Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

Mucking out the mess at The Ball and Chain on a Monday morning. May, 2010.

Their cleaning out the front steps of the restaurant and I have again returned to a meme to see me through the day; this time, a bibliographic theme...

Do you snack while reading?
I do read outside while eating on my lunch break. I don't eat nibblies while reading at other times, however.

What is your favourite drink while reading?
Coffee. Or orange juice.

Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I have been known to mark pertinent points in non-fiction books that I own, but rarely fiction. I've been relying on the public library at the moment, so no messing with them!

How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book open flat?
Bookmarks of differing rectangular sizes.

Fiction, non-fiction or both?
For a long time I didn't read a lot of fiction. That has changed for the past three or so years. At the moment I'm reading maybe 90% fiction.

Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere?
The nature of my reading - bus stops, buses, breaks, walking from A to B, the dunny - means that I am happy to stop anywhere. I generally try and make it to some kind of 'break' in the text, however.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?
That sounds stupid. I am more a "tut tut" or "pfffft" man. I also groan.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?
I rarely have the opportunity. I generally note it down (in pencil or mentally) and look it up when I can later that day.

What are you currently reading?
I just started The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and some other short fiction by Alan Sillitoe.

What is the last book you bought?
Lately the only books I've been buying have been for Henry and Ezra. The last one was about 'life in a big city'. The last one for me was Culinaria Germany, a nifty combo of cookbook and social history.

Do you have a favourite time/place to read?
My preference has been in a comfortable place in the peace and quiet, so that rules out home.

Do you prefer series books or stand-alones?
Ummm, books.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?
Lots and lots. If a book is good, and I think that someone will like it, I'll recommend it.

How do you organize your books (by genre, title, author's last name, etc.)?
They're still all in boxes, where children can't get to them and wreck 'em!

Background noise or silence?
Ideally, silence. That said, I manage to cope with the late afternoon Risdon Vale express okay.

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...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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