The dead seal

Obviously it wasn't really a dead and desiccated seal lying along the fence by the building site on Broadway, the sand seeping out of the gash in its side, its fur grown sticky from the rain that runs until it drowns something, day after day after day, and then, just as fiercely, disappears.

Baker's Game Easy

I have an addiction to playing Baker’s Game Easy on my iPhone. Actually it is not so much an addiction to the game itself or to the elation of winning or even the anticipation of winning, but an obsession with trying to locate the shift during a game when I know for sure either that I am going to win it, however mindlessly I play from that moment onwards – or lose; a moment that is experienced as much as a disappointment as a thrill.

Verlaine at the HR Christmas drinks

When his name came up she said that she had just been reading Edmund White’s biography of Rimbaud, and doing what all of us do – that is, googling the protagonists, Rimbaud and Verlaine – and as soon as she recognised our colleague in that famous painting (short nosed, bald and overly upright with his lover Rimbaud on one side and a flask of red wine on the other), she had to re-evaluate what he had been saying all year about his wife and their ADHD sons, who had their mother’s sense of humour (noticeable pause) – and also that imitation of the poor woman in Customer Service, which always had us laughing, since he could do her shoulders and her way of clutching at the cup she’d emblazoned with all the names of her long deceased cats. My friend said it was clear how this colleague had survived through the centuries. First, he was obviously intelligent, and then came his cunning way of insinuating himself into every drinks event that went on in Human Resources, when he really worked in Accounts – as of course he had never done a thing for HR (and the sheer quantity of drink he put away should have made them wary of hosting their Christmas event on site ever again). He only did Accounts.

No ride home

Of course, the moment it lengthened its end, straining to perceive what I was, I could see that the thick black slug which had burped its blood on the kitchen floor -- trailing it after itself as if feigning an injury or suddenly overcome with bilious despair -- that this slug was in fact a leech that had taken a one hundred kilometre ride from its bed of mud and, like a fat boy ensconced in a beanbag in front of an endless PlayStation racing car track in someone else's house, seeped tears as he played since there was no ride home.

Girl with the wooden walking stick

When I asked her about the old lady that passed our house very slowly on her wooden walking stick every day, wearing a woollen beanie, long coat and thick gloves even though it was the middle of summer, she explained that the supposed old lady was actually a girl of twenty-two and that no-one had the heart, given circumstances that she really didn't want to go into, to question the girl about the kind of eccentricity that really wasn't all that rare in this part of the state.

An authentic flavour of Christmas

After yesterday I can say for certain that it is possible to get an authentic flavour of Christmas from one and a half hour's exposure to commercial radio and the several, tasteful tinsel and LED light decorations at the local suburban hairdresser's.

At least intact

At the station I heard them arguing about whether the man was homeless. Who else knits a narrow scarf with baby blue wool over a Coles green bag as he walks, she was saying, than someone who is clearly mad and probably homeless? You have to look at the shoes, the other was saying. He has trodden the ends of his pants but his shoes look new -- cheap but new -- or not entirely new, she then conceded: at least intact.