BEAUFORT WEST: "His heart often overruled his head," PLInkletter observed, "and fighting ageing failed, but those nimble fingers kept hearts beating."

Be all that as it may, meanwhile:

'In other news…'

02^nd September 2010

Thursday: Yes, you're right, yet another day night day blurring. It wasn't till about 2 p.m. that I got to bed for the night of the previous day, if you can make any sense of that.

The last thing I did was made a phone call to a cousin at her workplace to get her email address, and make verbal contact in fact for the first time in several years. She didn't let me go, but it was good to catch up; I announced that I intended to keep the call brief due to her being at work, but we must have talked for half an hour, maybe more. Some of our discussion was regarding the prognosis for our cousin Vee, who is only 47, and in the midst of a serious cancer relapse, with two children around ten years of age and a wife.

Lateline: The (Tony) SilverToes aka Tojo (Jones) Assay: Top marks for Tony Jones' attempt to get a federal politician, Andrew Robb, the Coalition's Finance Spokesman, to answer his question, a reasonable one too, on whether the Coalition will make good on the commitment made to Independent Andrew Wilkie to spend up to a billion dollars to build a hospital in Hobart, in exchange for Wilkie's support of the Coalition to form government.

During this long interview Mr Robb confirmed, if he needed to, that he is as typical a politician as they come. He squirmed and deflected, avoided and non sequitured, until he finally, through his arse, squeezed out a begrudging admission of sorts that the answer was yes.

It would have been so refreshing to hear him say to the effect: "The hospital offer was part of the bargaining, and all bets are off now that he has gone with the other side." There would at least be something to respect with honesty such as this, however distasteful some might find the admission.

Mr Robb has a habit of mouthing off in the background during these interviews. He 'anwered back' to Mr Jones when he said he needed to interupt his flow, and the other night, last Friday in fact with Leigh Sales, during his joint interview involving Labor's Anthony Albanese. Whilst journalists aren't gods, neither are politicians, and humility and restraint will further the positive aims of the likes of Andrew Robb far better than smallness, ill will, or grumpiness.

I've said before that I wouldn't hold it against our TV journalists if they felt the need to take a shower after some of these interviews they do with our smarmy political cohort.

I enjoyed a very late (or should I say 'early') walk in the very cold air of this night, around four a.m.

A highlight of today was digesting, upon a Leigh Sales' reading recommendation, the Commencement Address delivered by J.K. Rowling, 'The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination', at the annual meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association in June 2008; it was a few minutes very well spent reading. What a noble person, what a wonderful speech.

+paytontedwithlove+