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This just might be the oddest piece I’ve written in a while. Does it work? Maybe. Maybe not. Shelf life Cereal, butter, pasta, chutney, relish…The supermarket list is long. Very long. And it’s my turn to push the trolley, to walk the bright fluorescent aisles, to face shelf after shelf after shelf. It’s my turn […]
September 23, 2013
What did we do, how did we live, before we had lanyards? First published in The Age, Saturday 18 June 2005 They are called ‘lanyards’, apparently, and they are taking over the world. They are those glorified shoelaces with security cards or club memberships or keys or mobile phones hanging from them. At lunchtime […]
August 22, 2013
When is a local bookshop not a local bookshop? When it has the hide to call itself a local bookshop. The not-so-local bookshop is next door to the local green grocer and opposite the not-local-at-all supermarket. I step inside carrying Jacaranda Avenue, my little self-published book of non-fiction. The not-so-local bookshop sells good books […]
August 5, 2013
Just over 20 years ago I wrote an 800 word piece called The Right Land, about a very common experience – hoping to buy a house. The story was published, appropriately, in an Age supplement called Home and in a West Australian supplement called Habitat. Its genesis was a failed fictional short story. (My cross-over […]
June 21, 2013
First published in The Age, 23 April 2005 As the 8.37 from Newport was pulling into Spotswood station the automatic voice inside the train said, in perfect digital harmony with the orange telex message that blips across the ceiling of the carriage, “The next station is Toorak. You are now approaching Toorak.” I looked up […]
June 5, 2013
First published in The Big Issue (Australia) Edition 432, 10-23 May 2013 I wash the car about twice a year. There are better things to do on one’s weekend; in one’s life. But once or twice a year boredom or restlessness (one and the same thing, I suppose) rises to the surface and there I […]
March 6, 2014
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