oneword.: Limit
it feels like that, as if my limit is already reached, as if i can't tolerate a scrap more of this sick sad feeling. sometimes i wish she was eighteen already and then i wouldn't feel as responsible, sometimes i wish she was still 10

oneword.: send: "Today I promise I will send my christmas cards, this means of course that as per usual I am too late for all the overseas people, why can't I be more organised? "

oneword.: snapshot: "I remember that afternoon as if it were yesterday. In the snapshot you are sitting, your shoulders slightly turned away, your head in your hands. That was the day that I was going away to Melbourne for three weeks. I should have known, from that photo, that of all your qualities, trust wasn't one of them. "

oneword.: bypass: "I didn't want to take the bypass, I mean if I did that I might miss something and heaven forbid, I don't want to miss anything! I mean what if right there, on the slow road, what if right there, was the one thing that I have been looking for all of this time? "

oneword.: punch: "i want to punch you, i should tell you that but instead i avoid you or i smile and pretend that you aren't the most infuriating human on earth "

oneword.: thread: "maybe that is all it is, the sharp tear as the threads that bind us together are torn from me and you run and i can't find the scissors fast enough to cut you free "

oneword.: three: "maybe it is my lucky number or maybe not? either way it follows me, influences me, haunts me. everything seems to occur in threes, love, hate, drama...just give me a three minute break. "

oneword.: drama: "Inside me it wells and settles as she comes and leaves the house and I want it to stop, I want some peace from this fear-filled drama. In her eyes I see her determination, she calls it love, that boy, I hate him "

oneword.: casting: "we lit the lamps and melted some wax I didn't understand how it was all going to work, i could not find the same three dimensional design at my fingertips as lived in my head, i was tired of the spanish and straining to understand, that was when i decided to have my baby in australia and not mexico "

oneword.: grade: "If I never push myself then I will never make the grade and the same goes for you. I know I set a low standard and maybe you think that I look okay but I know you can do so much better than this, don't let me hold you back. "

oneword.: static: "This memory, up on the hill that day, the red soil hot under my body, the wind whistling in the belah trees and that static crackling across the airwaves. The two way radio in my hand brought voices that I didn't know and could not hear well enough to decipher, yet those voices gave me something, a thread of hope, a connection with the outside world that I never knew was there. My isolation became a matter of perception, I felt less lonely after that. "

oneword.: statement: "and I looked at her coarse skin and snarly little smile and I decided she could make any sort of statements she liked to me but I would choose to listen to my own opinion rather than her condescending drivel "

oneword.: locate: "On the map I move my mouse and the names of the places pop up. I can't locate my home though, the place where part of my soul lies torn away from me like a missing arm. My brother says he is suffering depression and I can't reach him way out there to hug him and tell him everything will be okay, maybe that missing part of me can do it? "

oneword.: sand: "Maybe that is what I would miss the most, scouring it out of the bath, sliding on it as I rush in the wet bathroom, crunching it under my good shoes when I rush out, having it remind me the house I will come back to is a mess. Or feeling it seep between my toeas as I run and jump and laugh with my beatiful dog on the perfect beach. I love sand. "

oneword.: sand: "Maybe that is what I would miss the most, scouring it out of the bath, sliding on it as I rush in the wet bathroom, crunching it under my good shoes when I rush out, having it remind me the house I will come back to is a mess. Or feeling it seep between my toeas as I run and jump and laugh with my beatiful dog on the perfect beach. I love sand. "

oneword.: iron: "Maybe his heart is made of iron, maybe all those hearts are? All hard against everything except their own self interest. The worst is that they fill me with hate too, for them. Like a disease, their poison is catching. "

oneword.: honey: "The house she lived in was in a little shared community out the back here. When we looked through she seemed reserved and self protective. Wary. If she was anything like the character portrayed then it did all seem to fit. Her hair was long and grey, but she was still beautiful. Barbara."

oneword.: deaf: "It always seems to fall on deaf ears but I repeat myself just the same, I play my broken record again and again and I want to shut up more than you will ever know. 'Clean your rooms!' 'Do your homework'....I am an unbearable nag and I am angry that you make me that way. 'What?' you say. I don't repeat myself this time, I just walk away. "

oneword.: theme: "Forget a theme, I prefer eclectic. Can eclectic be a theme? "

oneword.: "what is the purpose? my favourite answer is, 'why not?'"

