This being the school holidays, Tom and I went to an indoor mini-golf centre today. Ten theme-based rooms and 18 holes later, my son emerged with the better scorecard. I especially liked the last chamber, it's three holes weaving their way through scenes of alien invasion. A life-size Tardis sat confidently amidst the battle, my attempts to open its door without management noticing, in vain. So, no escape from the present was possible today.

This morning I lashed out $12 on ebay and bought Quotations of Chairman Mao, aka, The Little Red Book. Much as I would like to launch an antipodean Cultural Revolution (modern popular culture being predominantly a wasteland of sleaze and mediocrity), I'll settle for using it as a companion in my ongoing study of The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The latter, of course, was no joking matter, much as I might make light of it. Good people were mercilessly cast aside, brutalised, murdered or forced to take their own lives on the whim of Mao and the collection of squabbling sycophants in the CCRG. No doubt there were some 'revisionist elements' in China in the years following the establishment of the PRC, but the chaotic and nihilistic swamp that the CR became was no means of establishing that as a fact.