This will hurt me...

The only way is up (baby). Alleyway off Criterion Street, Hobart CBD. May 2012. The premise and setting of Dalos György's The Circumcision had me expecting a wholly different book. Set in Budapest in early-1956 (that is, just before the Red Army crushed the nascent Hungarian revolution), one imagines that events will be woven into the novel. Instead, it remains a casual account of the life of a Jewish twelve year old in 1950s Hungary. You can't even say it is a coming of age tale, rather a slight series of set pieces with an interesting and some quirky characters. Mildly recommended.

The sixth-ugliest building in Sandy Bay. Marieville Esplanade, Sandy Bay. September 2011. So I have the flu. Bravery / foolhardiness compelled me to go to work yesterday (that and a meeting that I really didn't want to have to reconvene), and it was indeed a struggle. To give you an idea, try this on for size: work up a nice little temperature and then chair a meeting in the late-afternoon (with teleconference), within which you also have to do a fair whack of the talking, as you arranged the thing. After valiantly making my way through the meeting (relatively) unscathed, the voice completely gives up the ghost in the cab on the way back to the office. Thus I find myself 'resting' at home today. Kogel mogel all around! Have you ever tried to pull to rowdy children through the delicate art of mime?

Climbing climbing climbing climbing climbing climbing climbing climbing.

Here is a photographic tale of one young man, a beach, and his love for an icy pole. You will note that somewhere along the way, Ezra has ditched his shorts...

Here are a couple of snaps of handsome Henry getting his knees dirty down on Seven Mile Beach. I think that we were looking for sandworms. We had no plan of what to do with them if were to find them, however.

A rabbits eye view of things. St Johns Park, New Town. November 2010. Quiz time! To conquer the material world, human beings transformed themselves into disciplined purposive agents, and society into a bureaucratised and administered system. There is a unity of the 'autocratic' ego with the unity of instrumental reason and both, in association, impose an abstract, forced unification on the 'heterogeneous', the 'different', and 'the Other'. Psychologically, toward the inside, the autocratic ego represses the 'polymorphous perversity' of an individual's instinctual make-up to forge a unified self. Toward the social, the outside, the same 'ego' imposes a grid of instrumental reason that maps the diversity and particularity of external nature in order to control and manipulate it. The reification of external nature and the reification of internal nature, thus entail each other. What am I talking about here?

Things are looking up at the Theatre Royal. Campbell Street, Hobart. November 2010. Lists and numbers, numbers and lists. Off the top of my head, here is a four by four [4 X 4]: Four Movies I Could Watch Again and Again: The Thin Red Line Flying High (US title: Airplane ) The Outlaw Josey Wales Finding Nemo Four Authors I Enjoy: Ernest Hemingway Heinrich Böll Pat Barker Andrey Kurkov Four Places I Have Travelled To: London Berlin Prague Stanley Four of My Favourite Foods: Pizza Gulyás Hot chips Cheese!

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.

The corner of an old church (or was it a theatre)? Campbell Street, Hobart. September 2010. In the interests of brevity, here are thirty questions with one word responses! 1. Where is your cell mobile phone? Desk 2. Describe your boyfriend/girlfriend wife? Magnificent! 3. Your hair? Brown 4. Your mother? Franny 5. Your father? BAH! 6. Your favourite item? Hmmmm 7. Your dream last night? Sex 8. Your favourite drink? Juice 9. Your dream car? Automaton 10. The room you are in? Bright 11. Your ex? Who? 12. Your fear? Forgotten 13. What do you want to be in 10 years? Calm 14. Who did you hang out with last night? Missus 15. What you're not? Starry-eyed 16. The last thing you did? Type 17. What are you wearing? Corduroy 18. Your favourite book? Countless 19. The last thing you ate? Apple 20. Your life? Duty 21. Your mood? Intemperate 22. Your friends? Select 23. What are you thinking about right now? Thighs 24. Your car? None 25. What are you doing at the moment? Thinking 26. Your summ...

