Just awaiting council approval

Seriously.

Brewer Ross Smith plans to recreate the original Stonehenge on his property at Margaret River in time for the next summer solstice on December 21.

The structure will be made with 2500 tonnes of granite quarried from Esperance on WA's south coast.

"I'm doing it because I can," Mr Smith told AAP.

[Unlike the original] ...anyone visiting the Australian replica will be able to touch and play around a new and complete [Hey, "complete"! So surely superior] version of the monument, Mr Smith said.

The Henge, as it will be known, [guess he doesn't have to worry 'bout copyright...] will span 33 metres in a two-hectare area on his Margaret River property.

"I think it will attract a lot of tourists to the [er, tourist] region, about 200,000 to 300,000 per year," he said.

It will be hired out for weddings and a visitation fee will be in place, said Mr Smith, an entrepreneur [no kidding].

The plan has its critics in an area renowned for fine wine, chocolate and cheese.

"It's been mixed (the reaction)," Mr Smith said.

"You're always going to get your knockers but I don't mind.

"Thirty years ago Margaret River was infested with dairy cows and there was no wine here." [Nor, funnily enough, ancient Celtic architecture. And how we have felt the lack!]

Mr Smith says the local council has backed his plan, but it has yet to be approved.

The area, well known for its cheeses, will soon have a lot more cheese it seems. Jeez, just all class. Why can't he be sensible and erect a giant structure of fruit like other states!!?

Apparently she 'misspoke'

Whoops:

Clinton had last week told of coming under sniper fire when she arrived at Bosnia's Tuzla airbase in March 1996.

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base," Clinton had recounted.

But reporters who accompanied her on the 1996 trip have since produced TV footage that shows nothing of the sort, as Clinton, accompanied by her daughter Chelsea, greeted wellwishers on their arrival and paused to chat.

Reruns of TV reports from the time showed Clinton being welcomed by smiling officials on the tarmac at Tuzla, and listening as an eight-year-old Bosnian girl read out a poem.

Hey, poetry recitations have me running for cover too.


Eeeeek!

Hey big boy...

Is that a drug stash in your trousers, or are you just ecstatic to see me?


(sorry. couldn't resist.)

Easter reflections

Today is Good Friday, and the weather is fine - the brightest blue sky you've ever seen - and I can't recall where I was when I heard my grandmother had been taken to hospital.

She was a devout Catholic, but had a wicked sense of humour. Fittingly, she felt ill when at church watching The Stations of the Cross which was always performed by students of my former primary school. I say 'fittingly' not because one always feels unwell at church, and especially so if having to sit through students clumsily reenacting Christ's crucifixion whilst a giant (probably plaster or plastic) and pained looking Jesus views from the wall above, but because she suffered on the same day as the Lord.

She was in a coma in intensive care on the Friday and Saturday, and the day the Lord rose to heaven so did she.

I was 15 at the time and have memories of the hospital, and the waiting room, and fellow family members, and myself, very upset... but I can't remember where I was when I heard that she was in hospital. A couple of years earlier and I likely would have been at church with her.

I can remember where I was when I heard Princess Diana died. I can remember where I was when, watching live, planes flew into the Twin Towers. I can remember where I was when the Boxing Day tsunami happened. But I can't remember where I was when I heard that my beloved, healthy, vibrant, and strong grandmother was in intensive care.

Perhaps some things are just too close to home to remember, to want to remember.

Anyway, although I can recall the date she died, it is always at Easter that I remember her even more than usual. She figured that one out pretty well. No forgetting Easter.

Of course she was not forgettable. Not at all. My life would have been hugely lacking if it weren't for her. At least I remember that.

Howard spreads it on thickly

Howard: "If the butter of common national values is spread too thinly it will disappear altogether."



Audience member: Which is jolly good for the nation's obesity and cholesterol problems!



Howard: Wait... Hang on...

tendrils & blooms

In the early evening I step outside with my cup of tea. I stand and watch tiny New Holland honey-eaters chase each other around the yellow blossoms of a gum tree. I am thrilled by the spinning of a slim curved leaf as it slowly spirals to the ground, passing through shadows and light on its way.

I look over the fence to the giant soft greenness of the neighbour's Jacaranda tree. Beside it is a tall, fat pine. The one my dad said is like a Norfolk Pine but not; but smaller. It's arms stretch out with great multi-fingered hands. Cupped in some are tall proud seed cones. They sit like fat happy eggs in a nest. I glance back to the Jacaranda. Although a younger tree down the road is still blooming this tree finished flowering weeks ago, before it grew its soft feathery leaves for another year. But then, just to one side, I spot one brilliant lilac bloom. Just one, sitting in the green and the light. And I'm amazed at how sometimes, all we need is just one.

The passionfruit vine in front of me stretches toward empty air, looking for something to cling to, to grow on, something for support. I can see it won't find it and will have to be content to return to the fence. Will realise, after searching enough emptiness, it must return to itself and keep growing from there. Although this won't stop it from stretching out further vines and searching tendrils in the future.

(cross posted @ bloom lane)