Thursday, December 8, 2005heat, rage, smoothies... and the US soccer coach is going downIt's been stinking hot in Sydney and the city's gone to hell in a hand basket. There's more horns blasting than at the world cup grand-final, every imaginable charity is out pushing plastic buckets under everyone's nose, and people, with pretentious shopping bags, are walking over the top of each... Sign in to see full entry.Monday, December 5, 2005a sad suburban collapse into cafe cultureThis morning, as I was walking down to the beach bus stop, I noticed that the 37 year old local hardware shop is closing down. It's being replaced by yet another cafe. It struck me as a sad turn of events in this beach suburb of Sydney. The entire main street is now entirely given over to cafes and... Sign in to see full entry.Saturday, December 3, 2005a walk on the beachEverytime I catch the train down the south coast to Thirroul, I inevitably end up at a cafe that's run with a charmingly variable degree of incompetence. I don't return to the cafe despite the incompetence. I suspect that somewhere in my murmuring subconscious I decide to return to the cafe because... Sign in to see full entry.Friday, December 2, 2005steal the bait off the hook and to hell with fishermenSymphonies and other such musical matters seem to be on my mind of late. What makes a symphony so powerfully gripping? I think it's the way multiple auditory movements and emotional themes are held together, as one, in a continuous body of music. The moving complexity of the music elicits the... Sign in to see full entry.Tuesday, November 29, 2005the ambivalence that christmas can bringChristmas tends to be an interesting time for me. Last year I took one of my brothers to the Opera House for a performance of Handel's Messiah. It had been a while since I had heard the music but it was still strongly familiar. There were the stark lonely solos, the rising songs of hope and the... Sign in to see full entry.Monday, November 28, 2005the departure of a neighbourI arrived home from work today and found that a neighbour had moved out. She'd been packing for a few days. There were boxes out in the hall and a lot of clambering happening. Now it is all cleared away and it's the end of an era. She moved in just before I did so we've been neighbours for over five... Sign in to see full entry.Thursday, November 24, 2005a gourmet sandsculpture of epic proportionsThe Mayor of Sydney was criticised enormously last year because of the noticeable absence of Christmas Cheer around the streets of the city. She was portrayed as a kind of fringe-loving, mainstream-hating scrooge; a political hag with big hair and an even bigger chip on her shoulder; a leather-clad... Sign in to see full entry.a slight problem with my hard coverI was recently thrilled with the prospect of not only having some of my writing immortalised in the physical form of a book but a hard cover book. Let's face it paperbacks soon fade and are lost, like autumn leaves and bus tickets, but a hardcover book can live beyond your own span of life. Hard... Sign in to see full entry.Monday, November 21, 2005the sweet siren call of travel once againAfter an invigorating and intellectually stimulating day of assigning files to archive boxes, I came home and decided to make the most of the longer summer evening and go for a run. I've always loved running distance and, here, I have the good fortune of running along coastal paths that follow the... Sign in to see full entry.Saturday, November 19, 2005to the people who make writing blogs worthwhile: thankyou xxxAfter the last post I went for a long walk. I think it's the first time I signed off from Blogit feeling more wound up than when I entered. Anyway I went for a walk in Centennial Park. There were the usual number of horse-riders doing circuits, families having bbq's and a greater than usual number... Sign in to see full entry. |
