I could live here ...

Chimney Cottage, Mount Wilson, NSW

Blackheath

It's a long way to go to buy a tea pot but what can one say? Here it was that the teapot of a man's dreams was located in a decent little cafe just off the Great Western Highway.

Spike seemed less than immediately impressed ... noting only that it was brown - not one of the world's sexiest colours. William James "dark chocolate" actually. So what if I could have bought the same damn pot for less than half the price in Victoria's basement in Sydney's QVB?

Finding it, so unexpectedly, was half the fun. We also stumbled over the Blue Mountains branch of Gleebooks (where I bought an anotated Pride And Prejudice for an essay that's coming up and Toni Morrison's Beloved) and found some decent Stilton in one of the local delis. There are many worse places to spend an autumn afternoon. Blackheath seemed like a decent little town, although it does snow up here from time to time so one would really, really want to live here to live here. Worth a vist, any day.
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Chimney cottage fire

We've waited a year for this. Warm.



Chimney cottage, Mount Wilson, New South Wales

Happy Birthday Spike

We had a delightful evening at Bacar, the surprisingly good restaurant of the Pullman Hotel at Homebush. The birthday girl, her mum and dad, Jon and Rosi, Amelia and John plus me. Sarah and Derrin had to work late so missed out on completing an eclectic bunch. We enjoyed ourselves. The location leaves a lot to be desired ... the vast desert that is Sydney Olympic Park after dark, nine years after the five-ring circus has moved on, did not inspire confidence. But the food was excellent (the chef used to ply his trade at Pier, which ought to be commendation enough). Lovely evening, which Spike seemed to enjoy. That's the point, of course. That may really be Amelia's John offering the wine. It was lovely to see Ms Starr again for the first time in two months (thanks to the dumb ass disciplinary investigation at work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
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Wuthering Heights

My English literature class took on Wuthering Heights this evening. I read it for the first time over the weekend. I was surprised to discover that it was my first reading. I had been sure that I'd read the novel years ago; at school or in my first (failed) stint as an English literature undergraduate more than thirty years ago at Stirling University. But it seems I'm wrong. The further into the story I delved the less and less familiar the text seemed. By about the end of chapter three I realised I had never read the work before. How can a man like me, who professes to know and like literature, reach fifty-two years of age and not have read Emily Bronte's finest?

It is a splendid work. The anti-matter version of Pride And Prejudice. It is real and surreal, good and evil, dream and nightmare, natural and supernatural, alive and dead. It's imperfectly crafted and immature in many places but what should one expect of a novel written by an author who died aged thirty? It's one of a kind, of course. But what a one: a turning point in literary history to which every horror movie ever made owes an enormous debt.

Kate, of course: barking but irresistible.

Unpacking boxes

We're in that odd place, that mildly unsettling period of settling-in, of re-arranging the flat now that much of Spike's gear has arrived: an industrial sewing machine (with an oil sump, no less); tray upon tray of glass rods of every conceivable colour; a pancake pan, compact discs, books and all the rest. As we re-order our belongings Spike has started to rummage through some of the boxes I brought with me from Scotland ... almost 10 years ago! Some of what's been sitting in cardboard for a decade has gone straight in the bin. Other material surfaces, which I'll hang on to; mildly surprising as one recollects it.

Opening a box in which a 1990's sound system has been harbouring since emigrating, Spike found bundles of old bills (unopened) and sheet after sheet of poetry I had written, all stuffed around the tape deck and CD-player. They come from my time living in Dulwich Hill, where I went to live after Susi and I split up the first time. Hurriedly packed, I imagine, as we relocated to this apartment (nearly five years ago now) my poetic gems have been in hiding ever since.

I came upon these two poems this morning, sitting together on one of the crumpled sheets of paper. T S Eliot, they are not but I've written worse (and will do so again).

Some Might Call This Folly

We may lose ourselves in silence
made up of nothing
but vanity's insane pre=occupation
with figments;
slivers of imagination
laboured much too hard
in reckless pursuit
of fantastic might have beens
we create from nothing
but our wishful thinking,

our insatiable appetite,
which some might call our folly,
some delusion.

But dreamers never give up dreaming
nor do our foolish hearts contented lie.

The lease of life

Sitting in this rented house
late at night,
well past the witching hour;

home seems distant now,
.........so very far away.

Dwelling in that other country,
I cannot recognise
the lodger I've become

and I have absolutely no idea
to whom the rent is due.

