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The people across the road are drunk and two of them are planning to have sex together tonight for the first time. That’s at this stage, it’s not even dark yet, we’ve still got the Fight that Blows Up Out of Nowhere and Falling Asleep in the Pizza up our sleeves. Their voices carry and […]

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Finally my bike! There have been various substitute treadlies in between but my own blue bike, bought in Alice Springs a decade back, is now out of storage and dusted and greased and today for the first time we hit the black road. Wahoo! The freedom and terror. Raced down the tumult of traffic to […]

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I just feel so ruddy fortunate to have a decent academic education. It obliges me to be of service in the world, even as I benefit from the knowledge of people whose education differs from mine. I went off to Berlin for two years, leaving my old farm ute parked in the street. When I […]

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In the back of my ute is so much soil and sundry scraps of leaves and dirt that I just found, in the seams of the rusted steel, a tiny plant growing. I plan to leave it and see what becomes of it. Maybe I can drag a fruiting tree behind me round the town. […]

Tonight I saw a man pull over in his shiny red car – more small round bubble than lippy convertible – leave the car running in the empty lane of traffic, as Berliners sometimes do, climb out and stroll over to a tree I was approaching on my walk – a sidewalk tree outside a […]