He was about twelve years old. He stood at the edge of a concrete precipice on a scooter blade, still as a statue. Then he shot forward and dropped like a stone, out of sight. Four seconds later, on the other side of the precipice, he shot into the air and flew six feet above the ground, released the scooter, rolled forward 360 degrees in the vertical plain, met the scooter again in mid-air on the way down and landed like a sparrow on a chair. It was around that time early on a Saturday afternoon when you realise the weekend really has arrived, and you don’t have to rush anywhere or do anything for anyone. I sat on a bench under a blue sky and half-read the newspaper in the sun while William and Tom climbed. The playground is near the main street, and the view from my bench stretched away past a football ground and a primary school and a swimming pool, closed now, and all the way across a valley where it turned into blue South Gippsland haze. I struggled on through the Weekend Austra...
Recipes and ruminations from a small house in a big city.