The year's just crawled past, hasn't it!

KNOW a good cocky when you see one?
Confident that with just one quick glance you can gauge if it's capable of going the distance?
Experienced enough to know, just by holding a cocky in your cupped hand, that it's not going to come up short and let you down?
You do! And you are! Well, get down on those hands and knees this very moment and put that talent to good use.
The kitchen's the best place. Night-time with the light off too. But have a torch handy 'cos some of those cockies can be slippery little devils as you well know.
Yes, it's that time of the year again: the annual famous Australia Day cockroach races at the Story Bridge Hotel.
The hotel puts the event on in the middle of summer so that no-one's got any excuse for not being able to find enough cocky-flesh to come up with a veritable stable of potential winners.
Race the right roach on the day (Tuesday, January 26) and could clean up in true cocky fashion. There's also $500 in prizemoney including a Best Stable Competition, including costume, stable name and banner.
The seven-race program will be punctuated by music from Miles from Nowhere. Entry is free and the fun starts at 11am!
And just to help you out when you put the thinking cap on to name your racing cockies, here are some of the past winners:
1982: Soft Cocky
!983: Waltzing Mat Cocky
1984: Not a Problem
1985: Con Cocky
1986: Cocky Balboa
1987: Captain Cockroach
1989: Vo Roach
1990: Pursuit
1991: Desert Storm
1992: Drain Lover
1993: Guns 'N' Roaches
1994: Cocky 'N" Bullwinkle
1995: Priscilla Queen of the Drains
1996: Crawl Keating
1997: Crawline Hanson
1998: Roach Rage.

More of the blues...

If the monotonous regularity with which the annual Story Bridge Hotel cocky races comes around makes you feel a little bit older, here's further news to give you the blues.
Yes, another year has flown by and it's time for the fourth annual Summertime Blues at the Waterloo Hotel on Saturday, February 6. The fourth, already. Feeling a little older? The good news is that admission is still only $10.
This year's line-up includes bands Blues Inc, Delta Schmelta, Shakey Shaun and the Sleepwalkers, Buzz 'n' the Blues and Black Cat Bone. Solo acts include Carl Rush, Mark Doherty and Chris Bailey, Christian Maucery, Two Blues (Matt Mikkelsen and Willie Lebihan) and John Malcolm.
Doors open at 3.30pm with the first acts, on separate electric and acoustic stages, beginning at 4.15pm.

Out in the cold...

STILL trying to recover from the landslip tragedy of two years ago, the southern NSW alpine village of Thredo now faces a new threat.
It's the ever-present danger that Donna Gregorski will slip out of her jumpsuit on a cold winter's night to prove to the apres ski crowd that she is now, and has always been, a natural blonde.
Yes, it's the Australian Alp's gain and the Brisbane hotel scene's lost with the news that Donna and husband Ted are leaving the Queen's Arms Hotel in Teneriffe to run a lodge in "Tedbo", as some wag at their current watering hole has dubbed their new home.
Sadly, PubCrawl has never been present when the curvaceous and extrovert Donna has shed her clothes and inhibitions in a number of Brisbane watering holes, solely to liven up a dull evening, mind. Asked when her last show was, Donna replies proudly: The Fourex Women's Christmas Party. "All of your clothes?" PubCrawl asks, trying to grab a mental picture of the event. "Most of them anyway," she replies.
So can the Tedbo crowd expect an on-ice spectacular in the coming winter? "At my age, the answer should be no. But, probably yes."
Venue for any impromptu performance will be Bernti's Mountain Inn in the heart of Tedbo. It has 60 beds, a n award-winning 150 seat restaurant and a 50 seat cafe/bar.
After running the Queen's Arms for the past three years, the Gregorskis' move to Tedbo came totally out of the blue.
"We heard about it over the bar on a Tuesday (in mid December) and Ted flew down and bought it on the Thursday," Donna explains.
The snowfields won't be a new experience for the Gregorskis – they ran the Smiggins Hotel from 1976 to 1983.