New year’s resolutions – learn to sing

HERE IS A WAY TO START  A NEW HOBBY WITHOUT SCARING THE NEIGHBOURS – start singing in the shower – best way to loosen the under-utilised vocal cords.

 This booklet, with waterproof plastic pages, combines singing, patriotic songs, and some rather nice illustrations with a plastic strap that allows you to hang it over the shower rail.

It must have been popular as it was published first in 1984, then in 1986, 1991 and this edition in 2000.

The song list ranges over: the national anthem, folk songs like ‘Botany Bay’, the modern ‘anthems’ like ‘I still call Australia home’ and ‘C’mon Aussie C’mon’ and popular songs – ‘A Pub with no beer’ and ‘The red-back on the toilet seat’. 

Like the songs, the drawings illustrating the margins go from the fairly serious to the ridiculous. We move from koala up a tree and platypus in the creek through a cricket scene with a kangaroo and emu sharing an umbrella to a shark swimming with a flag attached to its fin.