In which the pond celebrates with our Kenny ...

  

The pond woke up with a dire sense of dread and mortification at having missed the dawn service ... then realised that came later, and what it was celebrating was a day when the broadband was so slow it was almost impossible to upload any content ...

It made cliched talk of wet wicks feel good.

Yes, the pond was standing in it ... not the doggy do on the Newtown pavement, but Malware's broadband Australia ... while over at the Terror, the reptiles were having a hissy fit about the flag ...

The pond has to hand it to the Terrorists, the constant alarums must be exhausting and terrifying ... how proud this land is to be Pom, British to its bootstraps or its fush and chups, or is that the Kiwis?

Moving right along, the pond next experienced a bitter disappointment, because it had been expecting and hoping to spend at least a little of the day with dashing Donners, expert in Australian education and all that spurs elderly white gentlemen to shout at clouds.

Instead there was a most forlorn sight at the lizard of Oz ...

What the fuck? No, not that bit about "Our Aborigines", a possessory claim up there with the Donald blathering on about his African American friend ...

No, that was just par for the tone deaf lizard Oz course, what was truly disturbing was that they'd decided to raid the reptile Queensland mausoleum, and instead of dishing up dashing Donners to the pond, they'd discovered his old buddy, the 'wilting in the lefty sun' Kenny Wiltshire ... and he'd decided to have a go ...

The pond shouldn't have worried. The Donners tradition is in safe hands when it comes to - if the pond may be so bold - Our Kenny ...having a go ...

Our Kenny is most agitated ... and so, he had a go ...

Indeed, indeed, and there's no doubt that everything that's gone wrong is the fault of Victorians ...

It's possible that without Victoria the world would be an infinitely better place ... especially as poor old Kenny seems to have gazed into the heart of darkness, quantum physics, and reeled away with the shocking, disturbing news that down at the building blocks level no one has much of a clue and things seem to keep on changing ...

Worse, pollies have suddenly become weather-vane creatures, unlike pollies of the past, who were stout and true, and never ever told lies, let alone minor porkies ...

The pond was shocked ...the pond had always thought Captain Cook was in the First Fleet, and as for this business of having a good time ...

Fair dinkum, have a go meant moral rectitude and a pineapple shoved up the pious Queensland bum, not having a good time ...

The pond recalled Geoffrey Wheatcroft moaning away in the NYRB about the way that Winston Churchill has been portrayed in film and television shows - sadly it's inside the paywall here, but spoiler alert, here's what Wheatcroft said in his last pars ... after noting the irony of Alex von Tunzelmann having written Reel History, a collection of essays about how the movies travesty historical truth, and then scribbled the screenplay for that historical pile of tosh Darkest Hour ...

Wheatcroft spent considerable time brooding about other fantastical entertainments about Churchill...then concluded:

... In somewhat optimistic words, Joe Wright, the director of Darkest Hour, sees his movie as a rebuke to Donald Trump: "Churchill resisted when it mattered most, and as I travel around America I am really impressed and optimistic at the level of resistance happening in the US at the moment."

However that might be, Wright must know what effects his film and Dunkirk are having in England at present. Max Hastings recently pointed out in these pages that Dunkirk, doubtless without its makers' intending it, is taken by some as a Brexit movie, as we plucky islanders once more shake the dust of Europe from our feet. As if to make that point, a headline in the Daily Telegraph spelled it out: "When it comes to Brexit, we need our Dunkirk spirit back."

But could "our Dunkirk spirit," however splendid it was at the time, have been our undoing since? More than a century ago, Giovannia Giolitti, the Italian prime minister, claimed that "beautiful national legends" help sustain a country. He should have added that they can also do great harm. For the English, "1940" is now the greatest of such legends: Dunkirk and "Very well, alone!," the Battle of Britain and "the few," the Blitz and "London can take it," and Churchill's speeches echoing all the while.

In 1940, Churchill said that "if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future," which is one way of putting it. Another way is Orwell's in Nineteen Eighty-Four: "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." Churchill - real or imagined - now controls the past, the present, and, alas, the future, maybe with bleaker consequences than we can yet know.

What a fuddy duddy. Sure the Churchill movies are rich with distortions, outright shameless misrepresentations, and much mendacity, all in the search for entertainment and legends over truth, but as Kenny notes, "Who cares? The kids had a great time, and that's all that matters."

The pond decided it should approach this First Dog cartoon in the same Kenny-approved spirit ... (there are many more First Dog cartoons here) ...

Indeed, indeed.

It seemed the perfect exemplar of our Kenny and the reptiles' Orstralia Day as they trot off to their assorted celebrations ... 

"Who cares? The kids had a great time, and that's all that matters. And besides, our tame pet Aborigines are doing us proud ..."