oneword.: timing: "Is that all it is, the timing? Can society be controlled so well that a few well placed words at the right moment can abolish all memory of evil, reset all ideas of dissent and reassure the onus is solely for self? "

oneword.: borrow: "I am happy for you to borrow my brand new top, you look a million dollars in it, as you do in everything, my beautiful girl. I am less happy that you throw my brand new top in the wash with the towels. It was a lovely top, once. "

oneword.: second: "I want to do this a second time because I think maybe I stuffed up the first time around and I mean how often do we really get a second chance? How often can we really hit the replay button? "

oneword.: second: "Will you give me a second chance? You said you didn't have a choice, that I was always going to have another chance. I walked away, where's the challenge in that?"

oneword.: essential: "It is essential that I keep my head together this time, that I don't let that dreaded insecurity leave me there, trembling, agrophobic again and unable to be whatever it is I am supposed to be."

oneword.: less: "there is always just a little less left than what i think, a little less milk, a little less money, a little less time. maybe what i need is just a little less optimism "

oneword.: stereo: "In my brothers room we listened to Deep Purple and Alice Cooper. We talked about theology and politics and I loved to listen. Then when he got married he hid the stereo under the bed and the records in the storeroom, his wife said they were evil and there were no more discussions. He said his mind was made up. "

oneword.: reach: "It is always there isn't it, that ideal, that goal, that dream...Hanging, taunting, irritatingly just out of reach. "

oneword.: "they came wrapped in plastic, tartans, i had a collection, they gave me one every year. picnic blankets, what a strange trophy for an age champion in an athletics carnival?"

oneword.: dusk: "the ground is fading, it reaches up and slaps the bottoms of my feet as i run, i hope there are no snakes. in the soft cold dusk light ahead the small yellow rectangles promise warmth and family and light. i run. "

oneword.: trivia: "let me natter, talk non-stop. words spilling out and I don't stop, I fill your ears with pointless trivia, I calm my nerves with inane banter. "

oneword.%3A awake: "this site is awake again?...where did you go? I missed you, looked for you, gave up on you, almost forgot about you, but now here you are...I am glad "

The 'One Word' site seems to be down. I miss it. Here is an old one I liked candle we walk through the creaky old house, this is home but with no lights it has become an alien landscape. my sister is behind me, i am scared of the dark, we walk to her room, our footsteps vibrate the house and her sliding door rolls open on it's own, the cold air from her room extinguishes the candle. i scream

oneword.: found: "'What have you found?', she asks me and I sit there in the dirt, my knees drawn up by my ears, the food pusher dragging the dirt back and forward across the paper covered magnet. 'I've found magic pebbles Grandma' "

oneword.: logic: "My concept of logic and his are worlds apart, so maybe the female brain sees things differently. More clearly :) "

oneword.: giraffe: "Under the bathroom, I buried it in the dust, I didn't want my sister to find it. It was MY Giraffe, all 8 inches tall, plastic and perfectly marked. I marvelled at it and marvelled that my cousin would give something so wonderful to ME! It would be safe in the dust. "

oneword.: seldom: "I seldom go there and yet that place lives in my mind and thoughts and in my soul. I walk those spaces, the sounds that live there echo in my head with every step. It is more real to me than any other place could ever be, yet now it is no longer the place of my memory, now it is my sister-in-law's house. "

oneword.: cardboard: "My love of fire all started with cardboard, we burnt all our flammable rubbish in the old copper, I would fill cardboard boxes with it and pile them on top of the copper. I spent hours looking for more things to burn and poking it with a stick. I learnt that burning plastic made interesting coloured flames. "

oneword.: wash: "It used to be my favourite day, I would offer to stay home and pile all the clothes into huge heaps on the porch, I would make biscuits, sitting on the back steps and holding the mixing bowl between my knees while the clothes swirled and then I would push them through the wringer and be lulled into happiness by the familiar rythym of the washing machine. That was what I would do to avoid mustering. I loved wash day. "

cafe
The room was long and the tables booths along the wall "Don't put your elbows on the table" said Grandma and I asked might I put my little elbows on it instead. She laughed loudly and I shrunk into myself, but later when she recounted the story to the family, and seeing the joy in her eyes, I was proud of my little elbows (wrists).

