The Untouchables

The remarkable Lewis Hamilton

There's a lot of photos to load, so be patient. PATIENT I TELL YOU!!

Much has happened which I haven't posted here so there's some making up to do. Immediately post-Christmas 06 was spent with our great friends the Hawkeses. For those unfortunate enough not to know them, Twin brothers Tim and Nick Hawkes are my godfathers. Hence their kids are my godbrothers and sisters.

All of the exquisite piccys on this page are courtesy of the amazing Miss Katie Hawkes. She has a knack for bringing out the best in her human subjects.

The divine Miss Katie and my divine Mum

Tim and Jane and family live in Sydney. Tim holds the rather low-brow position of headmaster of the famous Kings' School in Parramatta. Nick and Mary and family live in Adelaide as pastor of a non-denominatonal church. Tim's eldest son Peter wasn't present for our Chrissy bash as he was in India helping the impoverished set up businesses, while his new bride Amber was busting major slavery rackets. Peter is my Sammy's godfather. Nick's daughter Katie is my Naomi's godmother.

Geddit?

Pippa and Becky Boo

Right, that's all the intros out of the way, you're all acquainted now. Sadly my dear godsister Katie has jetsetted off to Manchester indefinitely to do PR. I'm not sure exactly how her career is going but we can be sure she has completely outclassed me in the blogging department. If you're reading this Katie, please be advised that only German motorways are speed unlimited, not English ones.

Omi with proud godmummy

The godfathers. Do ya think I like talkin' wid a dry, sore troat??

Now, in my family, we take the role of godparent very seriously. This time honoured role is maintained by many families. Some keep this tradition out of genuine desire for a role model for their child other than themselves, who can be a positive Christian influence. Some do it out of genuine need for legal guardians in case of an unforseen tragedy. Others do it to passify some token family members who just want to be included for the sake of it and who couldn't care less if the little tacker grows up to be a crack whore.

That's why it's a fact of life that when such "god"parents are selected, a few will disappear either through lack of interest or, in my case, sheer frustration at the near irretrievably poor behaivour of the little tacker whose well being was thrust upon them. It's understandable. But me- I was blessed enough to have at least two who really stuck. And they are Tim and Nick Hawkes.

Doctors Timothy and Nick Hawkes discovering light reflection and refraction for the first time.

This dedication seems to run in the family. Sam's godfather, Tim's son Peter, never fails to keep in touch and takes a real interest in my boy. Nick's girl, the lovely Katie H dotes over her goddaughter Naomi. We are very lucky.

Besides, it also means if my kids turn out to be horrors I have someone else to blame.

2007 Grand Prix Edition!!


Now, onto more important stuff. Between Christmas and that other major religious festival, the Grand Prix, the only other sacred weekend, for me at least, was my first race of the season. But you can read about that here.

The most remarkable bit was getting the new Hyper Racer Kart completed in time. Team boss Jon Crooke, a former Aussie Formula 2 National Champion and Touring car driver, bit off way more than he could chew attempting to build five new karts for the new season. This meant I was in Mount Evelyn (the complete opposite far far away side of Melbourne to Lara) to 10pm Thursday night before the race weekend.

What followed was a) driving back to Lara by midnight b) early start to open the office Friday morning with kart in tow to have the beast check weighed at a freight forwarder down the road from work but not before c) getting stuck in the 2 hour long Geelong freeway jam after a double fatality d) doing an illegal u-turn to escape said traffic jam and getting sprung by Geelong's finest e) giving Geelong's finest a non-abusive but extremely long winded lecture about how ludicrous it was for them to prey on stressed motorists doing perfectly safe u-turns and why don't they just ride in the bluddy car with me and do all my bluddy thinking for me, and subsequently f) worrying that my first race weekend of the year would be spent clinging bars in Geelong.

Fortunately Constable Sheedy of the Geelong Road Mismanagement unit resorted to merely fine me, I think mainly just to shut me up. I gotta say, paying $113 for the privalege of explaining to a police officer that they do not need to protect me from myself is actually good value.

