The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

Learning to surf. Clifton Beach, December 2010.

We’ve had a bit of a slow reading period over Christmas and the New Year (if you don’t count kids’ books). Actually, I enjoyed the kids’ books somewhat more than one of the novels I just finished.

For the record, the new Charlie and Lola book Henry and Ezra got for Christmas – Slightly Invisible – is a tour de force. It is an absolutely new and completely original book from the mind of Lauren Child. Without wanting to give too much away, Charlie and his gravelly-voiced East Ender chum Marv are in search of strange and tricky creatures. Of course, they would prefer to do this without little sister Lola bothering and interrupting. Luckily, Lola knows exactly how to catch strange and tricky creatures and enlists a little bit of help from her (slightly) invisible friend, Soren Lorensen, and the pulsating narrative goes from here….

Equal parts Dostoyevsky and Evelyn Waugh, the forever delightful Charlie and Lola explore the blurred boundaries that exist between siblings. Highly recommended!

Second is Luck, by Gert Hofmann. This one came with good reviews, but I must say that it really just didn't do it for me. A child's-eye view of a family in decline is usually meaty subject matter with potential, but when your major characters fail to engender any kind of sympathy, and while the young narrator could (should?) be the source of this sympathy, in this book he seemed merely a cipher to the other (frustrating and annoying) people in his life. Maybe it might work for you, but I can’t recommend it in any good conscience.

However, much was redeemed by a cracking little book by another German, Uwe Timm. The book is The Invention of Curried Sausage, and it’s a beautiful mediation on women, men, circumstances, knitting and curried sausage.

It’s a lovely capture of a specific time and place, and reflection on what are really universal human relations. As the title indicates, at its heart is the search for the inventor of the Currywurst, a popular German fast-food consisting of hot pork sausage (cut into slices and seasoned with curry sauce (regularly consisting of tomato paste blended with curry) and generous amounts of curry powder,

As interesting as the mystery behind the sausage is though, for a short novel the arch is grand in scope: subtle resistance in a totalitarian state, post-war economics, gender relations in wartime, age and beauty, trust and desire, personal moments stolen during times of profound change.

It’s well worth the effort, and I couldn’t recommend it more highly. It won’t take too long to get through either.

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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