The laksa was hot, deliciously chilli hot and coconut creamy, filled with juicy prawns but only the obligatory five of course, smoothly slurping rice noodles, a smattering of vegetables and tofu sufficient to meet some sort of health brief, and rounded out with the raw bean sprouts supplied as a side extra. Continue reading “Sushi OK”
I have just finished reading Peter FitzSimons’ book “Burke & Wills” (read my review here) and one of the things that stood out for me was the amount of walking these explorers did. Not necessarily by choice though as they started out with horses and camels Continue reading “Shanks Pony”
I started following a few bloggers awhile back when I did a WordPress blogging course and their new posts started filling my inbox. I just couldn’t find the time in a day to read all of them but I did want to hear about their new posts so I created a rule on my inbox to automatically file them in a folder to be read later. Now my sad confession is that the later has been a lot longer than I expected and I chanced upon the folder this morning. Continue reading “Michelle Toussaint – poet”
Willow stands silent and still in a front yard at the end of the main street. Obviously once a model, but her black dress, changing with the seasons, her pointed hat, broom, and a wand grasped lightly in her right hand suggest another occupation now, perhaps touching on the occult. Her presence always attracts attention, sometimes with approval, sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a little superstitious fear and trepidation, sometimes a lot of superstition and judgement leading to complaints and requests for her removal. Mostly though curiosity. Why? Why is she there? What does she represent? Continue reading “The Odd Thing About Willow”
It was just a small gesture or as they say, it’s the little things.
We were just warming up with hot cups of coffee, tea and hot chocolate after braving the first chilly, windy, morning of Auskick* this season. Appropriately as it was Mothers Day our daughter was treating my wife, our granddaughter the Auskicker, and myself to some warm drinks at Moss Bros in Rouse Hill. We were just starting to thaw out a little when I noticed the young mother at the next table who was sitting alone while her partner was queuing to place their order. The mother was cradling in her left arm a baby, a newly arrived in this world baby judging by the size alone. Continue reading “The Little Things”
My dear old Granpop often said “Ahhh getting old’s a bugger” and I can hear him saying it still after all these years. Please pardon the vulgarity but that is exactly what he said and to replace “bugger” with something more acceptable would be to lose the strength of feeling in his voice at the time. Of course what he meant by the expression was that getting old wasn’t something he was enjoying at all. As this baby boomer, a so-called New Age man, heads into Old Age I am starting to appreciate the depth of feeling and the essential truth in his words. Continue reading “New Age Old Age”
The gift of life comes with its inevitable companion, the sentence of death. You can’t have one without the other, there is no choice. You live, you die. As soon as you start living the clock starts ticking. Every life, human, animal, plant, no exceptions. There is no control other than adding the full stop through suicide, self-destruction. The length of the sentence is arbitrary and therefore unknown, unlike the sentence pronounced by a human court sitting in judgement. The sentence though is full of commas and colons and semicolons and capitals and hyphens, all defining the events of our life. But where does the natural judgement on the length of the sentence come from? Continue reading “The Sentence”
I was about fifteen when I first started to fool my body and brain into a new way of thinking. Thinking that it was actually enjoyable to put burning cigarettes in my mouth and suck the smoke from them deep down into my lungs. It wasn’t easy to do though, to overcome the natural response to this unnatural act. Continue reading “Back to Natural”
I made a comment when posting to Facebook about my Stringy Bark McDowell podcast that Stringy could be Australia’s equivalent of singer/songwriter Neil Young. As this elicited some feedback I thought it might be worthwhile explaining how I came up with such an idea.
Firstly let me say, yes Stringy is that good! I became so impressed with Stringy, the man, and the musician, during our chat. Continue reading “Stringy and Neil”
Weekly episodes on whatever catches my eye but with a keen interest in hearing the story behind blues musicians and craftsmen
Mike Stacey 2016
