This will hurt me...

Clock. G.P.O. Building, Elizabeth Street, Hobart. July 2012. Theme Thursday already and I am yet again filled with empty PROMISES. I PROMISE to make sure that I remember Theme Thursday. I PROMISE to try harder. I PROMISE to be nice. I PROMISE to do my best. I PROMISE to stop I PROMISing.

Theme Thursday yet again, and today the theme is LIMO . One assumes that we are to talk about a limousine , that is, a luxury sedan with a lengthened wheelbase and usually driven by a chauffeur. The cocaine being snorted off a high price call girl's breasts is an optional extra. I think that I am safe to assume that these three are most definitely not waiting for a LIMO. The stop would indicate that the Metro X-press (how hip) to Glenorchy is more likely. As my sloth in getting this post up might indicate, I've been busy, so I've little time to waste! The first thing I think about when I hear the word "LIMO" is wanker a story shared by a world weary colleague who mused on the differences between an American and an Australian , and yes, there is a LIMO involved. In many ways, Australians and Americans are alike. Former English colonies. "New World" rather than "Old Europe". Outposts in a rich an bountiful, yet dangerous and foreboding, land....

Here is the view up Elizabeth Street towards the bus mall on a brisk winter's afternoon. There is something inherently melancholy about the kind of afternoon light that can be found in winter. I like it, but then again, I’ve been known to stroll along that road on occasion. I suppose that perhaps it isn’t the light that’s melancholy though. Perhaps the problem is a little closer to home. If only there was some kind of standardised measure of melancholy to help. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale is of no use to me, and Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale is a joke. That said, anything to do with Warwick Capper is a absurd as a rule. [See what I did there?] I re-took Dr George W. Crane’s Marital Rating Scale (and scored rather excellently , I might add) but that was no assistance! In a rut? Tick . Bored? Tick . Listless? Tick . Lacking enthusiasm? Tick . Frustrated? Tick . Cynical and contemptuous to others? Tick . Irritable and curt to wife and children? Tick t...

From a few weeks back, when it snowed. I think this one is very "1970s Yugoslavia". Here's a poem pilfered from an overheard 'conversation' in the bus mall. Oh, the humanity! Thirteen years old. Grossly obese. "I fucken chundered EVERYWHERE " A moment, she reflected. "It was fucken AWESOME ." An evolutionary milestone.

Here you can see a sad old bugger waiting for the five fifteen to Claremont. There was once a time when men were men , women were women and people were people . Dogs were dogs, cats were cats and rats were vermin and rules were rules . Citizens respected authority, children were seen and not heard , little boys were little boys , little girls were little girls and they hated each other for it. People did what they were told and everybody was happy , (or at least pretended to be for the sake of their neighbours). There was no sex , no drugs and music was kept at a sensible level. Women dressed smartly , respected themselves and had pride in their appearence. Men kept their hair short, their nails trimmed and never cursed in the street. Ladies were ladies and were thus treated like ladies and genlemen were well-mannered and the rest knew their place and didn’t cause any trouble . By Christ it was horrible .

Continuing along the theme of black and white, and buildings in Hobart, here is a photograph that I took in the Elizabeth Street Bus Mall this morning. I am not sure how I feel about it. I think that I like it, but it seems a bit solemn and sombre. I think that this is because of the book that I had just finished on the way in had left me in that frame of mind. The book is Casualty Figures: How Five Men Survived the First World War , by Michele Barrett. The book is not about the millions who died in the First World War; but rather it explores the experiences of countless numbers of men who lived as ‘long-term casualties’. That is, not those of profound physical trauma, but of the desolate trauma of the slaughter that they managed to escape alive. To do this, Barrett explores the lives of five ordinary personnel who endured war, how they dealt with its horrors, both during and long after the war's end. Through this, she attempts to shed light on the nature of the psychological dama...