oneword.: anticipate: "Sometimes it is just far better to spend time anticipating an outcome than it is to actually experience the event. "

oneword.: home: "The years that I am not there don't make a difference, not the changing shape of the house, the aging faces or the new young ones. My home is still out there, out where the silence is so loud I sometimes want to scream, where the air is so dry and cold I do scream. "

oneword.: gray: "I thought it should be spelt 'grey', the other way just looks wrong to me, so this is where I am, stuck in that grey area. I don't know what will happen next, but inside I felt dead and grey and collapsed. "

oneword.: moose: "There was a guy called Moose in town, I think he was a friend of Keirans, one of those big thick-headed blonde boys, all muscle and suntanned shoulders. Deep voiced chuckles as I walked into the room, but never a word to me, just a straight blue-eyed stare. "

oneword.: goo: "I used to put the flour and the salt and the food colouring and what else was it? Oil? In the saucepan and make huge globs of coloured muck and my beautiful children would smear it all over my house their eyes glistening, full of laughter and this was happiness spelt g-o-o "

oneword.: ink: "In the drawer of the dresser in the sunroom, there were ink nibs there. My mother told me that they were used to write with but when I tried all I got was great blots of black ink spreading starshaped on the paper. "

oneword.: exchange: "What if I could do a swap, try that alternative reality to see what might have happened, what if I could exchange my life with hers? That other me who didn't fuck up? Would I like me any more or less? "

oneword.: solve: "If I could solve the problem then I wonder what else there would be left to do? If there was no problem then what would be the point? I wonder if we would bother getting out of bed at all if it were all already fixed? "

oneword.: depth: "I don't feel out of my depth anymore. All of a sudden I am in control and I think it is going to be alright "

oneword.: follow: "Wherever he asked I would follow. That was how I was, but maybe I am not like that anymore? Maybe the only road for me is my own road, I don't need anyone to follow anymore. "

oneword.: fiction: "I sink into it, my ongoing life of fiction. In that world I can have it all just however I like. In that world I am free, in that world, I am me. "

oneword.: sensitive: "He is that. I know that and yet I always hit out at him, because he can only see his own sensitivity and not mine. So his sensitivity is what I love about him and also what I hate. "

oneword.: sour: "Her mouth may have been misread and appear sour to those who didn't know her. When I first met her I swear I trembled in my shoes. With a sour face every day, she served me lunch all year, then when we left she packed me one of her best saucepans for me to cook his food with. I loved her, my almost-mother-in-law. I really loved her. "

oneword.: after: "After lunch he will be home with the car. after lunch I will go out driving alone for the first time, after lunch. "

oneword.: beam: "I can feel the hard cold wood, but I look straight ahead, I can feel their eyes on me, on my toes and how I move them, it is 1976 in the police youth club gym. I passed the gym level. I can feel the pride. "

oneword.: barely: "I can barely imagine it. This freedom was always something I believed that I would never have. So now that I can see it, now that it glimmers there like a star , now, is it really going to be mine? "

oneword.: half: "Half of me would like to just grab my bags and run, half of me would like to be the perfect everything, right here, half of me.....damn I clearly don't have enough halves! "

oneword.: measure: "I pour it like medicine. Balm for my day, red and tasty. I love my red wine. I just need to love it without loving it in too ample measure. "

oneword.: trade: "From here to there we trade. Tit for tat, a game we play. Like chess, or maybe more like snap? Is it luck that rules us or do we play to a carefully planned strategy? "

oneword.: drowning: "I try to keep my head up, I paddle furiously, but sometimes it feels as if I have weights tied to my legs. I feel myself sinking and today I just don't want to fight anymore. "

oneword.: grade: "I look at you, you move through your life with an assurance that I envy, a strength that I admire and you, my beautiful daughter, really will make the grade if you want to. It is all there for you like a road paved with gold. You can do anything, my beautiful girl, believe it. "

oneword.: daisy: "I learned to make a 'daisy' chain when I was ten, except we used clover flowers instead of daisies because there were so many on those green, green fields of my boarding school. "

oneword.: return: "I always plan to return the books on time. I try not to take too many out, no more than I can read in a month, but then, something always happens, the books sit on my nightstand, gathering dust and the library computer leaves rude messages on my answering machine. "

