Sho,Now begginsh my other commmmitmunt – 11 munths preparing for febfarts. I just hope my liVer is up 2 it.

What have I dischcovered? Lentils suck … well, aktually its probubbly more accurate to say they blow, and blow, and blow. I suspect I might have made a significant contribushion to the hole in the ozone that week.Do u think the KFC people shud have got a second opionion about their new advertising punchline – “Stop and smell the chicken?”

Can I ashk you a question about being Aushtralian? The other day the prime minister acccussed the ABC of being unaushtralian becaushe, as far as I could tell, they pointed out sum problems and questioned figures of authority? Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but ishn’t that what being Aushtralian is all about? We don’t go along with things jusht because we’re told to, and if we think bulldusht is involved we definitely give people a piece of our mindsh – don’t we? So, why ish that now unaushtralian? And wash it unaustralian when he was the opposition leader because I’m pretty sure he did his fair share of critishy…crishti….crititis….whinging.

We have a gecko living in our house. I want to call him Gordon, but he’s seems too nische. Shumtimes he turnsh up unexshpectedly and can give you quite a shurprise, through probably not nearly as nashty a shurprise as an unexpected tiger.

Imagine if any bushiness wash inshane enough to pay their CEO closh to $4 million a year and for their senior excutives to get an 82% shalary increash in 3 years, and then for those people to deliver a $252 million losh!!! Its jusht not poshible …. Unlesh, perhaphs you ran a national carrier. But don’t worry, the solushun is at hand – sack a few thousand workers and probably get a tidy little multi-millionaire dollar handshake for your trublsh. He’s got the full support of the board, so he should be gone inshide a week. And they say local government shud be run more like a business!!

I notcished another league player has got caught fighting in a bar, before the sheason has even shtarted. Now who would have exshpected that?

If the head of a committee is called a chair why ishn’t the queen called a throne?

And do you ever wonder if christopher pine really ish the best material to build our education shystum out of?

My purple jaguar tellsh me I’m rambling but he’s sho wrong – I haven’t been out for a walk in agesh.Anyway, enough is enough. Thank you for all you wonderful support and for your tolerance. The funds that have been raised really do go to some great, great causes and they can only do the good they do through your generosity. If you were planning to donate money but just haven’t got around to it the really exciting news is that you still can!!! Just go to:
http://my.febfast.org/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=685940&langPref=en-CAand you can still make a huge difference. I’m pretty sure it will win you brownie points in whatever afterlife there is and if that’s not your bag, well, it will keep moral blackmail at bay.

There are moments of clarity – oh how I wish they were moments of clarety.

I have left the air diet behind me, and the lentil diet, which was an air diet of another kind, or at least a wind one.

I think I have found the diet I was looking for. It’s based on massive amounts of poppy seed. Why do I like it? Because it makes me feel so gooooood. I could chillax my life away. Everyone just looks warm and fuzzy and … purple. Not quite sure why that is but there you go.

Actually, shouldn’t have said chillax – combo words, like ginormous, just annoy the bejesus out of me. Isn’t gigantic or enormous good enough on their own? I mean, ginormous doesn’t even sound big at all. It’s the embarrassing relative in the large word family.

I do love euphemisms though. We use them all the time, but we like to call them white lies. For example, “Bald men are viral” means “Bald men are bald”; “That haircut really suits you” means “No it doesn’t” and “No that dress doesn’t make you look big” means “Yes it does.” And what do you reckon a trouser cough might be?

There are two things a man should never, ever say to a woman 1) “Wow, you must be pregnant. When’s the baby due?” 2) “You know, you look just like your mother”. Blokes, on the other hand, deserve everything they get.

Sometimes people’s names make me smile. Is Joe Hockey a game where, if you don’t have the ball, you tell everybody how many goals you’d score if you did have the ball, BUT when you do get the ball, you complain that it’s not big enough and that the people who just had the ball are to blame? It’s then optional to pick up the ball and go home.

Have you ever noticed that when somebody says “In my humble opinion” (IMHO in text abbreviation), you can bet they aren’t going to be humble and there’s a fair chance their opinion will be spoken out of a different orifice. And, if someone ever says “With all due respect …” get ready to be deeply offended or move away from them quickly before you get caught in the crossfire.

