Found this in this weekend's paper -

Be with me, words, a little longer; you

have given me my quitclaim in the sun,

sealed shut my adolescent wounds, made light

of grownup troubles, turned to my advantage

what in most lives would be pure deficit,

and formed, of those I loved, more solid ghosts.

- John Updike, on his last birthday.

Am also enjoying the poetry of Stan Rice - check him out.

Sorry for not writing in so long - I blame Facebook! Will try harder from now on...

I've worked at my work
I've slept at my sleep
I've died at my death
And now I can leave

Leave what is needed
And leave what is full
Need in the Spirit
and need in the Hole

Beloved, I'm yours
As I've always been
From marrow to pore
From longing to skin

Now that my mission
Has come to its end:
Pray I'm forgiven
The life that I've led

The Body I chased
It chased me as well
My longing's a place
My dying a sail


- Mission, by Leonard Cohen

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR EVERYONE. (And Australia Day, if you go in for that one).
Here in Sydney we had lots of little kids walking arounnd with temporary tattoos of Austrayan flags on their arms and faces. We also had lots of old double decker buses carrying Chinese people around, and, strangely, an exhibition of old Land Rovers in Hyde Park. Go figure.
Anyway whatever we had, it has nothing on what was going down in China - check out this lovely firework chaos video taken by elyse sewell - gunpowdery anarchy!
Incidentally, some of my most favourite people are Oxen, so it should be a good year for them and for me for knowing them. Gong Xi Fa Cai!

HAPPY 2009 TO ALL - may it be full of days like this one...

One of my photos from the Paris Catacombs has been included in the Schmaps guide to Paris -


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got a million photos of Melbourne, Alice and Sydney to upload .... but off to Glenworth Valley Peats Ridge festival tomorrow so they will have to wait ... happy New Year everyone, may 2009 be full of beauty for you all...xxx

HAPPY CHRISTMAS HAPPY HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

Farewell Koh Phangan and back to Bangkok today. I'm going to miss terribly the Sri Thanu sunsets, roosters in the morning, fish curry, Prickly Heat and the cocktails at the Freeway Bar. And we shall miss Bev and Cathy and Sarah and all the fantastic people we met here...
but we'll be back...
Sydney - see you Saturday!

Some photos have successfully been uploaded as we wait here in our island prison! - the rest are on my flickr account - and more to come.

just to let everyone know that we're fine - stuck here on Koh Phangan for the time being... otherwise known as Paradise. So don't worry about us - worry about all the little old ladies standing their ground in Bangkok airport right now.

Greetings from Thailand! I saw an elephant on the back of a truck today! No shit!

Thailand is oneof the craziest and loveliest places I've ever seen - cannot believe it's taken me this long to be here. Just now I sat on the beach (we're at the Nice Sea Resort on Sri Thanu beach on the island of Koh Phangan) and watched the most massive sunset carve its colours out all over the sky. Photos will not be able to do justice but I will still try but am still just sinking into island living and eating lots of fish and learning some Thai and swimming swimming swimming - so camera geekery will have to wait til next week. The Thai family who run the place we're staying at are old friends of the husband so we've been integrated into their family life and sit around watching Thai soap operas and eating fish curry of an evening. It's heaven.

The food here is incredible - it has to be said. On the train from Bangkok to Suratthani we had a Tom Yum soup which nearly blew the top of my head off. It was a BOMB of a soup - so good!

We spent a few days in Bangkok with Bev and Cathy and celebrated birthdays and drank Thai rum and wandered about the streets - it was both the festival of Loi Krathong and the one-year anniversary of the death of the King's sister (big deal) so there was lots going on. We jumped on river ferries and sky trains and tuk tuks and got massages at the temple of Wat Pho and generally just wandered around, me with my eyes hanging out in delight at being somewhere new and weird.

So now after a few days of doing absolutely sweet FA, I am going to rouse myself tomorrow to finally learn to scuba dive. Hurray! By next week I'll be au fait with psi and atas and pressure and all that, not to mention the joys of the underwater world surrounding Koh Phangan. Maybe I should buy an underwater camera.......

Photos soon.