Anyhoo, on to the actual subject of this post- Grand Prix 07. As you may know from previous GP posts such as 2006 or 2005 (scroll to the bottom) I am a track lackie. Some years you get posted on boring corners and nothing happens. Some years you have the entire F1 field crash in front of you and you must chaperone Michael Schumacher to the medical staff. Sometimes you get fed crepes and strawberries by caring corporate caterers, sometimes you get yelled at by post pubescent spectators getting publically drunk for the first time.

This year I hit paydirt. I got posted on start finish line. This mean little perks like standing in pit lane during Qualifying, taking part in photographing the official FIA driver's class photo, walking the grid before the F1 race, then getting sprayed by Kimi Raikkonen's champagne.

Really, there's no need for me to do this again next year. The only way is down. Enough prattle. Here's some pics.

Kat the spectator marshal going for a career cange

Whiz kid Hamilton's McLaren post-race

Class of '07

My watershed photo- Kimi returns to parc ferme victorious. None of the F1 mags had one this good!!

2007 Motor Show Edition!
March 7th 2007

We got a new camera! The old one was kaput. Not many technological things we own last as long as they are meant to. The great thing about waiting for insurance companies to cough up was that, in the meantime, the model of camera was upgraded so..we got a better one! It does some groovy b&w and colour feature things.

Like this.

Sam's birthday was three days ago. So if anyone reading this forgot, hopefully this post will help you to become racked with guilt. More on that later.

In other news I've been getting into stacks of trouble with my karting website. Every time I run into more examples of sheer bureaucratic bloody mindedness-ness within this measly little sport, I satirise it. I only do that where I attempted to communicate the issues directly with the individuals in question, and had an unsatisfactory response. It's my way of dealing with it. It's much easier than dressing in army fatigues and going on a gun-toting, murderous, disgruntled-postal-worker rampage.

Actually, I've been doing it for yonks but some of the karting folks have only just started to notice, making it somewhat like a Homer Simpson moment when they contact me.

Yo man, just chillin' with my peeps listenin' to some Snoop Dog. Doof doof

But God works in mysterious ways. Just when I'd endured what seemed like a plethora of people emailing with clayton's complaints about the site's content (i.e. they say I've written something wrong but can't seem to explain what exactly is wrong with it) there was actually an unexpected piece of healing and reconcilliation.

It was borne out of an incident in an unspecified race in June last year when I spun during practice and got collected by someone in a prang which looked nastier than it was. In the pits afterwards I approached him to apologise (in the way you do to a bereaved person- it's not my fault they died, but I'm saying sorry anwyay) and he bellowed some very unseemly language and called me some names. Apparently somewhere in there was some advice about how to spin properly, but I couldn't pick it out from the expletives.

So 9 months after the fact, the chap (we will call him "M") rings me. The conversation went like this:

M: I don't like what you said in your website
Me: Why, was I unflattering in some way?
M: Well, it said I "went on like an idiot".
Me: Yes, it said that didn't it.
M: What's ya problem? It's not like I called ya a ******* ****head or anything
Me: Well, um, that's exactly what you called me. Actually your words were ******** ***** ****** ****head
M: Oh. Did I?
Me: Yep
M: Sorry about that.

Isn't that nice? Our conversation went on for a while. I sympathised with him on the two other nasty crashes he's had since that race and assured him they were nothing to do with me. He even volunteered to educate me on which of the other people hassling me about my site are ******* ****** ****heads.

Sam in flight

Fun. We almost purchased a horse for poor Naomi last week. I was just about to blow 300 bucks on a vet inspection when the noble steed saved me the trouble by assaulting the same electric fence several times in a row. Again, quite a blessing that the expensive animal didn't do it after we bought it, and a gazillion dollars worth of tackles, saddlings and other horsery. Or whatever that stuff is called. Hoisery?

But I was determined to educate myself on how to avoid buying an animal that would try to jump off a bridge or throw itself at a train or something. So I asked our very own horse owner and expert, Claudia from Germany. She explained the situation to me using rather high-brow equestrian terms. The conversation went like this:

Me: Why did it go through an electric fence?
Claudia: Because horses are bloody stupid dumb animals.

