18 September 2020

It’s a good day for curling up in bed – damp, soft grey sky – and the sea-eagle chicks have nestled down. Just when you think the white one has finally dozed off it scratches itself, or cleans under its wing, jostling the darker one, making it wriggle irritably in its sleep.

17 September 2020

Bundanoon is beautiful with opulent magnolia and pink-tinged snowy-white blossom. Waving yellow wattle and delicate droops of sweet pea. I push the pram into the butcher’s shop as a passing woman wearing an ankle length wrap of finely-woven wool articulates to her companion, ‘How did you discover this little place?’.

16 September 2020

I knew, even as I chopped the carrots, that they were a mistake. They would turn my dinner into a mess, diluting the flavours with their lumpy blandness. Suddenly I understood why my daughter had always picked the carrots out of stews. But I kept chopping, and added them anyway.

15 September 2020

The swimming lesson has moved to the other end of the pool. I sit on raked steps to watch my grandson. Behind the blue and white lane markers two women walk, as stately as cruise ships. Behind them, a turbulence of aquarobics. Behind that, a stretch of shimmering, unruffled water.

14 September 2020

Day twenty-five of my fifty days. What to write about to celebrate this auspicious moment? Being a great-aunt, the mystery of dust, the sudden shaft of western sun falling on the house across the street? Or maybe it’s time to consider the fast-approaching milestone of one million deaths due to

13 September 2020

A woman near the markets is wearing a shirt that says ‘Sunday’. Recently I bought some soft white sheets, on sale, called ‘Sunday sheets’. I think I get the allusion, but I don’t think either of us – she in her shirt or me in my sheets – is living the dream.

12 September 2020

My friend from primary school days messaged me this morning. Usually she’s found an old photo of us, usually playing with our guinea-pigs. This time it’s to say her partner has taken a turn for the worse. The palliative care team is looking after him at home, beautifully, she says.

10 September 2020

The baby is moving into toddler territory now, frowning at me in the café because I forgot her yoghurt. Back home, after wrestling herself onto the stool, she sits at the little table drawing with crayons. I hold her to me when she’s tired. She still pulls out my earrings.

9 September 2020

There’s a plover on the edge of a neighbouring roof, motionless on spindly legs. Last year we watched a plover from the 11^th floor hospital window, exposed on the flat pebble roof to those weeks of beating sun and pouring rain. When she sat on her nest, she disappeared completely.