This will hurt me...

Morning in Hobart. Sullivans Cove, Hobart Waterfront. July 2013. As you know, the Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (and RSS feeds.) The following are some things that I've had a look at in the last week. I call this: a Compendium of Click-throughs for Monday Morning... Winners: National Geographic Traveler 2013 Photo Contest Awkward Years Project Archaeology: The milk revolution Archbishop Tutu 'would not worship a homophobic God' How Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy Learned To Grow Up And Start Firing His Friends Monsters, Marvels, and the Birth of Science When Liberian Child Soldiers Grow Up The decline of privacy in open-plan offices Fallen Idols: Sometimes your favorite authors are not nice people

Sunrise on the Derwent. Hunter Street, Hobart. June 2013. Don't kill. It's not nice. How to Kill , Keith Douglas Under the parabola of a ball, a child turning into a man, I looked into the air too long. The ball fell in my hand, it sang in the closed fist: Open Open Behold a gift designed to kill. Now in my dial of glass appears the soldier who is going to die. He smiles, and moves about in ways his mother knows, habits of his. The wires touch his face: I cry NOW. Death, like a familiar, hears And look, has made a man of dust of a man of flesh. This sorcery I do. Being damned, I am amused to see the centre of love diffused and the wave of love travel into vacancy. How easy it is to make a ghost. The weightless mosquito touches her tiny shadow on the stone, and with how like, how infinite a lightness, man and shadow meet. They fuse. A shadow is a man when the mosquito death approaches.

Alien landing? Elizabeth Street Pier, Hobart waterfront. June 2013. Sunday Stealing: The "What's Your Story" Meme 1. What is the strangest thing you have ever eaten in public? Probably a witchetty grub . 2. If you had to go on an adventure, with elves, dwarves, or hobbits, who would you take and why? A rogue band of brigand trolls. 3. You are at a rural retreat lodge somewhere deep in Wisconsin or Canada. You are approached by a taxidermist who hands you a stuffed badger and asks you to put it in your lap. What do you do next? Say, "Yeah, cheers for that." 4. If you were given biscotti, would you prefer it with coffee, tea, or hot chocolate? Awkwardly apologise for not eating it because of an allergy to almonds. 5. In your opinion, who is the funniest man or woman alive today At the moment? I like Louis C.K. and Stewart Lee. 6. If you were given thirty seconds on television to say something, what would it be? "Stop wasti...

Walking to work. Murray Street, looking out over Sullivans Cove. March 2013. Wordless Wednesday.

Sunrise over Howrah. Seen from Sandy Bay. July 2012. A little late today, but bear with me, I have the flu and stuff to do this morning. Two books finished this week. First up is Bring Larks and Heroes by Australian author Thomas Keneally. I haven’t read a lot of Keneally ( Schindler’s Ark and Gossip in the Forest being the other two), and this book is a good reason to further chastise myself for that fact. It’s a ripper! Stylistically, it’s worlds apart from my assumption of his approach. It brings to mind a more accessible Patrick White, with a keen sense of tragedy without ever weighing down the who enterprise. In it Keneally probably helped kick of an entire re-interpretation of Australian history: that of our past as a penal colony. It’s a brutal but beautiful book. Rich in history and imagery, the tensions in those first few years of colonisation at the remote ends of the Earth resonate with tension. Men vastly outnumber women. The Irish – both convicts and those pres...

Morning glory. Geilston Bay. April 2012. . Two books to have a look at this Good Friday (not a bad day weather-wise). The first is German author Elke Schmitter's Mrs Sartoris . A subtle, but very dark, novel that explores the life of an ordinary - but spurned - titular character. For a text that revolves around the boredom of suburban life in a small German city, it is surprisingly engaging. As an exploration of marriage, motherhood, sensuality and bourgeois morality in the post-war period, this is a well-composed and balanced novel about the ways in which a wronged woman might choose to hit back. Recommended. The second - Guilt About the Past - is by another German, author and jurist Bernhard Schlink. Now, readers of Schlink's fiction will know that most of his books are in some way about reconciling the past with the present. This book is a series of essays (based upon a series of lectures) that explores the concepts of collective guilt; how we might use history to motivate ...

The sun also rises. St George’s Church, Battery Point; as seen from Queen Street, Sandy Bay. September 2011. A couple of books this week, of decidedly mixed resonance (and indeed esteem). First up, the good! I read John Braine’s debut Room at the Top a few weeks ago and enjoyed it very much. Set ten years from the events of that novel, Life at the Top chronicles the life and trials of Joe Lampton, a once ambitious man of humble origins who has discovered that ‘life at the top’ (well, in the upper middle classes) is not all it was cracked up to be. A fantastic snapshot of a certain time and place (England’s industrial north in the early-1960s), of a certain class consciousness (a rising proletariat and declining landed gentry) and a shifting gender and sexual politics. Life at the Top was seemingly lost in the rush of ‘angry young men’ novels that emerged in the UK in the late-1950s and seems now long forgotten. This is a shame, because it’s definitely a worthwhile addition to the ca...

Sunrise at Elizabeth Street Pier. May 2010. So, the intention is for Friday to become Book Club Day . I am thinking that it will usually mean just talking about whatever it is I’ve just finished, but I thought that I’d open up by answering this questionnaire. If you are so inclined, try it yourself. It should give you an idea of what kind of reader I am, and whether or not our tastes may concur. If you’ve any specific queries about books or recommendations, as ever I am open to suggestion! What have you just read? In the past fortnight, I have read George Orwell’s mediation on the theme of poverty in the two cities Down and Out in Paris and London , Muriel Spark’s wicked little Loitering With Intent , Evelyn Waugh’s short history of Mussolini's imperial adventure Waugh in Abyssinia , and the darkly comic Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse. What are you reading now? I’m currently re-reading Graham Greene’s magnum opus, The Power and the Glory . My current ‘go to book’ – the book that I...

