Tag Archives: Fatherhood

the heist

It’s Sunday morning and the sky is clear. The football season is over and the cricket hasn’t started. I have no deeds to do and no promises to keep. I mooch around the house for a bit. I consider getting … Continue reading

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haunts and haunting

The Chook and I have returned from our sojourn in the west. It was a good long drive, over 2000 kilometres in all. We headed off north through the city, up the central coast, taking a left up the Hunter … Continue reading

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sixteen kinds of hurt

When my Dad was mad he’d threaten me with sixteen kinds of hurt. There was the clip over the ear; the smack on the chops; the belt across my buttocks; the gut punch; the double fisted shirt grab; the single … Continue reading

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heaven knows

The day starts with Sex Machine. James Brown shouting his chorus to my sleeping children (Get up! get on up/Get up! get on up) and I feel Bootsy’s deep bass begin the snaking energy transfer from the cold airs to … Continue reading

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way out west

It was a long drive, ten hours or so, undertaken in the heat of mid-February. Vinyl seats in the P76, dog at my feet, the handmade yellow trailer behind. It was the beginning of our long migration, our time of … Continue reading

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a sense of north

I’ve been to a couple of gigs lately, Don Walker and Bruce Springsteen. Both were supporting new albums that no-one is really that fussed about. Bruce played in front of one hundred thousand or so, and charged a couple of … Continue reading

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Allan Moffat

Some weeks ago I found myself at woollies looking at an aluminium rendering of my Father’s hero packaged with chocolate fudge. There he was, Allan Moffat, with forty eight cubes of something related to chocolatey-ness. I stared the first time … Continue reading

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Below Stairs

“all my life in domestic service I’ve found that employers were always greatly concerned with your moral welfare. They couldn’t have cared less about your physical welfare; so long as you were able to do the work, it didn’t matter in the least to them whether … Continue reading

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don’t you think the joker laughs at you?

I’ve tried to quit smoking about six hundred times and I fail. I fail to actually stop.  At precisely the same time I’m saying I don’t want to do this anymore I am sucking on a cancer stick and loving … Continue reading

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what you fear the most could meet you halfway

There’s a conversation that I find myself having with myself in all sorts of odd places (in a corridor, in the breakfast cereal bit of the supermarket, on the toilet, on the bench press, in the bus queue) about what … Continue reading

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