Perhaps you can help me with something. The other day the prime minister said he wouldn’t give in to moral blackmail. What is this moral blackmail? Is it when your morals make you feel guilty, because isn’t that just guilt? Or does it mean that you won’t give in because you don’t have any morals to be worried about? Just curious.

Did you know it’s actually quite easy to speak German? Just put ger at the front of a word and en at the end and you’re there. Drop a brick on your toe and cry out “Gerbuggeren” and every nearby German will know exactly what you mean.

Isn’t panjandrum a cool word?

And is sugar the rudest food in the kitchen?  I’ve definitely heard people say “Sugar” and the way they said it meant a whole lot more than just a pile of sweet white stuff. A pile of something maybe, definitely not sweet and probably not white.

As I scoop down another spoonful of poppy seeds the purple jaguar who moved in when I started my poppy seed diet tells me I should remind you all to donate to the cause. All of me agrees with that (especially my left big toe which has always been cooperative, as opposed to my right big toe – the less said of that nasty piece of work the better).

So, if you want to make the world a better place for people who could really use a helping hand go to:

http://my.febfast.org/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=685940&langPref=en-CA

and donate your heart, lungs or big toes away.

As Week Two of my alcohol fast rolls by and I watch the purple sun sink into the pine-lime jelly sea it’s nice to know that at least my experiences have had no effect on my mental faculties. I guess it must be the impact of the sun on the jelly that causes the waves. Yes, it’s good to know I’m as sharp as ever.

Did you realise that diet is just die with a T?

Speaking of which, I’ve had to scratch another diet off the list. I’d been surfing the web and came across an airean diet. You do nothing but live off air and water. Well, it sounded easy enough and I thought that whatever is on the web must be true. Well, that turned out to be a load of b0llocks. A word of warning to – be careful with the net. You can put two innocent words together and get some rather disturbing results. I wanted to find something on games you can play when you have friends over – boy did I get a surprise when I googled adult games. I’m pretty sure our friends would have felt uncomfortable about it too. Perhaps not the ones who work for Great Lakes Council but, then, local government does do strange things to people.

Anyway back to the stupid diet. So, there’s the standard airean diet and the hot airean diet, which is popular amongst politicians. I went the standard one. To be on the safe side I locked all the food cupboards and the fridge. All went well for about 24 hrs – and then the wheels fell off. Things started disappearing around the house. Little things – bars of soap, tubes of toothpaste, but when the toaster went missing I knew something was afoot – especially as I seemed to be putting on weight and finding myself strangely drawn to magnets. Mind you, my breath was quite pleasant.

I knew it had stop when one night I dreamt I was a shark and the next morning my sweet breath was gone and the fish tank was empty. There’s nothing sadder than seeing a tiny pile of fish bones on the floor. Actually, there probably is, when I think about it. Having Christopher Pine in charge of shaping the minds of children has to be way up there.

Anyway, I gave it away and was strangely heartened to hear that the leader of this dietary cult was thrown out because he was caught eating a roast chicken (this is actually a true story).

If there really is a Heaven do you think the inhabitants are that happy about the Greenhouse effect? Mind you, if there is a Hell those denizens must be stoked with all the big holes were digging.

Speaking of Heaven and Hell, have you heard this one?

In Heaven: the cooks are French, 
the policemen are English, 
the mechanics are German, 
the lovers are Italian 
and the bankers are Swiss. 

In Hell: the cooks are English, 
the policemen are German, 
the mechanics are French, 
the lovers are Swiss 
and the bankers are Italian.

Anyway, if you feel like making a profound difference to people’s lives for not a heckofalot of tax deductible money, please, please visit the link below and donate your hearts out.

http://my.febfast.org/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=685940&langPref=en-CA

It’s been a week now since I started my dieting and exercise regime and I can’t say it’s been a raging success. Well, raging yes, success no.

I thought I’d give the colour diet ago, and for the heck-of-it I’d try my own colour. I’ve always had a bit of sympathy for the colour brown – a general all-round loser. Doesn’t sound nice, doesn’t look nice and it can be associated with unpleasantness. So, I thought – why not?

This was a particularly poor decision. Perhaps unwisely I focussed largely on lentils and a range of other legumes of that ilk. As a consequence, I spent a significant part of the past week suffering from a remarkably explosive case of wind. The lowlight came when I opted for a lentil curry. It turns out that cotton sheets can really be quite flammable. I spent a few nights sleeping in the guest room after that, I can tell you.

