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Keywords: Plastic Bags

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Learning to sail both ways

    • Graham Kershaw
    • 12 February 2013
    1 Comment

    Don't you seek a centre, an object of devotion? Don't you seek a primal source of light? In the evening, on verandahs, in the dark, in the rain ... Don't you go inside quickly and drink yourself blind? 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Winter of Greece's discontent

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 16 January 2013
    6 Comments

    I have always felt safe in Athens, but recently, while travelling in a crowded train, I was jostled by several large young men. When I alighted, feeling more than a little shaken, I discovered that my wallet was missing from my bag. There have long been beggars in Greece, but now there are many more, and of a new type.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Why the old woman couldn't cross the road

    • Mary Manning
    • 21 November 2012

    What was she to do? Mr J. J. Bullfinch would surely rescue her if he knew of her plight. He would stride out into the traffic and it would stop when he raised his hand. But why should she imagine he'd come? He hardly knew her. She was alone, sitting on the grass shaking from the shock of being nearly hit by a bus. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Xanana on the wall

    • Tessa McMahon
    • 26 June 2012
    9 Comments

    The bed on which I lie is scientifically sprung, approved by chiropractors ... and blessed from on high by Klimt ... Made by a woman Timor-thin, cross-legged on concrete.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A temporary halt to Grexit and Drachmageddon

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 20 June 2012
    6 Comments

    Greeks expect the positive outcome of last weekend's election to be weak and short-lived. Austerity has brought predictable unemployment, homelessness, and a rising suicide rate. The elderly are reminded of the fear and the helplessness that accompanied the hideous years of the Civil War and the dictatorship of the Colonels.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The hell of hoarding

    • Ellena Savage
    • 20 January 2012
    3 Comments

    Inside an old case of art supplies I'd lugged in and out of three houses but rarely opened, I found a plastic bag with something like a dead rat in it. It was not an animal however but a full head of my own hair from the time I shaved my head. There is internal logic to hoarding, but it has its perils.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Trashing American English

    • Brian Matthews
    • 30 September 2011
    5 Comments

    Few dump masters are as erudite as Steve. 'Had a bloke here the other day, a Yank. Said he was after a couple of barrels. "You mean drums," I says. But no. He didn't want to play the bloody drums, he wanted barrels. Well, I says, the only barrels round here are wine barrels. What you want is drums.'

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Supermarket and cemetery conversation

    • Brendan Ryan
    • 09 November 2010

    At the IGA, the woman at the check-out peppers her speech with Darl. Her friendliness, the way she packs my plastic bags, greets me two days later – a connection Facebook can’t provide.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Quasimodo comes to Woolies

    • Brian Matthews
    • 16 June 2010
    1 Comment

    He was horribly contorted. His head was bent over his right shoulder as if being crushed down. The angle of the head concealed the right ear and enforced a distortion of his mouth and right eye. You don't stare at such afflicted people so I gazed elsewhere until he was on the move.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Confessions of a stamp murderer

    • Devyani Borade
    • 03 March 2010
    1 Comment

    I am a pigtailed nine-year-old in frocks when I first lay eyes on the album. At a glance I can tell my grandfather's obviously old stamps from my dad's newer ones. Excitement fills me. What a treasure! I am rich! Now I can buy all the dolls I want!

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Immersed in India's light and shade

    • Anne Doyle
    • 17 February 2010
    3 Comments

    Before long we come upon an open stone building — the meeting room. We enter to find 60 weathered women seated on mats on the dirt floor. Their saris fill the enclosure with colour. Their faces tell the poignant stories of their lives.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Grand Prix: anniversary for a meaningless death

    • Roger Trowbridge
    • 25 March 2009
    2 Comments

    Dennis was the neighbourhood character. Full of good humour, he had a capacity for quipping his way through life — no one out-quipped Dennis. One day Dennis went to the Grand Prix. That evening he did not come home.

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