When the iPod first came out, I thought it was the Godsend I had been looking for.

First it was Joshua that was quiet in the back of the car, and then as we progressed on through the five children that we have, each of them either saved up enough money or acquired enough browny points to get one.

The daily bedlam within the car ceased and is now down to a decibel level of zero. What was good at first has now become, to me anyway, the height of rudeness.

None of them hear you when you ask a simple question and, indeed, the younger ones have lost the ability to actually speak. There is absolutely no communication with the individual iPod listeners at all.

They sit vacantly staring out the window, nodding their heads in time to a song that only they can hear, and at times I’ve seen them drool into their lap. What hope for the future.

An American in paradise

My American friend Adam Smalley flew in to Maroochydore airport last Saturday at 7.10pm. He spent Sunday with me and flew out early Monday morning.

We met in Los Angeles some 30 years ago, when we were both working as delivery drivers.

He went on to become a very successful music producer, working with the cream of the Hollywood film industry, and I, well, I just went on!

He’s in Sydney putting the finishing touches to the new Jackie Chan movie.

I took him to The Chopping Block in Buderim for breakfast, then to Sails in Noosa for a seafood lunch and a beer, and finished him off with dinner at Shelly’s Thai Restaurant in Coolum, where he fell in love with the waitress.

We then went back to my place for a nightcap of many bottles of Stella Artois beer. Decadent as it was, I was showing off.

I’m sure the movie Forbidden Kingdom is great but God knows what music he chose after that, or indeed how he chose it!

The Dance for Daniel

What a fantastic night was the sol-out Dance For Daniel supported by concerned and compassionate people who put back into our community.
It had everything. Rolling Stones memorabilia to auction, Ross Wilson to rock the place, the Band of Blue – a rock band made up of six policemen and women in uniform. Perfect for your teenager’s 18th birthday party.

You can just imagine the look on your kid’s face when they turn up to play at your house.

Steady Eddie was also on the bill and was, without doubt, the hit of the night. He was as funny as I’ve ever seen him and the audience just loved him.

The Daniel Morcombe Foundation is doing such great work in making our children “aware”, putting the funds raised to good use in many and varied ways.

I couldn’t help but applaud the Morcombe family’s strength of purpose and determination to see this terrible thing through to its conclusion.

Bruce stilled the crowd with a chilling reminder for the perpetrators when he said: “As long as I draw breath, I will bring Daniel home.”

The cheapest father-in-law

As a grandfather to my children, Max my father-in-law is second to none.

In fact, he suggested he make them a cubby house in a tree – isn’t that lovely?

As the cheapest man on the Coast, he is also second to none.

In fact, last week at McDonald’s he took four little sachets of sugar because he might need them for his tea when he travels to the Northern Territory with a rogue band of grey nomads who, like him, straighten bent nails to use again.

He forced me at gunpoint to drive to Brisbane twice this week to load up with free timber from under a fellow family member’s house.

Of course, to get this $20 worth of timber we had to spend $80 on fuel and, now I think of it, the same amount of timber at North Coast Demolitions at Yandina – some 10 minutes away – would have cost no more than $35, a saving of $65 and less talk about how well he played at the Coolum Bowls Club during the week, where he tells me you can get a choice of three meals every day at lunch time for a mere $5.