Thistles

Awhile back the thistles were in full bloom. I decided to photograph them before they entirely disappeared and whilst most by now are more thistledown than flower, a few blooms remain. 

And a poem from a Ted Hughes book of poems I have been reading.

Thistles

Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men

Thistles spike the summer air

And crackle open under a blue-black pressure

Every one a revengeful burst

of resurrection, a grasped fistful

of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up

From the underground stain of a decayed Viking

They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects

Every one manages a plume of blood

Then they grow grey like men

Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear

Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.

A visual interpretation of the poem on youtube.

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And so the year is dispersed and it ends to be replaced by a new one.

The Week Before Christmas

Review of Majboor on the phillum blog.

The lead up to Christmas here is often exhausting, especially if you feel disinclined to shop as happened to me this year. On Friday evening I watched Majboor and wrote up the review.  Saturday was taken up with shopping for gifts because I couldn't put it off any longer. I bypassed the malls and went to the outdoor  Rocks Market which was fairly pleasant given that we are still having rather cold and cloudy days well into the summer.  Then the packaging of gifts, the making of cards, the weekly grocery shopping, the weekly cooking, a fine tune of the Majboor piece and the weekend had just slipped away.

One important gift still remains.  My niece is of an age (4) when she has been sucked completely into the world of Disney (something that alarms me but that's a separate story) and Ariel is a particular favourite of hers.  Anyway a few months back we got talking about Ursula the Sea Witch who features in the animated series (naturally as a fat blue woman) and then somehow we got to the meaning of the name Ursula with my niece - a somewhat opinionated child - refusing to believe that it meant "little bear" because "you are very wrong Anu Periamma, Ursula is a sea witch!" Then she had one of those moments where she suddenly got what I meant (and I love these moments, its like watching a light suddenly shining in her mind!).  This carries its own dangers because she became immensely preoccupied with Ursula and the potential of another story that featured a bear.  Rashly I promised her a story of Ursula and the Bear to be delivered by Christmas but I have yet to start on it.  Hopefully inspiration strikes soon otherwise I will have a somewhat disappointed niece on my hands.

The shopping trip was slightly sobering too.  The markets were deserted and a girl at a stall told me that this year they would be making little or no profit during the crucial holiday season.  In my suburb, the Eastern European man who opened a small store of cheap bed n bath stuff has seen no customers and has grown progressively sadder and more dishevelled.  Perhaps it's fears of another financial crisis. Or perhaps everyone is online.

Speaking of which the highlight of my weekend was a trip to my favourite bookstore, Abbeys.  A wave of pure happiness engulfs me in nice bookstores so I remain loyal to dead tree books and can't contemplate an electronic one. Ever :-) 

And here are pictures of an Australian summer that has seen more rain and cold than the fabled sun of tourist brochures.

Dog Days

I have been dog-sitting.

The dog belongs to my uncle and is quite the apple of his eye. So I had to move in to keep an eye on the dog while he is away.  The dog has been behaving thus far and in an effort to establish friendship has shown me its bones hidden all over the garden. He's a Lab of some sort and fairly gentle as dogs go.

As I am away most of the day a walker comes around during the day.  This hasn't stopped the dog from attempting to bamboozle me into a walk.  Most often he loiters around the house but now and then he comes and barks at me, these appear to be requests for bone time or walks. Or he will hang around hoping for food, his stomach is a bottomless pit.

Bone time is very sacred and must be adhered to every day, its the hour when he bonds with you by chewing on a bone while you sit close by.  I have to take a book and sit by him till the bone is chewed to the...bone.  Of late we seem to have swung back into winter which makes this slightly unpleasant - especially when the demand comes at 9:00 pm.

I am not entirely sure why but I talk to the dog in Tamil, maybe because its the language I employ for babies.  It hardly makes a difference to the dog of course who only responds to a few important words.  I sing nonsense verse to it once in awhile too but it always leaves the room when I do so which hasn't done much for my pride in my singing :-)

The suburb my uncle lives in is fairly unremarkable, there are streets of suburban houses, schools, the odd community centre, a Railway Parade.  Over it all lies that Anglo-Saxon somonolence (as Murray Bail once put it in a book) peculiar to the more far flung suburbs of Sydney. 

This part of Sydney is also quite green and leafy and is a part of town where the city's early vegetable gardens were established.  One sunny day the dog and I went for a walk.  The park nearby is a mix of native and foreign trees and full of bird life.  I took a picture of galahs which are abundant in this part of town. And just a few general pictures in and around the park.

Yesterday I was putting away some stuff and the dog looked extremely doleful.  It then struck me that it thought I was also packing and leaving. Much petting and endearments later he looked happier.  Of course when I do leave he will hardly notice because the family will be back:-)

Initially the dog-sitting seemed a bit of a hassle coming as it did in the midst of a busy work spell but it's turned out to be a bit of a change and a mini-vacation.  Perhaps a staycation keeping house and dog for people on real vacations is a perfectly acceptable way to step out of one's routine:-)

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Separately the guy I buy The Big Issue from informed me today that he was now married to one of his customers.  When I first met him he was homeless, separated, had lost custody of his children and had just started selling the magazine.  Since then he had bought a place, earned a diploma. And now the marriage.  It made for a happy story.