I'm learning more about horses all the time.

Meanwhile Sharon's sister Pamela had herself a little baby boy, name of Zane. Check out the bushy head of hair. He has more hair on his head than his Dad has on his back!


As I mentioned earlier, it Sam's birthday. That can only mean one thing- it's Grand Prix time!

But with a busy month ahead, what with baby births, Grands Prix and Jordy and Irma's wedding in Adelaide, Sharon can't manage to chaperone Sammy to the Grand Prix this year. As a consolation, I took him to the motor show. You might say I went to town on that black and white/colour feature. That was a pun, of course. The motor show is in "Jeff's shed" opposite the crown casino, or as Sharon calls it, "Biff's casino". You can literally hold the camera up in the air, tell it to pick out all the red cars, and viola, there's half a dozen Ferraris and Golf Gti's. Tell it to pick out all the pastel, garish, pukey, loud weird coloured cars and voila, all the Commodores and Falcons stick out.








It's Grand Prix time in Melbourne Town next weekend but I haven't time for my usual tomfoolery with pre-season details. We know Schumacher has retired (thank the good Lord), Mark Webber will be trying to steer a dead bull, and some guys who were driving really good cars have moved into less good cars. My marshalling duties this year have plonked me at "Turn 0".

Every year, despite keeping you in the same team, they try to rotate you. First time (in '01) I got turn 2 and helped scrape 5 F1 cars off the road so that Mark Webber could finish a memorable fifth in the Minardi. The following year was turn 3, in the precise same spot where the poor track marshall was killed by the flying wheel from a car with the unfortunately ironic sponsor of "Lucky Strike". I've always said they should put bigger warning labels on cigarette packets.

Like this one

Anyway, the point is, sometimes you get a good spot, like turn 1 / 2 where you see everything and get some action. Sometimes you get a cruddy one like turn 9 when there are nothing but drunk spectators. Sometimes you get posted in front of corporates who feed you crepes, coffee and strawberries, sometimes you get posted in front of drunk corporates who yell out "so how much d'ya get paid for that job?!" Although, since the V8 supercars are not on the program this year, I suspect there will be less drunk people.

As a rule, it's better to be on a braking area or on corners, instead of halfway down a straight. Except this year. You see, "Turn 0" is the start-finish line. I reckon it will worth it just to see 22 F1 cars blast off the line, in the flesh (and kevlar).

What will also be worth seeing- if the Victorian Government pump a gazillion megalitres of water into the Albert Park swamp to make it look pretty for the TV cameras. All this while the rest of us have to take 1 minute showers and water our lawns with sink flotsam and belly-button lint. If they do you'll be sure to hear it here first.

MUFTIS AND MUFFIN TOPS

Of all the posts to NOT have photos, it just had to be this one. The one which really needs "before and after" photos. Sharon's expensive Canon digital had a breakdown recently and Dick Smith cannot give us a clear idea on who honours the extended warranty for which we paid handsomely.

I may have to dig up an archived photo or two just to entertain you. For further entertainment, I have placed deliberate spelling errors in this post. See if you can find them.

First up, there were to be two or three extreme makeovers in our family, and I only succeeded at one.

As some of you know, I have an impressive bone problem called "Hallux Valgus" in my feet. It's just a fancy way of saying "bunion", but mine are particularly incomfortable. So, after a year of fiddling with a million different specialist consults and no private health insurance, I settled on a self-funded operation with a nice orthapaedic surgeon in Geelong. He does knee reconstructions on football players, so shaving some bone off my bunion and cracking my toes back into place should be a walk in Kardinia Park for him.

We were booked in for January 16th, and I don't mind admitting I was as nervous as one can possibly be. Sharon and Omi (the other two are at Horsham) waited with me for two hours in the Hospital before I was finally called in to be sliced up.

Then the surgeon tells me we cannot do the op because I have a small amount of tinea on the same foot and this constitutes a major infection risk.

So the good news is I can still, momentarily walk. Infortunately I have to find another window some time this year where I won't need any mobility for 6-8 weeks.

So much for that makeover.

