A Foreign Secretary is forever poised between the cliché and the indiscretion.

Like Scott Amundsen of the Antarctic, this little bloke will not let something as insignificant a mountain of snow stop him.

Godt arbeid Ezra.

Hold den opp!

At his step everything seems to find inside itself a certain form of calm.

Waiting for the sun. Sullivans Cove, May 2010.

One of the The only thing that I miss about my old job is the walk from the bus stop in the morning. Although you can still see the river from New Town, it’s not quite the same as being able to see that morning sun over the water, smell the salt in the air etc etc…

Treat yourself to a poem.

Behind, perhaps, let the sea blow…, Carlos Barbarito

Behind, perhaps, let the sea blow.
Let some word blow
outside every destination of slime, rust.
Perhaps ointments from Avicenna,
forests of embraces,
crops, swarms, humid implications.
Or, perhaps, the same.
It sits up. It gets dressed. It goes.
The grass stands up again.
At his step everything seems to find
inside itself a certain form of calm.
It can't be a great distance
- he thought.

A husband without faults is a dangerous observer.

Have you seen that film Coolangatta Gold?

Henry hasn’t, thank God…

I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.

Hungry? Bellerive Wharf, Bellerive. September 2010.

Book Club Friday again already. I finished two books this week, one Vietnamese and the other Swedish (although very much Finnish is tone and content).

The first was Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War. Apparently quite popular in Vietnam enough to be banned – this one is a mediation through the Vietnamese War (the second one) from the perspective of a North Vietnamese volunteer. Think of it as a shorter, more disjointed Vietnamese version of The Thin Red Line.

Now, I am not sure if it is a poor translation, or if the Vietnamese lyrical style simply doesn’t translate well into English, but this one was a little disappointing for me. The overarching story was remarkable, and many of the vignettes themselves were compelling and nicely drawn, but the stilted, exaggerated and overly florid description does wear you down after a while.

I am not sure that the overly elaborate and shifting narrative also helped. While I appreciate an unreliable narrator as much as the next guy, the delicate balance of an unreliable narrator and omniscient overarching structure to me is almost certainly doomed. That said, it is well worth the effort.

The second – Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi – is a lovely little coming of age story set in the Finnish-speaking far north of Sweden. Set through the sixties, it traces the adolescence of a pair of friends and reflects on the world around them.

This is an exceptionally beautiful, poignant, often very funny novel about growing up in a remote area and feeling disconnected from the main. You can tell that the author is a poet, as each chapter really can stand alone as culturally fertile vignettes of what it is to be a young bloke growing up.

One of the marks of first-class writing is how these snippets of childhood are both intensely personal and specific – the notion of manliness in Finnish culture, the sauna and the family unit etc – and universal – the first alcoholic drink, the first kiss etc.

It really is a lovely little book. I’ve read that like Sorrows of War it was a real smash hit in its homeland, and I can see why. Recognition must go to Laurie Thompson too, as the translation is excellent.

I couldn’t recommend this one more highly. Get out there and read it!

The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.

Not quite the parting of the Red Sea, but Ez manages to get the clouds apart at Risdon Brook Dam for a few minutes...

It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured.

Young people today! The corner of New Town Road and St Johns Avenue, September 2010.

Theme Thursday yet again, and my, how appropriate is the theme today! Yes people, we are gripped by ENNUI. Well may you scoff at the notion of being engrossed in your own listlessness, but modern life is just like that sometimes.

Look at the graffiti above. Consider the written expression. Are the authors likely to be dynamic and enthusiastic members of their local community? They can’t spell “sucks” and they forsake the Australian “arse” for the bastardised American “ass”. If that does not tell you something about the state of their melancholy, nothing will!

Taken as a whole, the message is unclear.

PiGS SUX COCK ASS

Now, I could be generous and presume that our wanton vandals are actually intrepid young veterinary students positing a revolutionary new procedure for our porcine friends. Indeed, we might postulate that PiGS SUX [meaning suxamethonium chloride] COCK ASS refers to some kind of surgical procedure involving donkeys, roosters and large amounts of a drug that induces muscle relaxation and short-term paralysis.

Knowing that pigs organs have great potential for use in humans, we might propose another explanation. Perhaps the COCK does not refer at all to roosters. I am told by sources that the word COCK in some contexts is employed as a colloquial term for the male sexual organ. If we accept this hypothesis, then perhaps, just perhaps, the suxamethonium chloride is necessary to transplant the donkey penis onto the pig, with the eventual goal of liberating men from the terrors of an undernourished penis. A quick scan of my spam mailbox tells me that there might just be a market for it!

