed the same, walking en masse in straight and/or intersecting lines while twirling weapons - is an exceptionally male form of dance expression. It's probably as close as the military can get to the arty-farty feel of the festival.

So to the "castle story", a perennial favourite at the festival. It's closely related to our acts of tourist cruelty when we recount tales of "drop bears" and "kangas on every street corner". The ploy is to convince visitors to the country that the castle is a prop to satisfy the yearnings of foreign folk eager to savour the past glory of empire.

It began (according to legend) with an innocent enough inquiry: "If the festival lasts a month, what happens to the castle for rest of the year?" Thus was born the "Scottish deceit" that the castle is demountable. Taken apart brick by brick every September, stored away and then lovingly rebuilt each August. The tale is oft accompanied by an "och" or an "aye" for authenticity.

The only people who really fall for it are the Americans. Their sincerity, earnestness and gullibility make them the perfect fish in the perfect barrel. It'd be a challenge to try it on with any other nationality, but the Scots are too canny for that.

I'm back on the streets, it's sometime between 11pm and 6am, I've just overheard the Scottish deceit for the umpteenth time as I'm looking for a cab in a Clump curious as to why this city has captured the imagination.

Other places host similar events, but none has the sparkle of Edinburgh. It's a puzzle that has kept scholars, writers, critics and performers speculating for years. But I may have solved it - with the help of the local ale.

It's all in the cobblestones. When a car drives rapidly along the rippled stones, the sound produced is identical to applause. When a double-decker or a lorry comes trundling down Lothian Road, it's almost thunderous. That's why this city is perfect for theatre - for, in the early hours, it even warmly claps itself.

Edinburgh Festival (Days 8-15)

The driver of bus 42, headed back from Lothian Walk, cannot stop laughing. His eyes have fallen on a woman wearing a futuristic sci-fi outfit handing out some promotional material for a show. Her Marilyn Monroe wig is slightly askew and her sunglasses are broken. She looks damn fine for 4.30 Tuesday afternoon with a sad and sorry fag hanging from her lip. But it's the dress that's caught everyone's attention - a silver-speckled, homemade disaster that leaves her rump hanging out in the wind. The entire bus is in an uproar, yet she continues on her way totally oblivious. This is how the good people of Edinburgh deal with the invasion of their city - by laughing at the insanity.

It's the second week of the festival and everyone and everything is on sale. This is the time of the bloodbath, theatre as savage spectacle, where human beings debase themselves in their mad scramble to get an audience. The papers are filled with critiques from the tragic, one-star reviews that decimate dreams to the rare and hallowed five stars that can catapult an unknown to international success. While some shows are selling incredibly well, most are failing to get payers. Performers are making pitches from every street corner: there are students from the polytech trying to get people to their "lovely, lovely show", the fella from Clapham dressed as Saddam Hussein (someone's already thrown a rock at him mistaking him for the real thing) and several Liza Minnelli impersonators.

There's a headless chipmunk riding a bicycle, a strangely ungainly woman on stilts, circus performers, desperate comics, students, dancers, Tantric masters and mime artists all screaming to be heard above the din.

Sometimes it's too much, so we flee the Royal Mile and head towards Princes Street. Pushing against the crush of tourists, we managed to escape into a broad side street where crammed between two shop windows was something touching, challenging, amazing and which encapsulated the spirit of the fringe.

With little room on the footpath, two people, a singer and a keyboard player, were pressed back into the brickwork. The woman was large, rotund, wearing old jeans and a faded dark green windcheater. She was standing behind a microphone with a small amp and seven or eight multicoloured folders with brown paper spilling from them. The man hunched, Golem-like, behind two keyboards. His head was a skull with deepset eyes, prominent cheeks and streaky, shoulder-length blond hair maintaining a slight grip to the side of his head. Their age was difficult to guess: I'd hazard the mid to late-30s. They looked haggard as if life had been one long, unenviable trial. And they were both blind.

She started to sing If Tomorrow Never Comes. In the time it took her to sing the song, roughly three minutes, we were taken on an incredible journey. Her voice was, simply put, beautiful. It emerged without force, dragging the small crowd closer. As she sang, she was completely emotionless, neither dramatic nor showy, and there was no attempt to sell the song. She didn't move, apart from her fingers as they felt along the inside of those broken folders for the Braille song lyrics. Her voice was immensely satisfying, suffused with a deep sense of melancholy.

When the song concluded, she sat down, non-plussed, as if she had no idea of the effect she'd had. I was overcome with emotion and noticed a few people around me had started to cry. Then, a man appeared at my arm. He came up to my shoulder and he had a tatty knapsack slung over his own. His head was closely shaved while the rest of his face was unshaven. He was wearing a stained Celtic kilt. My first response was to check my wallet.

"Emazing, eh?" he said, his speech rattling like a lost trolley car from Trainspotting. "They're guud, yeh? These tah air firm Glazgie. They cum doon far the fest. See that borx there pal, the mony borx? In Glazgie, they still it, they still it. Filthy junkies."

He goes on to tell me the two are a bit simple and how they met in a home. That the fella taught himself to play like "one of them savants" and found the lass could really sing. So that's how they live now, he says, It's hard, but they do OK. His care for the two strange performers is palpable. He gives me a nod and he's off. (I see him later giving what little cash he had to a homeless youth.)

In a city beset by every kind of spectacle, where people clamber over each other in the name of art, this was something achingly pure and all too human. For the few people standing around, it was more perfect and exquisite than anything invented and played out on a stage.

So, it's meant spending the equivalent of your children's education - visiting Edinburgh for the festival is worth it, writes Paul McDermott.

FESTIVAL 4 (Day 15 to the end)

A final report from the Edinburgh Festival. It's all over bar the shouting. Although, for the four weeks of the festival, it's been all shouting over the bar. The Australian contingent, a people known for their immense generosity when it comes to a bevy, have been doing most of it. This, as you may realise, can be financially dangerous when your pockets are filled with the Great Southern peso.

The canny publicans were wise enough to jack up the prices before the influx of humanity so the folk complaining loudest and longest are always the Scots. But when you're enjoying the company of fine performers from across the globe, the loss of a year's earnings seems a small price to pay for a pint of 80 Shilling and a round for your mates.

The best approach is not to think about it. Do not allow your mind to stray! Do not make instant calculations! Do not worry about the conversion rate! If you do, it'll do your head in.

For a decent meal in Edinburgh you could live like a king back home, you could send all your children to private schools and buy a jet to fly you to exotic locations. The only problem is finding a decent meal in Scotland. These people have committed some of the most horrendous crimes against food.

In the early hours of the morning at any number of chippies, you can witness first hand what's known as the "Scottish skin condition". Everything is deep fried. This is the proudly ancestral home of the deep fried Mars Bar. Any food, savoury or sweet, regardless of shape and texture can be dropped into a curiously orange and potentially carcinogenic batter. What's most distressing about this process is watching the spotty local lads salivating, their eyes transfixed on the splattering lard.

