Kissing with confidence

This website has had the gestation period of an elephant, but it’s finally, thanks to Emma and to Rob Winter, off the ground. I have made no contributions so far, my excuse being ignorance. However, today I am to be taught how to post material on the site, so henceforth I shall be able to spout forth about anything, everything and nothing. Fortunately I wasn’t able to do so three days ago, otherwise I would have had to regale both readers with an account of how Jim coped with the discovery (he heard about it on the radio, predictably – that’s the type of things radio DJs in the UK talk about when they should be playing records) that he was already ten hours into National Kissing Day. That meant that there were already ten hours wasted, so he only had another 14 hours in which to demonstrate his mastery of the art. Fortunately he was due to leave at 4.30 the next morning to drive to Gateshead with his wife Alison plus their two younger daughters to watch their oldest daughter Lucy run in the National Championships, so he couldn’t risk tiring himself out completely by demonstrating what National Kissing Day entailed, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have let the day go to waste completely. (Lucy finished fifth in the final which I think was a slight disappointment, but then that’s where Ouija Board finished in her race, so there’s no disgrace in that).

Other than that, my only real problem has been fielding a barrage of complaints from Richard Sims, who reckons he ought to feature on the site somewhere. Obviously it wouldn’t be wise to mention him anywhere on the site – least of all in this section – but that still doesn’t prevent him from whingeing. What I am going to do, however, which I hope will placate him, is to instigate a section on the site called the Australian Racing Media Hall of Fame, and I will induct the leading identities in that field. I read that Makybe Diva and Ron Quinton were both inducted last week into the proper Australian Racing Hall of Fame, so it seems timely that we have something similar here. So the first inductees to our hall will be Tony Kneebone, John Barker, John Panozzo, Fr Joe Giaccobbe, Trevor Hindmarch, Simon Sewell, Jack Styring, Frank Pollio, Roy Higgins, Brian York, Peter Lyne, Craig McManus, Tim Bull, Brendan Dreschler, Jim Meek, Timothy Auld, Gai Waterhouse, John Wathen-Berry, Paul Richards, Tony Rickards, Richard Callander, Shayne O’Cass, Lee Freedman, Joel Marshall, Alf Kneebone, Paul Egan, Peter Neall, Greg Tobin and John Hawkes.

I wonder if they have a National Kissing Day in Australia. I should ask Richard Sims. I bet he knows.