I’ve combine my diet with vigorous walking, which means I get to see a lot other vigorous walkers. The funny thing is that none of them ever seem to see the wonder of the world around them, and they certainly don’t  smile. I’ve tried smiling back at them, but they just walk faster. This might be because during my brown diet phase the action of walking (and even smiling) did tend to bring on excessive bouts of flatulence that could last for some time. But surely, that wouldn’t put people off?

Then there are the side effects. Unless it’s normal for the world to often go purple. Maybe it is. Maybe that happens to everybody and I never knew. What about past lives flashing before your eyes? Gotta say some of them were quite interesting. Hard to believe there are lifestyles that are more exciting than being a librarian, but there you go.  I’m particularly disturbed by a recent tendency to believe what politicians say is true and I’m even finding myself thinking Christopher Pine may not be all that bad. I’m pretty sure that is a seriously unhealthy side-effect.

I’ve either got a deficiency of something, or an excess. I’ve tried reading the names of some of things on packets and you do have to wonder. There’s BHA and BHT, aspartame, tartrazine, pollywollydoodlezine. I’m beginning to think that the food industry doesn’t really want me to know what’s in things. Nah, surely not.

I got breath-tested yesterday.  Really.  Made me laugh, at first. What a waste of taxpayer’s money, I thought. But then I realised that it was plot. That somebody out there didn’t believe I was clean and had tried to catch me out! I’m going to find out who you are, you know I will!!

One last thought – if we shape our world by what we perceive how does a madman know he’s really mad? And is he really the mad one?

You know the drill. If you want to help me through this and do good things for youth on the streets and people battle drug and alcoholic addiction head to following link and make a donation. It’ll make you feel good and, sure as eggs, it will make a hellofa difference to somebody’s life.

http://my.febfast.org/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=685940&langPref=en-CA

February rolls around again and here I am working for Council and trying not to drink. Doesn’t seem fair. If life really is a box of chocolates why does some turkey persist in sneaking into the box tempting wrapped pieces of well … rich unpleasantness. They even change the shape and colour just to surprise me.To cope with this in the past I’ve tried drinking heavily beforehand (didn’t even have to worry about unforeseen circumstances there, the foreseen ones were a whole bagful of nasty by themselves), using tinfoil hats (they still haven’t caught on except in some very usual quarters, like the Engineers section of Council), starting my own cult that worshipped the number 29 (during the leap year), religion (still got the ark in the back yard) and, last year, finding myself at Nimben (and the self that I found was not pleasant, not pleasant at all).

So, after that series of abject failures what possible options could work for me? Well …. How about some sort of diet? They’re hot topics – and surely so many people believing it’s a good thing must mean it’s true (though another darker side of me thinks “Hmmmm, isn’t that what got Hitler into power?”). Damn it, that’s what I’ll do - diet my way through abstinence.But which one to choose? There’s classic diet’s like the Pritiken Diet and the 5-2 diet seems popular. What the Hell is the Paleo diet? Good lord there’s a colour-based diet! There’s the no-grain diet, the no meat diet, the low fat diet, the “What’s-wrong-with-fat?” diet, the high protein diet, the “Be-careful-about-too-much-protein” diet, high carbs, low carbs, three-carbs-full diets. Basically it looks like I can’t eat anything, or possibly I can eat everything …. Except trans-fats – they do seem to be the @rseholes of the food world. Oh, and household objects too. Apparently eating things like toasters is bad for you all-round. That dark side of me has to wonder “If these diets are right, how come there are so many?” Surely if a diet worked then after a while, like Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, it would be the only one left and we’d all be on it? Yeah, yeah, I do understand food intolerance and that sort of stuff, but how can there be so many diets?

I’ve had enough of looking through the diet books at the Library (which has an excellent collection – damn fine local library). I think I’ll take a punt at all of them, or at least as many as I can fit into a month. Abstinence here we come. What could possibly go wrong?

If you’d like to support me on this path to diet heaven in an alcohol-free environment please visit:
http://my.febfast.org/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=685940&langPref=en-CA
There’s plenty of information there about how the money gets used and let’s face it, tackling the effects of alcohol and drugs, especially on youth, is definitely something society’s grappling with right now.

Alcho-mo-hol is wunce again one of the major food groops and that makesh me shoooo happy.

