And that was New York

As a lover of cities, of the pavement and the steel, of the bustling shops, the rushing people, I have been wanting for sometime now to put down in words my experience of that ultimate metropolis, Manhattan.

A Walk in My Melbourne

It’s late afternoon on a Wednesday in August, late winter in Melbourne. I’ve ventured out from my native Carlton North, heading out on foot to cross Nicholson Street, the Carlton-Fitzroy border and a mental barrier between my territory and the unknown. Ostensibly a rare act of exercise (I have on my trackies and runners left over from school hockey trainings

Long hot summer night

Tonight I have discovered a new place to sit. Sleepless in the heat of Melbourne summer, I have been tossing and twisting until now, at 1.35 am, when I can feel — finally! — the breeze of the promised cool change. The sound of overweight raindrops has reached my night-time-alert ears. Anxious to take a breath of this welcome coolness, I have hurried to my window

On Dressing Up and Fitting In

When I was four, my mother dressed me as Norman Lindsay’s Magic Pudding. Grey tights, grey skivvy, a stocking over my face with currants drawn in permanent marker, and a pudding basin atop my head, the outfit’s crowning glory. No, she wasn’t indulging a deranged whim – it was dress-as-your-favourite-book-character day at kindergarten.

Already, I was different and, even at four, I knew it. All around me swirled tulle tutus and streaks of satin, glittering pinks and purples, cute little button-nosed Goldilocks and Tinkerbells. And here was I, a goddamn pudding. Refusing to submit to the indignity of the stocking, I gazed maliciously at the camera, unwittingly completing the impersonation of that bad-mannered, ill-tempered edible.