October, 2011

Mitsuko Uchida, she of the OMG look at my Issey Miyake pleats, right. (Picture from her great album of the final trio of Beethoven piano sonatas.) This global elite product of Japan-Vienna-London recently took part in the admirable Lunch with the FT series. The interview includes a quite provocative take on positive discrimination, her views [...]

What does a cop eat for breakfast? Vanilla rice porridge with poached quince, followed with a double-shot macchiato, chased by a single macchiato. Hard-core but nice, and now he can keep affording it. What baby cops break their fast on, I dunno — MuckMuffins? Our good cop is an older fella, into his 60s, street [...]

An industrial site of enormous machine-like buildings with exposed pipes. A woman holding up two pieces of meat announces: “This is veal!” She stuffs the veal into her ballet slippers — they dangle out like tongues — and dances en pointe around the vacant space. This is one of the many amazing performances invented by [...]

What an ugly, disgraceful overreaction by the mayor and the City of Melbourne to the Occupy Melbourne group. When I hurried up to the City Square on Friday around 4.25 to catch a tram for Carlton the emptied square was cyclone fenced with riot police standing behind the wire. Further up Swanston Walk everyone was [...]

We flew Tiger to Sydney, Qantas being in a state. It was a Constant Gardener idea to cheer us up: the last few weeks have been a very sad farewell to a friend who passed away (When did Australians begin referring to it as “passing”? Is death an American inflected experience now?). Friday night: It’s [...]

Diana Gribble at home, September 2011 Prefactory babble: most remarkable (The eulogy below; skip this preface as you will.) Yesterday, jangling phone, Constant Gardener saying: it’s a terrible line, ring back in five and I’ll get Chong to answer on a better connection. Seeing that I was asleep, reasonable at 7:45 am after a late [...]

How do you lose someone? It is why we can’t take anything for granted, though we do that every minute. When I heard that Diana, great friend and much admired and adored person, had passed away last night, it had already seemed a long time coming, though she had only been ill three months. She [...]