Everything under the two moons

Awesome All Black captain desperate to secure New Zealand's 'rightful' victory in final that could be most one-sided since '87

When an enormous Siberian tiger has a toothache, you need to find a very brave dentist.

Ogopogo is supposed to live in a huge cave under a scary looking island called Rattlesnake Island

The difficulty with being a government minister must be phrasing a statement so that it can't be misinterpreted, as it might then appear you've been dishonest in some way. So it's helpful that the Government has introduced new guidelines to prevent this, by establishing that ministers can make up whatever they like.

The difficulty with being a government minister must be phrasing a statement so that it can't be misinterpreted, as it might then appear you've been dishonest in some way. So it's helpful that the Government has introduced new guidelines to prevent this, by establishing that ministers can make up whatever they like.

Rant

If your name's on a trophy, it's on it. Twice in the past had Franny Norton been replaced late on a horse that went on to win the Ayr Gold Cup and though the veteran journeyman is well used to such weighing room shuffling, it did make his rather easy victory on Our Jonathan in yesterday's edition of the six-furlong dash the sweeter. He took Scotland's richest Flat prize by two lengths, thwarting a gamble on 6-1 favourite Eton Rifles in the process.

Notebook

Police hunting a missing pet skunk say she has now been found safe and well.

Pauline Black's earliest memory is of vomiting, at the age of four, on to a pile of sheets that had been cleaned, starched and ironed by her mother. "She was not amused but then again it was her own fault," says Black. "She shouldn't have told me I was adopted."

The last time Michael Ondaatje visited Sri Lanka in a novel was in 2000 with Anil's Ghost where, through a series of fragmented narratives, he presented a story of waste in a time of war. Now he returns. Only on this occasion it is not modern Sri Lanka with which he deals, but the lost and mythical island called Ceylon, a country as foreign as the past, and as extinct as the dinosaur. Ondaatje is both poet and novelist and his use of English is elegant and beautiful. He writes, not in the worn-out clichés that are current in Sri Lanka, but with a feel for an international language that post-Ceylonese nationalism tried hard to strip from the education system of a whole generation.