Wish I could shay the same about my experiencshes (whoah, need a raincoat for that word) at the commune.

It all went pear-shaped, or maybe I shuld shay bear-shaped (ahahahaha) when I was cheditating (that’sh meditating while you eat cheese) during a visit to the yogi. In the middle of my transhe the yogi shaid “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Something inshide me snappd. He was ushing clichés!!!!! Cliches - the arch nemnemi …the arch nesmes ….the.arch neminmes ….. the arch enemy of creative thought. Don’t talk to me in clichés Yogi, I thought. A cliché to me is like a red rag to a bull.

Cliché – I bet there’sh sum poor kid out there whose crinminally misguided parents thought that would be an awesum Christian name. “Thish ish my daughter Cliché Rhododendron Academia Potts” – throwing in the cruellest of acronymsh for good meashur.

And then the shtuped bear said ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’!!!

Aarrrgggg. Another of the shuckers!!! I was sho angry everything went red, quite literally – red with flashes of shilver (though, in retroshpect, that might have had shomething to do with the new type of mushroom the commune had dishcovered).

It turnsh out that what doeshn’t kill you can give you a darn good wallop and knock you off your shtupid branch.

It all went downhill from there. The bl00dy hobbits had been watching me from the bushes and they weren’t amused at me throwing sticks at the yogi.

The furry little buggas may not be that tall but they shwing a punch at a dangerous height. The sort of height that getsh fathersh and their children on funniesht home videosh.

Anyway, after a brief and remarkably painful period of bending over and sheeing double I began my journey of 1000 miles with a whole sheries of shmall shteps, taken at great shpeed.

I found my car along the way, don’t ask me where it had got to but at leasht it had the decency to look sheepish and, other than a brief period in something called a rehabilitation centre where I had to get over a shtrange adickwillytion (thought this shounded less rude) I had acquired to green peas, the journey home was uneventful.

But the story doesn’t end there. Shtrangest of all – I woke on the final morning to discover I was living in a share-house, just down the road in Smith’s Lake, and that four weeks of my life couldn’t be accounted for. Apparently this isn’t that uncommon an experience in Smith’s Lake. Whole lifetimesh can disappear there. At leasht I’m pretty shure I washn’t abducted by aliens becaushe my bottom didn’t feel sore.

Sho, it turns out it was all just a dream. Or was it?

[Fade to eerie “Twilight Zone” music]

P.S. No koalash or hobbits were harmed during thish experience. Not sho sure about braincells though.

P.P.S. My hobbit therapissed tellsh me I’m making excellent progressh.

And that bringsh another Febfasht to an end for another year. It will come around again all too fasht, for all of ush. In the meantime why not conshider donating to the caushe which is a sheriously good one and a donationsh may jusht shave shome of you from the fiery pitsh of Hell (though to be honesht mosht of you are probably a losht cause). Anyway, if you feel like doing good then donate to:

https://febfast2013.everydayhero.com/au/chris-jones
 
Yours affectionately - Gandalf

I have seen the light and it is green, but that’s only natural when you find your inner peas.

It all started after the stoning ceremony that was blessedly light on rocks and was really more of a smoking ceremony, involving local herbs. Since then everything has been green, with the exception of a strange purple period.

And it turns out that my commune companions do eat more than just pumpkins – they collect these funny little mushrooms. That was about the time of the purple period.

They say nothing in the English language rhymes with orange or purple but I bet they’re wrong. Some poor misguided parents somewhere will have decided to give their children unique names. “And these are our kids – Florange and Durple”. Cruel.

The commune did a lot of naval gazing for a while but then the navy took exception to it so we keep a low profile now.

I met the yogi the other day. It was a hard slog through the bush, particularly as we seemed to wander around in circles for some time, saying wow and admiring the orange-coloured trees (that’s right there was a break-out of orange as well). And suddenly, there he was sitting up in tree, chewing orange gum leaves. The yogi bear.

The yogi spoke to me. He called me Boo Boo. He asked me many deep and meaningful questions about life like ‘Why do brussell sprouts exist? And shouldn’t we just send them back to the Belgians?’ and ‘Is the hippopotamus a hippopotamus or just a really cool opotamus?”

He asked me if sugar-coating the truth was just a plot by dentists to get more business?