Admittedly, things are getting better. Food and its preparation have definitely improved: 20 years ago, fresh orange juice was unheard of in this country. I made the mistake of asking for it one morning and, when my grease-sweating waitress returned, she plonked down the famous Scot's fizzy pop Irn-Bru.* This distant relative of something pleasant looks like a darker form of Fanta and tastes like, well, iron. It's a national institution and a renowned hangover cure packing a wallop with twice the caffeine of its competitors. This makes it incredibly popular with the toothless youth and may aid in the digestion of such Lothian delicacies as deep fried pizza.**

I'm sorry for bringing up food, but I've started to miss the nutritional wonders of my homeland. We take for granted the diversity of our restaurants and it's only really driven home when you head out for a Thai meal and your green chicken curry is accompanied by chips and brown sauce.

After four weeks of this, you start to miss everything about Australia, like the scent of eucalyptus, dried sap and ants' nests.

On these days, we're luckier than most. When you need to hear the slow drawl of flattened vowels and ache for that joyously simplistic yet powerfully emotive greeting, "G'day", then Home and Away and Neighbours are as close as the TV and as comforting as the Southern Cross.

It's been a long run and everyone has lost something over the course of the festival. Many performers, sweating profusely in poorly ventilated rooms, have lost weight; some have lost all sense of time and direction; and a few (not mentioning any names) have lost their dignity. That being said, the many Australians have acquitted themselves well. Sure it's not the Olympics, but "they done you proud".

Meanwhile down the road in the air-conditioned comfort of a real theatre, an acclaimed opera company is finishing off Wagner's Ring cycle. A larger woman dressed as a Valkerie is pumping out a classic tune indicating in politically incorrect theatrical terms - "It's over". And I never thought I'd say this, but I'm looking forward to the in-flight snack on the way home.

* European union and continental palettes are certainly affecting the culinary habits of the locals, but one wonders how long tartlette aux Cassis and the mousse Framboise will hold out before they too succumb to the Scot's belligerent love of batter.

** Caution: Do not complain if this ever happens to you. When I dared suggest the beverage before me was not what I ordered, the waitress looked me up and down contemptuously and said, "It's orange innit? Now shut ya mouth and eat ya black and white pud."

A recent poetry-writing experiment for students has uncovered disturbing poetry of the masses, writes Paul McDermott.

This is for all creatures great and small, feather, fur or fin, how we love them all.
What rights do dumb animals need? The right to be slaughtered, to give us a good feed.

Oh, woe and misery to be privy to texts of such negativity. Recently, a poetry initiative was trialled in selected schools. The intention was to enable students from different social and financial backgrounds to find a common ground in the wonderful world of words.

What emerged was a tragic picture of isolated and disaffected youth striking out against the defenceless. The method of construction the students and teachers (and I use the word loosely) employed is a Dadaistic conceit where multiple authors adhere to a basic concept oblivious to what their conspirators have written.

The barbarism and cruelty of these words is untempered by individual conscience and a mob mentality flourishes.

Give us fur in abundance, ripped off an otter's back.
Powdered weasel penis bone, as an aphrodisiac.
Make every living creature something for our pleasure, mittens made of kittens, baby diapers made of leather.
A jumbo jet of ivory, catgut violins, (but don't take the catgut out, put the violins in).

The consistency of the attack is appalling. The poem reproduced here is Against Vegetarianism. It's an epic work, rivalling Dante's Inferno in length, but definitely not in depth. I've chosen a few stanzas (some are far too racy and offensive for The Age).

We've not received permission to print the work, so we'll publish and be damned. The public has a right to know what is passing for art in our schools. The horror continues:

Killer whale skin car seat covers like the ocean made to last, from a rhino horn doorstop, to perfumed baboon's arse, cute animals are designed to die, it's in their nature, don't you think, if you've ever smelt it, then you know that nature stinks.
Yet every single part, can make something really neat, and if they can't make something nice, well, just make them all extinct!

The project was aimed at three distinct social classes. The poems of the poor are politically motivated, with a strong social agenda and what they lack in grammatical correctness they make up for in passion. The poems of the privileged, despite some occasional trite introspection, are mostly concerned with higher love and the plight of Rene Rifkin. They're well-constructed, mature pieces displaying a gifted dexterity with language, a playful self-deprecatory nature and an awareness of the thesaurus.

But it's with the middle-class students that the project goes awry. With enough time on their hands to be thoughtful, yet not enough to think deeply, the poetry is extremely distressing. There's an unreasonable hatred of geology with mean-spirited attacks against such harmless minerals as pyrite (Pyrite! Pyrite? Pywrong!!).

There are scathing assaults on whitegoods, parents and types of native fern, but most of the bile is reserved for their loathing of poor animals.

Let's devour all creatures great and small, those who fly, swim and run, slither, walk and crawl, from the shit on their tails, to the snot on their snouts, dumb animals aren't smart enough, to know what life's about.

Poetry, thought by many to be a dead form after the repugnant work of Pam Ayres, was given a new lease of life in the late 1970s by rappers and MCs. These men and women incorporated dense, lyrical statements into vacuous disco tunes. It's become known as the urban drawl, with its major exponents drawing comparisons with Shakespeare, Elvis and Ted Hughes. What emerged from the melting-pot ghettos of America has slowly taken the world by storm. Despite FM radio's attempt to limit its growth, it's crossed all cultural and international boundaries with street poets emerging from the hard pavements of Luton and Leeds to the dusty ruins of Kabul. But do we need it here?

Let's BBQ Bambi, serve up Flipper on a spit, put seasoning in his blowhole pack it in until he splits.
We'll savour every flavour, honey-roast his dolphin skin, (I love the salty eyeballs, while Jim far prefers the fins).
It's a shame vegetables don't feel pain, we'd kill them if we could, cos you can taste the fear of death, and, by jingo, it tastes good.

As Peter Carey dips his nib in the world of Ern Malley and the seamier side of literature, another more insidious force is at work within the world of poetry. As Carey in his new novel rightly, and quite writerly, ascertains, we're creating monsters.

Yes, there's a war going on, between the animals and us, has no one told God's creatures, we have all the guns?
They don't understand a thing, they like playing with their dung (who doesn't?).
Animals are stupid, that's why we call them dumb.

Hey seagulls, it's a bird-eat-bird world out there, and don't you forget it.

Our first visitor is a clear-eyed seagull poised on a single orange stalk of a limb. He's decided to play the sympathy card early. What he lacks in a leg he certainly makes up for in the bird-brain department because he's ringside for the feast a full five minutes before the others arrive. He waits, almost patiently, before he hops forward, staggers a bit and is rewarded for this pre-match display of balancing skill with a juicy black-eyed prawn head.