Shan't see this one on the walk to work for a while. June, 2010. T minus 1,920 minutes and 8 seconds. Not long to go now, although having said that, I've lasted longer than England did in the World Cup ! Oh how I enjoy seeing the spirits of the English crushed at the highest level. No matter how down one gets, it never fails to give me a lift. So thank you England, thank you very much!

Sullivans Cove on a winter's morn. June, 2010. I better clear the decks of these Salamanca shots before I move up the road/river to New Town. I've a few left over, and will have limited opportunity to spring them upon you without looking like using old stock.

Sunrise over Franklin Wharf. May 2010. I had the great pleasure of resigning from my job yesterday (if you haven't done so, give it a try!) This means, of course, less photographs featuring the lovely waterfront area of Hobart, and a little more of the suburb of New Town, where I shall be making my appearance in a few weeks time. Until then, expect me to exhaust my Salamanca reserves!

Early morning and the sun is nowhere near the yardarm. Elizabeth Street Pier, May 2010. 0⁰ Celsius as I arrived in town this morning. Zero degrees Celsius . I’m wearing shorts. I’m Tasmanian, so shoot me.

The last of the cruise ships in Hobart, April, 2010. Here is part two of the meme... 11. What's the best bargain you've ever found at a garage sale or junk shop? I'm not sure that I ever have. I've enough junk of my own, let alone picking up others'... 12. Where were you on September 11, 2001? I was in bed with my future wife. We spent a large part of that year in bed, come to think of it. I'm not sure I was all that aware of events until the next day. 13. What's your favourite tree? I am quite partial to the good old Araucaria heterophylla . 14. What's the most interesting biography you've read? If This is a Man and also The Truce by Primo Levi is an excellent two part auto biographical tale. 15. What do you order when you eat Chinese food? It's been a while. I like a nice special fried rice. If I can switch to Korean I love the Kimchi Fried Rice. 16. What's the best costume you've ever worn? Costume? I seem to draw attention every tim...

Walking to walk. April 2010. Above you can see the MV Cartela , a fine little steamer operating out of Sullivans Cove here in Hobart. By all accounts, she is now Australia's oldest continuously licensed passenger vessel. Take that, RMS Titanic!

I have day off today. Eight Hour Day or International Women's Day? You be the judge!

Waiting at the bus stop yesterday morning, I spotted and photographed some interesting colours in the sky to the east. The show in the sky was useful actually, as the bus didn't show. Bastards. Which gives me an idea for Tuesday Q and A : What withering bon mot should I include in my latest letter of complaint to the bus company?

Another sunrise over Davey Street. To paraphrase Mr Hendrix from some time ago, excuse me while the sun KISSes the sky. Those of you who live in proper cities will be delighted to hear that this line of cars is what constitutes "heavy traffic" here in Hobart. It's Theme Thursday you see, and the challenge today is that of KISS . I would like to expand on the subject of KISSing, however life prevents me from exploring it in too much depth. That said, it is a practice that I quite enjoying – in the right sort of company of course. Alas, I am required at a three hour navel gaze interface all morning, so the best that I can manage is a list of five things that I’d rather be KISSing than go to this meeting today: Decrepit harpy Dame Margaret Thatcher (with tongues); The mangy cat that lurks around my bus stop of a morning (no tongues); A large sandpit full of mud, nails and dead gum leaves; Six of Snow White’s seven dwarves midgets little people (the current conce...

Here's a Hobartian winter sunrise (when it isn't raining), for your perusal. I think that the two columns there are masts from a couple of super maxi yachts parked down in Constitution Dock. I have just heard that poor old Michael Jackson has died. As someone of the firm opinion that Whacko Jacko's work enables him to stand in the column marked Musical Genius (at least until it all started to go pear shaped . I am wondering, what do people think of the guy? Pop genius ? Kiddie Fiddler ? Tortured child trapped in a man’s body ? Punch line to a thousand jokes ?

Here is a special Good Friday good sunrise over the Derwent looking east. So it is Good Friday again. I love Good Friday. You have to wonder what old Jesus was thinking when he got up that morning. Did he think that he was going to have a good Friday? Was he disappointed? I would be. I have been explaining the concept of Easter to Henry. "There was this guy, and some chickens, and some rabbits. There was some argument about something. I think that it was over chocolate. And eggs. This guy's father wasn't happy. It had something to do with fish as well. Chocolate fish eggs maybe. Anyway, the rabbit eventually must have won and this chicken got nailed to this guy. His father wanted to prove a point. Because he sinned. Or something. The father sounded like a bit of an arse actually. Nailed them to a cross I think. Something like that. So we eat chocolate eggs delivered by rabbits in bonnets and there's nothing good on TV." I don't understand it either.

Autumn morning sunshine can't be beaten for colour. Here is the sun coming up over the river, as seen from Franklin Square. Yesterday I erred in judgement and taught Henry the Queen song We Are The Champions . Now I can't stop him from yelling it at me (well, his version goes " Me Are The Champions" ). This brings back a number of horrifying memories of my older brother besting me in some kind of sporting endeavour, to then pummel me and sit atop my chest sing the above song. Do you have a song that evokes similarly terrible memories? I'm not counting anything by The Osmands, as they just don't count.