Perhaps it was the turbulence that woke her. Or was she dreaming? She found herself gazing up at a tall, lean, male figure in company uniform with two gold braids on his sleeve. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you.” Jill Harding rubbed her eyes, adjusted her reclining seat, sat up, and smiled. “Not at all! […]

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Ronald O’Brien sat staring at the screen of his computer, elbows on the desk, his cheeks propped in his hands, the very image of a blocked writer. He sighed, and stretched with relief when his son entered. Unlike some, he had no rules about not being disturbed during working hours. His son John recognised the […]

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Boons back to antiquity were from a Somerset village near Taunton, so for the next several weeks I wandered back and forth across southern England, sometimes tramping, sometimes bussing, sometimes with my thumb out. On the lookout for tachyons, you might have said. I did a cathedral binge from Canterbury across to Exeter and from […]

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I remember the first time I wrote about him: the leg spinner. The editor of the paper, Clive Holder, asked me, “Who is this new kid they picked for the state team?” Clive was a cricket fanatic. I told him the debutant was a leg-spinning all-rounder. “A species presumed extinct,” he said, and added, “Are […]

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The North Shore bush rang with the sound of currawongs. Spring sunlight turned the tree-tops a brilliant green. The tang of eucalyptus sharpened the breeze stirring the foliage. Yet to wheelchair-bound Craig MacDonald, settled on the front porch of the house, it was a matter of indifference whether the sun shone or not. Every day […]

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A woman is writing a letter. Let’s watch her. She is an old woman, white-haired, strict as a stick in her sitting, her spine in exact parallel to the untouched back of her chair, but don’t be fooled. This is a stance of schooling, of breeding, of character, not of arthritic age. She is not […]

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“It’s a boy this time,” said Eva as she came inside from the backyard after hanging out the washing. She sank her middle-aged, rotund body down at the kitchen table opposite her husband Martin, who put down his paper and spectacles to listen. Eva looked anxious, and the lines on her strong face seemed to […]

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It was a Friday ritual, always at the same course and always at the same time. Stan always arrived first, having programmed his GPS and consulted the whiteboard on his daughter’s kitchen wall where he, and she, meticulously wrote down all his instructions for the week. It was the highlight of his week, so much […]

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For years Nanna had told me that she wanted to die in her sleep, peacefully. “I doan’a vant to be a burrden,” she’d said. Back then, I thought she might get her wish: she had survived the war in Europe only to endure a toxic, sixty-year marriage with my grandfather. Surely the God she loved […]

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Each time I see Connor, my son, he seems to have grown two or three centimetres. Today, at least, his increased height was partly due to his light-brown curly hair which hadn’t been cut since I saw him two months ago and now bushed up high. It was his sixteenth birthday, and I’d driven to […]

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