Well, for one thing he’s usurped a traditional Rudd family name. My great-grandfather on my father’s side was named Minchin Rudd and my father still carries Minchin as his middle name.
OK. In fact, I couldn’t give a fig about happenstance like that. It’s his talent I resent.
M couldn’t have been absolutely riveted to the screen because she jumped up at one point and exclaimed ‘There’s the rat again, running down the tree! Do you see him?’
In fact we’ve seen a lot more of the rat, if that’s what it actually is, than Tim Minchin over the past year, but in any case I was glad to drag my eyes away from Tim’s trademark unkempt dreadlocks for a minute or two to catch a glimpse of ‘Ratty’.
Probably every evening at about the same time, (we don’t go out of our way to look out for him), the alleged rat makes a break for the bottom of the tree outside the living-room window, most of which is visible from our TV couch, when the blinds are up anyway. We’ve never found out where he goes precisely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a bolt-hole with a little green door and a welcome mat hidden in the undergrowth that we like to call ’the garden’. I imagine that his family gathers around him after their evening meal while he relates the strange goings-on in the neighbourhood, which naturally includes our living room, while drawing on his favourite clay pipe.
We’re blessed with lots of views of nature from our living-room. The Wattle birds provide us with plenty of entertainment trying to extract nectar from the tiniest of flowers on the hebe bush, for instance. They’re quite big birds as honey-eaters go but also very territorial. We had an unexpected visit from a couple of lorikeets a few days ago and our Wattle bird mate gave them very short shrift, dive bombing them a couple of times just to let them know they weren’t at all welcome, even if the loquats are starting to look a bit tempting.
The loquat trees, (we have three of them – I call them a plague of loquats) also attract fruit bats. Well, not fruit bats in general, just the same family group that have been trying to keep their stash secret from the other legions of fruit bats flying to various orchards from their home in or near the Botanic Gardens. As we lie in bed we can hear them chewing and chatting (with their mouths full!) for hour after hour until we pass out from boredom. The saying ‘boring as bat-shit’ probably derives from this very activity.

By now, dear reader, you’ll have tumbled that there’s not much else on the horizon topic-wise. We’ve paused Jesus Christ Superstar short of half way to be resumed when we get back from Canberra. I’ll have to trim the content waiting to be viewed on IQ before we leave. Jesus might get terminated before his time - or Judas might do something equally unMinchinable..