Swimming with sharks

I always expected that by this time in life, I'd be swimming with dolphins. I was training at university to become a marine biologist.
Well that never happened, did it?
I took a holiday job at a little newspaper and got hooked.
I suppose I can blame the chief reporter there. Despite all he had been through -- too much booze, late nights, broken marriage, too much black pudding and cigarettes -- you couldn't help but be swept up with the adrenalin rush he obviously got anytime he got the scent of a good story. It was contagious. Lots of lows, but lots of highs too -- and I decided this was the life for me.
So here I am: chief political correspondent for the Daily Lemonsuck, swimming with sharks rather than Flipper.
People say: how can you possibly work with pollies, as if they were lepers? Unclean, unclean.
I say: I didn't choose this job, it chose me.
And I didn't elect the pollies. You voted for them, I just follow them around with a bucket and spade and analyse what they leave behind.

Distraction for a newshound

I'm not so much a newshound, I guess, as a newsbitch. My beat is what goes on at Parliament House in Canberra and you'll often see me asking the hard questions at press conferences there. Everyone knows my newspaper, even if they pretend to never read it. The paper is often derisively called The Daily Lemonsuck and I guess I'm one of the chief juice extractors.
Lately though, I've been distracted.
It is all the fault of a British soldier cum mercenary cum adventure travel operator named Major Jeremy Billycock-Smythe. What a name, eh? He's as pretentious as he sounds too.
But he knows how to play the system, knows all the "right" people, and schedules press conferences when the pollies aren't around knowing full well that we press gallery people have nothing better to do than attend.
My first dealing with Major Billycock-Smythe came some months ago when he announced he was starting tours for adventure tourists to war zones. Can you believe that? The sicko!
He got spades of publicity though. I'm afraid the media has no conscience.
They pay me very well to stir up politicians, but it's very hard to stick to my core business right now.
I see Kevin Rudd's government has introduced grocery-watch on top of petrol watch.
What we really need is a pollie-watch, don't you think, so people can go online and weigh up the relative merits at any given moment of K. Rudd and B. Nelson and the rest of them?
Or better still for me, perhaps someone can come up with Major BS-watch. I know that man is up to something but I just can't work it out yet. I will though. Mark my words.