Archive footage

Before all that, and in anticipation of it, I decided that my forthcoming new toy (see here , or here ) needed a decent home to live in. So, the garage got a huge makeover. The "studio" has been reassigned the title of "storage room" and the garage had an enima which would impress the most militant lentil-eating hippie vegan.

I even had a crack at welding some benches. Welding is fun- apart from the bit where molten slag hits you in the eye. I then stained and coated the floor with polyurethane. It looks a zillion bucks, but you can't actually walk on it and leave dusty footprints.

My obsession with dust-free living lead me onto the roof with a can of that sticky expandable foam. I don't want one single speck of dust in that place. Not one. Every hole has been plugged, and even the door gaps have been padded. I am determined to have something close to a Formula-One Laboratory style environment, and will maintain it with a zeal equalled only by ancient Jewish Levitical Priesthood. Now the garage is the cleanest, most uncluttered room in the whole place. I'm actually thinking we should hold our home Bible study group there.

Yes, I think I am really quite ill. Help me, please.

More archive footage from March 06. The yard still looks like this.

Of course, what may be contributing to the dust problem is the fact that there is no grass anywhere in our back yard. It has either been dug up, died, or eaten by guinea pigs. For a more detailed environmental impact statement on this issue, go here.

These water restrictions are getting too much. Perhaps I have become an old cynic and don't believe anything the Government says. But I have to admit, I drove past one of Vic's main dams near Ballarat the other day, and it looks like a pile of dried up seaweed, and it is forcing people to engineer different solutions for being frugal, and some of them are quite creative.

Grey water systems are popping up all over the place, where people plumb their shower and washing machine drainage into a pump system, connect hoses up, and away they go- watering their gardens with gay abandon.

The problem is, their neighbours see them watering their lawn and dob them into to the Water Restriction Police. So the Water Restriction Police are suggesting we all signs in our front yards saying "grey water system installed" so they don't have to follow up so many reports. Methinks they want nothing more than for their jobs to be made a little easier. Well, they bluddy well started it!!

So, not only do the Water Nazis insist that all our properties should look less attractive than a desert, now we must have big ugly signs in our front yards boasting that we water our gardens with washing lint and armpit hair. Shall we dump a burnt car wreck there while we're at it?

Our front yard

Now I am wondering about those little things, which never caused a stir in pre-Water Nazi days.For example, will the state Government plumb millions of litres of water into the Albert Park lake as they do every year, to make it look nicer for the TV cameras at Grand Prix time? (see HERE ) Can't wait to see that one. It will be more entertaining than the event itself. If they do, I'm having another 20 minute shower, thank you very much.

Speaking of entertaining, I'm sure you are all expecting me to comment on that Muslim Mufti fellow, Sheik al-Hilali shooting his mouth off. He is most famous for his witty little jibe about women getting themselves raped because they dress funny.

Okay, I will comment. I think he's a fine representative of Islam and hope he stays in Australia for as long as possible. Especially for the "women/ raw meat" comments.

After all, the Profit Mohamed himself loved women. He thought they were great. He believed every man should own at least one.

Yes, I admit to a little chuckle when I see an Islamic leader portrayed poorly by the media. I wince, of course, when the same media portray Christians worse. But is there a chance that ol' Moofus HAS been taken out of context?

After all, us Jesus freaks are always suggesting women should dress modestly. Meaning, they shouldn't wear nothing, but then they shouldn't wear a tent either. When having a conversation with a woman, you should at least know whether she's facing you or not. And, I have to admit I do like the odd pierced belly button.

Nope, that's not the problem. The problem goes back much further. Perhaps we should stop bombarding men with pornography, and de-sensitising them to visual stimulus. Then we wouldn't have the problem of uncontrollable male urges being unleashed at the sight of a young muffin top. Now there's something our postmodern culture cannot handle- men and women are different (gasp). Especially the way they handle visual stimulus. Men handle it very badly.

So there's no point in attacking the symptom and not the cause. No, to properly understand Sheik Mufti Imam Al-Halali Bin Laden Alladin whatsisname's comments, you need to understand where he is coming from. Or, more specifically, where his "faith" comes from. Seriously, get a coffee, sit back, and have a look at THIS . Sheik Mufti Muffintop's comments should come as no surprise. In fact, they were tame. In Saudi Arabia, he would be made Royalty.