We're in the first flush of spring as a bright new day is ushered in. The drought appears to be breaking, Mundine is champion of the world, the redhead's doing time, Christians and Muslims across the globe are united in love beneath the glorious banner of father's day, our Prime Minister has said "sorry" and we're feeding seagulls in the park.

That first innocent salvo of tucker has brought the hordes and they neatly arrange themselves in front of the low picnic table. Each gull is attempting to look disinterested, even wistful, but the lack of noise from our new guests betrays their intentions. Thirty angled heads, each with a single expectant eye, salaciously view the contents of the butcher's paper. Then it's on. A prawn head wings its way to centre of the mob as one of the bigger birds flies up to meet it. In a shocking display it bounces off the beak, is missed by another couple of youngsters, then it's down in the pack.

There's a mad scramble but no one's got control, the food's fumbled, knocked forward by a webbed foot yokel before our original flying turkey snatches it and takes it out of play.

It's a brilliant spectacle, the crowd of two are up on their feet. There's nothing else for it, with another big lob from the butcher's, the second head is out on the field. They're all mucking in now in a mad rush for the semi-transparent carcass, there's four in contention but a plucky fowl moves it forward, grips tight and it's over the heads of the major players and out towards the bay.

If the birds are particularly feisty and hungry, never throw the scraps towards the elderly or at prams. It all gets a bit horrific and Hitchcockian.

Within a few short tosses the feeding frenzy has become the AFL grand final of the bird world. To complete the vision, all our feathered athletes need are numbered vests adorned with company endorsements and the smallest inkling of teamwork. More players are entering the arena. A scrawny mongrel of a bird with two pale feathers rising as a lopsided mohawk greases in the back. Is this the junkie of the group or the hard-bitten, rough-as- nails survivor of the Exxon Valdez spill?

The birds are getting restless. Enter the alpha male, head lowered to the ground, glowering at his compatriots, emitting a hideous screech. He's terrified at least four other birds around him. He leers about his naked square of concrete, master of his domain, unaware his antisocial behaviour has singled him out.

His arrival signals a new state of play - selective feeding. Under this agenda: avoid the seagull acting like a cock. Our friend at the back, wall-eyed and wobbly is the first to catch the nosh. What follows is a barrage of crustacean body parts with an increasingly hungry and frustrated alpha clearly losing it. Four quarters of fun down and we've reached the end of the prawns but the players won't leave the field. Remaining on the bench are coleslaw and assorted salads (none of which have the aerodynamic ability of the prawn shells) and a few stray olives. You could certainly pitch them up, they'd travel the distance but, being unsure of the "pip awareness" of your standard gull, it's best to err on the side of safety.

The arrogance of the alpha male is undiminished as the final scrap, a meatless chicken drumstick, is slung towards him accompanied by howls of protest from the picnic bench. "Fowl play," is the cry, "it's cannibalism in the park. They shouldn't be encouraged TO eat their kith or kin. Boo!"

Although I agree, there's something strangely delicious, and yet incredibly distasteful, about watching a bird obliviously devouring another of its kind).

Meanwhile the alpha is wielding the drumstick like a club, like a small dumbbell of bone that he can't lift from the ground. He must suffer the indignity of towing it away. A couple of kookaburras and a murder of crows make his humiliation complete as he drags his sorry seagull arse to the shore, alone with his bone, rejected by society.

I'm unsure as to why we fed the birds that day and why we gained so much joy from it. Was it kindness or manipulation of the feathered masses? Was it an altruistic act or did it serve to confirm our superiority, taunting them with our opposable thumb? However, there's a valuable lesson we learnt on the day. If the birds are particularly feisty and hungry, never throw the scraps towards the elderly or at prams. It all gets a bit horrific and Hitchcockian if you do.

Afterthought: I'm not really sure if religious separatists were united on father's day and I made up the stuff about the PM saying "sorry". Sorry.

With global insecurity and the spread of theme-park culture, are any of us far from Terrorland?

As Johnny Depp globally promotes The Pirates of the Caribbean, a film based on one of the oldest and dullest rides in Disneyland, another Disney ride has been making a splash - albeit a red one. The Runaway Train, true to its name, ran off the rails recently. It injured nine people and sent another to Never-Never land.

Disneyland's a spotlessly clean family machine priding itself on the safety and efficiency of its fairground attractions. How did this come to pass in the land of the free or Frontier-land or Fantasy-land or what-ever-land in Disneyland it happened in?

This sort of horror is something we might expect from our fun fairs where maintenance is carried out by a fella with a total of seven fingers answering to the name of Spud. It's not something you expect from the safety-crazed Yanks, the people who brought us the seatbelt and the finger-saving cheese in a can. Did implacable forces of nature work to bring the happiest kingdom of them all down a peg or two? Or were dark forces seeking to rattle Disney's stranglehold on family fun? An accident or sabotage? Was it the act of a fresh-shaved devotee of the Taliban, a disgruntled crack-addled Snow White or an overzealous employee of Dollyworld? Rumours will circulate and proliferate, how could they not? If the place Walt created isn't safe, where the hell on earth is?*

And what of the thousands who queued for the ride? What of their distress at never experiencing the true terror of the Runaway Train? And what of the man who snuffed it? How would he feel? If I were him, I'd feel pretty pissed off. It's Disneyland - this sort of thing doesn't happen in Disneyland, maybe EuroDisney but not here in the States. If the poor fella had kids they'd be in trauma counselling for years. Their best friends would be lawyers and therapists. They'd always associate Goofy, Pluto, Hercules, Nemo and Cruella de Ville with memories of terror. Terror they could pass on for generations.

This new story affected me so profoundly I woke in a sweat last night after dreaming I was one of those kids. I was around seven, and I know this sounds horrific, but my first thought was "Trust Dad to ruin the day. We waited years to come here and now this. He's done it on purpose." I was so confused and so conflicted. Tears were rolling down my cheeks as I realised this was my one crack at a good time cos Disney would never be the same again.

I selfishly begged Mum for a quick go on Cinderella or one ride on the Little Mermaid, just one. I heard her saying, "OK, go. But come back when the ambulances arrive. We don't want to have to wait for you." And I wanted to enjoy myself, but I remember I was in an emotional hell feeling about as good as Kevin Costner condemned to eternally read reviews of Waterworld.

