That Australian Crawl song swims into my head ‘As the Manly Ferry, makes its way to circular Key’, but I’m going the other way – to Manly. The engines vibrate and chudder away somewhere in the soul of the ship  and we are spirited over the glittering waters of Sydney harbour. I stand out the [...]

Small stones and crushed rock are folded into a wheel barrow and transported across a wooly unkept garden.  The barrow makes a hollow grinding sound as the stones tumble to freedom onto a large wooden board. He reaches a trowel into a bag of dried cement almost as tall as the 4 year old boy [...]

Why do I feel like Mr Darcy, banged up in this penguin suit prison, waddling around arms trapped/ pinned to my sides. In the rehearsals it had been all free flowing and easy , the steps chiseled into our unconscious by Rhodan ’s mistress, until like breathing they are now automatic, but doing it in [...]

In secreto, playing a game of cat and mouse, mouth permanently filled with a bitter taste of contempt for the ’system’; inform or else . Hands bound in barbed wire , eyes open with  toothpicks. On alert all the time, scanning scanning, ears radar for morsels of information, brain taking in everything, every moment, a [...]

What a delight, a slice of heaven, lighter than angels wings in the mouth, pockets of air transporting bubbles of taste sensation on see saw rides. I could smell it  from the moment we walked in the door , Mrs Prout had been baking. The back porch area leads into a muted corridor with the [...]

Rohan had a real nice one, back in the day, before mp3, before i-pod, before digital download, when the only pirated music was a vinyl album you borrowed from a friend. Funny thing, part of a component system , a brushed black metal box with smoothly recessed switches and a single knob for volume, I [...]

Lips curl at the edge as I read the word and think about all its implications- how to talk about just one, there’s been so many, memories spring back to school and the discovery of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy for a ‘Grand Farting Competition’. That’s just about the only really legible [...]

Get yourself a trade, a wise parent said, you can always ‘fall back on it’, if things don’t work out – don’t work out? Impossible, my teenage movie ideal of the future is impenetrable, unbreakable, I am superman flying high the world beneath me ready to be scooped up and devoured like chocolate ice cream, [...]

Fingers trace over the ring, it’s worn smooth on the outside, the lustre of the gold dulled, diamonds and rubies seem to be swallowed by time somewhere in its grooves.  I probe the surface, the metal still warm from her ring finger. What am I perceiving?  Eyes closed I see symbols and images in my [...]

Patience is a virtue, jealousy’s a curse and pregnancy’s worse- according to my high school recollections. For some reason  I see patience being smeared all over a problem, like axle grease or butter on hot toast. A knife dips into a yellow container and a big glob of it comes out on the end of [...]