~ decompositions of the season

THEYesterday a small car ploughed into the venerable magnolia tree on our nature strip. My wife arrived home from a free solarium treatment, (shared in its entirety with a fluttering moth) to find the car abandoned, two vacant child restraints and the neighbours milling about. Someone called the police, who were at a loss as to how a vehicle could have generated the necessary speed to destroy itself so thoroughly, coming up a steep hill on a perfectly straight, short and narrow suburban street ... A momentary suicidal urge, perhaps?


A lady from Somalia was found at her house around the corner, presumably in shock. The magnolia tree is noticeably canted and almost ring-barked. It’s been there as long as I have, the poor thing, I have seen it flower every year of my life, and to be struck like that ... out of the blue ...


Greyish Blackish seems to have caught her first mouse - though it may previously have been partially incapacitated by Tweety Bird, the Jack Ketch of the household. GB is a very sweet natured cat and appeared unaware that the object of the exercise was to kill.

The mouse in the image below is accompanied by a item of biological refuse discovered by my wife in the shower. Tweety Bird seems to have have chewed off the outer coating of something’s head and left the remains as her customary matutinal gift.


(Just now, as I was writing, my wife called me to see this morning’s offering: another bio-hazard on the shower floor, this one resembling a grub-shaped grey-green kidney. Can’t find the camera ...)

Recent rains have eroded the banks of the Grey Creek, revealing an item of archaeological curiosity. This shopping trolley was surely buried long ago, possibly during earthworks associated with the laying down of the abutting Monash freeway. It might have sedately decomposed down the aeons, but no, the elements have thrust its ghastly corroded form back into the light, to further pollute the habitat of Immaculata, that pure white duck.



I’ll let you know how the supermarket responds, when I report the trolley for collection.

And by the way: the best wishes of this dread season to you all. Thanks for reading, [and commenting upon,] my meandering, probably perplexing diary. I hope you all get as focused and happy and prolific in this next year as I am determined to be. Sorry, as usual, for the unpredictable timing of my posts.Usually, it's concomitant with my state of mind. [William Burroughs despised the word concomitant.) When the the posts dry up, I am either in a slough of despond or so obsessively busy with my life that I can’t pause to reflect ... Anyway ...

I hope you get something really good for Christmas. May the wind fill your sails.