Then I heard the sirens while waiting in line for It's a Small World. I went on the ride anyway and then regretted it, regretted it immensely. But only because it was such a crap ride. I saw the paramedics and knew them all by name cos they were wearing personalised mouse ears. And they're saying, "Sorry" and "We would've arrived sooner but there was the chance of a quick snap with Pluto and Minnie in Tiny Town. And then we stopped to watch the pageant and Ariel looked beautiful and, sorry, but, on the up side, the accident was on the Runaway Train so we didn't have to queue. Who knows how long it would've taken to get here if it happened on Star Wars. You always have to wait for that one." And then I saw my sister running towards us saying, "It's OK, it's OK. I just saw Dad in the Haunted House. And everyone burst into tears. I awoke from this weird cartoon nightmare wanting to know what really happened on that frightening day. I started thinking maybe it was nobody's fault, maybe it was the machine.

If you thought your daily grind was unbearable, imagine the life of the fun-fair ride. Straining, twisting, desperately chasing some mathematician's idea of enjoyment. Seven days a week, hundreds of times a day. Pausing for three minutes every 12 to accept another salivating bloat of overweight thrillseekers.

Clambering on board spilling their jumbo Cokes, smearing gummy bears and Donald Duck burgers into the smooth vinyl of your seat, constantly straining as you pull the load towards that last-gasp-inducing drop, I think I can, I think I can. Then pop, it strikes you like an animated thunderbolt and you realise in the depth of your gears you actually can. And in that moment of self-realisation you reach out beyond yourself to something greater, to the notion of true freedom. Lurching from the familiar into the unknown, your new-found intelligence becoming aware, too late, of the symbiotic relationship between yourself and the rail tracks. Maybe all these dilemmas will be solved when Disney make a film of the Runaway Train?

* No one was more surprised than Walt himself. When his cryogenically frozen head was thawed for a comment, his response was, "F---, it's cold".

Mornings have traditionally been a terror. Over the years, they've become more difficult to cope with. Day-weary bones, still shackled to sleep, unable to rise. The alarm's shrill singing, pulling you from slumber with all the strength of a castrato drill sergeant.

Waking with half your face trailing on the pillow. Then, the first decision of the day as your hands fumble for the delightfully dangerous snooze button.

Your brain reconnects with the stretching mass of stench unfurling beneath it as your mind tumbles to the fact that sometime in the night you committed numerous crimes against good grace, decency and etiquette. Like a dog taking itself for a walk, your body found a means of expression in sleep - a horrific means of expression.

You know this because of the first look you received and you also know, before you utter a word, that you and the cat have the same breath. But even with all these negatives, it's a joy to get up because, from dawn today, your life has meaning.

Years ago, the only reason to get up was Mike Walsh and the crazy crew on Midday. Wall-to-wall laughs guaranteed as a wildly enthusiastic audience of the barely living and the near-dead would wet themselves (quite literally) as Mike effortlessly sailed the fine line between congenial host and vicious satirist.

After Mike, we fell into a visual abyss. For years, there was no good reason to rise, apart from the occasional afternoon flick. Then, like a laid back Lazarus, the early morning saviour Bert began rousing us at 9.

Since those heady heydays, things have slipped. Sometimes you might try Ricky or Jerry (but only if there's an interesting topic under discussion: "Transsexual dilemmas - women who want to be loved for the men they once were", or "Filthy freaks - legless, topless dancers" (where do you look?). Admittedly, some of us had a brief and insane flirtation with Oz Aerobics Style but, of late, most have been catching a bit more kip, only rising for round three to marvel at the Texan drawl and down-on-the-farm wisdom of Dr Phil.

All that's changed. Now, there's a reason for rising, as a battle royale wages every weekday morning in your lounge room. This battle is for your heart and soul and the brief spans of attention between coffee and getting the kids off to school.

Its intention is to grab you for a second, still dripping from the shower, to hold you pooling on the carpet with salacious tales of Ben and J-Lo and make you late for work with a selection of sit-down-take a-load-off-this-will-only-take-a-second sections. It's a battle of smiles and perky chats, of interesting items and special guests, of give-aways and get togethers, but it's a battle nonetheless, and its casualties are as real as you and I.

The warring camps of Today and Sunrise battle from seven till nine (coincidence?). Both contain a happy assortment of early morning heroes, who accompany them on their daily adventures. You can marshal behind Steve and Tracy, or Kochie and Mel - the old guard or young upstarts. Or you can flick like a maniac from one to the other.

As these two titans of breakfast TV tussle, they're picking up their game, making the real victors the Australian people. When the Campaign for Optimism is countered by Australia's Best Neighbour, you have to ask yourself if it could get more positive?

Days begin with happy chappies and pretty lassies talking about stuff. Real stuff. The old grey newshounds have been brought to heel and mornings are filled with more blondes than a Barbie convention. It's bright! It's happy! It's now!

Even Kochie's name sounds friendlier than the austere, yet trustworthy Steve. This is an old home-grown breakfast radio formula, where the addition of 'ie' or an 'o' to a name creates a great mate. Imagine how much love would rumble from our Weet-Bix'd bellies if Liebman was Stevie or Stevo?

To contend with Kochie, Steve has been allowed to roam, reaching such distant climes as New Zealand. Freed from the restraint of the desk, he's a magnificent creature, bursting forth in smart casuals.

There are big smiles at Today, though after years of grimness they're strangely strained, seemingly enforced wide-screen pearly whites. There are bigger smiles from the rivals, where it's all about dawning awareness, new growth, messages of rebirth.

At Sunrise, they're so at ease in front of the cameras that breakfast is now served amid the laptops. The morning has never been so get-up'n'go-for-it. It hits you in the face like a double-strength scalding hot chocolate and makes you want to tackle the day. And not just tackle it - take it down hard with a head high and a quick knee to the median.

There's been nothing much to smile about lately but, by jingo, the news is all good before nine. And if I could be bothered moving the TV into the bedroom, I could have the best of both worlds - a joyful slice of morning mayhem and a good lie in.

It may be a quiet stroll, but there are surprising encounters on the way.

Three days ago I misplaced my spectacles. I've worn glasses since the age of six, so to not have them close at hand is unsettling. I'm not wandering around blind, I've my contact lenses, but they can be annoying. The trouble is the specs are somewhere in the house. I've turned the place upside down looking for them but to no avail. To deal with the loss I've begun to concoct bizarre scenarios: a myopic junkie with my prescription broke into the house and, once his/her vision was restored, was still too short-sighted to steal the stereo.

After walking the golden path, I realised the glasses were holding me back, because it's not about the glasses, it's about the way I look at the world. The way I observe, view, watch. You may not see where this is leading but it'll become clear in time.

Sunday. The earth has been warmed by a generous sun and myself and my girl have decided to take ourselves for a walk. The path before us is the same as can be found in any suburb. Today it's bathed in light. Today it's golden. And it begins.

We round the first corner and bump into a friend. He has dark circles under his eyes. He starts ranting: "Stinking birds. There's a family of kookaburras, rosellas and something that "screeeeeches" nesting in my yard, they start before six and they don't stop, I hate them, I work at home and they're prancin' while I work, singing their shitty little bird songs, swanning about in the sun, not worried about the rent 'cos they've got free bread and board in the goddamn tree outside my window. They're mocking me. Mocking me."

