If you haven’t seen it over at www.thegreatestbloggerintheworld.com there is cur­rently a Great­est Blog­ger in the World com­pe­ti­tion going to write a small blog post and go into the run­ning to win one of two Apple Mac­Books. Pretty cool, huh?

To enter all you have to do is write a blog post that con­tains these words from the book:

Ille­gal red cor­dial
Unshorm merino
Bar­code
Duck on a leash
Tuxedo
The Boots
Card­board
FAP
Dr Mary­loaf
School par-tay
Lola Cat
Granny flat
Trunk Food Company

I wish I could enter the com­pe­ti­tion but since I’m judg­ing it I can’t. But I’ve still had a go at mak­ing a blog post of my own out of all the above words. This is what I came up with:

THE CAT AND THE CORDIAL by Andrew McDonald

One day instead of going to school I went see Dr FAP with my Grandma because my foot felt weird like card­board. I took the boots on my feet off and the doc­tor feel back in shock and knocked my Granny flat! We were amazed to see there was a cat liv­ing on my foot. Who knows how long it had been there.  It was hold­ing on with its claws and seemed to be hav­ing a good old par-tay down there.

The doc­tor picked up his phone and called for Nurse Lola to come in. But Nurse Lola was attend­ing to an opera singer in a tuxedo who had shoved an entire bot­tle of red cor­dial down his throat dur­ing reherasals for a new opera called I Shoved an Entire Bot­tle of Red Cor­dial Down My Throat. So instead Nurse Mary came in to help us.

She reached for a pair of clip­pers and told us the only solu­tion was to shave the cat. She said it was as wooly as a merino and could not go on unshorn. In fact to leave it unshorn would be ille­gal. After the cat was shaved we had to duck as it jumped up and tried to escape. But Dr FAP put it on a leash and sud­denly we had a new pet. To cel­e­brate Nurse Mary brought out a loaf of sugar bread. Even Nurse Lola and the opera singer (cor­dial bot­tle now removed) came and joined us for the com­pany and the food.

Just before we left Dr FAP stuck a bar­code to our new cat’s head. He told us this was in case she got lost, we could always scan her to make sure she really was our cat.

Back at school the next day nobody believed my story. They all said they believe that it was pos­si­ble to shove an entire bot­tle of red cor­dial down your throat. Oh well.

THE END

To enter the blog­ging com­pe­ti­tion your­self visit www.thegreatestbloggerintheworld.com.

The Great­est Blog­ger in the World was offi­cially launched last week at Read­ings Carl­ton in Mel­bourne by author/broadcaster Tony Wil­son. It was a lovely evening. Tony said nice things about the book, lots of peo­ple came to lis­ten to him, most impor­tantly, I got to wear a suit jacket. And it wasn’t even a wedding.

Big ups to Read­ings and Hardie Grant Egmont for putting on the launch and let­ting me pre­tend I’m more impor­tant than I am for just one night.

Tony Wil­son (author of Harry High­pants and Grannysaurus Rex) launch­ing the book.

Me and my suit jacket.

All the lovely peo­ple who came to Read­ings to hear Tony talk about the book and then stayed while I read a small extract out.

I signed books. Peo­ple wanted me to. I felt very important.

And here’s my with my fam­ily and my friend Sean who MC’d the evening. And yes, I have a big (but beau­ti­ful) fam­ily and yes, my Mum has been doing bunny ears to us all our lives. Sigh.

And here’s some of what Tony Wil­son had to say when he was launch­ing my book. Thanks to Rob McD and Matty Soc­cio for the pho­tos and video.

When I look out the kitchen win­dow at the moment there are men next door build­ing some kind of house that looks more like a giant out­side toilet.

It’s such a small place to con­struct any kind of  build­ing. Per­haps the men are just build­ing their own per­sonal cubby house. That would be pretty cool. If they are build­ing a cubby house I will be able to wave at them from my kitchen when they’re fin­ished build­ing. And maybe they’ll invite me over for lemon­ade and choco­late in their giant-loo-sized cubby house. Orsome.

I have a friend called Ken. He thought that he could make improve­ments to my book. Thanks a lot, Ken. Here are his ‘improve­ments’ with apolo­gies to the fan­tas­tic cover illus­tra­tor Gre­gory Baldwyn.

So what do you think? Per­son­ally I’m just glad he didn’t think of The Great­est Bog­ger in the World because I would hate to see what changes he would have made to illustrations.

After the com­ments and feed­back left on my pre­vi­ous post about the bits and pieces that make up one’s beard, I now present the revised edi­tion of The Anatomy of the Com­mon Beard.

And here’s the KEY:

PHILTRUMLINGS: The hair of the philtrum.

SIDEBURNLINGS: The hair of the sideburn.

CHEEKFUZZLINGS: The fuzzy hair of the cheek.

GINGERLINGS: The inex­plic­a­ble gin­ger hair on blonde or brunette beard.

BERMUDATRIANGLINGS: The place where hair refuses to grow at all despite the clear geo­graph­i­cal require­ment of hair growth.

UNDERLINGS: Neck hairs.

TRANSCHESTLINGS:  The hairs that sit just under the Adam’s apple and glare envi­ously past the collarbone.

Thanks to Phill, Ken, #2 and House­mate Numero Uno for their input.