“I want to get this finished by …” The site foreman scrambles bare-headed up the slope of fallen bricks, through the crumbling wall to the summit at last, where he turns and heads towards Elsie and the dinosaur. He nearly falls at one point, misjudging his step on the rubble and spreading his arms for balance.

The car park swarms with yellow-shirted scaffolders, ants that have found a vast blue corpse and are moving it piece by piece. Above them, picks and hammers smash the top levels of the flats, and workers dismantle the roof with a crash and tumble of sheet metal. The scaffolders wear no head protection; but then, neither does the site foreman.

Collaroy Beach with Long Reef in the background

A man stands by the stack of bright blue scaffolding poles, lifting one and setting an end on the ground near his feet. Holding it in place, he reaches for a second pole and adds it to the first. He seems to want to continue all day. There’s a ripple beside him as blue poles cascade down but he’s unperturbed, and lines up another pole. When he has five, he tips them onto his shoulder and walks out of sight.

And just for a moment, the silence was deafening …

A girl sits at the bus stop ahead, a silhouette in the glare, except that her hair is very red, very curly, cut short at the sides. Almost a mullet, but it’s fluffy at the front too. Her head bends as she looks at her phone. One leg stretches in front, the other tucks beneath the seat to form a triangle, whose apex is her knees. A white bag nestles beside her.

She stands and emerges into the sunshine, ready to catch her bus. A Goth girl. Short black skirt. Big black boots. Black jacket. Black stockings. Black garter above one knee.

Crossing the road I see her again, sitting upstairs as the bus waits at the lights. A phone appears suddenly. Her eyes flash and amusement lifts one corner of her mouth. She snaps the selfie.

A small girl pursues a beach ball in the surf. Each time she reaches it a wave snatches it away. Finally she throws her arms in the air with a cry of disgust, and her father has to run after the ball.

@jdm On your “About” page, there’s a sentence that doesn’t make sense in the quoted text from Kirkpatrick Sale’s Rebels Against the Future:

‘… in which it was argued that those who controlled capital protected by government and king, without much in the way of laws or ethics or customs to restrain them.’

Could something before the full stop have been omitted accidentally from the original?

A man with his son balanced on his hip stands contemplating a motorbike. The man is in his 30s. The son is in his twos. " … anodised," says the dad with a glance at the son. “Ooh, anodised!” squeaks the son, or a good approximation of it. They both gaze admiringly at the machine.

A woman in the supermarket. Two daughters and a trolley. “Go away. I’m tired of the complaining. Just go away somewhere and leave me alone.” The daughters stay. So does the trolley.

The 6th of January is Festa de la Befana. All over Italy, kids will be waking up to socks full of lollies! And it’s a public holiday :)

I’m setting up a stall at Manly Village Public School Markets on January 21 to try to sell some books. I’m also going hoping to record visitors reading lines from one of the books (with their permission). I want to create an audio version where lines are read by different, unrelated voices, mainly because I think it would be fun. And another audio project to muck around with.

@danielpunkass Posting this from MarsEdit to see if the mention link is working now :)

Sydney this morning is cold, wet and windswept, like a Winter’s day in 1965.

Season 2 of Bäckström ended with the Linda mystery unresolved, which was frustrating. Apparently there’s still a chance for a Season 3, so maybe then. 📺

After The Troubling Affair of the Carrots, Episode 1, in which my Aldi carrots emerged from the bag rotting from the base up (all soft and squishy-crumbly), I took my business to The Big Fruit Shop instead. My new fruit shop carrots looked perfect when I put them in the fridge, but the following day when I opened the bag they were covered in spots of mould.

What is happening to the vegetables of Sydney? Because it isn’t just the carrots. The Troubling Affair of the Carrots, Episode 1 had become The Troubling Affair of the Beans as well, when my just-purchased refrigerated greens began exuding a slimy, off-white substance resembling pus.

Not appetising. Not at all.

I’ve just watched the first tutorial in the video series This is Reaper 6, by Kenny Gioia. So impressed! Here is someone who really knows how to make a video tutorial! He doesn’t rush, he isn’t condescending, he assumes zero knowledge on the part of his viewers (totally correct in my case), and he doesn’t overload the brain (thankfully, because mine overloads easily these days).

I’m interested in audio production. Not music, so much, but spoken voice and ambient sounds, and I want to know how to capture these and present them as well as I can. Maybe do a podcast one day. 🎧

Now, on to Video 2 :)

Sydney this morning: cloudless sky and high humidity. And very, very quiet.

Oh my! I’ve changed the theme of my blog to Cards, truncated longer posts on the home page (thank you for your help, @jsonbecker) and added a footer with links in a horizontal list.

I can add a search box but I cannot style it for love or money, so I’ve removed it, pending further research.

These small achievements have taken me the entire first day of 2023 and may well occupy the second as well, but by the end of tomorrow I hope to have a blog that I can just post to without thinking about form. And then I might actually post.

This post is an act of defiance. Take that, cruel world!