ask people we know is the first thing I wrote, then lists:
yours and owls
soda
ice cube tray
bread
milk
fruit
Hamish in Queensland.
Turn the page for 13/8 Habossem St; Egem Pension, Kemalyeri, Cannakkale; the Fedriades Hotel in Delphi – don’t make me fly home; the vistas to the Gulf of Corinth from Mt Parnassus, so many olive trees they turned the hills blue, perfect hanging valleys carved out by glaciers.
Lists of things waiting for me at home:
iphone
washing machine
television
lounge, chairs
saucepans
knives
the photo album maker.
In Istanbul: two Turkish towels, rosettes for Lily and the Museum of the Innocents, the Biennale, the ruckus of cows and ducks in backyards about to be slaughtered for Eid al Adha.
6 eggs, 270g castor sugar,1 tsp vinegar @ 120C, recipe for pavlova clouds seen on the ferry from Piraeus to Heraklion
Between the pages of flying back from Greece to the Finch Apartments in Karakoy, one of my homeless clients, Emma, needed 4 weeks of bank statements, a T file number and three criteria why she needed priority housing
Prices for hotels in the Old City, with a bathroom suddenly from $26 to $131; Piraeus Harbour, so much to absorb from the shade, waiting to travel to Hydra. I noted: taxis, rembetika, beggars, ferry ticket sales, the call girls, the traffic;
Knossos: ochre/ox blood; blue; cream; black; the monkeys, the lilies, the bull. I write: anywhere but Australia. So far away. Was it the sunshine, the ocean, those things I understood, and it was magical, maybe the wood nymphs…
Turn the page, well and truly back in Wollongong:
AVO 5 years? 6 years?
bread milk the staples of life
oko nom iyaki Japanese cabbage pancake, mayo and tomato sauce,
I’ve made them, they’re great, for when there is too much cabbage.
ring tiler, screen people;
tiler definitive level for floor;
look at the grate, higher than thought;
plumber – waiting for toilet pipe
I’ll use my experience of European plumbing and Greek showers to get the perfect bathroom.