We happily left our troubled acquaintance and ran straight into our friendly local fireman. He and his crew had been called out hours before to help a distressed animal stuck in a tree, but they couldn't find it. The panicked caller had given the street name but not the exact location of the tree.

On the median strip, four blocks from home, scant inches away from my precious golden path, a myna bird is tucking into a freshly laid dog turd.

They'd been up and down searching, but found nothing. We could feel his anguish and, seeking to alleviate the pain, suggested the cat would probably find a way down.

"Cat?" He was incredulous - it wasn't a cat, it was a bird. With that we realised the enormity of the task. Looking for a cat in a tree is one thing, looking for a bird in a tree is confusing. The crew had been at it for hours and seen hundreds of birds in trees, but none, in what you would call, distress.

He ambled off along the path - generous, kind, good-hearted - the antithesis of our first encounter. We continued on our way. It'd be half an hour before we stopped again.

Atop a cluster of pale stones baking in the sun was a large snake. I grabbed my girl's hand and dragged her in for a closer look. It took a moment before we realised what we were staring at. There on the rock were a couple of sizeable lizards curled round each other in an amorous embrace, clearly engaged in a slow dry hump, a cold-blooded frottage.

We've lived our entire lives in a country teeming with reptiles but this was the first time we had seen any blatantly having a go. And these were exhibitionist geckos because, far from being disturbed by our presence, they seemed to be getting off on it. And we couldn't tear ourselves away.

We began the homeward leg of our journey as reality blurred round the edges, in league with my vision.

There's nothing to prepare you for the full horror of what I am about to describe, to sugar coat it any way would border on perverse. On the median strip, four blocks from home, scant inches away from my precious golden path, a myna bird is tucking into a freshly laid dog turd. Why hasn't Attenborough ever shown a copraphilic side of our feathered friends?

Two devotees of yoga out for their morning stroll are nauseated by the sight. Nature has seldom been so confrontational in the realm of good taste.

But I've already stopped looking at the bird because something else has caught my eye. Something that makes my heart stop. I'll discover in a few seconds it's a beer coaster with a message from the National Health and Medical Research Council concerning sensible drinking. It gives examples of standard drinks and how much alcohol is in them.

But it's not the back of the coaster that interests me it's the front, it's the side facing up as it lies in the grass. It instantly makes me feel a greater force is at work in my life.

A force using pointed and personal messages. The universe has started speaking directly to me and, weary of using easy-to-misinterpret, oft overlooked visual symbolism, has resorted to screaming out in plain English. For there on the grass in a clear, yet out-of-focus font, are the words: Try not to lose track - of your glasses.

Never a pretty sight, the old Plumbers' Crack is in vogue with young fashionistas.

Scene 1 - David Jones, Melbourne

As the sales arse-sistant turned and bent, we were greeted with a bright pink fissure of flesh. An indication of what some acquaintances have called drop bottom. The crack itself was over a hand span in length but the bulk was concealed, iceberg-like, beneath an aquatic blue-stretch denim. When she rose I'd forgotten where I was, my name, my reason for being and had to bite my bottom lip (thank God someone was) to avoid saying "For mercy's sake, woman, pull your pants up because the thong you're wearing's just flossing your arse!"

There are other matters of greater import but this is an issue that demands resolution. It must be addressed, or redressed, or just dressed, immediately. We're entering the warmer months and, if a recent tour abroad gives any indication, we're destined for hard times. There's a global pandemic of poor taste. A low-slung, jean-plague has been running rampant throughout Europe and America.

The exposed diamond-studded thong, championed by Hollywood's elite, has been appropriated by many who shop local and hang on tight to their underdaks. Post-war cracks are appearing in this free world everywhere. To be completely frank, we're showing too much arse for a polite society.

The cracker, or one who exposes a crack, once inhabited the bland world of pedestrian eroticism dominated by plumbers and roadies and slovenly men. The former two experienced the breezy phenomena as an offshoot of their trade, which, on occasion, necessitated a glimpse of crevice. On the whole, these were unintentional displays, though some of the more exhibitionist types found this an added bonus of the job.

After years of copping an eyeful and paying for the privilege, the 1950s suburban housewife coined the term Plumbers' Crack. It remains a derogatory phrase for the grotesque sight of a cleaved arse bursting from a strained pant - imagine twin gluteus maximas souffles rising unbidden from denim. The phrase and, unfortunately, the look have both entered common usage.

We're showing too much arse for a polite society.

The current craze for crack afflicts both men and women with an infectious desire for bum display. It's not so much an outbreak as a breaking out. But as my father used to say, "If you ain't got the goods, don't put 'em on the counter". It's one thing to have a butt beaming at you from the sanitary safety of an air-brushed fashion mag, it's another to have the horror smack you in the face every time you ride an escalator, catch a bus or order a pastry. The wheelchair-bound and children must be in a bright pink hell.

Even when it's intentional, it can get ugly. Even on the svelte, tanned, siliconed, and surgically enhanced it can be nauseous. There are blemishes, pimples, moles and, for the male, there's the problem of the scrub below, known in some circles as the man's pubis or back bush. Few of us have the good fortune of getting changed in the Corridor of Eternity (two mirrors facing one another) so we usually let the back take care of itself.

This is a massive mistake. While a cursory glance is all that's needed to ensure our frontside is neat, zipped and tucked, it requires a dedication to discovery last seen in Our Bodies, Ourselves to ensure the backside is correctly stowed. The arse is letting the team down. It's hanging out all over the place. It's further complicated by the fact that people have never bent over so much. These days there's more bending over than standing up - and both forms of bending are freely employed.

1) Knee bending, which loosens a garment creating a deep tunnel effect.

2) Waist bending, which tightens and lowers a garment, forcing the cheeks together.

Scene 2 - Scotland

The cheap satin of her undergarment had balled and the thong was wedged so far up her Scots Khyber it threatened to strangle her ribs. There's a reason underwear is called underwear. When this type of apparel is worn externally it should have an Italian price tag. Or, at least, be worn by Italians.

This doesn't happen in the East: the saving grace of the burqa is you have to bend a long way before you can expose the thong; while daily in the West you see more asses than the apostles Alistair Crowley and John Holmes put together (and wouldn't that be a great dinner party?) When will the brief become too brief? Will hipsters give way to arsers?

Will politicians engage in vote-catching antics by lowering their strides as they bend to kiss babies? Our Prime Minister seen in such a light would be a visual puzzle looking much the same top to bottom. And pray this desire for flesh-flashing does not grip our aged population.

