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Uncertainty.

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Public transport is an eavesdropper’s paradise.  Disconnected conversations float along train platforms and down the aisle of trams; past coffee hungry commuters and seat searching straphangers.  Some are fragments of conversations between two present people, some are one sided fragments shouted into smartphones.  Platform One, Mont Albert Station. “Where are you? You said you would be here by eight.” (Inaudible phone noises) “Well, that’s a real shame, but you said you would be here by eight!” (Inaudible phone noises) I look at my watch.  It’s a minute past eight.   Tram Route 109, Whitehorse Road. “I hate this new weather app.” “Why?” “What the @#%^ does ‘10% chance of rain’ mean? I just want to know if it’s going to rain or not! We live in uncertain times. - At low tide a strip of rocks bends from the shore, away from the beach and out towards deeper water.  In places the rocks are slick with weed, in others rough wi
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Green

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There are times when all I remember of my dreams is the colour green.   Neither detail nor narrative survives my awakening, but a colour does.   And even that is not entirely true, for no single colour represents the green of my dreams.   I would not be able to stand in front of the walls of colour swatches, beloved by paint manufacturers and often raided by my daughter, and say, ‘That one.   That’s the green from my dreams’.   It’s not the livid lime green of Ash trees, spring fresh, growing on grey northern limestone.   It’s not the sheened English Racing Green of ivy, inch-by-inch destroying my fence, or smothering a building.   It’s not the smoky blue-green of Gum trees, fire prone and sweating oils in the summer sun. The dream green feels calm, but not passive.   It’s alive and moving, but so far it’s never been frightening.   Other things do wake me in fright, spiders mainly or loud voices in darkened rooms; but not colours.   The green is neither a distinct memory
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It's been a long, long time.

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The last time I was here was 26 years ago. I was in my middle 20s, had only just met the woman who would become my wife and the mother of our children.   It was only the second time I had travelled outside of the British Isles. I had no real idea of what I was doing and absolutely no idea why I was going to India.   And even less idea of what I was going to happen once I was there. On the outside I was there to meet two friends, one I still have and one I have lost.   Nicky – dark haired then – less so now, Scottish, lives in the Lakes with a host of children and (in all probability) a decent whiskey waiting in the cupboard.   Mike? Well that’s a different story. I have no idea where he is.   Sometimes you pick things up and sometimes you put things down.   And sometimes you are put down yourself; put down by somebody when they see no utility in carrying you further.   It turns friendship into an object and conversation into scripted theatre.   It turns friendship into someth
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In a big country.

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Everything is big these days.  Big meals.  Big games. Big news.  Big risks.  Bigger promises, backed by bigger lies.  And today’s big is much bigger than yesterday’s, and will be much smaller than tomorrow’s.  Yesterday’s big TV will be tomorrow’s phone screen.  Everything is so big, and hence so uniformly forgettable, that when you come face to face with things of genuinely enormous magnitude it takes you by surprise. Four and half hours out of Melbourne airport and I’m still in Australia.  For much of that time the view down from the window has shown nothing but red soil and rock pocked hills running off into the distance.  The flight path to Darwin takes you over Australia’s red centre, over lands that are some of the most thinly populated in the world.  For the most part, over landscapes not riven by the familiar comfort of road or rail.  The straight and narrow of human transport is missing – instead the land is broken only by lines of stone and the trans
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