I went for a ride on my Sydney ebike this morning for the first time in a while. Apparently, complicated things you only do intermittently are a bit hard. Unlike a simple…
Alien invasion
Debris falling from the sky. Giant things floating overhead. Satellites crashing into backyards. Aliens with deep booming voices. Fields of purple flowers that turn into horses and giants that fight each other….
The bookseller
Unable to read, when confronted with a specific request, the bookseller would trawl through his piles of books arranged by size and colour, seeking a particular combination that matched the requestor’s style…
Young Mr Stoker
Young Mr Stoker, Re-insurance broker, often dreamt of the stars. More precisely, though not quite so nicely, He dreamt of the endless shoals of risks That danced and whirled about them. Visions…
All the coin in the castle
The plaintive sound of a violin echoed through the swamp. Holmes sat on a log, alone, playing a threnody. “Abandoned!”, he sighed. Lestrade, Quaz and the princess were gone, who knows where….
The Kingdom of automata
I hid behind a pillar. I could hear the thunder of feet. A group of people ran into the hall, toward me and past me, oblivious. They distributed themselves among the various…
Graveside manner
“You know, I have been dead now longer than I was ever alive. It’s kind of sad. All that unmet potential.”
How the huia was lost
[Repost from 26 Jan 2018] “No New Zealander who loves his country can read, without indignation, the chronicle of the collectors’ raiding of the forests. Even such a bird-lover as Sir Walter…
Journal of a Plague Year – Haymarket
[Repost from March 2020] Down at World Square they’ve gone slightly mad. Coles affixes notices to starkly bare shelves, begging us to only buy a single pack of bog roll: ‘There’s enough…
A series of unfortunate events
Due to absentmindedness and many distractions, I managed to let the domain name where I hosted my blog expire late last year. I have it on backorder, so hopefully will be able…