Gordon Brown and the white ants

Have come across a great new Australian bit of vocabulary – the unfortunate Barnaby Joyce, formerly the Federal Opposition Finance spokesman but now relegated (or promoted depending on who’s spinning), to Regional development, Infrastructure and Water, is blaming colleagues for “white anting” him. To put it into context, white ant is another name for the termites that are a feature of Australian life. A termite inspection is a prerequisite for a house sale in Sydney and I regularly pay out big time for termite inspections in case the house collapses around us as a result of white ants silently and skillfully chomping their way through the woodwork. Anyway I liked the image of Senator Joyce brought down by the quiet and deadly undermining of his position by colleagues in his own party. I am wondering whether Gordon Brown might have an interest in adding ‘to be white anted’ to the British political vocabulary.

Sleepovers – don’t you love them? In a weak moment I foolishly agreed to Drama Queen No 3 having a mass sleepover last weekend with four of her 10 year old friends and somehow the whole thing metamorphosed into camping in the back garden. I am always suckered into these things by thinking about how wholesome and “Five go Camping” the whole thing is and forget until approximately 2a.m. how tents just move the whole sleepover thing into a new dimension – torchs, things that go bump in the night, dog, possums, moon, no moon, bad language from next door garden and needing to come inside to the loo in an unending relay.

Morning dawned over a crowd of remarkably good-humored children and a pair of exhausted and bad tempered adults. The dog that normally gives true meaning to the phrase excitable was so high it was in dire need of Prozac. Husband retreated to shower where as parents arrived to pick up offspring he could be heard bellowing away like a wounded buffalo owing to the fact the tribe of sleepover girls had used all the towels in defiance of the house towel rule no.542 that states all children found in possession of an adult towel will be hung drawn and quartered.