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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 ...

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...

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!