And as I grappled with these problems he introduced me to his gu-roo – a giant eastern green kangaroo. The gu-roo asked still more questions. Why jump in the shower when standing still works just as easily? And why must people a take a bath when it is fine just where it is?

And then, as my mind was awhirl, they began to speak such truths. The yogi said “Ask yourself not how much wood does a woodchuck chuck, but rather why does the stupid animal bother to do it in the first place?”

I had never thought of that!

And then he asked why do we give used-car salesman such a bad rap when we’re happy to believe research funded by mining companies on why burning fossil fuels doesn’t impact on global warming?

It did make me wonder why you don’t read more stories about mining magnates building their mansions on beautiful low-lying pacific islands.

And then the gu-roo said “Hell is other people.”

And I thought, of course. That explains Reece Mastin.

And finally, the yogi said “If life sucks, make sure you’re a vampire.”

The truth swept over me in a green wave, with purple and orange bits thrown in. I could control my own world, find inner peas and still stay sane.

I thanked the yogi, who was certainly smarter than the average bear, bowed to the gu-roo and followed a group of passing hobbits back to our hobbit-hole.
At last things were making sense.

If you would like to donate to the Let’s Make the World a Better Place for Hobbits Fund please head to:
https://febfast2013.everydayhero.com/au/chris-jones

If you really feel stupid, remember that an ex-President of the US once said “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” Does that make you feel a little bit better? Or possibly a little bit worse?

I’m beginning to think I made a stupid choice. I was expecting the commune to be about sharing, mother earth, equality, inner peace and probably hobbits. Sadly, the Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster Commune is not that kind of commune.

Oh, they do believe in sharing. First day I got to share all my money. I’d have left on the second day but, after some sort of medicinal herb drink they gave me, I slept in and by the time I woke up my car had been “shared”. I haven’t seen it since. They tell me it ran off and joined the wild bush combies but I have my doubts.

So, let me tell you about the commune members. There’s Lillipilli Gumnutblossom. She used to belong to Greenpeace until they threw her out for being too alternate. Now that’s an achievement. Mind you, you can probably see why. Some women wear flowers in their hair, Lillipili has a small bush in hers, possibly a grevillea, complete with nesting parrots.

Then there’s Agnetha and Anni-Frid. The love twins, or so they claim. To be honest they are about as likely to be twins as Arnie and Danny were. And, disturbingly, they’re not that different in looks from them either.  I’m thinking that if this was the Garden of Eden and they were the Eve options the human race wouldn’t have cleared the first hurdle.

The leader is Trevor, self-proclaimed anarchist. As far as I can tell, all this means is that he doesn’t clean up after himself. He is also “taking a stand” against western civilisation. He says society is built on junk food and we must resist it. To steel our resolve he makes sure to eat a large chocolate bar in front of us every day. He says he’s making the ultimate sacrifice. I think he’s the ultimate tool.

Trevor, thanks to his mission, is sufficiently rotund to avoid beaches in case people try and drag him back into deep water, but I can understand why the others are skinny. I knew communes live off the soil, but at the Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster Commune dirt appears to be a major part of the diet. The vegie patch contains a few scrawny dead things and one pumpkin vine. Even they couldn’t kill that. So far meals have consisted of Rustic Pumpkin Delight (pumpkin with a dirt coulis), Pumpkin Soup (boiling water and pumpkin), Mock Pumpkin Soup (boiling water without pumpkin) and Pumpkin, Peanut Butter and Dirt Surprise (this was a lot more surprising than even the name suggested).

Everybody is equal here but Trevor says some are more equal than others. He’s definitely tosser material.

Tonight Trevor tells me I’ve earned the right to share in a special ceremony. I must confess to having some reservations. I think it will involve someone being stoned and I’ve seen Monty Python’s Life of Brian enough times to know this may not end well. I’ll try not to say Jehovah.

Then tomorrow we will go and see their yogi.

If it doesn’t get better I’m leaving.

Maybe if there’d been hobbits things would have been different.

Don’t forget the cause:

https://febfast2013.everydayhero.com/au/chris-jones

You know, pithy sayings or proverbs should be put up against a wall, given a final cigarette and then shot without compunction. I’ll get through this dry spell. What I don’t need is somebody saying something like “Just take it one day at time”. What were they thinking I was going to do? Take all of February in one hit? Or maybe skip time? Now that would a handy power. Maybe there’s an app for it? Imagine that at meetings!! You’d get to the call for apologies, press the app and wham you’re straight to setting the date for the next meeting!! Woo hoo.

