This will hurt me...

Short cuts. St Johns Park, New Town. June 2011. Breaking my streak of books that haven’t disappointed me (I was up to TEN) is the highly regarded sci-fi ‘classic’ Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch. I shall admit that perhaps I was not in the best frame of mind to tackle this one, but like many novels of its time (1968), I fear that it has not aged well. Set during a war that seemingly emerged from the Vietnam War, this altered history posits a United States as having taken a decidedly authoritarian turn. The narrative is the journal of a poet of some renown, the lapsed Catholic Louis Sacchetti who has been sent to a secret military installation as punishment for his conscientious objecting. This experimental camp sees military prisoners are injected with a form of syphilis that is intended to make them geniuses and thus harness their genius for the good of the state. Of course, things are never that simple. Don’t be fooled by the sci-fi tag, the book is crammed with a multitude o...

You heard! St Johns Park, New Town. June 2011. Week two into the new job, and I'm slowly picking up reading time. One really top book this week, Tom Keneally's Gossip from the Forest , a novel which reconstructs the minutia of the negotiations surrounding the declaration of an Armistice at the end of World War I. Now don’t let that concept fool you, as this is an engaging and impressive work. Kenneally paints vivid portraits of the key characters, and infuses a humanity that is often absent in this kind of work. The novel is a fantastic study of the profound challenge of ending a conflict that featured such brutality. As might be expected, the real interest can be found in the vanquished, rather than the victors. This is magnified as the key Allied negotiators - vain French Marshall Foch and cold British Admiral Weymes - relish their roles as conquerors (even though the the reality was somewhat more complex than that) and that the Germans were something approaching evil incarna...

Only limbs. St Johns Park, New Town. June 2011. My word for the week? flat [ adj. ] ... 7. Lacking interest or excitement ; dull: a flat scenario. 8. a. Lacking in flavor: a flat stew that needs salt. b. Having lost effervescence or sparkle : flat beer. Hard-time blue s, William Waring Cuney Went down home ’bout a year ago things so bad, Lord, my heart was sore. Folks had nothing was a sin and shame every-body said hard time was the blame. Great-God-a-mighty folks feeling bad lost every thing they ever had. Sun was shining fourteen days and no rain hoeing and planting was all in vain. Hard hard times, Lord, all around meal barrels empty crops burnt to the ground. Great-God-a-mighty folks feeling bad lost every thing they ever had. Skinny looking children bellies poking out that old pellagra without a doubt. Old folks hanging ’round the cabin door ain’t seen times this hard before. Great-God-a-mighty folks feeling bad lost every thing they ever had. I wen...

An old furnace. St Johns Park, New Town. June 2011. Here are SIX things I have reconsidered my opinion upon of late: U2's Zooropa . Keeping one's mouth shut. Guinea Pigs. Slash and burn (in relation to the public sector). Traveling with children. Wales.

Fare thee well, St John's Church. St Johns Park, New Town. June 2011. Last day today! One of the positives of my shifting career path will be less need to tear down Liverpool Street in the early morning trying to make the connecting bus through to New Town. The 7:48 am to Glenorchy is a far more pleasant journey, as the 8:02 generally involves a bus packed to the rafters with reeking and deafening teenage boys on their way to school. In fact, anyone who queries the likelihood of man’s evolutionary link with our ape cousins really needs to catch the 8:02 Glenorchy Express and wise up! After last week’s dismal effort, I’ve lifted my game this week and steamed through a few books. The first, The Drowned World is a 1962 sci-fi novel by J. G. Ballard that differs a little bit from most post-apocalyptic fiction. The central character, rather than being disturbed by the end of the old world, embraces the changed existence that is coming. It’s an interesting little book. Ballard has done ...