However, am reticent to believe this, as although the prospect of harnessing the power of the donkey phallus would have its backers, the ethics approval for this kind of experiment would be very difficult to achieve. Especially in Tasmania, where the donkey has a wide range of civil liberties enshrined in law,

No, the simplest explanation is probably correct: ENNUI. Boredom and disenchantment. A poor grasp of syntax and sentence structure. Some kind of crude, poorly spelled and anatomically impossible sexual allusion involving the long hand of the law.

Sigh.

[See, the problem with ENNUI is that you really can't be FENCEd in once it takes hold...]

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

I asked Henry what was out there.

His reply?

The World!

I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.

History can be found anywhere. Elizabeth Street, Hobart. September 2010.

Here you can see a ye olde time billboard (e?), advertising a long-since departed service station in Elizabeth Street, right smack bang in the middle of town. These days, you will struggle to find a service station anywhere that close to the CBD, they’ve all been bought up and converted into alcohol outlets (I kid you not).

One day, I wonder what people will make of what we have done to our city.

The learned man knows that he is ignorant.

Ezra can now say, “I love you”.

It’s quite the skill to have when you still require a lot done for you.

Ads that I like: # 117

In 1922, a group of eminent French scientists definitively established the causal factors behind the mystery that is marriage.

It appears that – despite a multitude of philosophers, artists, alchemists, poets and cabinetmakers probing over centuries – women had known the secret all along!

It seems that marriages “are made in the heaven of women's [sic] minds and hearts.”

As with most hard science, I am not sure that I fully grasp the A to B. I know that it has something with the bourgeoisie. I know that it has something to do with flushed cheeks. I presume that it relates to triggering that part of the male brain that reacts to a post-orgasmic cutaneous blood circulation in the buccae.

The advertisement does not fully explain that part.

Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.

The house generally wins. Elizabeth Street, Hobart. September 2010.

I am not a gambling man. I am more a gambolling man. Punting is a game for mugs, and there does not seem a shortage of mug punters out there. There used to be a lively (if not quite happening) music scene in Hobart. Now we have poker machines.

Now I understand that not everyone wants to hear another version of Keh Sanh played at the wrong tempo and sung by a guy with less gravel in his voice than Nana Mouskouri, but it is surely better than the sound of some poor down and out pissing away his kid’s new pair of shoes in the hope of three pairs of cherries.

I confess that I have no experiential knowledge of electronic gaming. As I said at the top, it is a mug’s game and I may be many things – charming, handsome, sophisticated, romantic, modest – but I am not a mug. So I turn to you, the global village, and ask what is so fun about poker machines?

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

Cranky Hanky slowly carves his way through the scrub to the wonders of Seven Mile Beach…

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.

People heading home. Collins Street as seen from Campbell Street, Hobart. September 2010.

In a rush so here's 20 questions!

Were you born early, late or right on time? You would have to ask my mother about that.

Chicken pox? Twice! Aged five and again aged 14. Good times…

Allergic to bees? No. I have been stung and while it hurt, it went away reasonable quickly.

How about strawberries? No. I can eat ‘em all day.

Hereditary illness? Not yet, although there are a few predispositions there.

Have you ever been in a car accident? Nothing important. We went through a fence once. That was funny.

How much do you smoke? Smoking is for losers.

How much do you drink? The odd cider now and then.

Is your cholesterol normal? Who knows?!? One hopes…

Have you ever run a marathon? Christ no. No good for the knees. And feet. And legs. And back. And heart.

How many x-ray's have you had (not including dentist)? A few. Couldn’t tell you.

Do you watch what you eat? I try and practice balance, but I don’t record the ins and outs in detail. Everything in moderation.

When was the last time you worked out? Every day is a workout with two little blokes on the go.

What is your ideal weight? I dunno. 86.7 kgs?

Current? Around 92 kgs.

How old was the oldest living relative in your immediate family? Huh? You’d have to have asked them.

Veggies or Fruit? Probably fruit, but I have plenty of room in my life for veg too.

Low-carb or High-carb? I like my carbs.

How do you want to die? Quietly and quickly. Preferably asleep.

Every man is his own hell.

Sand, sun and even a snippet of Mount Wellington. Ez weighs up his options at Bellerive Beach.

I believe that he opted to collapse and cry…

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

The World's smallest sand dune. Clifton Beach, September 2010.

Sunday Top Five? Meh.

My Top Five Excuses For Not Doing A Sunday Top Five!

• I have a headache.


• I can't be bothered.


• A Great White Shark ate my notes.


• Sunday is the Lord's day, I shall not blaspheme his name.


• The pretzels are making me thirsty.