The lonely sponge. Seven Mile Beach, September, 2010. Theme Thursday again, and seemingly without REASON I have chosen the above photograph, taken on our visit on a wet and windy day last Sunday, to get out of the house and avoid killing each other commemorate Father’s Day. I say that I post without REASON, but as is the case each Theme Thursday, I can manufacture a REASON no trouble . You see, all (or at least, one of the things) REASON is “a statement presented in justification or explanation of a belief or action.” It can also refer to “ Logic , or a premise of an argument.” Thus my REASON – as in justification or logic – is that age old adage: because . Because on Theme Thursday I need to post something . Because for some REASON unbeknownst to me I have appeared to have locked myself into the twice-a-day ( three times on Tuesday) cycle that obsessive compulsive disorder prevents me from breaking. Therefore, you get a sponge on a beach from the south of Tasmania. You don’t n...

Bottom of the stairs looking up. Carruthers Building, St Johns Park, New Town. July 2010. Last Friday I was on the [second] bus on the way to work – the Glenorchy via New Town Road – when I found myself rapidly approaching the emotional climax of the book I was reading. For those that don’t know (and you would be forgiven for not knowing of it), The Middle Parts of Fortune by the little known and long dead Australian expat Frederic Manning. Men and war, war and men. That’s the plot. While this book is a record of experience on the Somme and Ancre fronts of World War One, there is far more waiting around than actual battle. Just like a real war. That said; if you know anything about the Somme, you know that there will be blood. Perhaps the most striking thing about the book is the voices. Manning served in the ranks, a gentleman amongst men. The dialogue strikes one as ‘true’, and it is as if in recording the conversations of ‘the ordinary soldier’, it seems at times as if one is heari...

Ezra, as seen by an unsuspecting freshly made fruit loaf.

You might be forgiven for thinking that Henry and Ezra are fiddling about with some cushions here, but you'd be wrong . They are, in fact, small islands. Small islands that one perches oneself upon in order to avoid the crocodiles . Or sharks . Or crabs . Or death adders .

Ezra re-enacts his birth experience with his mother. It's all part of the healing process. As part of the festivities, I give you the week of his birth ! [Start at the bottom and scroll up.]

I have a tendency to look up trees and see what I can find. This tree is in St David's Park. Have I found anything of note? Apologies for the brevity of late, but it's National Drug Strategy time of year, and I'm whirling like a dervish to get the bugger done.

Another two for one, this time from Clifton Beach. The little bloke loves crop circles, but we struggle to find farmers willing to let us loose in the paddock with little more than a thresher and some big ideas. Consequently, we get the compass out, and head down to the beach to harass the crabs.

Yesterday we were looking down, today we're looking up! Here is the sky as seen mid-afternoon on Clifton Beach. Like most Rorschach designs, I'm never very sure what these clouds are supposed to look like, so I shall go with my default answer that generally involves something sexual. "Two lovers in embrace." There you go. Diagnose that Hermann! Time for a top five. Yesterday, Henry managed to sweet talk the good folk on the Steenholdt's Organic Produce stall [the tastiest apple and pear producers in the known universe] out of a good eight or nine small Crofton apples, which prompts today's Top Five Apples That I Like To Eat ! 5: the little seen Catshead ; 4: the Pink Lady ; 3: the Ginger Gold ; 2: the Jonathon ; and, of course, 1: the beloved Granny Smith !

Look up in the sky down at Fern Glade, and you're bound to have the view obstructed by some kind of tree! Here is a selection of the kind of little beauties you might find. My apologies for the brevity, but work is rather hectic at the moment, and only bound to get worse.

Another day, another photo taken from below on of the corners of the Hydro building. Forgive my indulgence in such shots, after endless grey skies, that expanse of blue is a sight for sore eyes!

Here we are looking up at the Hydro building one morning last week. Christ I have been busy!