I saw a couple come into the cafe out of the sun, I have seen them before. One woman has a sour aspect and it is difficult to get her to return a smile. Her smile, when it comes, has a difficult, painful quality as though vouchsafing it hurts her in some way. The other […]
Christmas edition of the local paper, West Germany. Four pages of articles welcoming the first couple of hundred asylum seekers into the area. Photos of Syrian and Pakistani families lugging their suitcases off the bus and of all the local dignitaries who turned out to smilingly shake their hands and welcome them; photos of the […]
One of the world’s sweetest men has been reading me snippets from the local paper. There is a photo of an activist dressed as Santa Claus holding up a sign towards unmoved Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint Bethlehem which says, “Jesus brought us one message: peace, freedom, and justice.” In the section International News comes […]
No Murdoch press and the sun has come out! How much fresher can Germany get. We have eaten a breakfast of thinly sliced things rolled on platters served with other, slightly more thickly sliced dark and chewy breads. My companion sinks into his first cup of filter coffee with condensed milk, “Aaahhh.” The familiar is […]
We tried out a new coffee house, on our bicycles. Actually it was an old cafe, one of Brisbane’s earliest, in a dingy nook at the entrance to the gold-crusted cinemas on Queen Street. However it’s been done up like an ageing aunt, trussed in striped golden paper and with those little dinky tables too […]