Category: 2015

1 | 2 Bumped into a Cheated Friend at Pak ‘n Save   His hair is dirty steel wool forehead a tyre tread his eyebrows ask me questions eyes like fish bait angling for answers I don’t have. His nostrils flare at my sympathy. Thin lips grip his mouth around…

My Fat Memoir   I am a member of a fat society. This is a contemporary statistical and linguistic fact. I won my mum a Plunket healthy baby prize. The photo shows dimples and a double chin. My childhood build was described as stocky, and in my teens I had…

Porridge and Bananas   The best part about breakfast is where I eat it – in a room, not much more than a box-room, which has been many things in its nearly 200-year life but is presently our kitchen. A coal-burning range defies the frigid draughts of winter and welcomes…

Our Daily Bread   Preparation: take one young specimen displaying evidence of a high grade carcinoma and treat as follows:   Ingredients: to be gathered and measured in advance.   Administer 60mg doxorubicin and 600mg of cyclophosamide: these are cyctotoxic and should be given intravenously every three weeks. Daily doses…

I Find Slaters   If I write about trees I have to write about everything –   Blue cheese and pink grapefruits. A small gold bell ringing over moss. Politicians’ billboards dumped on the side of the road.   I like hating people. It is fun. Dolphin killers and men…

Home-made Bread   Threshed, ground, bagged, its parts wait nurture yeast into slow bubbles, creamy promise strong, honest flour meets, envelops, pauses ready to concede, to swell, stretch and smooth   ease proud bounty onto the board, watch my mother’s hands push and pull, quiet rhythm flour, flirt, shape, dimple…

 noodles and sweet things[1]   Saturday morning finds me seated at the kitchen table with the sun at my back, reading a book called ‘The Jews of Khazaria’. I knew there would be something of interest in this book. The sort of things I am looking for are in the…

Elvis – A True Story   I am bipolar don’t you know certified from head to toe   it reads, high functioning, sparkling wit alas, hallucinates a bit   So, on a little manic buzz I went to Scotland 2001   to see the place my genes begun lift a…

Surveillance                                                         the lino lined up and the squares were horizontal with the windows a glasshouse of sorts the fifties furniture sat where it was placed   in black and white she is typing on the deck I’m in shorts he must have taken the picture   later I will…

Where do you get your ideas? – You look like a nice person?   I don’t go searching for ideas for my novels, rather, it seems, they sneak up and ambush me. Sometimes the idea slinks out of someone’s chance remark during a conversation or sometimes it’s in something I…