Football tragics only

A post only for football tragics, I'm afraid. My team, Lokomotiv Cove have been having a wildly up and down season, winning games 10-0, losing other games 6-0. How does that work? Simple. Some bozo at the federation decided to put the 0/35 first and second divisions together, leading to an eighteen team competition. Imagine Manchester United playing... Scunthorpe. And where are Loko? A creditable seventh, getting soundly beaten by the top six who are very aggressive and mildly skillful, but beating everyone below us. The oldest man in the team, that'd be me!!!, had a good weekend, scoring five in a 6-1 victory. For a beautiful action shot of Herrick in full-flight, go here. And where did the free-kick go, you ask? Easy... miles over the bloody bar. Beckham, I'm not. 

On a slightly related note, my son Joe and I have season tickets to Sydney FC this year. Looking forward to some european influence in the coaching department. They may even pass the ball this year!!

the odd shortlist AND a new book!

Rhyming boy, my first prose fiction has been shortlisted in the Australian Speech Pathologists Book of the Year Awards. The longest shortlist I've ever seen, here.

And Cold Skin is shortlisted in the YABBA Children's Choice Awards, here, with some serious, I mean Premier League, opposition - Morris Gleitzman, Emily Rodda, Matthew Reilly, Garth Nix, Catherine Jinks and Moya Simons... yikes!

So, let's forget all that shall we and talk about my new book, which is one I've been wanting to have published for years and years and years... well, since I turned forty-five.

It's called untangling spaghetti and is the selected poems from my three poetry collections for children. Full of poems I still perform on a regular basis, poems that trace the childhood of my two sons, Jack and Joe - some true, some slight exaggertions, some major fibs and some just plain silly. The boys are no longer children, but young men. Hairy young men. I trust they'll forgive their father his indulgence in writing about them. Despite popular opinion, that is not me on the cover.