40 or 20 , YOU decide. St Johns Park, New Town. May 2011. Day two of the final week in New Town, three more to go. You will be pleased to hear that the next office will be located a little closer to the water, and I might get the opportunity now and again to brighten things up with a little morning on the waterfront action. By that I mean sea birds, mist over water and the odd sun burst; not a surly, pouty Marlon Brando. “Charley, it was you! … He gets the title shot outdoors on the ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville! You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn't have to take them dives for the short-end money.” Consider Sandy Bay this year’s Palookaville.

Self portrait in the autumn sun. St Johns Park, New Town, May 2011. Two photographs featuring Moi within days of each other?!? My ego must be getting out of control… Either that or it’s a simple cry for help. heeeeeeellllllllllllllllp…

A quick meeting is usually a good meeting. St Johns Park, New Town, April 2011. A trip away does not stop the run of books. Mixed fortunes in my selections this week. The first, Double Indemnity is considered a genre – crime – classic by James M. Cain. The film is probably better known than the book, but both are excellent. A brief but complex novel captures beautifully the tale of ordinary-guy-gone-wrong-at-the-hands-of-a-woman . It’s a gripping read, and (if you’re lucky enough to have the luxury), the kind of novel that you could pick up and finish in one sitting. Highly recommended. Decidedly not recommended is James Buchan’s Heart's Journey in Winter . Another genre novel (spies, Cold War and whatnot), it’s a dull read, poorly told. I can’t summon up the effort to say any more about it…

Their own cross to bear. St Johns Park, New Town. April 2011. Sunday Top Five day and what possible top five could top The Top Five Churches That I Have Been Into And Find Firmly Stuck In My Mind ? As a person of no faith [and believe me, at this point I have no faith in anything at all…] you know that a church must have something going for it to either have me going inside, let alone remember much about it. Nürnberg Frauenkirche , Nürnberg. Seriously, how could you go past a church where the Holy Roman Emperors were crowned? St. Vitus Cathedral , Praha. A spooky number located inside the castle, we were fortunate enough to see just towards the end of the restoration of the façade out front. Notre Dame de Paris , Paris. Jean de Jandun nailed it in 1323: “that most terrible church of the most glorious Virgin Mary, mother of God, deservedly shines out, like the sun among stars..." You really do have to see it to believe it. St Paul's Cathedral , Melbourne. A testament to the w...

Entrance to aged care. St Johns Park, New Town. April 2011. Slight case of nerves today. I've a very special mission, and much depends on it. No, it doesn't involve comments M.I.A. Roddy's birthday...

This monolith thrusts confidently and proudly out up the heavens. St Johns Park, New Town. April 2011. Everywhere I look the phallus . Phalluses to the left of me, phalluses to the right, I am even seated right inside a phallus as I type! I look out over a vista dominated by (you guessed it) the phallus ! It doesn’t make a man half uncomfortable…

The morning sun of the office desk. No more shall be said. Curruthers Building, St Johns Park, New Town. March 2011. Another day, another too books! This week, the theme is depressing , albeit for quite different reasons. Book one is Caryl Phillips’ A Distant Shore . I’ve read a few of his books, and although he’s not the most refined of writers, one thing that Caryl Phillips can do is tell a story. This story is one of two people, both lonely and exist largely outside the mainstream of society. One is a retired teacher and the other an African refugee. Stylistically, the book's sections jump between the perspectives of the two main characters, and the story is relayed in a non-linear, broken fashion, so the reader is often caught on the back foot in terms of the narrative. This isn’t too frustrating, although the emerging fact that one of the central characters – who increasingly narrates in the first person – is unreliable, throws in a bit of a twist. Most novels of this kind w...

Needs another coat. St Johns Park, New Town. March 2011. I was thinking about karaoke hits the other day. Now, I know that do a very good Suspicious Minds . I'd like to think that I do do a decent Crying , but I suspect that the high notes are a little beyond me reach. My The Harder They Come only works if your creativity will accept me doing Glen Danzig aping Jimmy Cliff. You really have to be there.

