When I was a child, I loved a story about little tugboat called Little Toot.

He was a tugboat in New York Harbour.

He wasn't the biggest boat in the harbour. He wasn't the strongest. And he certainly wasn't the sort of vessel anyone would have expected to do anything particularly important.

But Little Toot had something the big boats sometimes lacked.

He was willing to have a go.

I hadn't thought about Little Toot for years.

Then I read about what happened in that same New York Harbour on September 11, 2001.

And suddenly I remembered him.

You Either Get It or You Don’t

People have lost their sense of humor.

Not shoved it in a basket or the rubbish bin.

Lost it the way a man loses his dignity in a public toilet with no lock: suddenly, publicly, and with witnesses.

If you can’t laugh, fook off. The rest of us have work to do.

That’s the trouble with the humorless. They treat a joke like a fire alarm. One wrong word and they’re evacuating the building. The old priests at least had the decency to threaten you with hell. These ones threaten you with an HR meeting.

The Alfred Graving Dock -  a monument to Victorian engineering and Australian shipbuilding

Most readers have probably never heard of the Alfred Graving Dock.

Indeed, I suspect many would quite reasonably ask: “What is a graving dock?”

The answer is rather more interesting than the name suggests.

There is an interesting piece of language hidden in the name. “Graving” is an old word associated with digging, cutting or carving. A grave, in its original sense, was simply a hole dug into the earth, while to grave something was to cut or carve into it , hence engraving. A graving dock is therefore, quite literally, a dock that has been dug or carved out of the ground.

One of Australia's finest examples is the Alfred Graving Dock at Williamstown in Melbourne.

And it is quite a remarkable place.

I was 12 years old when "The Prisoner " came out. Sometimes, I would sneak out of bed and watch it from the hallway when my parents were engrossed in watching the TV. I will never forget my fascination with some bloke running around a quirky town being chased by giant bubbles and mini mokes were the go-to vehicle of the time. It confused me and intrigued me. No doubt, my parents felt the same way.  It was hardly the same as watching " I love Lucy " or " Rawhide " but it surely got my little grey cells working overtime. 

"The Prisoner," a British television series created by Patrick McGoohan, first aired in September 1967 and ran for 17 episodes. It followed the story of a British secret agent named Number Six, played by McGoohan himself. Set in a mysterious and surreal village, the series explored themes of individualism, freedom, surveillance, and the power of the state. 

Number Six’s line -  “I am not a number. I am a free man” -  is not just a catchphrase. It is a refusal to let the collective rewrite the terms of his existence.

A lone juror who will not move, even when eleven others and the machinery around them want him to, occupies a similar position: one person insisting that his own judgment is not for sale. 

THE GREAT MULBERRY VACCINATION SCANDAL

A Ratty News investigation by Roderick “Whiskers” McNibble

I knew Dusty Gulch was in trouble when Dusty McFookit started counting his mulberries.

There were thousands of them.

And, according to an order issued by the very sinister Prentis Penjani on instructions from Honkland Central, every one of them was required to be vaccinated against Fowl Flu.

The reasoning appeared to be that birds ate mulberries.