Does this mean I have eclectic tastes?

Or is simply that I'm having a lazy Saturday at home, sheltering from the rain and wind? Reading Wuthering Heights, listening to Kila's Mind The Gap and eating Spike's rhubarb crumble.

Chai Latte

When did chai latte enter my life as a favourite thing? Who invented the idea, I wonder?

Spike and I met Sharon at Sappho Books on Glebe Point Road. We sat in the cafe at the rear of the building, in the section where second-hand science fiction and fantasy paperback novels are stacked from floor to ceiling. Sharon and Spike drank coffee of various types. I drank Chai Latte, my currently favourite hot beverage. We roamed inattentively over the weird and wonderful landscapes lurking behind the gloriously coloured, sometimes ridiculous, covers before us.

There is a lot of Brian Herbert on those shelves, which should surprise no one really; the Dune trilogy was losing its way by the middle of the second book, while Frank was still with us. It became simply silly when the son took over. Money for old rope, if you ask me. Stephen Donaldson too. It seems we may have become bored with Thomas Covenant who, when I first heard mention of him (in 1980 or thereabouts during a meeting with that National Organisation Of Labour Students national organiser, the reptile John Dennis) seemed like an interesting charcter. Spike bought five novels, most of which (I think) fit somewhere in the many and varied series of multi-volume tales of other worlds in galaxies far away, a long time ago. I looked for Wuthering Heights and The Monkey's Mask but neither were available. We bought them next door in Glebe Books, new of course.

Now I think of it, it was Halimah who introduced me to Chai when we worked together for the Physical Disability Council of NSW. She was mildly astonished that I'd never heard of the drink so she took our tea pot from the office kitchen and walked two blocks from the St Helen's Community Centre to a cafe noted for decent Chai. Upon her return, Halimah and I sat on the lawn drinking Chai in the sun like refugees from the days of the Raj.
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Discovering our inner New Zillunder

New Zealand featured strongly in last night's celebrations of Lynne Hancock's birthday ... born, as she was, fifty years earlier in Auckland ... living there now, as she and Barbel do (albeit temporarily).

"How to speak New Zillund" was distributed last night to great amusement. I particularly like:

F is for Fush - sea creatures; and

O is for One doze - a pane of glass in a wall.

Happy birthday Lynne

Lynne Hancock's 50th birthday party: a great success for all involved, especially Lynne (which is, I guess, the point). Spike did a great job creating an autumnal scroll bearing the words of my ode and Spike's leaves. I read out the poem to Lynne; in front of the assembled birthday masses. Only later did it strike me that this may have been the first occasion (outside a NSW Writers Centre poetry group meeting or one of the weekend workshops I've attended) that I've read one of my poems in public. It went down well-enough. People seemed to like it. Lynne did, which certainly was the point.

The harmonica playing was less than totally impressive. I lost the plot when people joined in, singing along to Stevie Wonder's I just called to say I love you. Spike observed later that their singing along did mean (at least) that the party goers recognised what I was attempting to play.

Lovely evening.

Macbeth

Finished my university preparation course essay this way:

Macbeth, clearest in his mind in moments of action, ultimately recognises that his fate is sealed and that his folly is to end life as the weird sisters foretold. His final words show him to be resigned to that fate and damnably unrepentant when, as he faces certain death at the hands of MacDuff, he defiantly calls out:

I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'

Heroic to the end but tragically flawed, Macbeth pays the ultimate price for his crimes.

I don't imagine I'm the first to draw such a conclusion but it's done. And that's the point.

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Star Trek

It's good to look at, the main characters are lovingly re-imagined (Kirk's not Kirk and Scottie is something else entirely but they're all engaging). The story is weak. Nero is anything but an existential threat. So So, as a movie, I suppose but a decent summer blockbuster.

Sequencing

Bring out tomorrow's dead
and dying

and brace those not yet ready
for the shocking

news our DNA delivers

every day

to resurrect life's truth,
its animal

instinct,
renewed

if not reborn
through dissolution

and decay.
All things must pass.

In that dread thought
sits hope

and there we find
our future

waiting to be born
in life

not yet run rampant
through the mystery

and we wonder
at the touch of morning's sun

on a dew drop,
poised

in the tall grass
waving in a summer's breeze.

We bought a Holly Grace to celebrate ...

Holly Grace glass