By dictionary definition a crack is a flaw, a defect. Let's leave it that way, hitch up the pants of this great nation and invest in some belts.*

* In the aesthetically superior culture of the Japanese, a flaw may be highlighted or accentuated by pouring precious metals into the gap. This may be seen as one immediate solution.

We might have an ageing population, but there's no reason for it to be a stupid one.

This country is on the slippery slide to oblivion. When the demise comes, it will not be at the hands of a foreign power, it will be because of one thing, and one thing only - our own stupidity. For some inexplicable reason, we've stopped seeding, resulting in a rapidly ageing population.

Within 15 years, 75 per cent of our population will be over 50, in 20 years, 93 per cent will be pushing 75. Of the remaining 13 per cent, half will be invalids, mentally deficient and welfare scumbags, leaving a mere 9 per cent to generate enough income to fuel the entire nation. Our only hope is to develop smart kids.

Televisual education is the way of the future but not the namby-pamby goo-gah rubbish kids are currently fed. Australian tykes are luckier than most. They inhabit a world of Wiggles and Hi-5s. It's a world of giggles and simple life-affirming songs, but there's a darker world approaching at terrifying speed and, to cope, the children of today need to be armed with something more powerful than Hot Potato. Other local attempts have been made, but you're not going to learn a lot from a bear who can't talk and forgets to wear pants. America has provided us with cloyingly patronising programs such as Sesame Street. Early Sesame was brilliant; the only slightly negative effect was that children with two working parents developed quirky American accents.

But why hasn't this show progressed? Why do they continue to cycle through the same sequence of numbers, pluck letters from the same alphabet and adhere to the same dull calendar months? Watching a recent episode, I found nothing challenging whatsoever about One of These Things. Sesame Street has stalled.

Children, babies in particular, have an amazing ability for comprehension. Fresh from the womb, their eggshell skulls contain an ultra-absorbent sponge called the brain. By 16, that brain is as sponge-like as granite. It's obsessed by either sex or Christ and the only thing it can absorb is itself. Parents must act quickly because genius comes at a price. We're all amazed by teens who arrive at their chosen professions fully formed. From sport (Woods and the Williams sisters) to entertainment (Timberlake, Spears) to the nameless 12-year-olds who drive IT. They all had parents who cared enough to be cruel. These were progenitors with vision, who drove their young charges beyond the limits of endurance. Many of these parents are multimillionaires, living lives of luxury, because they put in the hard yards. Where do you want to be?*

Children are our future and there's finally a show that enables them to secure that future for us.

The Super Intelligent Child's Half-Hour of Power (TSICHHOP) is a dynamic new concept in toddler teaching and is rapidly becoming the most watched educational program in the US. Each show is hosted by members of the intelligentsia, not some poorly-educated-but-sprightly-piece-of-kiddie-eye-candy.

The daily story reading is not from some colour picture book with arty scribbles but from Dante's Inferno and the pop-up Karma Sutra.

They've proved that just because kids are closer to the ground doesn't mean you have to talk down to them, so episodes are brought to you by the number pi and the letters alpha and omega.

Each week the program is delivered in a different language, from Esperanto to Aremaic. The latter is essential if a child is to comprehend Mel's new flick. There are also subtitles in English to aid slower learners and a scroll featuring the day's words - totalitarianism, carnivorous, botulism, stagflation. This is a program that believes in syllables and the more the merrier. There are up-to-the-minute stockmarket reports and, surprisingly, for just a minuscule amount of product placement, TSICHHOP is entirely funded by fast food outlets.

There's a need in this country for parents to seize the reins of education. It has become increasingly clear that without the totally focused, obsessive and niggling attention to detail a devoted pair of dovetails can bring to their hatchling, there will be no growth. The least a begetter can do is plonk their loved one in front of the box.

*Now we can map the foetus with 3D imaging, there's no reason why we can't begin a bombardment of information. Start with simple etiquette - "sit up straight", "don't kick your mother".

Tracking down the world's oldest folk has been fraught with danger - especially for the nominees.

Seven years ago, an extraordinary project began in Osaka, Japan. With the best intentions, a group of scholars, scientists and community leaders, aided by government funding and corporate sponsors, began an incredible search. Then in 1998, they sent an elite team of accountants and doctors out to scour the globe. Their task seemed insurmountable - to locate a birth date.

They pored over files from two centuries ravaged by wars and blistered by armed conflict. Countless fires, tragedies and human error meant records had been lost or misplaced. At every turn they were confronted by hearsay and conjecture. After eight months they returned to Osaka to collate the massive amount of information they'd collected. They discovered what they'd been looking for was right under their nose not four hours drive from the town where they'd begun their undertaking.

Yumi Tamachu was 116. They'd found the "world's oldest living person".*

In the ceremony that followed, Yumi received an award, a small sum of cash and numerous "age-enhancing gifts" from the sponsors. Her delightfully confused, wrinkled, prune-of-a-face was seen around the world, but due to a history of mental illness, only her great, great-grandchildren had a vague idea of what was happening. Since that day the award has gathered momentum, capturing the world's imagination and catapulting some very old people into the spotlight. But there's a downside. Many recipients have seen the award as the kiss of death.

The three-ringed circus of paparazzi and hysteria that follows close on its tail would be enough to pop even a spirited 80-year-old's heart valve. Looking at the concept in the cold, hard light of day, it's a double-edged sword. The acceptance speech is a recipe for disaster, and how could you have any pride knowing your rival had to kick the bucket so you could win?

There've been 24 Oldest Living Persons since 1998, most lasting less than six months, some only managing to grasp the trophy before letting go of life.

You can only win the accolade once, and in terms of competition, it's a sure bet you're not going to win anything else. It's highly unlikely to attract members of the opposite sex, proven to be one of the prime motivating forces for winning awards. It's been used as an excuse by covetous offspring to prevent their ill grandparents indulging in euthanasia.

Guntis Wegmanus, a Latvian coal miner held the title for an unprecedented and undefeated 32 weeks, until the machines were turned off.

In one woeful ceremony last year, the female recipient was blind and deaf. As she was a code-breaker during World War II, the adjudicators were forced to tap the happy news into her head using Morse. The press cruelty was incredible, with one British tabloid suggesting: "It was lucky the old girl wasn't blind, deaf and senile otherwise she may've thought she was a door and there was nobody home."

The recent win by a Dutch family has been shrouded in controversy. It's been suggested the 113-year-old Eda Van de Veldes children, Minky (89) and Johannas (96) cleared away "the dead wood" to secure the award for their mother. The accusations came hot on the heels of the untimely demise of the 115-year-old who was next in line. He apparently died skateboarding.

Thus far the Japanese have dominated the competition, and in some countries this has caused immense bitterness - in the United States particularly. How can you propagate the myth you're the greatest nation in the world if no one in your country lives as long as a Mongolian goat herder? In the US, the left have used it as an excuse to re-evaluate society, while the right has encouraged big business to discover ways of artificially extending life.

