http://www.pickledeel.com Creative, personal expression - journal, writing, art Mon, 21 Jun 2010 02:57:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en When is a book launch not a book launch? When the author writes about his family and his upbringing then invites all those, and some, over to lunch to celebrate his parents, their love and tuition, the memory of them and all those (immediate family and others) who had some part in creating his ... http://www.pickledeel.com/2010/06/20/an-elephant-a-duck-and-a-community/ Dear Charles, I hope being that familiar so soon is okay. I just wanted to say thanks for the excuse to run up to Palmdale today.  There  is no town centre to speak of but I am sure the couple of women I crept past as they walked their Clydesdales in ... http://www.pickledeel.com/2010/05/14/letter-to-charles-15-may-10/ Dear Mr Sayers, Here you are at last. Funny how a photo makes it all a bit more personal. Just a shame I had to rely on the Army to provide it. I am sure you appreciated the recruits haircut you received just as much as the rest of us did ... http://www.pickledeel.com/2010/05/13/letter-to-mr-charles-sayers/ Scrubbed timber has no smell. The burnt brake pads and the metal wheel flange create their own dust and heat and smell which lifts in the warm afternoon, hangs in the humid air and is pushed aside by the train as it sighs up to the platform. I watch the ... http://www.pickledeel.com/2010/05/11/notes-in-a-sydney-train/ I rolled into Cobar with the sun sunk by twenty minutes and the clear autumn sky turned Indian ink blue. The rising moon was flashing through the trees on my right, distracting me from the roos taking a leisurely leap into my path. Thank goodness for peripheral vision. To my ... http://www.pickledeel.com/2010/05/01/cobar-by-moonlight/ Snaky Creek, just out of Manna Hill (ironic given the arid country, but then, perhaps not so ironic: I wonder if quails fall from the sky around here?!). Not Snake Creek. Or Big Snake Creek. Or Black Snake Creek even. But an adjectival snaky, suggesting deviousness. A slipperiness. A snakiness. ... http://www.pickledeel.com/2010/04/11/snaky-creek-and-other-place-names/ Sometimes, perhaps even "most-times" the image betrays the true story. Take Monty here for example. Young nephew charming up the camera, and in whose mouth no butter would melt. Pretty normal grin for a kid, especially given he has just been gently scolded by his father.  Scolded for what the ... http://www.pickledeel.com/2010/04/09/the-invisible-story/ BB King is twanging in the ceiling, largely drowned out by the chatter of customers, the clatter of the kitchen, and the hum of extractor fans over the ovens. The hooting laughter from an elderly couple in the corner, lubricated by a bottle of red and another of white, punctuate ... http://www.pickledeel.com/2010/03/19/kebab-book-review/ There was something unsettling sitting in the offices of a certain government department in Baghdad and hearing senior civil servants, some with PhDs from US and European universities, cynically observe that they had swapped their home grown dictator for Dictator Bremer of Washington DC. Perhaps most disturbing was their discussion ... http://www.pickledeel.com/2010/03/13/green-red-zone/ ...the town clerk (not sure which town) in the 1920s or so who thought it would be good for all in that part of the bush to have some water delivered via the channel that now bears his name.    Once can only suspect he well earned the naming rights ... http://www.pickledeel.com/2010/03/07/turns-out-albert-priest-was/