I live somewhere beautiful. It’s surrounded by water except where it’s surrounded by undeveloped bush. There are roads through the bush and coming home at night you often have to use high beam at nights. That was exciting when I first moved here. Blackwall Mountain is next to my house. It’s a long low flat-topped […]
Month: February 2023
Outside Myself
I know me. I’m intelligent. All my life my family have told me how intelligent I am and my mother has acted as if my only focus in life was what I was studying. I remember when I was 18 and just off my ‘P’ plates and I hit that doctor’s car in Dover Heights […]
Reality
I sometimes think reality is a consensus. We all agreed that we would regard what we saw around us as the truth. The consensus happened a long time ago, when people first began thinking and since then each of us is born into it. It changes slowly and the consensus has to hold, enough people […]
The Anger Loop
The anger loop creeps in when my mind isn’t otherwise occupied. It starts when I wake in the morning, especially if I haven’t slept well. My upper teeth and my lower teeth are engaged in battle. I stumble into the bathroom and obsess about the size of my nose. On the drive to the station, […]
The Ducks are Everywhere
The ducks are everywhere. They cluster around on the grass by the dirt path that isn’t a pavement, sitting or waddling around, occasionally quacking. They edge away when I approach. I want to tell them that I’m harmless and wish they would come up and say hello but they’re too wary for that. But they […]
The Sentence is the Tombstone
The sentence is the tombstone of the thought that inspired it. A thought flits around one’s brain, comes vaguely to awareness. Then a word attaches to it, perhaps a noun or verb. Perhaps an action will be involved or an observation on happenings or the perversity of happenings. As the thought firms more words attach, […]
Dorothy
My friend Dorothy died at 8pm last Wednesday. She was old and falling apart and ready for it and I was ready to let her go but now I’m thinking of the things that will never happen again. No more going to Dorothy’s place to eat lunch and play word games while telling outrageous jokes. […]
Janet
I found out about the death of my friend Janet through Facebook. We used to meet regularly, first with a mutual friend, Dorothy. Dorothy gradually went downhill till she died at 94. Janet and I, joined by another friend, Rebecca would sometimes meet at Galaxy and have lunch together somewhere in the city. When COVID […]
Making Vegetables
I have a bit more time now, so I’ve started making things. I made cheese from milk: Camembert, cheddar and goat’s cheese. I turned cattle bones into broth, soaking them in water and apple cider vinegar, then baking them and soaking them again, with a carrot, an onion, some celery and peppercorns, for 36 hours […]
Making Cheese
I like the goat’s cheese at Rozelle markets but no one sells it up here and I don’t want to go to Rozelle every weekend just for goat’s cheese. So, when I saw a cheese-making book in a catalogue, I decided to make my own. I found some goat’s milk at a local health food […]