Emmo's bullet

BARELY a week ago, your humble Strewth scribe slipped away into the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, whereupon a wall of fog closed behind us.

BARELY a week ago, your humble Strewth scribe slipped away into the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, whereupon a wall of fog closed behind us, and by the time we emerged, the world had changed. Dennis Hopper and Gary Coleman were gone, Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard had hugged on TV, Sydneysiders were in terror of a hurricane, Eurovision appeared to make sort of sense, Julie Bishop appeared to have outed herself as a secret but remarkably effective servant of the ALP, Andrew Robb appeared to forget that Barnaby Joyce wasn't a servant of the ALP, and when Malcolm Fraser said he was no longer a servant of the Liberal Party, some managed to appear surprised. In the resulting mental discombobulation, there was one rock we could cling to: a press conference by the federal Minister for Bashing Tony Abbott, Craig Emerson. And at Parliament House yesterday, as he stood in the Opposition Leader's courtyard (a droll choice in itself), his hair as buoyant and erect as grass in a spring meadow (a counterpoint to the fading autumn leaves behind), Emmo rose to the occasion as he combined Honest Tone and the ALP's newest pinata, Clive Palmer, in one convenient sledgefest: "Clive Palmer and Tony Abbott are running on a unity ticket . . ." and so on. All in all, not Emmo's finest work, but still something to savour. Praise the Lord and pass the Emmo.

One lucky kid

IT'S been a while since we outgrew our "So what?" phase, but once in a while we get a reminder of how powerful this concise expression can be. Today, we dips our lid to Rosleigh Corby, who has shared with Woman's Day her daughter Schapelle Corby's maternal desires and, in the process, given breath to this ripper: "She is going to have a baby, and she's going to be a great mum. If she doesn't come home this time, she can have one in there, so what?"

Now bugger off

IT was only yesterday morning, as we watched federal opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison don his sternest visage for an interview on ABC1's Insiders program, that we were struck by the polar breadth of his talents. Not all that long ago, he was the boss of Tourism Australia, the man charged with luring people to our golden shores. To this end, he gave us Lara Bingle and the "Where the bloody hell are you?" campaign. Now that a lot of the wrong sort of people have answered his call, he's become the bloke in charge of turning them away. With Christopher Hitchens's memoirs upon us, much is being made once again of Hitch's almost seamless flip from Trotskyism to Thatcherism. But we say, with all due respect, the Hitch has nothing on the man we've come to think of as the Moz.

Not quite tip-top

AMONG Strewth's failings is our knowledge of how footy tipping works. "Dim comprehension" would perhaps be the most diplomatic way to put it. However, we can count (more or less) and were interested to see the near unanimity across the Victorian chapters of the Fairfax and News Limited empires on Friday. In The Age, 22 of their 24 tipsters tipped Julia Gillard's team, the Western Bulldogs, to put Essendon to the sword. In the Herald Sun, 28 out of 30, including Gillard, plumped for the Bulldogs. Curiously, the joke tipsters in both papers - Scottish Terrier inThe Age and Kiss of Death in the Herald Sun- got it right. There's probably more to be read into this, but all this sport talk has exhausted us.

Bumper practice

WHEN Strewth was learning to drive, it took little more than a couple of bunny hops and the pricey fiasco that was our first attempt at reverse parallel parking to persuade the parents to surrender us to one of those professional masochists known as driving instructors. So we were a little concerned for the mental state of NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell when he tweeted this yesterday: "Practising patience during another driving lesson with No 1 son." We expressed our concern, but O'Farrell was quick to reassure us: "We're sharing the experience across both parents and a pro."

Beyond tasteless

THIS may strike some readers as a little credulity-stretching, or at the very least unlikely, but once in a while we do pause and wonder whether we've pushed a metaphor just a tad too far. These ponderings shall cease after reading this small masterpiece from late British columnist Alan Watkins, who died last week. It was penned in 1983 in reaction to a comparison drawn, fairly, between Labour politican Roy Hattersley and a suet pudding. It was reprinted yesterday in Watkins's paper, The Independent on Sunday and is a pocket-sized masterclass in throwing caution to the wind and going all out: "Hattersley is a northern food (at once a staple and a delicacy), a piquant yet wholesome cross between a meatloaf and a black pudding. The standard way of serving hattersley is cold, sliced, with pickled gherkins and chips, but it is a versatile comestible and can just as well be fried - some Sheffield connoisseurs will brook no other method - with egg and tomato. For the continental touch, it can be coated in egg and breadcrumbs and served with tartare sauce a la lyonnaise."