Earlier Work [pt.2]

THE FRANTIC AND EXHAUSTING LIFE OF A PARLIAMENTARY MEDIA ADVISER colinposter

Jacobs, Colin (7 August 2014; Crikey.com.au)

I bundle out of the train in short-pants and find a phone box to call Colin. I’ve started explaining where to meet me when Colin screams and I hear the receiver clatter against the tabletop.

When he comes back on a few minutes later, Colin explains that from his kitchen window, he saw his car start to roll back down the slope out of his garage. He ran out of his house and slapsticked along beside it trying to get the key into the lock as it picked up speed, rolled down the slope and through the neighbour’s fence in front of an audience of staring children. Continue reading

Earlier Work [pt.1]

PROCLUS: COMMENTARY ON PLATO’S TIMAEUS proc

Baltzly, Dirk (Three vols., Cambridge University Press, 2007, 2009 & 2013; ISBN 978-0521183888)

The masculine squalor of a man’s first share-house often owes as much to his housemates’ incompetence at housework as to their disdain for it. Some may know how to replace fuse wire or unblock a toilet, but few men of eighteen have any tangible notion of how to clean a grill trap or defrost a refrigerator.

When Dirk Baltzly moved out in the eighties, many young men couldn’t even cook. Continue reading

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