This columnist had his hands over his old teddy bear's ears (to protect him from any audible obscenities) as one night we sat up and watched another tantrum-enriched Nick Kyrgios match at Wimbledon.
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"Just you wait and see, Edward," I prophesied to him, taking my hands off his ears for a moment.
"Any day now the dear old things who write Letters to the Editor are going to get out their fountain pens and start invoking the example of polite, seen-but-not heard Ken Rosewall and wondering why Kyrgios can't be like him."
"Surely not, Ian," my lifelong companion (he is in his 70s and I am 69) begged to differ in his pleasing low, musical growl.
"Why Ian, it's only folk of our age who even remember who Ken Rosewall, born in 1934, was. And in any case intellectually it makes no sense to compare the behaviours of people of very different times.
"Growing up in Ken Rosewall's tightly-corseted Australia our Nick would have been shy, polite, authority-respecting and unhappily repressed. Growing up today in Nick's liberated, let-it-all-hang out, uncorked Australia the dear Ken might be an entertainingly brash, troubled, bling-wearing racquet-smasher."
Of course the brainy bruin was right about it being illogical to compare Rosewall with Kyrgios. But sure enough the why-can't-Kyrgios-be-another-Rosewall? letters are sprouting now on the Letters pages.
In spite of acknowledging the bear's sensible insights about socialisation this columnist is very respectful of Rosewall. At one Australian Open in the late 1990s at which he was a distinguished guest I arranged a one-on-one interview with him. Awed, I heard myself calling him "Mr Rosewall" throughout our talk.
For a while in the 70s and 80s I even campaigned, through my columns, for him to become our next Governor-General, noticing his (subconscious and never publicly expressed) disappointment every time a new Vice-Regal appointment was made and he was overlooked. He would have been excellent, and far too polite and deferential to dismiss a prime minister, Gough Whitlam.
Meanwhile, we thank all those readers who have composed Nick Kyrgios limericks.
Greg Cornwell of Yarralumla has linked Nick to the wider world.
With a Greek father our Kyrgios
Knows that country is in deep debt loss
Thus it's disappointing his on court behaviour
Doesn't find any favour
In tennis, in Australia, in Lemnos.
Meanwhile, on the subject of ears (remember we covered up our teddy bear's in today's opening sentence) today's column is decorated with Geoffrey Dabb's typically splendid photo of some Pink-eared Ducks.
Although this is a devotedly bird-supporting column we have been a bit speciesist about which birds we run pictures of and stories about. Shamefully, though so beautiful and so weird (their beaks are spectacular) Pink-eared Ducks have never had a guernsey here. Over 200 species are seen in and around this most bird-blessed of cities, but magpies, the parrots, raptors and celebrity owls have hogged column limelight.
Our happy pretext (for this is a newspaper) for mentioning these wonderducks is that, well-known as an adornment of the Jerrabomberra Wetlands, they've just shown up as well in an inauspicious place.
Liana Matthews rejoices that "I have been working recently out at the recycling centre and landfill site at Hume and was delighted to come across some unusual visitors I thought people might enjoy knowing about.
"Chilled, sullen, winter skies heralded some feathery visitors ... Two zebra-striped Pink-eared Ducks have recently flown in and made the grey-water ponds at Hume Resource Materials Facility their mid-winter retreat.
"These shovelly-beaked characters appear to enjoy dabbling in the nutrient-rich pond in repeated circles, up-tails-all. Some excited school children on a recent visit to the Mugga Lane Resource Management Centre and Landfill site at Hume were treated to a display by these buoyant, masked interlopers.
"The Pink-eared Duck is so named as it has a spot of pink feathers on the side of its head ... They typically feed ... in head-to-tail pairs swimming in a tight circle. This cleverly concentrates small organisms in a rotating vortex of water up towards their highly-specialised bill, fringed with fine grooves which filters microscopic plants and animals into their beak.
"The telltale sign they have arrived in an area is their musical chirruping call. These nomadic travellers are highly dispersed throughout Australia though not commonly seen in cities. They are here one day, gone the next [though loitering a bit at Jerrabomberra] to some other inland shallow lake or pond."
Liana Matthews thinks (and because this column likes to offer readers some mysticism and folklore as respite from all the dry facts and truths there are elsewhere in this newspaper we report her opinion) that their arrival "can hint that rain is on the way".
Yes, we have just come home from folklore-rich Norway wishing Australia had just a fraction of those riches.
Once upon a time it used to be Canberra folklore that when snow fell in the city this was a sure sign there would soon be a federal election. But now that snow in the city is so rare (while federal elections are as frequent as ever) perhaps some other sign, some behaviour observed in Canberrans or in one of our native animal species, might be used to fill this folkloric gap. We welcome readers' suggestions. Surely the continuing, strange, semi-mystical presence of the famous Powl, the Powerful Owl of Turner, (still there on Wednesday because a reader has sent us a grisly picture of it devouring its latest possum) is saying something to us?
