She must be reading an autocue – I’m certain. With her  fresh powder snow make up and glittering diamond eyes she engages in a beautifully shrink wrapped conversation with the co-host. His answers are beautifully diced, not garbled and are totally appealing. Together surely they’re a winning combo, but I just can’t help feel the [...]

The yellow van from roadside assistance pulls up in the driveway, my phone lights up with a brief flash in glowing pearl. He’s backed the ute into the driveway  and is donning heavy duty yellow gloves- smeared with grime and grease. His engine is running at  a high rate of revs….I explain the flat battery [...]

Cables hanging from the top of tiered spikes, stretched out tight like elastic bands, but these only flex in strong winds. A fan of strong steel cables  finest spider web work, finest quilt patching needlework . A lattice of support. Cars and pedestrians and trains crawl across the surface in peak hour trudgery. People stuck [...]

She was certain she’d slipped it off her finger and placed it on the mantle piece above the fire. Certain because over the years her fingers had grown stubbier and the ring hadn’t. It required quite some work now to remove it. It’s well worn gold band had to be encouraged over the knuckle joint [...]

“Hey teacher- leave those kids alone”, a bulbous cranium shoots out the back of a cartoon character’s head, hammering in the knowledge to those open vessels. Ready to absorb and learn- ha! School, who went to school to actually learn? To be motivated to learn , very few I imagine. It was all about ‘getting [...]

Why do we have them? Are these the evolution of some once removed avian part of our history? Once upon a time perhaps a claw that might have wrapped itself around  the branch of a tree? What do apes do with them? I still find they’re useful to file my teeth against at moments of [...]

Packaged fire wood. Is there a greater sin? Service station, thick plastic envelope contains a bundle of logs, almost fire ready, some too big to fit inside the swinging door of the home hearth. They’ll need the axe.  These ones are blue gum, though the colour of the wood is more of a brick orange [...]

The gas burner is hissing like a cornered cat, spitting a blue orange gas flame that is licking the underside of the special camping  saucepan. The one bought at last minute.com halfway to the camp site.  A brew of dehydrated oriental rice is cooking up  – no doubt full of every bad chemical known to [...]

Kaboom , another curling white tower crashes into the water as violently as a shell exploding on a battlefield. Surf surges and foams and boils and a wash runs up the beach, the sand seems to sizzle as it comes in. Sizzling like a barbecue frying in the back ground. We’re walking just above the [...]

Yawning circles hover in mid air. Numbers tick over mega joules in kilowatt hours. Peak and off peak. The meters sit in a chipboard box on the front veranda. The meter reading  persons come by tri-monthly and expose the new layers of dust that gather on the lower lip. Perhaps a sneeze as they open [...]