Browsing Category: New writing

by John Clare I just wanna ride on my motor cy… cle. That is from an Arlo Guthrie song whose name I can’t recall. Nor do I. Want to die that is. Or if I have to, I want to die on the sounding of the last chord of a track by Duke Ellington, or […]

by John Clare Aware of the aching void they leave in the hearts of loyal Aussies; of our despair at having nothing to watch now on the TV, and with the heart-rending plaint ‘I’ll never be Royal’ still quivering in the air, the Royal Couple might well be tempted to make a mercy dash back […]

We caught a ferry from Rockhampton, then camped very cheaply just outside the resort on Great Keppel Island. At the resort’s perimeter we could buy a coffee or a meal at an outside cafe. Those inside, presumably paying a price far beyond our means, rarely left the confines of that playground. They seemed to prefer […]

You might remember Dicko, the curiously irksome talent show judge. Recently he said this, ‘One thing you cannot take away from the baby boomers is that they invented rock and roll.’ Hmm, sorry, but I’ll take that away right now. I was a teenager in the classic rock and roll era which peaked about the […]

I grew up with P.G.Wodehouse, The Goons, Monty Python, etc, so I welcome Tony Abbott’s brilliant decision to re-open for this country the rich vein of ludicrousness represented by knights and dames. No sooner had he done so than every television identity had bestowed a title on his or her co-presenter. Childish, you might say. […]

It was 50 years ago today – well, a week or so back – that the Beatles came to Brisbane to play. My wife and I lived there for a while just prior to sailing off to England. Fair exchange some might say. There are still conflicting opinions as to whether you could actually hear […]

Role models & civilization from another angle My father was away in World War II and was held over for a while after the war’s end. He did, however, appear occasionally on leave, in a bottle green utility. He was a man of principal, great technical and manual skill, and responsibility, but he did not […]

1. In that little park beyond Westminster Palace I saw but could not hear well from the fence A little scarecrow man berate another Larger deadbeat on a seat, A singular yet archetypical Peak-capped, jut-jawed dunce, Who all at once had had enough, And with an odd mechanical jerking gait, His chin pumping, Went to […]

1 There was a period when I would eat a salad sandwich and read the morning paper on the seat by the old Glebe Fire Station in Mitchell Street. That was a block downhill from Glebe Point Road and it was opposite the tiny house in which I had once lived. My old house was […]

1. Prelude At one time I had a girl friend who was much younger than I was and only liked sex occasionally, yet we loved each other. On winter nights we loved to slide shivering and laughing between the cold sheets, rub each other’s bodies and hold them tight at the point where warmth had […]