Congenital Heart Disease
My heart is swollen with the Pulmonary joy of friendship Threatening to Rupture and disarm me.
He is an Old Cat
He is an old cat Shrinking every day Into his baggy black Suit of knobbly bone and Matted fur.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…