OK, so it's been a million years since I blogged. I'm sorry - I've been flat out. Here's a tale from my early twenties to keep you entertained. When I was about 21 I lived in Richmond (Lennox St) for about 6 months. I lived there with a guy I didn't know (Cam), who was a friend of Sean's. We soon became friends - he was a spectacular guitar player (truly incredible) and great songwriter. He slept during the day and wrote songs / played Carmageddon on his PC during the night. He was a funny guy. My other housemate was Louise ("Mitch"), my ex-girlfriend. We'd be broken up for a few years... but it didn't take a rocket scientist to work out that a living arrangement like that was doomed to fail. But this story isn't about the fun of living with your ex. No, it's about the woozer dog.

During the 6 months in Richmond, a lot of the time I'd meet up with my friends Chidgey, Paul and Cam and we'd walk down to Victoria Street, get some food, and then walk down to the Terminus Hotel (near the Skipping Girl sign) to play pool / bingo / drink ourselves silly. There was a lot of drinking come to think of it. Fair bit of pool as well. A few doors down from the Terminus is a car yard (I think it's a car yard at least). Given we were walking past it, to and from the pub anywhere between 8pm and 2am, it obviously wasn't open for business when we were in front of it. It had a locked gate, with a big padlock. But that wasn't the main method of protection for the business - it was a big, menacing looking, German Shepherd. And it made a racket when anyone walked by. As time went by and the dog would see us more often, it was less about the insane barking at us and, Paul Hogan style in Crocodile Dundee with the bull, it became a challenge to tame the wild beast. Most of the credit has to go to Chidgey, who managed to get the dog to a point where there wasn't any barking at us. It would run up from one end of yard to the gate to greet us, and we were able to pat it through the gate without fear of losing a hand. And thus, the dog was christened the woozer (pronounced "wuh-ser" - an abbreviation for "whose a good boy?") dog.

Mind you, a band of thieves probably cleaned the place out years later because of a guard dog now rendered ineffective, but boy do I miss that dog and those times sometimes.