This short-lived award was intended as a celebration of survival - tragically it's become another symbol of our weakness and greed. While other nations are providing financial and physical aid to help their oldies live longer and have a chance for gold, we in Australia are making it more difficult for them. It's high time we saw our local crinklies as potential world winners. By giving up the smokes and tucking into the calcium we can make this prestigious prize ours within 20 years. We've a great life in this country - let's make it a long life, too.

* I've questioned the use of the superfluous "living" in the award title. One assumes the "oldest person" is alive, otherwise all manner of demon hell-seed and succubus would be eligible.

Five centuries after its origins in Morocco, the West has cottoned onto "suggestive selling"

It's been mocked and ridiculed across the globe and used as a punchline in films and plays. Its simplicity has seduced us, entering out language while we slumbered. We've all heard it, many of us have spoken it, but do we really understand what it means?

The seemingly harmless expression "Do you want fries with that?" if the thin edge of the wedge that dominates and controls the way we spend.

This story begins five centuries ago with the market sellers of Morocco. It was here a style of haggling developed where the buyer would always appear to profit. It was deception brilliantly described in Richard Burton's wonderful lurid translation of the Thousand and One Nights. Although well-known and practised in the East, it would take until the late 1950s to be "discovered" by the West.

Post-war Europe and the Allies create a tiered technique of "suggestive selling: based on the work of the "Moroccan Masters". The objective: to revitalise cities and villages economically disadvantaged during conflict by incrementally increasing a populace's spending without their knowledge. After years of theoretical work, the concept was ready to be tested and it came down to a question of size and semantics.

Let us examine here the tri-tiered model of small, medium and large (imagine, if you will, three containers of soda pop). Originally any size was relative to the one preceding it. This needed to change for the new system to work. The population had to adopt a fresh approach to capacity and volume, one where words no longer had a connection with measurement. Thus the new "small" is the old "tiny", the new "medium" the old "small". But here's where the developers' ingenuity must be admired - the new large is the old large - just slightly more expensive.

Thus, by comparison, the new large is "enormous", and therefore the only rational choice a person could make. The result: more money is spent than initially intended and more product consumed, enabling the wheels of industry to turn a little faster. And, best of all, the customer believes they've scored a bargain.

To fully understand the effectiveness of this campaign, it's important to note only large beverage containers have been produced since 1978. Old stocks of small and medium containers have been sufficient for demand since that date. This concept rapidly broke free of the confectionery counter with the simple template now used in virtually every industry. Everything can be made more attractive if you believe you're getting something for nothing.

You may have noticed this same system has infiltrated video rental stores, where the 3-for-1 deal is fraught with danger. The "suggestor" will encourage you to return to the shelves to take advantage of "the bargain". These well-trained trainees know what you only suspect. They know you'll never have enough time to watch three videos, you'll never be organised enough to bring them back on the due dates and you'll always be in debt.

If you're ever stuck in a line at a video store these days it's not because people are renting videos, it's because they're paying fines. They've even taken the notion further with the "only pay half the late fee if you pay when you return the video" concept. Here lies the immaculate perversity of suggestive selling. Suddenly you feel you're saving money paying a fine you wouldn't have incurred in the first place if you hadn't been tempted by the bargain.

Wherever you spend you'll find these forces at work. From Brazilian waxing (do it all for less) to car dealers and from property developers to religious organisations. Plastic surgery has embraced the philosophy. If you're going in for a touch of rhinoplasty, obviously feeling encumbered by a grotesque proboscis, you'll be offered an ear tuck or a tummy tighten as a package deal at a "discount rate".

In some countries the interminable wait for a heart transplant can be swifter if you do the whole family in one go. Even as we speak, the Americans are upgrading Iraq. There's no end to the applications for the new sell and I, for one, "am loving it".

There comes a time in the affairs of man when a lifelong avoidance is cast aside, even though the odds of success are minuscule

He's off and racing with 700 to go

The time has come to talk horses. It is in the air, like freshly mown cow patties, like masticated grass, reguritated or deposited in heavy balls of green and brown. It's everywhere. From the red sands of Broome to the blistered plains of Hay, you can smell the damp straw. The air is thick with anticipation and precipatation.

The time has come to pause for "the race that stops a nation". An emotive historical prespective.

In an all-male Catholic school were i recieved my education, gambling was sin. Incidients in the bible attest to Christ dislike of this odious pastime - market sellers, batering and gambling in His father's house, His blood-stained clothes a prize of vulgar centurion's game and the heady night of five-card stud with the apostles where the grail wasn't the only thing the Son of our father lost.

From my earliest years, betting was decried by teachers and admoished from the pulpit. It was a "cursed thing" the destoyer of families, a hollow pursuit, a bottomless pit. Yet, one day a year, all this was swept aside and made irrelevant. On this day, gambling was glorified, televised, immortalised. The first tuesday of november. the melbourne cup. more significant than christmas.

In the week preceding the event, newspapers, with their tabloid editorials and tales from lands that existed beyond our blood and boned ovals, were allowedto enter halls of callow youth. The usless bulk was tossed, while a single sheet was hysterically shredding for the sweepstake. Names of unheard of a week before were placed in a plastic ice-cream container (only once Brother Glover make hte mistake of forgetting to remove the ice-cream) Learning was a toss on the backburner as hundreds of ex-bedwetting pentitents queued for a decent pony. there was the ridcule of drawing straching, or the horror of pulling a nag destined for the glue factory or worse, still something from New Zealand. You held tight to that gnarled stripe of paper never knowing, under pressure of the day, if emerge with diamonds or coal.

Rounding the corner on the first concept with 350 still ahead.

In the early afternoon, every boy from grade three to six was jerded into the gymnasium-cum-chapel. (The only time we were dragged from class was to witness the moon landing. From memory we bet on that as well.) Under watchful eye of a wooden spoon, mute witnesses to fantasies of escape, the seed of gambling flourished, Squinting, cross-legged on the pebbled-crete floor (admittedly a poor choice for the rough and tumble of the gym) our new alter was an elevated, malfunctioning school monitor. That rectangle of green-hued static buzzed with the fluctualting image of tiny beasts storming about a distant track. Sheathed in drab scholastic grey, some of the more winsome boys would faint at the colour, pattern and fabric of the rider attire.

We were intructed to contain ourselves and any whelp that rose wxcited felt the remorseless crack of the cane. the it began. The thunderous pounding hooves emerging from the 5 centimetre mono speaker as an effeminate hiss. Over the course of those ellipses fortunes were lost. For the victors of the transformation was immediate. Previously loathed they emerged as young kings, pockets heavy with coin. In those days a single bullet would buy servitude. They were hoisted on shoulders of cheering youths and paraded through corridors of shredded paper ticker-tape.

