News

Fifth news item

"You've Got to Sleep With Your Mum and Dad" is now available on Amazon. Childhood angst, marathon swimming, international exploitation and the threat of impending pinniped intimacy. on 2014-08-13
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Fourth news item

Have a look at my page on Amazon. Still plenty of summer left for challenging literature. on 2014-08-13
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Third news item

Check out my Amazon Kindle page. 'The Baby Who Killed People for Money' is now available. An utterly charming child with a unique and lucrative skill. A father with no defence against his daughter's impulses. Would you take your little girl around Europe for a spot of murder tourism? Of course you would. on 2014-06-30
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Second news item

My story on the Tate gallery website on 2013-11-11
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First news item

A Thousand Natural Shocks An anthology that includes two of my stories. Available now at Amazon. on 2013-11-11
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February 2014
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Archive for February 13th, 2014

Posted February 13, 2014
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petra22

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Posted February 13, 2014
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petra12

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Posted February 13, 2014
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petra41

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Posted February 13, 2014
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I came back from Aqaba through Wadi Rum and tried to get to Petra from Ma’an. No transport would go there. Apparently the roads were closed.

I teamed up with a bloke in my hotel and we paid enough money to a man with a Peugeot 504 shared taxi for him to agree to take us there. As we left the plains, the view was like this.

petra31

There didn’t seem to be enough snow to close the country’s major attraction. Still, a bit further along we found the Minister of Something being interviewed for television about how the freak weather conditions were bringing the country to a standstill.

petra21

We were the only tourists to get through that day and the hotels had apparently emptied before the snow. It was a buyer’s market for hotel rooms so I decided to stay. When my companion disappeared in the Peugeot after a few hours, I had the whole enormous, glorious thing to myself. Except for the Bedouin, obviously. They just got on with their normal lives and left me alone.

petra11petra4

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Posted February 13, 2014
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This was my first job when I moved to Sydney.

It was a noisy place to busk with trains rattling in and ferries revving their diesel engines but the audiences were good. One problem was that I attracted much larger crowds if I sang covers that people recognised. My own brilliant songs were largely ignored. However, singing songs repeatedly is boring. Being the late 1980s, lots of people requested The Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be (500 miles). Easy to play, very recognisable but really dull after you’ve played it a few hundred times. So I played around with the words.

My standout memory of this particular job was the stricken face of a poor, innocent American lady who walked past just as I was singing:

…and when I come, yes I know I’m gonna be

I’m gonna be the man that comes all over you.

Oh.

My.

God.

I don’t have any pictures of me busking at Circular Quay but my mates came by while I was playing in The Corso at Manly, took a picture and then pelted me with coins.

corso

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