The lost days pre and post op One thing should be made clear. I did not think I would wake from my operation. In fact I was almost certain that I would not, but I could not say that I was really frightened or sad. To me it seemed no great tragedy to die at […]
R.E.M.
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R.E.M. were right in the place of youth, that very zone. In the drift of sweet melancholy where there are youth suicides. I think I’m losing my religion. It’s the end of the world as we know it. I hope I die before I grow old, to quote someone else. That place. Not teenagers but […]
The Golf Pro
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If you walk along the clifftops from Maroubra to La Perouse on Botany Bay you will skirt four golf clubs, or just walk through them if no one is teeing off. The last one is the Royal something or other and I’d never gone very close to it before. When I did a compound of […]
Shallows
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At Bronte the beach was closed. There was a sign: DANGEROUS CURRENTS. Did I go in? Well, yes. First I went with my mask, snorkel and flippers into the shallow, rock-corralled water down the steel ladder beside the swimming pool. The gap where I would usually slip under broken waves into the open sea is […]
Nuages
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Cumulus cloud is like a boiling turmoil frozen, but when it is as vast as those round piled shapes looming against the clear blue skies of early winter, monumentality replaces any sense of movement, arrested or otherwise. There is one gigantic cumulus above my backyard now and others further away. Above it are cirrus, stretched […]
Contrary Motion in Darlinghurst Road
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Everything had been going wrong for some time and through it all the pain of a break-up persisted when I slid into a cab on Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross. It was night and the footpaths were thronged. He was going the wrong way for me but I told him to run on to Macleay Street, […]
Omen In Malaysia
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About ten years before the Twin Towers catastrophe I spent a couple of weeks on Pinang Island which is part of Malaysia but well offshore, as Tasmania is part of Australia, but somewhat further away. We were visiting my girlfriend’s brother before flying on to Japan from Singapore. I will call her Sara Lee (that’s […]
Song Of The Shops
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Many who are irreligious, pacific, and weak in fealty to the throne love churches, cathedrals, citadels and palaces. They are part of what draws us, late at night, to the Tour de France. Their age old stone is caressed by the helicopter camera in spiral digressions from the race, doing no harm to Tourisme en […]
Fake Autum
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It’s all we’ve got. Looking out the side from the bathroom window I can’t see the winter morning sun directly, but like water finding the lowest channel, the sun’s light has found a narrow clearway between walls and over low roofs to the street beyond the neighbouring back wall, where it irradiates a tree. This […]
Death Somewhere Near The Nile
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In 1965 my then wife and I went to live in London for a while and we travelled by ship because it was cheaper than flying at that time. Not only was the fare much less but we could sometimes spend a couple of days or even three in an exotic place without paying for […]