Anyway, it’s pretty much been one day at a time since the Big Bang (which is remarkably less raunchy than it sounds). Besides, it’s the minutes that kill you. You can add to the list of bum-itchingly-annoying saying “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I’m sorry, but after working for 25 years in local government, especially around budget time, the correct saying is “What doesn’t kill you weakens you for the next blow.”

Here’s another one. My gym has a sign on the wall that says “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Yeah right, so what it’s really saying is there’s like a million steps to go and you’ve done exactly one hundredth of buggerall. And it’s not always darkest before the dawn, it’s darkest when you’re tightly sealed in a deep and inescapable pit.

Anyway, back to my pilgrim to inner peace. It turns out the Nimbin was a bl00dy long drive. They say it’s the journey not the destination that counts but that’s just another of those load-of-horse-biscuits sayings. Long journeys are tedious and suck big-time. I think the important part of the word pilgrimage is the middle part – grim.  Six long hours, much of which was travelling through 80 km zones that made as much sense as serving pork chops at a barmitzvah. And don’t get me started on caravans. Or drivers with hats.

Still, I made it to Nimbin and I’d hardly got out of the car before a man with a face that looked like a semi-trailer had dumped a truckload of pimples on it was offering me those Asian herbs for inner peace. Also, Nimbin Chicks. I think you probably needed the herbs first before you tackled the young ladies. It may sound unkind but if they were young then the years had not been generous. They looked a bit like victims of Dracula that had been drained of blood but then not bought back to un-life. Skin that colour simply didn’t belong on the living. Perhaps he was talking about young in Jupiter years, which are 11 times longer than earth’s. That looked about right. You know it’s funny how chicks can mean women and birds (of the feathered kind) but it’s actually quite rare to see someone who looks like a cross between both. I said no thank you.

I did ask the man if he knew where I could fine inner peace and he told me about a commune just out of town. They even had their own yogi! Inner peace here I come.

If you’re still reading then you’re clearly a kind and generous person, which makes you a perfect candidate to donate the Febfast cause. Seriously, these organisations really need your support and they do great things. Go ahead and make a difference athttps://febfast2013.everydayhero.com/au/chris-jones

February has come around again with the same inevitable impact a boomerang has on a blindfolded man. And Febfast clings to the month like a rat on a coconut tree floating towards a pristine, unspoiled island ecosystem.

So the dreaded month has arrived and I’ve had a fairly average record of surviving it in the past. I’ve tried tinfoil helmets, binge drinking beforehand and western religion without much luck, but perhaps that’s all about to change.

I met a man the other day, going by the name of Lance.  Actually, he was kind of long and pointy on the end, like a real lance. Funny how names can do that sometimes, mind you there’s got to be plenty of people who are grateful they don’t look like their names. Take all those girls named after flowers. Daphne, Daisy, Iris, Rose. Lovely names, but they’d get sick of being called Petalhead pretty darn quick. Prickly little things to hug too, I’d imagine. But it could be worse. I reckon Fanny would drop off the popular names list like a rocket.

Have, you, ever noticed, that, sometimes, you can, be ambushed, by a hunting pack, of, commas?

Anyway, I was talking to this Lance fellow about surviving February and he told me I should find my inner self, with a bit of help along the way. He said that it was all part of the cycle of life, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t make the ride a bit easier with some herbal supplements. He rattled of a string of words that ended in oid and one.

I told him I wanted my body to remain pure and he reckoned he had something for that too. He said this stuff would make me so pure I could drink my own urine.

You know that moment in a conversation where you realise you’re trapped with someone who might just be a whole loaf of bread short of a picnic and that everybody else in the room already knew that and is standing a long way away from you and won’t make eye contact?

As luck would have it a pack of cyclists rode past at that moment and as Lance was shaking his fist at them I did a runner.

Maybe he was living in La La CuckooLand but something in his words struck home. Perhaps I could find my inner self. But where to turn to? A journey to Nepal seems a bit of a hike. Maybe a little closer to home? One of the smaller coastal communities where people always seemed chilled out and know the benefits of eastern medicines, or at least Asian herbs.

I feel good about this. Smith’s Lake, or maybe even Nimbin, here I come.