This is the caption accompanying this picture from The Guardian:

An illegal shipment of horns, antlers, dried sea horses and tortoise shells destined for China was confiscated by Indonesian police, who later burned it.

Destined for China. This is the common theme. The destruction of the world’s wildlife is largely due to CHINA. In particular, due to the desire of Chinese men to have better sex.

I do NOT like CHINA!

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Speaking of wildlife, on my walk around the lake this afternoon I saw an ibis quietly having a sleep (standing on one leg) on a rock right next to the footbridge.

Ibises. © PJ Croft 1985, 2015

This is the first time I’ve seen one in these lakes. Usually it’s only ducks and coots and seagulls. (The above picture is one from the 1980s at Lake Gwelup, shot on Kodachrome 25 with the camera on a tripod.)

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This is also the first time I’ve ever known the Channel 7 Xmas Pageant to be cancelled today, due to the weather. It’s raining, flashing and thundering and blowing quite hard as if it were winter. Yet it’s the start of one of our long hot summers.

As I say, I’ve never known the Pageant to be cancelled before in more than 20 years. I think it’s a first. Very disappointing for all the people involved, apart from the kids. (Postscript: yes, according to the paper, it was the 44th, and the first to be cancelled. As it turned out, the weather was OK at 7.30pm on Saturday night, but cold and windy so it wouldn’t have been pleasant.)

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I was having a quiet pint at the pub last night when a guy tapped me on the shoulder and thrust his phone in my face, showing me a picture.

It was this one. It was George R. R. Martin. Apparently I look like him. Oh come on. Who’s George R. R. Martin anyway? And why would a mature bloke have a picture of him on his phone?

Game of Thrones. Apparently he’s the writer/creator or something. I said I had no idea what Game of Thrones actually is. They couldn’t believe someone wouldn’t know about it. Well I don’t.

Anyway, it was a reasonably friendly conversation, but there was a lot of ribbing about hair, or lack of it. Two out of the three were shaven headed, but when I took my cap off, I was ribbed about my receding hairline. What?

Oh well, I gave up on that and returned to my paper. I got handshakes when I left, so I suppose I was OK, but I didn’t know how to take them as all their talk seemed to be private jokes.

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I’m writing this at 4am on another night of insomnia. I got to sleep very easily but awoke at 1am and that was it. I’ve just had some chamomile tea and I’ll try again now. Damn, I never used to have trouble sleeping. Getting older, apparently.

8am update: nope, never got back to sleep. Lucky I never have to go to work. Oh well, I’ll crash at some time during today.