Sydney, October 15th 2010
The Ashes are nearly here and it’s going to be a busy time for me with my predictions. I’ve been rushed off my feet gathering runes, entrails and the like ahead of the series and preparing my tarot tent at all the Test venues. People think that it’s all beer and skittles, just a bit of a laugh going, “Oh yeah, 5–0 mate” every time the Poms show up. Well, it’s not. Maybe if I was some sort of hack like that Jonathan Cainer of the Pom Daily Mail it would be. But seeing into the future is a serious business and you have to know what you’re messing with. It’s like bowling an off-cutter to a left-hander if you haven’t softened him up with the rib-tickler and put the hard word on him first: you are trifling with forces beyond your control, and that is not something you want to be doing. Just look at poor young Mitchell: one of our most promising practitioners of the black arts as was, and now he couldn’t predict an ice cream will melt on the bonnet of a ute during the Narromine hot season.
October 22nd
Still not had any luck persuading young Brett to throw his lot in with me. Mystic Glenn McGrath and Gypsy Rose Lee: we could take the clairvoyant world by storm. But Brett’s got his musicals and his men’s outfitters and I suppose I have to respect that. I won’t give up, though, and he’ll come round in the end. I have foreseen it. And if I have to lock him in a dressing-room overnight, get the Ouija board out and get old Merv Hughes done up in a white sheet to put the frighteners on him, then sorry Binger, that’s how it’s going to be.
October 26th
Devastated to read about the death of Paul the Octopus who did such awesome predictive work during the soccer World Cup in Germany. Obviously, I foresaw it was going to happen before it did, but when any member of the clairvoyant community – be they human or seafood – passes to the other side, it is always a sad day. I knew Paul a little, he had an incredible gift for prediction and he was a hell of a useful left-armer – and right-armer as well, come to that. My heart just goes out to Paul’s family, friends and other Fusbalpredichtopussen everywhere. He’s gone to the great 5–0 hammering in the sky, or ocean I guess in his belief system, but he will not be forgotten.