Good bread

Multi grain bread, 750 g by Luneburger German Bakery Sydney Australia

You know, there are worse ways to end a day than this: firstly, you find a parking spot on Pitt Street without driving round the block for what seems like days. The lift down to Town Hall Station is working, as is the lift in the Galleries Victoria (who chooses these names?). Mind you it only seems to want to go up to the second floor, not down from it but that's okay because I'm in search of books at Kinokuniya after which I take the goods lift back to the basement.

The book store was quiet, almost tranquil although I doubt that this Japanese-owned megastore ever attains that Zen like state. I bought Petals Of Blood by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and A World Of Difference: an anthology of short stories from five continents (which is part of my strategy to win the Ulrick literature prize in 2009 ... not!).

Back underground I visited the wunderbar German bakery where a delightful young woman with an accent just like that of Jamie Lee Cutis in Trading Places sliced the loaf I bought, placed my cheese roll delicately in the paper bag with terrifically efficient tongs then added a blueberry strudel (for free because ... but never finished her sentence). It truly is great bread and who would have expected to find it there in the subway passage leading to a railway station.

On the way home I stopped off at the new mega-bottle-shop to buy a Shiraz for Michael Small to say thanks for binding Amelia's play in a book called S S Heliotrope. The guys in the bottle shop must love customers like me. I don't drink alcohol (although I had a mouth-full ... literally but don't ask ... of vintage champagne with the New Year's fireworks up a hill near Windsor). So I asked for a bottle of decent Shiraz because that's what Michael would like.

To drink immediately or lay down for a while, the shop assistant inquired?

Need one ask?

So ... for imbibing tomorrow ... he suggested St Hallet, a Blackwell Shiraz 2007 from the Barossa Valley in South Australia. It could be turpentine for all I know but I doubt it. I hope Michael enjoys it, although I doubt his pleasure will come even one hundredth of the way towards the fun I had writing the play for Millie (see the almost unbelievable but, in a way, wonderful night of 14th November when the peerless Lettie Lariot was born).

Anyway ... here ends the prosiac tale of the simple pleasures of an ordinary man. Happy but tired and ready for his bed.
..

First Monday back at work ...

... and one thinks of T S Eliot's Preludes which (according to this page on the web) "deals with spiritually exhausted people who exist in the impersonal, tawdry modern city. "Preludes" impressionistically captures the impoverished spiritual lives of those living in a lonely, sordid, decadent culture."

It's not really how I feel but it fits parts of my day somehow. Go figure.

PRELUDES

I

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimneypots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

II

The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades
That times resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

III

You tossed a blanket from the bed
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

We're not in Scotland, Toto

Pictures, including the Dooralong thistle, by Spike Deane

Not quite The Sound Of Music

The photo arrived today in an e.mail from Scotland, sent by John Murray (older brother of my great childhood friend Gordon who is standing next to me in the photo. He's wearing a blue sports shirt with a white trimmed neck line). It all took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Who is that dorky 14 year old with the tea cosy on his head standing just in front of the cross? Ooops ... it's me.

My older brother is there, sitting fourth from the right (as one looks at the photo). Years later, the guy sitting next to him killed himself.

We were younger then. Our world was simpler; a big adventure. Still is.

fear not

take me no more to the dead places
where fools are doomed to dwell
in fearful dreams we vaguely recollect

ghosts in less than fertile imaginings
who, like all figments, hover and lurk
in the crowded corridors of tired lives

possessed of little meaning, even less
of purpose, except our daily grind
of coffee beans and ancient axes both

once sharp enough, we used to think,
to wake us from this heavy slumber;
men too terrified of dreams and doubts.
.

The Day The Earth Had A Quiet Nap After All The Festivities ...

Keanu Reeves isn't as bad as some people say. i quite liked him in this nonsense but it is the dullest, deadliest bore you could imagine. A bit like the original in that sense, which is hugely over-rated.

Happy New Year