ink marks on a blank page thursday 1st Jan

There are pleasures and then there are pleasures. Should that come across as being a little obtuse or even inscrutable isn't really meant to be. At the moment we here in OZ are blessed with the presence of Paris Hilton and her sister,why I am at a loss to know. She was paid $100k by someone to swan about the place and just be, well here. Her first stop was Melbourne where she spent the night swanning and the next day, yes you guessed, swanning about the shops. That folk get some degree of pleasure seeing her here is a given, ergo some dolt paid her all that money to come. I give no reasons for maintaining a degree of animosity towards such creatures as Ms. Hilton and ,it would seem, her equally vacuous sister. There are more pressing and deserving people in this world to concern myself with and if I had $100k to splash about there would be I think more positive things to do with that sort of money than the Misses Hilton's.

Pleasure..... a state of gratification, but there are degrees of. Today for instance we went 100 metres down to the end of our road and there is a remnant of the farm that used to be here on this spot 80 years ago. The last bit of the orchard that was here, a massive old Mulberry tree. Each year about this time,even in a dry year, the tree fruits well and we go pick Mulberries. Normally it goes like this, one for the bucket, three for the robbi. But folks it is pleasure, with a capital P, and that don't stand for Paris. No cost involved, just get into some old clothes and enjoy.

So, as we have established there are some differences as to pleasures. There is the Paris Hilton kind where she can do odd things on video, get into trouble that causes her to be locked up. Then gets heavily into the Bible becomes a sort of saint and a role model for impressionable women . Or , one can go out on a nice day in the park, walk the dogs, go pick Mulberries and gross out on fresh healthy juicy fruit. I only have one thing to say about the latter, it didn't and will never earn me $100k but it sure was fun.

Yes indeed Hortense it was rather fun at that. I got really well covered in Mulberry juice as well, oh indeed you have seen the photo.Would you believe Horty old girl I also got some in my hair, and on my jeans shirt face and arms, grub robbi that I am. I should think about more serious things Hortense, like? Oh the poor Hamas folk Horty, it is a terrible shame isn't it. I mean what have Hamas done to deserve that Hortense. Yes I know , all they do is lob a few hundred rockets into Israel Horty, in a sort of indiscriminate fashion , nothing really serious Horty, all done in the hope they just might knock over a few bits of Israel. Just boyish enthusiasm really Hortense, and then they go put their offices and arms dumps in the Palestinians homes and schools Hortense. Funny about all that really, I mean it isn't actually funny, odd more than hilarious. I often wonder how I would feel as it is I live in South Australia, the neighbouring state is Victoria, if all of a sudden the boys in Victoria started lobbing rockets at me and mine , just because I lived there next to them. I mean Horty old girl, all my pleasures in life come from going down the end of the road and picking a few Mulberries, weird little things like that. Yasser Arafat, he ran that place for a few years didn't he, then he upped and died, Hamas sort of rolled in, took over. They didn't get elected or stuff like that, they just rolled in and killed a few folk and took over, just a bit of boyish good fun. Yasser managed to save a bit of money too , some 2 or 3 billion $'s, frugal sort of fellow no doubt. In all of this we could forget the ones in the middle, the normal folk from Palestine ,the Gaza folk.They must be suffering very badly but perhaps the man who runs Hamas might from his hide-out in Syria will want to send some money for food and the necessities of life rather than new rockets and ammo.There is fault on the Israel side of course,one has to acknowledge that, some terrible right wing hardliners espouse all sorts of foul gibberish. In this world no person or group of are perfect and Israel must have some awful hard cases too because that really nice little man from Iran has vowed to wipe them off the face of the Earth, not my words Hortense , his. Of course Hortense what do I know about all this, in the words of that immortal philosopher Sergeant Schultz " Ooooowww, I know noooothing"

But I do know that it is holiday time and already I have had three servings of Cocolat Gelato this week , time for another when we take Princess Chloe to the airport don'tcha just know it.