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John Arthur Nichol

  • A line of school kids in mufti walks down from Battle Boulevard at the Spit. One girl is a beetle with her jacket over a backpack, and two boys at the end wear ribbed, bright yellow carapaces.

  • Social Climbing, Manly Wharf

    A harbour scene with pale blue sky and deep blue, glistening water. Blocks of flats, houses and trees in the distance. In the foreground, in the water, an old timber safety barrier crosses from bottom right to middle left. The barrier is made of long, heavy timber beams laid horizontally, supported by vertical timber pylons disappearing into the water, with a crust of barnacles. Angled pylons further support these, and everything is reflected in the gently rippled water. A sign on the back of the barrier says: ‘Swimming and diving prohibited’. In the middle distance is a long jetty with a colourful group of figures standing in the sun. Below, in blurry silhouette, a girl climbs a ladder from the water, and a second girl, still in the water, clings to a rope strung between two pylons.

  • With Ukraine so gamely resisting,
    Russia’s ship of aggression is listing.
    As the vessel goes down,
    Some abandon, some drown,
    And a little tsar’s neck gets a twisting.

  • Practice

    Practice on a Pest

    A bird called an Indian Mynah, an invasive species, seen from behind with its head turned to the left and blurred grass in the background, sits on a concrete gutter. Its feathers are shades of brown, with a thin white band at the tip of its tail and another on the edge of each wing. The head and neck are dark brown, with a yellow mask around its eye linked up to a pointy yellow beak.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 31

  • Wild and Succulent

    A small succulent or semi-succulent plant grows in the middle of a patch of beach sand that includes shells and small pieces of stone. The leaves, so thick they could almost have been moulded from pale green wax, are roughly oval in shape with curved indentations all around the edges. Some of the leaves are speckled with sand, and some show the marks of insect damage. At the top of one spray of leaves is a cluster of flower buds, three of which are opening into purple flowers.

  • In his bubble, with those who agree,
    Vladimir Vladimirovich P
    Gives a shrug at Bakhmut:
    ‘They’re just fodder on foot.
    All that matters to history is me.'

  • A tall young woman at Collaroy, elegant in a long, black, sleeveless dress and wearing her dark hair piled high, walks to the crossing with a white cord swinging in her hand. She swaps a tablet to her other hand and presses the pedestrian button.

  • A young woman struggles out to the footpath with the Adult Novelties sign.

  • A small girl dances by a pram, toes turning and heels swinging back and forth.

  • A man in dark blue clothing reaches the bus stop, out of breath. He wipes his mouth, grinning foolishly as he watches the two B1s pull away.

  • Two B1s arrive in convoy at Warringah Mall, and half the queue makes a break for the second bus. One of the breakaways, a woman in a black mask, stops suddenly and glances up at each top deck in turn. Decision made, she runs.

  • A man cleans the Hungry Jack’s sign with a broom that spouts water. The water misses, sailing up over the sign and arcing down to the driveway.

  • Spit Road, Mosman. An orange, transparent, spiky ball sits among bark chips at the base of a wire fence.

  • Mirror

    The Shop in the Mirror

    An arched, black-framed mirror stands in its packaging on a speckled floor, leaning so that everything reflected is also on an angle. Inside the frame, in reverse, are green boxes of V8 drinks stacked up at the side of a fridge, two shelves containing Easter eggs and chocolate Easter bunnies, and a big grey rack of open, refrigerated shelving full of boxes and packets lit by fluorescent tubes. A wide, straight-sided metal flue rises to a grey industrial ceiling with sprinklers, hanging lights and other attachments.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 30

  • For Putin, a cease-fire’s appealing -
    His war of aggression is reeling;
    But Ukraine will control
    All its territory, whole,
    Ere it stops for a scone and Darjeeling.

  • Slice

    A slice of our beautiful coastline

    Portrait-oriented image. The top of the photo is all sky, leaving about a third at the bottom for the foreground. Dark grey clouds at the top merge into white clouds stained with grey, which descend to meet a thin slice of flat grey sea. Unmown grass in the foreground encroaches on freestanding sandstone boulders in the middle ground, and a sagging temporary fence on the left, surrounding a big, net-covered mound. A sign attached to the fence says: ‘Work Safe - Home Safe’, and a bent metal sign lying beneath the fence says: ‘Danger - Construction Site - Do Not Enter’. The lighting is overcast and gloomy, and the top of the fence is in stark silhouette against the clouds.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 29

  • Just past the Anzac Bridge, a network of vast steel pylons has been driven into the water.

  • A tall, slender woman walks past the theatre. She has long blonde hair, a loose blue top and skinny black trousers. Her hands sway with the movement of her elbows, and each contains a white-topped something. She brings the left one to her mouth, and drinks.

    Entering a driveway, she rests her cup on the roof of a blue car parked rear-on to the street. Lights flash and she opens the passenger door. She sits sideways in the vehicle, feet on the driveway, cup beside them, one elbow on a knee with the second white-topped object lifted so she can see inside. Fingers delve. Her hand goes up to her mouth. She chews.

  • Four Japanese women stand in the wind, sentinels at the four corners of a covered pram.

  • A four-year-old strides across the road with his mother, swinging his one free hand with enormous energy.

  • A woman crosses at the lights with her stroller, crests the footpath and engages two similar women with similar strollers. All three adopt matching grins of many teeth, and crinkly-cheeked gazes of sunshine and joy, accompanied by an array of high-pitched sounds that no one could possibly disentangle. The waiting two hone in on the just-arrived stroller, directing their eyes, teeth and noise in that direction.

    Appalled, but aware of its obligations, the baby grins back at them.

  • Voices on a bus.

    Girl 1 : ‘Know what I mean?’

    Girl 2: ‘Not really. Like …’ (long, inaudible mumble)

    Girl 1: ‘Exactly!’

  • At St Leonards a man lumbers down the stairs and sits facing me. He pulls his mask away from his mouth and drapes it under his chin. Why?

  • Movement at the Beach

    A portrait-oriented picture looking along a curving grass verge with a construction fence on the left and parked cars in the background. The fence has two separate coverings: a padded green plastic overlay in the foreground with white, illegible text, and beyond that a grey sheet made of woven plastic, like raffia. The bottom of the sheet has lost many lines of horizontal weave, leaving long thin tassles like a fringe all the way along. A strong wind lifts the sheet so that it bellies out over the grass, its tassles whipping and flying. Parts of the sheet, and sections of the tassled fringe, are blurred by their movement, while others are frozen by the camera and appear sharp.

  • Is anyone e’er so reviled
    As one who would murder a child?
    And could there be any
    Who’ve murdered as many
    As Putin, as so far compiled?