oneword.: raise: "It the sun warmed indoor air, I turn the gas on in the oven. On the open door, I place the dough, teatowel over and I wait, the room is perfect, rich and warm and yeast filled and I love the days in autumn when I make bread "

oneword.: synthetic: "There is nothing worse against my skin in winter than the static scrape of something synthetic, so foreign and raw that it almost hurts. "

oneword.: custom: "We have so few, at least so few that really matter, of course we have christmas every year and that always has the same format but even then the customs that we follow are confused with influences from too many cultures. Sometimes this is such a shallow culture, void of custom, void of meaning. "

oneword.: match: "Behind the big chair in the sunroom I could hide, my knees pulled up by my ears and I would empty them out on the floor, gold veined lino. Each match, then, I would place my in mouth and chew the slightly acidic red ends off. When she caught me, my mother took me to the doctor. "

oneword.: slam: "Slam the door and walk away, I am sure that will fix everything dear daughter. It's easier to leave the mess behind the door isn't it? Move onto the next thing and, like my mother, when you open the door again, you pretend that nothing ever happened.

oneword.: interior: "I won't show you the interior today, I haven't tidied and I cannot be sure that I haven't left things out that I wouldn't want to see, if I were a guest. So, no, today you cannot come inside, instead we will sit out in the rain and watch the gully trickle innocently down the mountain."

oneword.: hollywood: "Would she or wouldn't she? It's really up to her, I will keep my thoughts to myself on this one :) "

oneword.: ocean: "The water is warm like blood, it laps my bare feet, i move into it as if in dream letting it envelop me, take me away, my body floats, it moves like breath, I am the ocean, I am. "

oneword.: panic: "I feel the sweat under my skin, the tremble along my spine. I try to breathe slowly, walk smoothly and calmly. 'It is only my imagination.' I tell myself, but I feel his presence behind me, cold breath down my neck and I want to scream. "

oneword.: plunge: "I want to take that plunge, just go for it, but something inside me holds me back like ropes around my shoulders. Give me a knife, I have to cut the ropes and get out of here. "

oneword.: cracker: "Yes, it was a cracker of a party with a little drama but not too much and lots of laughing and not enough sleep. "

oneword.: raise: "I want to raise them in the best way that I can and yet again and again I see myself making the same mistakes. I just hope they see it too and when it is their turn they can learn from my mistakes rather than their own. "

oneword.: copy: "I never wanted to make a copy, I wanted each one to be unique and that is why I can't make a living making jewellery like that. I hate charging too much. Some things are just better as gifts "

oneword.: feedback: "I think we all love feedback, maybe not if it is too negative, but even that can be so much better than nothing. 'The worst thing that you can do is to ignore me.' I said. He said he would never do that. Liar. "

oneword.: manner: "It's the manner in which he does it, so casual, so warm. He puts a lunch on that everyone wants to be at. The mix of people are a reflection of his personality. Interesting, passionate, eclectic. He is the host with the most. "

oneword.: steps: "Under my lips and under my chin there are small white lines. I don't remember getting these scars, as I get older they seem to be more noticeable. I do remember falling down the back steps a lot when I was little, maybe thats where they came from? "

oneword.: reading: "I am reading a book set in the french countryside sometime in the early 1800s. I fall asleep every night with it's words hanging in my eyes and my dreams find angels wings and alabaster skin and wine, dripping down my chin. "

oneword.: highlight: "I spoke about it the other day, the highlight of the day being that first cup of glorious caffiene. It is quite disturbing when I acknowledge how much I love my drugs. "

oneword.: brand: "All the cattle would be drafted first, dust and sad confused bellowing. The hustle and the twang of the short polythene pipes thwacking them on their backs to send them in the right directions. The rattle of gates, the human swearing, the rustle of their hoofs in the dirt, then the horror of the searing flesh and screaming animal agony as the hot irons branded their flesh."

