Tag Archives: Middle Age

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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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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It’s not about the baggie

It seems certain that Andrew Chan and Myu Sukumaran will be executed over the next few days, and there’s no question that executing them is a greater crime than importing all the heroin in the entire golden triangle. It’s a simple … 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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YOU WAIT, TIME PASSES.

Sometime in the mid eighties my Dad acquired a Commodore 64 and a bag of tapes with games on them. He set it up in the sleep out and connected it up to an enormous CRT television. It had a … Continue reading

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faith no more

Some years ago I was a casual academic. I taught classes and marked essays. It was great fun. For a fellow as quiet as me, the enforced opportunity to speak about the stuff that I knew was tremendously rewarding. I … Continue reading

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not hungry anymore

It’s twenty years or thereabouts since I moved from the country to my Nanna’s fibro by the sea, ninety minutes by train from the city. I have been reflecting recently on how keen I was back then, how desperate to … Continue reading

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glad animal action

I’m sometimes asked why cricket caught my imagination so strongly when I was a kid. I usually answer that it was something to do with masculinity and those magnificent moustaches that early eighties Australian test players sported, especially fast bowlers. … 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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onward, ever onward

Now I’m back from Nepal and ensconced in the usual things the temptation is to start to dream afresh, to find a new escape tunnel. But I’m not really escaping in any meaningful sense, just looking out the window and that … Continue reading

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