MERRY (WINDY) CHRISTMAS

It might be time to move the bed. I’ve got us under the open window where it was once a delight to sleep with the cool night air wafting up from the vale of Annandale and animating our dreams. Now the perishing winds of climate change howl indoors all night, tilt the pictures, scare the …

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THE GREEN GREEN GRASS OF NEXT DOOR

Dried leaves have fallen onto the lawn from the weeping myrtle. Summer is here. The lawn itself is a miracle. Our neighbours had a few jigsaw pieces of turf left over from landscaping their backyard and offered them to me. In time honoured fashion I didn’t do anything properly. I didn’t pull up or poison …

BOOK HIM!

We’ve been away, inland, and then we drove back up the coast. We ate oysters for breakfast in Merimbula, which is something I’ve never done before. I’d do it again. They’re better than muesli. Another thing I’ve never done before is write and publish a novel, but today all that changes. Today my novel THE …

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Ever since I planted my meadow a couple of years ago our garden has been full of wildlife and weeds. You need a machete to get to the clawfoot herb bath on the cliff edge, and when you get there you find the deer and the possums and the orange-bellied parrots and platypus have eaten …

IT’S A DATE

Families have started decorating their front yards with cobwebs and skeletons. We pass them as we head down the hill to buy bread and have a coffee. ‘When’s Halloween?’ I ask. ‘You ask that every year!’ Robinson says. ‘Well how am I supposed to know when it is?’ ‘Because it’s been on the same day …