oneword.: sing: "He really can't sing. To those who state that anyone can sing, given the proper training, I say to you, 'Bullshit!' "

oneword.: playground: "Last time I saw him standing up, we laughed and joked 'Remember the days in the old schoolyard?' we sang. 'Come and see me.' He said, 'Yes', I said 'I will.' But when I did see him it wasn't as we had imagined. I leant over the bed so that he could see my face. With he contraptions holding his spine together he could only move his eyes. "

oneword.: complete: "I think I used to imagine that when I achieved the next goal or obtained the next possession, then, I would feel complete, but finally I realised that to be complete would be to be dead. "

oneword.: chosen: "I stood there in the kitchen, the tall people all around me were waiting, looking, and I felt my hand tremble. The plate of cake was held there and so as not to appear greedy I let my hand hover, looking for the smallest piece. The tall boys laughed loudly, 'She is looking for the biggest piece' they said. I wanted to shrivel up and die of shame then and wished I had chosen faster. "

oneword.: popular: "Never in the popular crowd, instead on the edge there, hovering with a certain lack of respect for those who feel that it is their right to hurt others to make themselves look cool. "

oneword.: reputation: "No-one wanted to have a 'reputation' but I did apparently, though I had done nothing to warrant it other than going to primary school with the popular boys. Familiarity breeds contempt, perhaps? "

oneword.: segment: "I don't want to be the vital segment, or maybe I do, but I want to be valued as the vital segment. If I don't do my job, then the whole structure will come tumbling down, so maybe somebody should pay me for that. Why should I do it all for free? "

oneword.: revolve: "At fifteen she believes the world revolves around her, I think I thought that she would grow out of that after she turned two. I am a forever hopeful mother though, there is always next year. "

oneword.: departure: "
I wish they would make their departure. My mood demands it. Messy men, crowding around, talking about stupid things, treating this place like a home, geez, I have to work here, what do they think this is? "

oneword.: revival: "In her wardrobe she has the clothes I wore when I was fifteen. At her thirteenth birthday she played the same 'Grease' soundtrack I played the year I turned thirteen. She lives a revival of my youth. Weird really. "

oneword.: spring: "Here it is the beginning of the heat, it doesn't rain enough so to have a spring garden you have to use that precious water that should be saved for summer. I like Autumn better. It is autumn now, crisp fresh and like a long cool shower after a heat wave. "

oneword.: lavender: "Bottles and bottles of lavender oil, we dab it on the mosquito bites and they stop itching and we smell like a linen cupboard or a relaxed sunny afternoon nap with clean white sheets washed in lavender fabric softener. "

oneword.: green: "Well here is a blatant attempt to get me to think about Ireland, just because it is St Patrick's day. But yes, the greenest photo I have in my collection was taken in Ireland at a tomb just north west of Dublin. "

oneword.: game: "After the game we would climb back into the bus a stream of hot sweaty teenagers. I remember even if we had won, the heavy sadness I would feel as we were transported back to the school. It always felt like jail after the wide windy openess of the field hockey grounds. "

oneword.: detour: "On the way home from work in the mornings I would sometimes take a small detour and knock on his window pane. He would climb out of bed or I would climb in. We would breakfast together, usually he would follow me home and we would eat there. He would make me a beautiful breakfast and then I would fall into bed and sleep the day, while he went and did whatever he did. I loved those mornings and now with his namesake in the headlines every day I think of him again and wonder who he has breakfast with now. "

oneword.: needle: "In the hot little room, the ten of us learned how to thread a needle and tie a knot at the end. Outside the silence rang in my ears until it threatened to deafen me. Mrs Plant showed me again how to spin the thread over my finger to make the knot. When I showed Grandma she seemed annoyed. Mrs Plant wasn't doing it just the way my Gran had shown her. In the bush school we learned to thread the needle Mrs Plant's way. "

oneword.: mistake: "It remains glaringly obvious that he was my greatest mistake. A mistake once made, my stubborn nature did not want to admit to and so my mistake, though at first quite small became huge and all encompassing until it created itself as greater than any apology could ever be. "

oneword.: message: "Scrawled on the notepaper on the kitchen bench we communicate. When I get in at night, he sleeps, when I wake up, he is gone. We write messages of love and of hate and pain and anger and frustration, and now years later, now that he is dead, I remember those words. "

oneword.: avoid: "confrontation at all costs. I have to, I hate it more than I hate corned beef and pumpkin and that is an awful lot. "

oneword.: blink: "In the blink of an eye, you are gone. I hold that vision of you, standing there on the railway platform. Your shoulders are slightly hunched, the expression on your face knows we will never meet again. This is goodbye. I feel the roar as the train gathers speed, you shrink and then in the blink of an eye, you are gone. "

oneword.: finish: "I can see the finish line, it only took the vision of one completed wall and now the job seems easy. Soon my house will be renewed, all painted and fresh and finished."