It was something i never expected, and 13 consecutive years of losing takes its toll on a lad. Since leaving that insitution I've not been able to savour the Melbourne Cup. I've never placed a bet. I've avoided the obligatory barbies, the charged drinks, the equine camaraderie. I set myslef apart.

He's in the home stretch. with 100 to go.

But this year is different. this year i joined the nation and celebrated the froth and sweat-flecked hindquarters. The year i dally in silks and form guides. this year i formulated and paln and place my money on a winner. Gone from my sight is the tempting sweepstake with it's chance and casual luck. the stakes are high but so am I Bring it on.

There's nothing in it now. Down to the line.

Fuck it Fuck it

Modern society had devalued the true worth of our equine friends by focusing on their racing and show jumping ability.

Horse! Horses! Horses! A week after the race that syops the nation and those pancin throughbreds have not left our screens, our papers or our hip pockets.*

We've ridden on the horses' back as often as the back of the sheep, but history may record it was the horse we truly fleeced. The horse: it fought battles, won our wars, shaped our destiny, entered our folklore, premeated our dreams. From the white steed with its flowing mane and celestial grace to the dark horse of chance or the pitch-black rump in saddle our every imaginable landscape with these magnificent creatures. So how have we allowed this relationship, one of the most important in human exsistance, to sour? Why do we only praise the brutish speed of the beast? Why do we ignore the passion, the artisty and unbridled intellect of horse?

In the closing quarter of the 19th centuary, the horse began the slow fade as a convenient mode of transport; flesh and willpower were superseded by slavishly obedient metal and gears. the horse was forgotten, sent out to pasture. In the past 30 years, the paragon of animals has fallen further, relegrated to the walls of pre-pubescent girls. these poster pnies, as they've come to be called , are the new elite of the equine world. Pampered and kept in peak condition only to be snapped in salacious poses by some of the world's leading photgraphers. They've got the look most of their stable mates can only dream of. But this obsession with physical perfection can come at an enormous personal cost to the horse. Some, primarily the perpetually vain palomino and dutch warmblood, become obsessed by their own reflections and end up gnawing at thier mirrors like demented four-legged budgies. others, mainly fillies, have developed eating disorders.

While their posters sell, their visual art does not. Cats and elephants, two leading lights in the competitve world of animal art, have always been pleasant, if predestrain, painters. The horse - a late starter in this pursuit - has trailed in the field, failing to captivate the public's imagination. The poor pony lacks the expressive action painting paws of cat or pachydrem's extraordinarily multifunctional trunk. The horse was also born with a distinct disadvantage whenit comes to mixing colour. This is why horses have turned their hooves to sculpture. In a new movement orginating in the soft earth of villages near Seville, ap prepared ground of clay is presnted to the equine artist. the horse is then allowed to express by wandering, bolting or defecating over the surface. The resulting impressions are then fired or brozened and hung as friezes. These stampings are emotive and passionate responses to the clay and have drawn praise from the art world, with comparsions to the late religious work of Rothko and the transcendental sand mandalas of the Tibetan monks. (A recent addition to the form is the patterned horseshoe, enabling more creative and complex designs.)

The horse was a star of the vaudeville curcuit 100 years ago, entertaining everyone from the crowned heads of Europ to the huddled masses crammed into circus tents. The horse was loved, it was even accepted as an equal in many pubs. Amazing stories abound: one foppish Clydesdale was prasied for having the wit Wilde, there was Sorah the Shetland contortionsit that could squeeze into a glove box, Madame Zara de Pune from Cheeky Nat. Not only could she count to 10. add, subtract and multiply but she could also solve complex equations. the plucky pny alerted the authorities to design faults in the Wiggan Suspention Bridge (1904), averting disaster and saving the lives of dozens.

And what of ancient arcobatic horses? We've seen these gymnastic marvels in Cretan cave drawings, but where are their contemporary counterparts? Why have so many made the jump to the highwire or the trapeze?

There are so much more to the horse than its racing ability. We must focus on all it's talents, it's beauty, art and intellct. We need to act now. We cannot wait for another Mr Ed to explain to us.

*Obviously, with the world situation people have a tendency to panic but the epxression "The race that stops the nation" does not refer to any minority group, or enthnic organisation hell-bent on destroying the most generous countries. Yet.

Nature's healing powers emerge after a bruising ride on the cash cow of modern medical treatment.

All my demons are coming home to roost. They blew in a week ago. I reckon it was the day I struck myself off my own Christmas list and, let's be honest, there was only ever one name on it. Those viral monsters overcame me in an instant.

Pityriasis rosea that's what the quack called them, but I know better. I recognise their little games. The way they keep me awake at night, the way they make me scratch. They hide in those hard to get to places like the back of me ganglia. Now I got a red jump-suit of lumps to wear when naked - salmon-red, copper-coloured. They say it's just a rash, but I know it's them demons. How stupid them doctors, with all their long hours of study, not to know this.

I forgot to keep my guard up and they poured through my unprotected territorial waters, wading ashore. How? Up the highway olfactory or down me gob? Am I allergic to something? Don't know. No one does - oh, she's a fine mystery indeed. What I know is this: they're externalising my internal struggle. They pop out of my skin. A legion of them marched across the sparse plain of my breastbone on day one of the campaign.

By day three they've sent out scouting parties to check for weak spots in the epidermis defence. They find them, back of the knees, scapula. They surround me dolly dots.

Day five - a force sweeps south but they're lost in the mangrove of my abdomen. Later the same day another group makes a pincer movement above my arse and descends in the marshlands. I'll never be able to track them there, that whole place is off bounds.

Then it's get meself checked out and I'm off to get fixed. Now I don't know how it sits with you, but as soon as I cross the threshold into that space, with its waiting room and antiseptic, I've gone back to the Dark Ages. Me good brain seizes and me book learning's lost and I'm a great, frightened sore held together by skin with a million minuscule Krakatoas ready to blow.

(They're acting up now. Trying desperate to stop me typing. They're all crying out to be scratched. They hate me telling ya 'bout them. It diminishes their power.)

So I'm in that place to see one of them generals. He's all smiles and handshakes and where's ya card and Give the Girl the Money. Then, without so much as a by-your-leave, it's strides down, knees up.

Before I know it, there goes me hard-earned and I'm out the door, off to get me scans. There's one fiddy I'll never see again - 'cept on a light box. And I've got me scans now tucked under me arm. Them demons didn't like that, by jingo, they complained all the way. (Why go? Have a drink! What if they kill you? Have a few drinks.) Then, you know already don't you? I've got to go back and see the general. I'm on the medic-go-round. Oh, and she's a dizzy ride, believe me. I gets sent from me general to me chemist to me specialist, and from me specialist back to me general to me chemist.

That's how they work, them quacks. One gives it to anot