Thanks for all the great comments. Sorry about the moderation business. I'm still getting fuckwits trying to embed defamatory comments about those most likely to engage legal action in old comments (like two months or a year ago) hoping I won't notice until it's too late. You don't have to use much imagination to guess who might be inspired, or driven, to employ such dirty tactics. These are very desperate times for some, while for independent bloggers like me, it's the start of an exciting new dawn, and lots more readers.

For the next week or so, moderation will be on. Sorry about that, but it will only be for a short time.

Unlike those living under the delusion that people will pay to read blogs, I am the only moderator here and my grasp of what is and what isn't defamatory usually depends on how much I've had to drink or what other substances consumed, or a combination of both (or is it all?).

And thanks for the dinner invites. I'm up to about 65 now via Twitter, comments and e-mail (darrylmason@yahoo.com).

The only downside of demanding free dinner invites instead of paying to read this blog is what happens when I take you all up on your generosity. Hint - I don't like to eat with utensils.

I'll be publishing a long piece soon, maybe tomorrow, on a summer I spent in Bondi in 1999. I'll leave it up for a couple of days because it does go on a bit, but I hope you like it. That Bondi is well and truly gone now, so it's a bit of a blast from the past, particularly for those who knew Bondi back then, they might be reminded of some people they used to know. The worst of it is absolutely true, though names have been changed to protect the guilty and the moronic idiots who should have fucking known better.