They're right, all of that 'effing and blindin' is good for no-one. St Johns Park, New Town. March 2011. Sunday already. You know what that means...? Sunday Top Five! Without further ado, Mein Favorit Fünf deutsche Wörter so viel besser als ihr Gegenstück Englisch sind ! Doppelgänger Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaft Götterdämmerung Weltanschauung Vergangenheitsbewältigung ! I shall give a reward for those who can successfully incorporate all of these words into a convincing sentence...

Where have all the flowers gone? They're here in St Johns Park! New Town, March 2011. How’s this for a future summer blockbuster film? Keanu Reeves is an intrepid former police officer – he was framed for a crime that he didn’t commit – who now volunteers as an arborist in an inner city ghetto helping the yoof overcome their deprivation through the love of trees. Suddenly, and without warning, a tsunami hits! Keanu must journey through the panic stricken city with a rag tag bunch of loveable street urchins to save the woman that he loves (and avenge the crooked cops that set him up), while the city falls apart! I’m calling it: H² WOAH Green light!

This used to be an orphanage. Poor orphans! St Johns Park, New Town. March 2011. The King's Orphan School , later, the Queen's Orphan School , was built in 1833 to provide for people who weren’t quite orphans; that is, the children of convict women, orphans those whose parent were unable to support them and abandoned children. It seems that the ‘school’ was a bleak and over-crowded establishment, with headmasters who were more interested in their own profits than they were the wellbeing of the children in their care. The minutes of one of the Board of Management meetings makes for grim reading. … Children had never been furnished with Porridge, but merely a very thin Gruel -- that the Oatmeal provided for making a thick porridge could not have been used, & that what had been used was never weighed or measured. -- that the Childrens Tea was made in a Boiler contg about 6 Galls of water, a handful of Tea with some Sugar & Milk being thrown into the Boiler, wit...

Beautiful little buds in the Autumn. St Johns Park, New Town. March 2011. Surfacing is Margaret Atwood’s second published novel. Like a lot of Atwood’s work, it tackles notions of national and gendered identity, with a strong environmental theme. Plot-wise, we join a woman – who is never named – returning to her hometown in rural-Quebec to try and find her reclusive father who has gone missing. Without giving to much away, we explore the notion of ‘the past’ and experience her decent ‘wildness’ and madness. However, the mental disintegration of an already unreliable narrator presents a tough ask of the reader. Initially ‘flaky’, our unnamed protagonist's mental reasoning deteriorates sharply and enters a full-blown psychosis. Atwood constructs this in the first person, through monologues and the experience of action through the lens of the protagonist. While this allows for a thorough portrayal of a mind 'undoing itself', it doesn’t half make a tricky read on the Glenorchy...

Accept only the best in terms of secure fencing! St Johns Park, New Town. March 2011. MORE questions? Bring ‘em on! Are you a good dancer? I hold the record score for The Girl is Mine on The Michael Jackson Experience for the Wii. ‘Nuff said. What was your favourite game to play as a child? I’m not sure that it was y favourite , but “Run away from Father with the strap” was a regular feature… If you have read/seen Sophie’s Choice , do you think she made the right choice or the wrong choice? There was no right or wrong choice. That was the point. The ‘choice’ was merely a reminder of her insignificance to the system around her. The ‘choice’ was simply a more brutal way of destroying her. In fact, you can say that it was a more effective expression of totalitarian control that any amount of bullets or poisonous gas. One of the more devastating literary experiences I’ve had. How old are you in your dreams? Since the age of about twenty seven, I’ve generally been younger than the age I ...

Sign #1. St Johns Park, New Town. March 2011. Still going... Sign #2. St Johns Park, New Town. March 2011. Still going... Sign #3. St Johns Park, New Town. March 2011. Still going...

It seems rather PUBLIC to me. St John’s Avenue, New Town. February 2011. While I understand the necessity of communicating a particular message to specific parties, I am certain that it is unnecessary to shout. Moreover, good manners will get you everywhere sir!