My 10-year-old daughter wanders out last Saturday to watch me in the garden. She seems intrigued by my ringing wet shirt. “You’re sweating,” she observes in a way that suggests that this is mildly inappropriate but also highly unusual.
I remove my hat and, hands on hips, survey the fruits of my labour. The overgrown and [...]
Entries from February 2008
February 23, 2008
In the Garden
February 16, 2008
Boy Man Boy
The dogs rounded her up. We followed their barks through the acned hills that lay low and shimmering around the homestead. And suddenly there she was, entirely motionless, as we came breathing hard over the warm rocks. The goat watched us, its body turned sideways to us, only its eyes moving. Like it knew that [...]
February 3, 2008
The invisible lie
“The cruellest lies are often told in silence.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
I didn’t recognise the voice on the car radio but I knew the name of Tom Maver immediately. I hadn’t seen him since I was twenty. I don’t remember what he was studying in those days; just that he was a university friend of my younger [...]
