Paying Ready Attention

It had the worst of views ; it had the best of views. Along with the relative silence, it was the sense of speed that I found surprising.   Things – bushes, houses, trees, pedestrians – flashed past on both sides of the road.   The distant rapidly became the close, and the near retreated with remarkable haste.   People smiled as I passed them and some children laughed.   My kids laughed.   So did my wife.   And, if the truth were told, so did I. As a kid you miss out on all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons – financial, emotional, physical.   And sometimes you can’t explain an absence at all really.   Bike riding falls into that category for me.   Somewhere along the line of childhood and adolescence I missed the part where you learn to ride a bike.   And having failed to do so at the appropriate time, I have never taken up the opportunity any other time.   I became a committed pedestrian and public transpo...

It had the worst of views; it had the best of views. - It had rained overnight. Each gust of wind brought down a clatter of drops on the roof and set palm fronds scratching at the window frames.   Cool air fell into the room from the open window, smelling of novelty and the sea.   A book, open to the second chapter, lay on the side of the bed where Sal would normally be.   The pages soft and informal, without the new-page crispness that a book of that age would normally retain.   Maybe, at some time in the darkness, a form of island life has soaked into the pages, making the book feel more at home than me.   There were no children eager for space or fidgeting for closeness.   There was no cat, stamping about, sharp-clawed and busy-tailed, awaiting the departure of humans before settling in for a long day of sloth and idleness.   I picked up my own watch from an unfamiliar bedside table, just in time to see the hands click over to 5....

As a kid, holidays meant a series of day trips that started and ended at our brown front door, the one with the loose brass handle and the glass that rattled in the wind.   Any overnight trips meant camping with the Scouts, returning home smelling of wood smoke and needing a bath. Not that long ago flying was still a novelty for me.   It signified something different, an adventure. It meant that I was no longer tied to the routines of childhood holidays.   That was until I started to fly for work.   Two, or sometimes three, trips a year, interstate mainly, but with the occasional long haul thrown in, soon robs flying of its novelty and thrill.   Work travel is more work that travel, and with a young family waiting at home, I was more likely to feel I was in a lonely place than in a Lonely Planet.   This may sound like whingeing, but an early flight to Sydney followed by meetings and a night in a noisy hotel is travel robbed of the slightest po...