Pogue Mahone

I'm currently writing this from a half empty caravan - total population me, Bob and a Canadian lad named Cameron..  The reason for this is that almost everybody else has gone down into Cairns to celebrate everybody's favourite snake botherer, Saint Patrick.  For some reason, up here in the tablelands the Irish are the most common foreign nationality you're likely to come across and people have been looking forward to this like prisoners serving a life sentence waiting for a conjugal visit. I've elected not to follow them for the following reasons.

1) I'm not Irish.
2) I distrust any holiday which dictates that I go get drunk (see also, new years eve) as the night almost always end up as a damp squib.
3) If I go down Cairns I don't think I'll return.
4) I'm boring.

They decided to mix things up at work this week and have had us tying bags to the bananas that are ripening on the trees.  Normally this is done atop a super duper woofinexing machine that you drives you along the rows and moves you up and down the trees.  However, as we are pommy, back packing scum, we were instead given a step ladder and a bin bag to protect us from the rain.  As far as jobs go it's alright and is at least a change to the normal scheduule.  It is also like doing a step aerobics class for eight hours.

Still getting used to my newly shaved bonce.  I went out in the sun for ten minutes last week and managed to burn my lily white, naked skull.  The latter part of the week has therefore consisted of me indulging in the surprisingly diverting past time of peeling dead skin off my head.  One of my eyes also went a fetching shade of pink as it wasn't producing enough tears.  This may be because (*he looks out over the horizon and his voice becomes choked with regrets and memories*) I have cried enough tears for two lifetimes, or may be because my last job on the farm involved me getting squirted in the eye with diesel a dozen time a day.

I would like to take this opportunity - with my flaky scalp, my gammy eye, my trousers held up with a bit of twine and my distinctive aroma of sweat and kerosene - to remind all the laydeez out there that I'm curently single.

Play your cards right and you could  be on this.

 Love and Fishes

Dave Denton