Paying Ready Attention

Walking on water is one of those things that does not normally happen too often. All considerations of the divine to one side, it’s a question of optimism over physics, mass over buoyancy - and mass wins. Attempts at water-walking inevitably end with wet feet, laughter from colleagues and embarrassment. The scale of the embarrassment is directly proportional to the degree of wetness. We learn this at an early age. And yet we still try to outrun that sinking feeling associated with water walking - it’s as if we believe that you really can get your foot out of the hole you have made in the water faster than the water can get back in. Speed walking once immersed is only likely to result in tripping over - which leads to greater wetness, more laughing and increased embarrassment. However, a compromise version of water walking is available - one with significantly reduced wetness and only slightly reduced enjoyment. You can walk along piers and jetties. You can linger in the middle of bridg...

There have been a number of articles in the papers this week about animals - predictable animals, popular animals. The PR departments that are employed by dolphins, pandas and dinosaurs must be very pleased with themselves. There have been no articles that I have noticed about slugs or hyenas, and definitely no articles about spiders, which is a shame as this time of year their webs are easy to find on trees and fences. Spiders. The word above is a kind of spoiler alert for those who have no fondness for these eight legged beasts. Although I have not seen it for a number of years, I can remember fields silvered with the webs of tiny spiders, catching the early morning sun, diamonded with dew. If you walked through the fields your shoes and trousers would become swathed in silk. Tiny threads, stronger than steel - trap, parachute and egg case in one, produced by an animal not always associated with beauty. During my first month in Australia I had parked under a gum tree - which was stil...

Politicians Change. Governments change. Day length changes. Temperature changes. Things continue to change. The only constant is change - trite, but true. Some of these changes are most noticeable at either end of the day, in the mornings and evenings. Some may only be noticeable when the unemployment statistics are published or when you notice the size of your tax bill. Many things people seem not to notice at all. It was cold on the way to work, breath in the air, hands in the pockets, chill on the legs. Breath in the air is a clear marker that things are on the move. I like the idea that you can see your own contribution to the water cycle. It seems to be vapour made visible - although it's not really that at all. When the morning brings fogs or mists you swim through a thin soup of water - condensation on the fine hairs of a woollen scarf, droplets of water in the junctions of leaves and stems, pooling liquid on car roofs and painted fence rails. On some mornings the water thic...

We had missed the rush hour, but we still caught traffic on the way out of Melbourne. It seemed inevitable. Any escape from the urban area requires a period of slow moving traffic, a psychic speed bump to bring you down to the required velocity. A period of trial by boredom, where a manual car seems a mistake. Although we were planning to go south, we had to go east first. Out past the recent urban growth and the factory shops with poorly spelt names and promised discounts. Out past graceless shopping complexes striving for attention, calling for customers. Out past gated communities promising security and rural charm and probably delivering neither. Not fully urban and long past being rural. Neither arse nor elbow as my father would have said. Not everybody wants to, or can afford to live either the inner city or the rural dream, but surely our planners can do better than this? When you finally leave the built up areas it does not necessarily get any better. On the edges of small mark...