 These boots are made for working |
City life is seen, conventionally, as stressful. We suburbanites often idealise rural life.
Birds singing, paddocks bursting with grain, scenic hills, maybe a valley or two . . . Many people who do live “in the bush” do enjoy it. The ease of car travel, for example, means that they can easily get up to metro shopping malls or high streets dripping with cappuccino cafes. There is stress, however, beyond the suburban boundaries. On a recent visit to the Western Australian Wheatbelt I heard a farmer’s candid lament on how profits had not kept pace with profits. “We get the same price for what we produce, same as a decade ago, but today we have to pay much more for power, fertiliser and fuel.” |
Two cheers for progress
 This was longstanding . . . but now only the scoreboard, left, is still there |
Once there were roars. Then there was a big crash of falling glass, roof and walls. Now there is only silence.
Last month the red-tiled main stand of Perry Lakes Stadium was demolished, much later than the rest of the venue because of an asbestos-related problem. The building is now a pile and will be carted away in trucks so that the rest of the swish housing development, between Floreat Park and Bold Park, can proceed. |
Wherefore art thou, art?
 Reaching for the sky at Cottesloe |
Dance, the most graceful but least verbal of the arts, is something I am learning about fast, having accepted a part-time job with a ballet company.
My moves do not involve gliding around on the floor of practice space. My moves are more prosaic. I help shift tables, as a break from tapping away at a computer keyboard to write letters and material for the company’s website. While waiting for a reply, maybe, I have time to wrestle with questions. Why did I never, as a child, develop an interest in dance, apart from me bopping, jigging and jiving to the Beach Boys and Abba? Why do I, generally speaking, need a verbal component to appreciate the arts, such as drama and opera offer? And, er, what is art? I am not going to live long enough for a definitive answer on this third one. |
Let ‘em have it
 Balsamic… many people would prefer that to ballistic |
Such great news for Indians, however many hundred million they total today, that the nation now has nuclear submarines. And they can fire ballistic missiles, which is even more wondrous.
Well, good for about 2.7 per cent of the people, I suppose. You know, the ones who wear suits and ties and travel business class and wheel their bags into five-star. . . You get the picture. As for the rest of the population, who cares? Their lives have nothing to do with missiles. The countless millions with jobs or family businesses, cooking food for train passengers, or cleaning offices by night. And finally, the poor, for whom no international conferences or bankers’ dinners can bring an end to hunger and exhaustion. |
Pet project
 Tillie takes the lead as a conversation piece |
Blog, tweet, app, text….. If you’re reading this you are probably into 21st-century communication in a reasonable way.
But let me ask: Are we perhaps in need of reminding of the joys of simple one-on-one contact? If so, I suggest one-on-dog commitment. Stay on this leash for a couple of hundred words. Bold in a cheeky sort of way in since primary school, I am the sort to initiate chatting with most people I meet either on a street or in a park. “That university sweater you’re wearing . . . I have not only been there but was booked for speeding as I approached the entrance . . . ” Such opening gambits are my stock in trade. For nearly a year I have often had a four-legged aide to the business of meeting and exchanging a few minutes of conversation. Especially with dog owners. Our young friend Tillie is forthright, to put it mildly, in approaching creatures of either two or four legs. |
You may have heard this one before…
 “Oh my God”… among the many abbreviations the world of texting has unleashed. |
How many clichés does a newspaperperson pile up in decades at the typewriter and keyboard? How long is a piece of rope?
Somewhere between the exciting occasion of a first byline and the perhaps disappointing discovery of a first grey hair comes an epiphany: “I am starting to trot out familiar phrases.” The mishap “just waiting to happen”. . . the official who claims he has several responsibilities that mean he “wears many hats” . . . the reporter for whom so many smallish towns are “sleepy” and any island beset by an upheaval is “paradise lost.” You’ve read ’em all. |