Later, in a different home, I befriended a eucalypt, using a resilient bough as a trampoline. Learning nothing from having plummeted from the peppercorn, I'd bounce happily in my haven in the heavens. I loved that tree - and fully understand why Heysen, Roberts, McCubbin and the rest devoted so much time and effort to painting arboreal portraits.

Advertising men and politicians are dangerous if they are separated. Together they are diabolical.

Marx was wrong. Religion is not the opiate of the people. Opium suggests something soporific, numbing, dulling. Too often religion has been an aphrodisiac for horror, a Benzedrine for bestiality. At its best it has lifted spirits and raised spires. At its worst it has turned entire civilizations into cemeteries.

Today, words. Tomorrow, sticks and stones. And the day after that?

The Internet provides a delivery system for pathological states of mind.

Unless you are willing to try, fail miserable, and try again, success won't happen.

To many people holidays are not voyages of discovery, but a ritual of reassurance.