Author: Bearsy

A Queensland Bear with attitude

November Creative Writing Winner

It has become customary for the competition adjudicator to begin with a laudatory paragraph about each submission, highlighting their best features – and a very civilised custom it is, too.

However, the entries for November are of such a uniformly excellent standard that I have decided to throw custom and convention out of the window.   Instead, I shall highlight the few blemishes I uncovered, since it was the only way I could find to discriminate between such superb essays – my initial reaction was to declare them all joint winners!   I hope our five skilful authors will not be unduly discombobulated by this unusual approach, and I urge them to take my remarks with at least a modicum of salt. Continue reading “November Creative Writing Winner”

More Aussie Humour

While taking my obligatory daily walk, I usually listen to music that I’ve downloaded to my phone, but for the last few days I’ve varied things by listening to “Triple M”, an Aussie commercial FM station.   Of course, they carry adverts, which are frequently highly localised and delivered in a strong local accent, wherever one happens to be.   I’m inclined to ignore the content, but I learn a lot of dialect.

Yesterday, however, I was much amused by one for a new Ute – a Mazda I believe, though I could be wrong – which had a delightful political throwaway buried in the exaggerated Queensland Strine.   Describing the virtues of the new vehicle, at breakneck speed, the guy said –

… and as for grunt, well, this baby delivers 412 Newton-metres, which is more torque than you get at a Climate Change Convention …

Quite made my day. 🙂

What d’ya reckon, Soutie?

Or how about you, Sipu?

Here’s our new Australian Team Coach and Selector, Mikey Arthur.

A Saffer who coached the Proteas with some success until he suddenly left after a disagreement with CSA or Graeme Smith or possibly both.

At the time he avowed that he wanted nothing more than to move to England and coach a County Team, but apparently the Poms didn’t want him and he ended up as coach to the WA (West Australia) Warriors.   He has  a reputation for being a good man-manager – is that praise, or is it a nice way of saying that his cricket isn’t very good?

Reactions from Aussie fans have been mixed, so far.   Some of the derogatory comments included –

  • Anyone would be better than Tim Neilsen
  • Why can’t we have an Aussie coach?
  • Does this mean our team will become as arrogant and precious as the Proteas?

Continue reading “What d’ya reckon, Soutie?”

Less or fewer? What a mass!

A few days ago, one erudite Charioteer gently tweaked the tail of another, by querying her use of less, where prescriptively she should have used fewer.

Well, we all know the rules, don’t we?
Fewer for countable nouns, and less for non-countable nouns.

Well actually – no.
And to compound the problem, non-countable nouns are themselves something of a movable feast. Continue reading “Less or fewer? What a mass!”

Back to their bad old ways?

Before South Africa became the Rainbow Nation, we in the rest of the world were resigned to reading regular reports of how police suspects had unaccountably jumped out of tenth storey windows while being questioned.    Steve Biko, for one.  One shrugged.   What else could one do, it was what the police did in the state of apartheid.

What were they called?   BOSS, or something, wasn’t it?   Buro vir Staatsveiligheid, that’s the chap.   They bullied their way around the world, infiltrating other police forces, including the UK, where they did some very questionable things.

But that’s all behind us, isn’t it?

South Africa is a model state these days, surely.

Well, actually – no.

After several misleading – and in some cases downright false – statements, the world’s press appears to have established that Peter Roebuck (an English-Australian-South African cricket journalist of great renown) “jumped” from his sixth floor hotel room whilst being questioned by a solitary South African police person, allegedly about a matter of sexual abuse.   Some accounts report two police persons.

Hah!   If you believe that you’ll believe anything.

I would dearly like to hear Soutie’s take on this.

Charlie’s dead

A minor wardrobe malfunction on the distaff side of the Bearsery this morning reminded us of this euphemism that was in vogue in the 1960s.   Neither of us can recall hearing it for many years.

Do Charioteers still understand it, I wonder?

And while I’m wombling free, does anybody feels like commenting on the difference, if any, between dispatch and despatch? 😕