Jim’s Invitation

(A piece written earlier this year).

 

I

 had not written to Jim, that I could recall, for him to ever send me anything in return. More to the point he passed away in 1980 so I thought the spidery scrawl on the expensive, semi translucent wedding paper envelope was some sort of prank. I had gone to bed, not at my usual late hour but at a respectable time.  As I drifted off I realized I had not collected the mail for the day so I swung myself out of bed and walked outside. It was the only piece of correspondence in the box. 

Click here for the complete short story. Jim’s-Invitation.pdf

 

Congenital Heart Disease

My heart is swollen with the
Pulmonary joy of friendship
Threatening to
Rupture and disarm me.

Read more

He is an Old Cat

 

He is an old cat

Shrinking every day

Into his baggy black

Suit of knobbly bone and

Matted fur.

Read more

Kokoda – The Day After

Sitting around the pool the day after walking/flying out of Kokoda was a surreal and dislocative experience. Fraudulent even. Here we were sitting in comparative luxury, able to flop into a tepid pool if we felt too sticky. And yet we had some claim, we felt, to some ownership of the Track. After all we had worked very hard to cross it. Yesterday we felt a modicum of affinity to the soldiers of 1942. Today I felt that affinity dishonest. I wondered what a soldier of 1942 would really think of us. Cec Driscoll a veteran of the campaign who we met at Kokoda, expressed delight at the Australian youth walking the track. But what would the 1942 Cec Driscoll have thought? I picked up my pen and scribbled this first line, and then the second, seeking the voice of that 1942 Digger. Then the rest just happened. We all “own” the Track. So I called it “Our Kokoda”.

Our Kokoda

Who are you that disturbs this track?
Who plods, head down
Under weight of pack?
Who disturbs my rest, my sleep?

Read more

A Retro Trip

The travel of the mind is easily the most seductive. And the most dangerous. I am writing a biography of a man I once knew. Still do actually, though he ‘crossed the Jordan’ in 1996. If I was to be honest with myself I have not been prepared for the emotional dislocation that has happened as I have pored over more than 1000 pieces of his personal correspondence with more than 1000 still to be read. Read more

An Elephant, a Duck, and a Community

When is a book launch not a book launch? When the author writes about his family and his upbringing then invites all those, and some, over to lunch to celebrate his parents, their love and tuition, the memory of them and all those (immediate family and others) who had some part in creating his story. Not the written one that is, but the knitted one. The one that binds everyone in a community together. I was very privileged today to have lunch on the family farm of Peter Fitzsimons (here listening to his uncle) and to meet not only family but to chat with people from the Peats Ridge area, be served a cup of tea by a lady wearing a CWA apron (when was the last time that happened? When I was fighting bush fires in Bamawm I think, in 1980!) and to have earnest conversation with old friends I had only just met. As only country folk seem to be able to do.  When Peter spoke to the throng (using the elephant as a pulpit) he spoke about family and community and of bonds that sadly we let fray and separate too quickly in our city lives. There was a book signing too but that was not really the gift of this afternoon. Or the point I suspect. Rather, it was about a community fabric that allowed a perfect (actually not so perfect) stranger to be woven into it and to enjoy some of its warmth and love. The duck snuggles in at the foot of the elephant. Fitting somehow.

The Devil’s Shilling

In the deserts of South Australia there are numerous monuments to failed enterprises and settlements. Standing at an old crossroads in the middle of saltbush country is a  derelict hotel with flowery wallpaper slowly peeling off the walls, floors caving in and a cellar blown into the street. It became the scene for a gothic short story task, the end result being titled “The Devil’s Shilling”

A Word of Distraction

Last year I used the NanoWriMo competition of bash out the Iraq novel. This year it was used to smash into the biography of Herb Money. Bash and smash are the only way to describe trying to write 50,000 words in 30 days, when lots of other things are out there distracting you. I now confess to taking the laptop to the shearers quarters in South Australia. Happily I can report that it was not dragged out for the purposes of writing – which meant I had to do a lot of catching up. Crossed the 50,000 word line tonight – though all I think I have achieved at this point is a good idea about how the publishers book proposal should look. That cannot be a bad thing. Now, that short story for the writers group. Oops, no, better get back into the prospectus we need to have concluded in the next 24 hours or so.

Black and White – with Lots of Colour

The first time my name was in print I was shy to the point of embarrassment. The second time I was published I was paid 900 pounds sterling but thought I had better keep my name off that piece – it was some analysis on China and given where I was working at the time some might have taken a dim view of that. I can still scarcely believe it was for only 600 words! Since then my name has been on a lot of things but aligning name in print with cash for the trouble remains elusive. But hey, that is not what writing is about is it (is it?) Well, certainly not this effort by the Fast Twitch Writers Group which landed in my mail box (the one in the garden wall, not my laptop) this evening. This is a brilliant labour of love with some really good writing in it (no, not mine) by some local folk with a real gift for writing. Writing is like sex – the fun lies in the creating. I can’t promise being taken to pleasurable heights, real or imagined. But I can promise some creativity here which is impressive. If you want a copy try here…If not, that is okay too. You can admire the cover instead – daughter Miriam trying to look awake over the Saturday morning papers but really still tucked up in bed!

The Smell of A Book

Sir Ernest Barker, clearly part of “the establishment” if his Wikipedia entry is any guide, thought The Reader Over Your Shoulder is ‘a national service.’ Only a knight would judge a book on writing to be so. Actually a knight who was also a don at Oxford and a professor at Cambridge, which may or may not mean something other than the possibility that he had to support two opposing teams in the Boat Race. I wonder where his allegiance really lay? I digress however, evidence that I have purchased the correct book if my writing needs are to be met!

Read more

Next Page »