Living on the edge Beneath my feet A great lake stretches away Pristine glass To grassy slopes, rising, slowly rising Hills of green and gold And further still the blue and grey Of distant mountains The soft lap of water at my doorstep The slow creak of a boat moored nearby Wind whispers over the…
Review “The Ship who sang” by Anne McCaffrey
“The Ship who sang” is an early novel for McCaffrey which was published in 1969. It depicts the story of a young female who is born with severe birth defects rendering her body useless, who is trained and then installed into a spaceship, with the ship essentially becoming her body. The story depicts the various…
St Maggies
What do you call a hospital That doesn’t have any doctors? Where patients are tended After a fashion By disenchanted nurses Where the senile and confused Wander unattended through the rooms Of the sick and injured Wailing their confusion To their own detriment and the distress of the rest What do you call a hospital…
Review “The Endless”
This is a weirdly compelling low budget film which is kind of science fiction, kind of horror (a bit), kind of supernatural. This 2017 film starred and was directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Two brothers are living a hand to mouth existence after having escaped from a cult some years earlier. The younger…
Home Improvements
For a broken heart, call the plumber It’s just a pump, surely It should be a simple matter to straighten out Tighten a few bolts Seal the leaks Flush out the blockages There! Good as new Anxiety? IT department Brain computer giving random pop-ups? Have you turned it off and back on again? No…
Review “Mississippi Burning”
“Mississippi Burning”, made in 1988, is based on real events that occurred in 1964. It depicts the way racism divides and destroys community. In 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi after they tried to help the local African American community enrol to vote. Two agents of the FBI (played by Willem Dafoe…
The Umbrella
What’s the point of an umbrella Held over a soaking head by a stranger On a very wet day That ship has sailed, surely This body could not be any wetter Were it to jump in a swimming pool So, what’s the point of an umbrella To share a shelter with someone who has…
Public hospitals and other weirdness
Over the last few weeks I have been experiencing (as a concerned onlooker) the wonderful public health system in Australia. What I have taken away from this is the determination to hang on to my private health cover no matter what. First – how to find the patient in the public health system. Shouldn’t be…
Mother Spider
Mother Spider makes a plan And sets to work as best she can She weaves her strands of cruelty tight And coats them with affection bright The tallest tales adorn her nest All underpinned with malice best A fine veneer of fair deceit This faked accord is quite a feat This web’s a work of…
Review “The Door into Summer” by Robert Heinlein
This is a relatively early work for Heinlein, having first been published in 1957. More famous works such as “Stranger in a Strange Land” are still ahead of him. As such, this book, while quite good, is not great. The story concerns protagonist Dan Davis, an inventor who is cheated out of his life’s work,…
Eclectic Assemblage 