The moment in the water

There’s a moment when you’re in the sea and you realise you’re not okay. It just materialises. It isn’t there, the thought, then it is and you know the force pulling you back is stronger than you are. There’s nothing below you and two-feet of white water bearing down on you and not a thing to hold on to.

Harry knew it too. The moment we realised he let out a cry. I know, I said, I’m trying.

There was a man on the beach with his kids so I waved that straight-armed wave of panic. He looked and I waved again then he was there. I gave him Harry. I can’t, I said.

I got half way home before I almost cried. But there was music on the radio and Friday afternoon traffic around us and we were fine. It's just, you know.

I've got your stuff: An open blog post of apology

A selection of the 15 million books I've borrowed, suffering Stockholm syndrome.

There are a stack of things I can do quickly: run to just miss a train, eat tacos, get to the head of the beer queue. But one thing I'm never going to do is get your stuff back to you in a reasonable time. I'm sorry, it's bad, I feel bad about it. But age has not wearied my capacity to hold on to your stuff.

Books are my main problem. They're just so damned interesting and I want to read them all and you have so many! And you're so kind and sharing and offer them to me, and I snap them up greedily, knowing they won't see you again until your children have left home.

You may not even remember I have them? I recently bumped into someone who had lent me a Jonathan Franzen book a while back. I stuttered something like, "Hey I've started the Franzen! Yeah finally, I had this thing I had to finish but now my evenings are clear and I've read the first 30 pages and I'm really enjoying it (the language is great!) and I should have it finished and back to you by..." At which point I kind of trailed off and she looked at me like I was a cat short of a crazy lady then muttered something about a meeting she had to be at. So Franzen lady, I'm sorry, your stuff is with me.

So my question is, should I work my way through all the books people have lent me (project-style), or just return them wholesale and unread and add myself to some global 'Do Not Lend' black list? What would you do?

Because it's an election year

I've been thinking about doing some kind of low-brow election year commentary, just for shits and giggles, but I've been a little intimidated, frankly, with all the political smarts of politically smart people flying around.

But after the fun of today, what with Crean and Gillard and the leadership challenge that never was, I reckon an untrained monkey has as much chance of making any sense of it as anyone else so what the hey, why not have a crack.

So what do I bring as a political commentator? Absolutely nothing. But I do promise to:

1. re-watch The West Wing
2. drink enough beer to make Hunter ST proud
3. bring everything back to the carbon tax
4. never, ever say 'Juliar' even if I really, really want to (so lame, so very, very lame. So very lame.)
5. base my political analysis on fortune cookies and horoscopes
6. hold my suburb's third, maybe fourth, least sucky election night party.

So comrades! Let's get this shit on.