It's a week now since I got back from a month away in Australia, visiting family in Melbourne. I'm finally over the jet lag, and getting back into the swing of London life. I was very glad that Nick could come with me on this trip, my first "home" in nearly 3 years. It makes …
Category: Melbourne
ABBA in Battersea!
A long time ago... briefly... but it's true, ABBA alighted in Battersea in 1976, when they were promoting their album Arrival. Back then, I was a teenager in Melbourne, an ABBA fan, and although London was on my radar, I doubt I'd heard of Battersea. There's a photo of me on Christmas morning, delightedly clutching …
Melbourne, Berlin, London, Coventry & Beirut
Poetry can take you to many places. On Wednesday night we travelled to all these cities without leaving the discomfort of the Poetry Café's infamous orange plastic chairs. I was one of four invited readers at South Bank Poetry magazine's First Wednesday event, along with Norbert Hirschhorn, Peter Raynard and Amy McAllister. The time allotted …
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devouring Barracuda
The book: Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas Start time: Thursday 14th May approximately 11 p.m. Finish time: Sunday 24th May approximately 8:45 a.m. Number of pages: 513 This is fast for me. I'd wanted to read this for a while but it looked like a chunky novel and not one I could easily carry around with …
off to the charity shop
I bid farewell to an old favourite the other day. A school satchel that has seen better days, and for the last few years, if not longer, has hung, not quite forgotten, on a hook on the back of the door that hides our hot water tank. I bought it decades ago, before satchels became …
Melbourne scrapbook
Here are some snaps and snippets from my recent trip home. Home? To the city where I was born, where I grew up, that I made a conscious choice to leave many years ago. London is home now. Melbourne is family, a few friends, home-but-not-home. What's that line from a Gang of Four song? 'At …
a short, vaguely feminist, marginally existentialist reading list
My younger sister asked me this week to help her with a request from a work colleague, who had approached her for suggestions of female writers to read. Her colleague likes Sylvia Plath, apparently, is interested in feminism and existentialism, and is planning to take four months off work to go to France and read …
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and then there were two
My visitors have departed. The airbeds have been deflated. The flat suddenly seems remarkably spacious, and strangely quiet. There's a new mark on the back of the kitchen door, recording the current height of my niece. She's grown 34 centimetres since the last visit 5 years ago. 34 more centimetres and she'll have outgrown me. …
London latte
Friday morning. I'm in the city for a course, and I'm early. Summer's ending. It's a bright, fresh morning and I'm in fine spirits, for no particular reason other than the weather, and that's a good feeling. I have a quarter of an hour before I'm due in the world of work, and I'm going …
not quite dispelling the blues
A brisk walk around Battersea Park. Looking for signs of spring, and for the rhyme or reason that I'm still wedded to London. I need to gaze at water but The Thames is low, the tide right out. The brightest thing in the park is an out of place wattle tree, shaking its yellow blossoms …
Hilaire 