Why my fascination with Saudi Arabia? Well, let's just say I see it every time I look at my front yard.

Just when you'd lost all hope...

Hi folks. It's me again. To those of you who were on the brink of hopelessness, contemplating suicide to end the utter desolation and emptiness, the nothingness and futility of a world without my blog updates...

...sorry about that. For everybody else, which would be all of you...how's things??

I would like to say that nothing's been happening so there's been nothing to report. That wouldn't really be true, but most of it involves little four wheeled machine business and spending money and you can find all that out by clicking here .

The new toy should be ready before Christmas. Whilst dismantling the old one to pilfer the engine and other parts, I discovered my silencer had broken in three places. I wonder how long it was like that? - he says, grinning quietly to himself at the notion that the motor might actually be coaxed to go FASTER...

But other things have happened. We've grown a little older, for a start. And that's non-trivial, because life is a journey.

We also went to the U2 concert. "We" being Sharon AND me. Which is scary. It's the second time the vast chasm which is our respective musical taste has actually met in the middle.

It was fantastic. Sure, Bono did his usual get-into-a-cause thing, and I don't see how paying $140 for a U2 ticket is going to make poverty history. If anything it's going to make poverty worse. But anyone who doesn't complain about Global Warming is alright with me. And I would put up with anything to hear the guitar chime of Beautiful Day...

The downer was we had to park at the Exhibition Centre and walk to the Docklands and Sharon was wearing the wrong shoes. The upside...the docklands are really nice.

Now that we're up to stage 58 water restrictions, our front lawn is brown and the back yard has no lawn at all. So the kids have a sandpit to play in and I didn't even have to build them one. At least the Bracks Government can blame Global Warming for the fact they had absolutely no preparation whatsoever for a drought.

You see, Global Warming only started happening immediately after the lastVictorian election, and nobody saw it coming. It had nothing to do with the screaming, bleeding heart, pagan humanist green-worshipping Left crying "Burn them!!!!" the moment someone mentioned making dams, or enlarging catchments. Nope, who could possibly have foreseen the sudden effect of 100 years of greenhouse gas.

Note carefully that I inscribe "Global Warming" with capitals so as to afford the appropriate respect to the deity of the Green religion. The messiah is Al Gore, who is still on his I'll-save-the-world-from-Global-Warming Tour. It's a worldwide tour, and Apostle Al (PBUH) flies busily about, in planes that belch hordes of greenhouse gases...

Currently there's an Inquisition to root out the heretics who are skeptical of the seriousness of Global Warming (peace be upon It). That includes those pesky scientists who just won't shut up with all their "facts" about largely cooler temperatures.

Then with all the healthy skeptics gone we will be panicked into making laws that planes must run on lentil juice. Planes will fall out of the sky and thousands will be killed, but it will all be worth it.

Religion comes in all sorts of weird shapes and sizes, huh?

Meanwhile Naomi has adpoted yet more Guinea Pigs, which further worsens the grass problem.
While Mum was over in October for 'Omi's birthday, she tripped over some piles of junk and discovered a spare room underneath it. There were no Egyptian Tombs, Hebraic stone etchings or anything else of note, mainly just odd socks, long disused toys and junk mail. I came home from work to find an elegantly decorated formal sitting room with two new suede chairs, a little coffee table replete with a marble chess set we picked up in Brazil ten years ago, and a rug.

I'm not sure where all the junk has gone but I'm sure it may have been shifted into one of those spare dimensions I talked about earlier in the 'blog.

I gotta go. There's a Greens party member at the door, I suspect they are arresting me for blaspheming the God of Global Warming. Tell my kids I lov...................

=end transmission=

A post about nothing

Yes, this is about nothing.

Haven't posted for a while because I've been busy driving performance cars, celebrating Naomi's TENTH (!!!) birthday, Mum's visit, and racing karts at Wakefield Park (link on right)

Catch y'all when I've got some time.

Peace out