Neither building is there anymore, just grassy areas assumed by the golf course, and fading in the memory of those who wandered the streets of our youth.
Books
ENOUGH Chapter 6 – Pinned Beneath the Boat
One thing, if you have been to the western plains of this great land, you will encounter is a magnificent sunset and tonight Mother Nature is turning on quite a show. Even from our fishing spot on the river with the bank and the trees filtering the view, the orange ochres build and crescendo across the landscape.
ENOUGH Chapter 7 – Learning to Recognise a Miracle
The afternoon whiles away. There is the odd bite, a twitch of a line enough to keep people enthused into staying for just a little while longer to break up the monotony. I continually text the audience of the fishing trip, sledging my fishing partner for assisting in the loss of the big carp, but also regaling his efforts in now being a cod fisherman.
ENOUGH Chapter 8 – The River Never Stopped Flowing
Perhaps that is why places like this possess such power. Not because they solve problems. Not because they remove stress. Not because they magically banish depression. They simply create enough distance for perspective to return. The river does not change my circumstances. The creek does not eliminate responsibility. The fish do not solve existential questions. Yet they slow everything down enough that I can finally see beyond the walls. Sometimes that may be all that is required.
ENOUGH Chapter 9 – Enough
Looking back, I suspect most people who marry or partner into close families eventually discover the same thing. The terrifying examination they imagined was never actually taking place. The judges they feared were mostly spectators. The barriers they believed existed were often little more than shadows cast by uncertainty. The acceptance they sought was available long before they realised it. Their greatest obstacle was rarely the family itself but their perception of it.
ENOUGH Chapter 10 – Learning to Live With Victory
So where did this week end? It ended beside a river. It ended amongst family. It ended with laughter. It ended with fish, timber, stories, and memories. Most importantly, it ended with a man who finally understands that winning was never the problem. Learning how to live with the victory was.
THE WORDS THAT FORMED ME – Foreword
I have reached an age when many people might expect the important influences to have completed their work and taken their final positions. That assumes considerably more order than I have observed in memory, writing or life. Words have a habit of returning when the listener has changed enough to hear something previously unavailable.
THE WORDS THAT FORMED ME – Prologue
The premise of this book is therefore both serious and slightly ridiculous. A man wakes with songs playing in his head, records them in a diary and later decides to investigate what they have been doing there. Some will unlock memories, others will expose contradictions, and a few may reveal that he has carried borrowed language for so long that it has become part of his own voice. Several may reveal nothing beyond questionable employment practices within the station’s programming department.
THE WORDS THAT FORMED ME Chapter 1 – Fatter Sheep
I can still hear the child’s delight in “sweeter” and “fatter”, and I do not want the adult to confiscate it entirely. Nonsense has its own value, and not every remembered rhyme needs to be interrogated until it confesses to shaping civilisation. Yet the opening no longer sounds innocent, because I have heard too many desires become plans and too many plans become necessities once the preferred conclusion has been chosen. I have also heard myself perform the same conversion.
THE WORDS THAT FORMED ME Chapter 2 – Facing Fearful Odds
Perhaps writing is the place where that contradiction can finally be examined without immediately being resolved. I can allow the logic to remain complete, follow it into the emotional territory it once concealed and speak without first calculating how much of the thought the room will tolerate. The reader is not required to stand at my right hand, but I can at least show them the bridge as I see it. They may recognise their own ashes and temples on the other side.
THE WORDS THAT FORMED ME Chapter 3 – To Be, or Perhaps Not Today
The analytical Jeff would prefer projections, milestones and a properly funded succession arrangement. He would like to know what lies beyond usefulness as he once defined it and whether meaning can continue producing an acceptable return. The human Jeff is beginning to suspect that some forms of existence do not need to justify themselves through output. He can understand that proposition intellectually while still struggling to live comfortably inside it. The accounts have not yet been finalised.
THE WORDS THAT FORMED ME Chapter 4 – The Importance of Being Jeff
Oz Jeff Banks developed in a similar way. At first it helped distinguish me from another Jeff Banks who was already known in a different field, but over time the name carried an Australian informality and a slightly exaggerated version of my willingness to be visible. Oz Jeff could write, promote books, tell stories and occupy the public space that Jeff Banks may once have entered more cautiously. Yet he was not an invented Ernest travelling to town for freedom. He was one part of me given a louder microphone.