Dear Teacher...

What I did on my holiday:

(1) Movies.

Through the influence of young - and very cute - children, and through some semi-hysterical loss of decision making, I ventured out to see Son of the Mask and Amityville Horror.

Son of the Mask was a treat for The Burp's two boys. The boys loved it - there were fart jokes! And there was a Mutley-esque dog, which did make me chuckle. Mostly I spent the time wishing that houses like the one in the film really did exist and that people really did live in those sorts of houses. By people I mean me.

As for the Amityville Horror. Well, I think it grandly lived up to its one-star rating or whatever it got. The problem is that no matter how stupid, scary movies scare me. But I did the right thing and saw it an early morning viewing: then I had all those hours of bright sunshine to get over it. Not quite enough bright hours. When Grumpy trooped off to the library that night, I felt the house had taken on a particularly ravenous look and it looked like it liked its meat rare. I continued to marinate myself in a fearful sauce of "true crime" shows. Needless to say I was wide awake when Grumpy returned several hours later and the planet was groaning under my desire to hold back the night, turn on the light, definitely do not want to dream about you, baby.

(2) Good Fences. Good Neighbours.

Before our lunch at The Mint Leaf (RIP), the Burp and I were talking to her mum, who was telling me all about her hassles with The Man Down at City Hall (no, wait, this is Australia) who has told her she must fence in her pool, installed in the 70s when fences weren't required. I was totally sympathetic to her cause and especially impressed at her tactic: she asked the council to declare her back yard public open space - since lakes & ponds and other public waterways aren't fenced. They declined, of course. Because you can't fight City Hall (no, wait...).

I knew this was a story that Bloody Ern would love.

- This is a man who has declared his own personal secession from the Commonwealth of Australia. This is a man who, when he was in the Army, was told he couldn't go to Vietnam because he had a boil on his bum and has brooded on it ever since - "Every man should kill another man in combat; it's like a rite of passage." And when his wife was ringing up demanding to know why he wasn't being sent and his commanding officer told him to make his wife stop ringing them, he said, "I can't give my wife orders, sir. She's a civilian." I may take to calling him Fa. So after all the years of being confounded and enraged by the activities of his country and his fellow Australians, he declared his secession. -

I told him the story of the pool fence and he was delighted and momentarily diverted - "I only met her briefly, but The Burp's mother always struck me as a very sensible woman" - but then it all lead, inevitably and somewhat tragically, to a rant about Australians as a nation of "forelock tuggers" and the price of Camel Plain these days.

(3) Give Me Land, Lots of Land

Speaking of secession...Grumpy and I took a trip up to Kalbarri and paid a visit to Prince Leonard of Hutt River Province. We met the Prince and the Princess and took the walk to Mt Secession, where we were, apparently, spiritually refreshed by passing through the Biblical Gateway (this would explain why we bickered all the way there but not all the way home). But - "These flies!"

We even got our passports stamped. The Prince keeps a collection of foreign passports. He asked me, "I haven't seen one of these in a while [Australian passport]. Can I keep it?' "I'd love to let you,"I told him, "But I might need it to get back into the country."

(4) There was something else but I forget what it was.