Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

Sunday was a nice, clear, cold winter's day. At the moment, I will take what I can get. Here is the view south down the Derwent estuary.

I'm laid up in bed with whatever it was that has been troubling Henry. Symptoms include a hacking cough, chest pain, an upset stomach, and a general lethargy akin to being stuck at work late. I do believe that today will be the first time ever that I actually taken a sick day. I expect that admission to see me stripped of my title of "Australian", where the Great Australian Sickie is revered more than any frivolous claim to, I dunno, curing cancer.

Comments

Sue said…

Oooohhhhhh...poor boy! Hope you are feeling better soon.
Usually when I take a sickie I actually get sick not long after. It's Karma!

30 June 2009 at 09:58

Roddy said…

There is sick and there is sick. The great Aussie sickie is when your company gives you x number of sick days and so you don't loose them you of course take them. As Sue said as soon as you run out of sickies you actually get sick. As I say, I have never had a sick day in thirty nine years, although I have had enough sickness. I work through it. I have however been in hospital on a number of occasions.

30 June 2009 at 10:21

yamini said…

Hi Kris,
Hope u are recovered by the time u read this.
How is Henry and Ezra and Jen?

We got our first monsoon showers yesterday evening here in Delhi, so, the weather is warm and cool by turns, which means we also have to take care not to catch flu that is quite common around this time of the year.

You can ask Henry and Ezra to read u stories in bed, that will definitely make u feel better.

30 June 2009 at 15:05

Sue said…

Well, Roddy...did you get a medal? If truth be known...my first 39 years were one big 'sick day'...if you know what I mean!! hehehe

30 June 2009 at 21:44

Kris McCracken said…

Sue, better now.

7 July 2009 at 08:36

Kris McCracken said…

Roddy, bludger.

7 July 2009 at 08:36

Kris McCracken said…

Yamini, I could do with a monsoon.

7 July 2009 at 08:36

Kris McCracken said…

Sue, did you bring a note?

7 July 2009 at 08:37

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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