oneword.: dude: "I married a surfer dude. Though to be honest I never think of him like that. When we first met we travelled the coast in his kombi van smoking pot and checking out the waves. I think that is about as surfer dudish as you can get really. "

oneword.: nails: "My mother always won the nail hammering competition at the gymkana. She always won the broom throwing contest as well. She was a foot taller than most of the women and stronger than half of the men. My mother. "

oneword.: charm: "It comes so naturally to him and I look and watch and I see people mesmerised by it. He seems unaware he has it. I see his uneasiness like waves wash over him. He carries on so accustomed to this feeling and in a flash of clarity I see that I am more charmed by him than anyone. "

oneword.: continue: "I just can't continue giving money to this isp, I have to find a better deal. I've had enough of the monopolising of the industry and the complete disregard for customer care. Bigpond can go jump. "

oneword.: worthless: "I know that word so well, it trips through my mind all day, telling me that's what I am, telling me I cannot pretend I matter because I don't. I know that word, that word kills me, I hate that word. "

oneword.: union: "My first pair of jeans were 'Blues Union' brand. Actually they weren't the first pair I had ever owned, just the first that I ever bought new. Mrs Allen in the habedashery in town sold them to me. I tried them on behind the curtain in the little change room and she looked in while I was getting undressed. "

oneword.: reaching: "Sometimes it feels as if i reach out any more my arms will hurt. I cannot reach it, whatever it is, there is nothing there, just a giant empty space filled with loneliness and loss and I am just reaching for the door out but maybe there isn't one? "

oneword.: vacant: "It's vacant now. We have packed and moved and shuffled ourselves out of that space, in a few minutes he will arrive with all his gear and our flat will be full, overflowing with another human being. We are in dissaray up here, trying to fit 11 rooms into 8. "

oneword.: assign: "I kept them home from school today because the teachers requested no kids if the temperature rose beyond 35°C. Instead of school I assigned them tasks and we melted through our hot friday. It was probably hotter here working for me than it would have been at school. "

oneword.: north: "I want to go north, not north in this country where it is so hot that your skin almost melts away, not north further where the malaria might get you in the hot dark afternoon. No, further than that, I want to go north until it gets cold, until the air bites my face. "

oneword.: mislead: "Lie your heart out, go on! In the end it will be only you who will really suffer, in the end, you just mislead yourself. "

oneword.: switch: "I am thinking about switching my blog to upsaid. I like the style of their sites. The clean feel of european design. Though if I do it I will probably pay and design my own anyway. In school they said I was too much of an individualist. How can anyone be too individual? Perhaps that was why I switched schools? "

oneword.: cracked: "So there you have it. I finally cracked, though it didn't take much did it? I was just waiting for a second of weakness where I could let the truth flow out in a torrent of words without meaning and screams of discontented wailing until the harshness of it all forced you to close your ears and walk away. "

oneword.: candy: "I wanted to learn to cook it, the way it said in my children's encyclopedia. It looked so complicated so I never achieved that. Instead we made perfect chocolate fudge on the slow heat of the woodstove in the kitchen. Country kids candy. "

oneword.: late: "He is always late. I like the relaxed way he lives but as we get older I think my time becomes more important to me and I really hate wasting it, unless I am wasting it doing something I enjoy and then of course it is perfectly alright to be late. "

oneword.: bike: "My brother was given an old bike when he was about 12, it was blue and had silver handlebars. When I was about 9 and my brother was away at boarding school, he passed it on to me. It was the greatest gift I was ever given, I cannot even begin to describe how much I loved that bike. I used to ride it over the cattle grids and up the hill and away on the quiet dirt roads, there was no-one there but me and my imagination. Sometimes I want to go back there so much it almost hurts. "

oneword.: anniversary: "We missed the surprise party. They were celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary, we were away at a 40th birthday so all this is making me feel so old that it is almost funny. For christsakes, I remember my parents 20th wedding anniversary, that wasn't that long ago, was it? "

oneword.: channel: "There was only one channel that came through clear, the other would come and go with the weather or the wind. So we sat there and watched a steady stream of Dr Who and the ABC news and british comedy like 'On the buses', and it wasn't until I grew up and saw all the other utter tripe on TV that I realised that we had the best of it, after all. "

