BLINDED BY THE NIGHT

Thank you all for the outpouring of love, support and flowers during my recent stay at the Royal Darwin Hospital for eye treatment. It is much appreciated and I am truly humbled. I am on the mend and feel that I turned a corner last night. In fact, I turned several, after missing my stop on the Darwin bus and spending the better part of the next hour wandering the streets of Tiwi, blindly searching for the smoke stack and familiar tungsten glow of the hospital car park, unable to read Goggle maps and forced to navigate by dead reckoning and a rising yellow moon in the east, being barked at relentlessly by dogs from the safety of their steel-fenced yards like the gutless overfed four-legged suburban cowards that they are.

Where are all the blind dogs when you need them? Sitting in bloody shopping malls with coin slots cut in their skulls, that's where, as if that were of any practical use to anyone. Help Train A Guide Dog, they whine. Well let me tell you, I have, on more than one inebriated occasion. Sit! Stay! i cry -- and they do, without the need to be further anchored in place by the weight of my hard-earned spare change thank you very much.

So after a spiralling nocturnal tour of the football ovals, suburban driveways and rollershuttered supermarkets of Tiwi, I stumbled across the glowing blue sign that marks the way to the hospital, and was once again on the long, poorly signposted road to recovery.

Any further donations of cash and cigarettes can be forwarded to me care of the Jabiru Post Office. All such donations are fully tax deductible, depending on the courage of your accountant. Thank you all once again for your support.  I would be lost without you.

Photo: News Limited