Posts by paul dalgarno
‘With her is no sitting down and starving out; no dilly-dallying and fooling around; no lazying, loafing, and going to sleep; no, it is storm! storm! storm! and still storm! storm! storm! and forever storm! storm! storm!’
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain
‘Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.’
Melville in Moby Dick
So sweaty, so unpleasant
‘Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition will not need to be told the story in detail; how he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up […] and could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.’
Woolf in Orlando
Scene from Billy Elliot, with striking miners shouting: scab, scab, scab
My mind to my body for agreeing to go back to work on 2 Jan
Excerpt from A Christmas Carol
Maybe the Xmas Eve experience at Coles was better in Dickens’ day
Philanthropy is in our DNA (most of which is inside the mosquitos)
This summer, I’ve decided to donate all of my blood for free to the mosquitos
Ha, yep, that’s how it’s used. Apparently it’s from the Gaelic war cry ‘aigh bas’ (battle and die)
Paul with a bound manuscript of his forthcoming novel (ya bass)
Bound manuscript ya bass
Found out this week that a raw score of 35 in Latin gets scaled up to 50 in the ATAR results, the highest scaling (and most school-specific) subject in Australia. If that’s not a clear-cut rort for private-school kids I don’t know what is
All trains direct to Flinders Street
I smell the deoderant you rolled while reaching halfheartedly
for the stars
See the knife sets on your
zoomed Android
& undies at forty percent off
A skeleton wrapped in muscle wrapped in skin:
Do you have any appointments today?
Would 5.30 work for you?
Know the feeling
Don’t lose the tshirt!
And the cry
That it’s aggressive
Before the keys find
Your hands
In your jeans
Cos I watered it last night
And the garage
In the downstairs room
And the laundry
In the kitchen
And the bedroom
Under the bed
And then kick
— kapow —
The big plastic sewing box
My right foot right through
Needles flying
Little looms leaping
Keys
I search in the bedroom
In the wardrobe
And the garage
In the downstairs room
And the laundry
In the bathroom
And the toilet
In the kitchen
And the lounge room
In my pockets
And the bedroom again
In the wardrobe
And the garage
In the kitchen
And the downstairs room
In the garden
Nothing says Australia like Let it Snow playing in the supermarket while everyone’s pissing sweat
A grey cat with a grey mitten
Ever since we got him, our cat has treated this glove like his child
🍙 Onigiri time
Sitting at my office desk
Smiling seaweed teeth 🍙
No matter how many times I write it, my phone autocorrects to Hairline Murakami
All of the above … and very food-focused
A British Blue cat sniffs at a flower in a vase (before trying to eat it)
Once in a golden hour
I cast to earth a seed.
Up there came a flower,
The people said, a weed.
Do I dare to eat a peach?
Press 3 to speak to a customer advisor
zero, brrrr … cool change coming through here now ☺️
Would post the link to Heatwave by Blue Nile but am too groggy cos of the heatwave
When you’re on fire as an actor everyone sees it; when you’re on fire as an author you just look tired; but when people eventually see the world you’ve created, with its shiny bells and whistles … you still look tired
Ta!