oneword.: formal: "Dress will be casual this weekend, though in a way I wish we were getting to dress up. I love nice clothes and crisp white tablecoloths and crystal and silver. This weekend by the beach the party will be food and alcohol and sand and laughter, and thats okay too. Not too formal at all. "

oneword.: launch: "We should launch this new site tomorrow, after weeks of changes and indecision. Sometimes I get so frustrated with my job, why can't everyone just go with the first option the first time, we always seem to come back to it in the end anyway. "

oneword.: eject: "I got my first cassette player the christmas after I turned thirteen, my brother gave me a Simon and Garfunkle cassette to go with it and even after all the times I have hit that eject button, I still love them. "

oneword.: escape: "I used to think about it sometimes, about a suitcase and a ticket. I have a passport, I think about it. I love travel, but lonely travel was never for me, any escape like that would be an escape I would want to escape from. "

oneword.: script: "Where is the script? I can't remember my next line. The next scene is a mystery to me, I am stumbling across the stage making an arse of myself. I want an action/romance scene here, I can't find my leading man, where is the bloody script? "

oneword.: streets: "On tv they showed streets like rivers, the water rushing past in torrents of filthy god knows what. I am very glad my street is high, my house looks down upon it, looks down it's long aquiline nose. "

oneword.: least: "It's the least that I can do, I cannot do any less even if I try. "

oneword.: culture: "It is different. We talk and we laugh and we do have many things in common, but still even in the few short years that we have been back here, I can barely remember now that requirement for culture that they have there. We seem so shallow to them, us aussies and these lovely london dwellers. "

oneword.: olive: "When I went away to boarding school I was 10. We all had to have showers together and that was when I noticed. I was different. All the other girls were pink or black or golden, but I was green. Like a green olive. "

oneword.: burn: "We sat under the umbrella and the laughter of the children and roar of the water sounded soft and remote in the morning breeze. we read the words in our books and talked about the perfection of the day and our reluctance to leave this moment behind. Now as I move gently to avoid the pain from the sunburn where the sunscreen missed, now I wish we had left earlier. "

oneword.: curtain: "I pull the curtain across and check that the front gate is shut. You are on the bed lying back and watching me as I slowly peel off my clothing and let your eyes linger over me, you make me want you. A desperation of need with that hunger in your face. "

oneword.: salt: "The glass is covered in a layer of it, wet and sticky, the seabreeze and the humidity leave it there like a calling card. I see a blurred view of the world, warm and salty in the summer monsoon. In autumn when the air dries out, it will scrape off the glass dry and crisp. "

oneword.: heavy: "She needs to carry herself, she is far too heavy for me, I drop her now and let her walk her own way out of the mire she and her father have stomped into. I will not lie for her, I will not allow her to think it is reasonale to lie, she can admit to her boss she has another job and get the sack, that would be fair. "

oneword.: deaf: "As I walked down her street I could hear it, the cricket on the television at full volume, the roar of the air cooler, and she would sit in that chair (which is downstairs now) and that is my memory of summer in her house. I would walk in and say hello, 'What?' she would shout, 'Speak up, I'm a little deaf you know?' "

oneword.: logic: "now there's a foreign word! or so I am told! what I do.. to me is always perfect logic. one of my favourite pastimes in years gone by was arguing female logic against that of the much misinformed male.. "

oneword.: clean: "if I can feel the space around me is clean then it feels as if my mind is clean and clear and then i can reach the utopia of a clean slate, my never attainable utopia "

oneword.: ready: "Ok then, here we go, I am ready. It is a new year and don't even think for a second I am going to sit here and do the same thing I did last year. I am ready for a change, I am ready for anything... bring it on baby! "

oneword.: pale: "In winter I thought I was pale, then in all the photos in Scotland, next to those girls I am a darkskinned girl, their skin so pale it is almost translucent. Nicole Kidman's skin. "

oneword.: note: "I want to write you a note, crisp words on white paper. Words written in ink so they cannot be erased, I want to write you a note that says I love you. "

oneword.: precision: "the sharpness of the lead is so important and the degree of hardness, then as i speak and they talk about their ideas i start to draw, lines of precision on paper soon bring out the jewellery item that was hiding there "