Spoon of everyone. Spoon of the belly. Spoon of the empty belly. Spoon of the full one. Spoon of no one hungry. Spoon for everyone. — from ‘Spoon Ode’ by Sharon Olds I’m writing this sitting at our wooden kitchen table, early on a Friday afternoon. The big window above the bench is overlooking a grey […]
“But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful as a child’s transfer and tinged with the same sense of unreality.” – from My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell Pre-dawn on Monday morning T and I boarded our train home. I had no […]
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; – from ‘Romeo & Juliet’, Shakespeare First up, an apology. Things have been sporadic and rather […]
I’m sitting on the couch, cross-legged, woolen socks on. It’s late afternoon, raining outside, low grey skies, seeping damp. Both of the kids are asleep. I’m balancing a milky cup of earl grey tea and a thick slice of banana bread on the couch armrest. Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem cookbook is open on the table in front […]
Not that long ago, a special occasion called for booze and parties, wild costumes and late nights/early mornings. In these present days of small children and being all grown up, special occasions are mostly food-based. Afternoon barbecues, civilised early dinners, pancake breakfasts, brunch. Which is alright by me, truth be told. I like going to […]
It was bigger than an emu’s dark brown egg But smooth and glossy. Its outside was curiously hard If you picked it up. Like a turtle egg it bowed With a sort of elasticity to the touch. I dug A fingernail in. Beneath the purple surface. The taste, we knew, would be strange, perhaps poisonous. […]
The crazy vegetables Uncurled Their tendrills and leaf-crowns, Throbbing bulbs, In the sub-soil The carrot With its red mustaches Was sleeping… From ‘Ode To The Artichoke’ by Pable Neruda Pablo Neruda was one of the first poets that I learned to love, and one that I still love to this day. I have several of […]
We were woken up at 3am on Sunday morning with a sudden roar of wind and rain. W cried out in fright, and it sounded as though the trees out the front were creaking and cracking and breaking. Whenever I’m cosy in bed listening to wild weather outside I’m always reminded of the fantastic tornado […]
Brisbane is in the humid sub-tropics. Word on the street is that there are over 300 days on sunshine a year up here. Feels about right. Of course, it being the sub-tropics, in the summertime those sunshine-y days are interspersed with raging thunderstorms and torrential rains. Since we moved here, there were the crazy floods […]
It’s been rather an unusual weekend. For starters, Brisbane has been in the midst of a crazy heatwave (it is still 36°c and it is 7:30pm in the evening as I write this). Our lovely Queenslander house atop the hill usually stays pretty cool, but on a weekend like this, with not much of a […]
