Category: Personal
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The Creativity Thing
I have been inspired by Meredith Lewis’ Advent Calendar and today’s most so which is on creativity Meredith’s Advent Calendar. This is my best response… I can still hear her voice in my head. Although long ago she would have sent away mine, unfortunately. She had spend the last 45 minutes describing her failed novel […]
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Short Run
Again. I drew my hand close, splayed my fingers wide and pressed down hard. On my shoulder. I pivoted and turned left, facing the scorers. “Short run, ” I intoned, making sure my voice carried off field. Somewhere in the distance, a head raised and lowered. Perhaps a pen moved scratching paper, hopefully. I turned […]
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Help the helpers
“Daddy? What is it you do again?” My daughter looked up from her drawing and fixed me with her questioning stare. You can’t explain what I do to a four year old. Even one who had watched me all morning: resetting passwords, setting up new users, installing software, checking performance reports,etc. Saying “I’m a system […]
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Version Control
It began as an easy and fairly innocuous job. The only downside was that it had to be finished by Monday. But I was just the technical writer and my role was secondary. Or so I thought. The content was being emailed to me by another person. A communications document for a new software implementation. […]
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Copy and Paste
The greatest public humiliation I experienced was at the hands of an ex-wife and her then boyfriend. But that didn’t prepare me for my greatest workplace humiliation (also known as the copy and paste incident). It occurred during a meeting. I was presenting the changes I had made to an intranet to a group of […]
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Letters to an artist : John Keats
John Keats! They made me read you and after Chaucer and Donne (who I ended up liking eventually), I wanted to refuse. I loved poetry having fallen in love with Milton’s, “On His Blindness” and John Masefield’s, “Sea Fever,” but even after having written poetry of my own, the reluctance was strong towards this one. […]
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Laughably Ever After
“Dr Twinkle?” “Speaking.” “Do you do weekend emergency out calls?” “Nope. Only weekdays. And only to the Kid’s hospital. Why?” “I need a doctor for a party.” “Have you tried datingdoctors.Com?” “A clown doctor,” I replied. “And how did you get my name?” she asked. “You tried clown ties on me. In the kid’s hospital […]
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The Last Line (Beth McMullen : Obstinate Little Tart)
“Excuse me.”I look up. I’m zero words into a five hundred word short story, which means…any interruption is perfectly welcome. “Do you know you look like David Marr?” I’m laughing now. At the woman waving her debit card. She was about to buy a coffee and has mistaken me. For David. Not David my twin […]
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The Last Line (Beth McMullen : Obstinate Little Tart)
“Excuse me.” I look up. I’m zero words into a five hundred word short story, so any interruption is perfectly welcome. “Do you know you look like David Marr?” I’m laughing now. At the woman waving her debit card. She was about to buy a coffee and has mistaken me. For David. Not David my […]
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The Last Melbourne Cup
Apparently Melbourne Cup 2018 is being soaked by heavy rains. Melbourne Cup 2017 for me was tear-soaked. That day, I was working at Westmead Childrens’ Hospital. I had bought my cup of coffee and walking back to my office when I noticed something odd. Police vehicles were pulling up at the entrance. Ambulance sirens and […]
Andrew James Whalan 