Last week was the Melbourne Cup, which is Australia’s premier horse racing event. (It’s like their Kentucky Derby.) Everybody in the country bets on who’s going to win this one race. It’s huge. The other thing it’s known for is the hats. All the ladies wear huge flowered and feathery headgear, just like the Ascot scene from My Fair Lady. Even the gentlemen get in on the act. Here the Snook models his own modest chapeau, which he fashioned himself from a bit of newspaper. He didn’t attend the actual race, of course, but I’m told his creation made quite a stir at the local pub where he and his workmates watched it on the telly. 🙂

(Yes, I told him to smile but he never does. He thinks he looks crap in photos, when really – when he smiles – he’s so damn photogenic it makes me jealous. So the seriousness of expression here is deliberate.)