I told you I went back to see Susie the next day. Fairlea is near the Yarra River and surrounded by green parkland but you know it is a prison by the rather ugly front entrance. The Prison Officer I met at the reception area was a very sympathetic and helpful woman. “She was released this morning. We aren’t permitted to give you the address … Continue reading The Girl in the Blue Dress – meeting the wife.

Mary Gilmore was a great Australian poet and journalist and adventurer and all-round interesting person. For those of you who might be interested there are many internet references but this one is my favourite. Here is just one grab from that article. She was an ardent internationalist but a fierce nationalist. She was a staunch socialist who revered the monarchy. She was a pacifist who … Continue reading Mary Gilmore.

I said before that we met ‘at times’. Susie had a habit of disappearing without trace. I told you she was a nurse and I remember one time going to the nurses’ hostel in Punt Road in South Yarra and when I rang the bell for her room someone answered and said, “Sorry, whoever you are. Susie doesn’t work here anymore. I think she’s gone … Continue reading The Girl in the Blue Dress with note.

I have changed the name of the Girl who is the subject of the “Girl in the Blue Dress” series. It’s sometimes hard to find names to use because someone will invariably say, “Oh, John. Are you talking about ‘such and such’ a girl?” when I’m not. I make up all my stories – sort of. I don’t think/can’t remember if I ever went out … Continue reading Name correction.

The sentimental Bloke was a set of fourteen poems that started with the one I posted earlier and then proceeded to tell the Bloke’s story from meeting his wife to be, to meeting Doreen’s mother, then an Uncle who gave them a farm and finally the birth of a son. I’ve taken one or two verses from some of these. You can read the whole … Continue reading C J Dennis. A sampler

I have here another poem from C J Dennis. For quite some years he was a columnist on the Melbourne ‘Herald’ newspaper. He would often respond to some item of news with a poem that was very often quite cutting. The one I have chosen today is ninety one years old but still relevant. “According to the cabled pronouncement of an eminent London economist we … Continue reading The great depression.

You remember that girl I told you about who said she would wave to me from 30,000 feet up? I said there was more to come after that but I should have explained myself better. Actually there was quite a bit more to come before that. About the blue dress and all. Well many years ago, before I became a family man I did cast … Continue reading The Girl in the Blue Dress. Early days.

I said three or four days ago that I might do another poem by C J Dennis. Now it is quite difficult recording a longish poem without making a mistake so I went on line to see if there were any recordings that I liked. Please don’t go looking. I’m not saying I know better but there’s a lot out there that makes me cringe … Continue reading The Sentimental Bloke.

A Girl with a Watering Can is an 1876  painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The work was apparently painted in Claude Monet’s famous garden at Argenteuil, and may portray one of the girls in Renoir’s neighborhood in a blue dress holding a watering can Continue reading The girl in the blue dress. #8

It was that rare late autumn afternoon when everything was still as though some troop leader has whispered, “Hush! Listen” and we all stopped and there is a silence broken only far across the valley by a solitary black crow and, as the mournful fading ‘caaa’ fades, the last leaf flutters from the oak outside my bedroom window. Absolute stillness! Across the yard a tiny … Continue reading The girl in the blue dress. #5