Frank Corti - A Good Neighbour...

...We, mercifully, are blessed with good neighbours. I trust it is a view they share.

That they are at somewhat of a distance - the Rectory being of the old style, large and with plentiful grounds - does not signify, as they are all in fact decent, quiet coves; though were they not the half an acre of lawn surrounding would be handy.

Mr Frank Corti, a hero of our day, is not so happily blessed it seems, his neighbour - one scumbag named Gregory McCalium - bursting in one evening on the startled Mr Corti and his dear wife Margaret, armed with a knife and intent on burglary with harm no doubt.

The photographs in the newspaper today show both victim and assailant alike. There is young McCalium, 23 years of age; and there is old Mr Corti a white-haired seventy-two.

The one is bruised and bloody, eye blackened with thickened bloody lips. Mr Corti, on the other hand, shows himself firm, upright and properly defiant.

For yes indeed, Mr Corti, an ex-soldier and boxer to boot, taking - as he would - unkindly to McCalium's threatening intrusion into his peaceful home, brushed aside the scumbag's knife giving the would-be thief the old one-two.

Biff, bash, bosh as they say. Or as Mr Corti himself said: ""I was scared when he first drew the knife, but my old training must have kicked in because I just punched him as hard as I could and he went down like a sack of spuds. If you can't defend what's yours, where are we at?"

That accomplished, it seems Mr Corti then restrained the battered McCalium awaiting the Police to cart him away.

Bravo Mr Corti for your deeds and for your words. Last word perhaps, the Judge to McCalium before sentencing him to four-and-a-half years without the option: "You got what you deserved." Quite so.

I wouldn't know if there is a 'Neighbour of the Year' award proximate to where Mr Corti and his wife live, but there jolly well should be and he its winner.