All right then, this one is for frou_frou and qamar, after the dis­cus­sions on both of their LJs about being clucky. If you’ve read my posts in their journ­als, you’ll know I am taking it more ser­i­ously than this, but this is what happened when I sat down to write about…

So, fin­ished that art­icle, on the courses being held at the UME. Could­n’t work out who I could write it for and in the end suc­cumbed to pitch­ing it to the Aus­tralian Jewish News, which should make my mother happy (hi, Mum!). They said they were inter­ested but it’s…

Looks like I might have sold a story so I might have some more money after all. Phew! How come none of you have been talk­ing about David Kelly’s death? Seems to me it’s huge, but maybe that’s just from my point of view as a journ­al­ist. And the whole Nigeria/Iraq/Italy…

So, the good news is that I got my Rus­sian visa and I don’t have to go back via Bar­celona if I don’t want to. The bad news is, no BMW C1. Why? Because I’m incap­able of lying, even to com­plete strangers. After I’d signed the paper work and everything was set for three…

Mel­an­cho­lia vieja (1935) – Fed­erico Garcia Lorca El paisaje tiene teleraà±as de siglos. Archivo de crep­ús­cu­los y de noches. (As far as I can trans­late: The land­scape holds spider­webs of cen­tur­ies. Archive of twi­lights and nights.) Per­fect. Absolutely…

The only thing fun­nier than watch­ing over-acted melo­dra­matic epis­odes of Pacific Blue about satanic human sac­ri­fice is watch­ing them dubbed into Castil­lian in little Toledo cafes first thing in the morn­ing. Now, I have two quick ques­tions: a) nuwishas_tail, what are…

Inter­est­ing the books we end up read­ing on jour­neys. The first ended up being about philo­sophy, faith and reason and the love of three men at three dif­fer­ent times with a woman who was either a pagan or a jew – regard­less, an out­sider. Then _dead air_, a marvellous…

She becomes a hermit crab, shrug­ging on her new home, scut­tling side­ways from shade to shade under its weight, bal­an­cing new ideas on her shoulders, shift­ing them for com­fort, trying to avoid sores. She has to move fast, now. From one spot in the heat to another. Stop…

behind a hole in a wooden gate a family of sia­mese bask in the hot scent of red brick dust. twi­light, their sil­hou­ettes shad­owed against piping and tumbled tiles. little ones scramble from the intruder; madame chocol­ate points doesn’t twitch: with exquisite…

29 degrees at 1 in the morn­ing. 25 degrees at 3 in the morn­ing. How do I know? They very kindly have tem­per­at­ure and time things every couple of blocks. I prob­ably should­n’t rub it in for you porr freez­ing Mel­bur­ni­ans, should I? Another thing I like about Toledo? The…

For dr_zero, a poem about lan­guage that’s full of puns, or at least double mean­ings. no hay in españa I have dis­ap­peared Swal­lowed by for­eign tongues In my place are moments of fem­in­in­ity and hints of pos­i­tion: below/above; stranger/friend. encantada, contenta.…..

So; it was a good day. A day in which the invit­a­tion from my Rus­sian cousin was indeed – magic­ally – at the post office when I went to enquire on the offchance, sure I was days too early. A day in which an acquaint­ance happened to want to go to the city too, so I…