“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”


DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)


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08 April 2015

A SUNSET GEOLOGICAL STROLL

It's over a month since this Roussanne was picked, yet the vines still look healthy and fresh. This has always indicated to me a balanced vineyard with healthy, confident vines. That's a stack of big ironstone gibbers in the foreground shadow, scratched out to make way for the vineyards. (Click images for clarity). That Roussanne block's mainly ironstone down to the flat in the mid-left, where it gives way to the alluvial rubble of the Kurrajong formation. Here's the local screensaver version exposed and bulldozed about 200 metres off:

More ironstone gibbers on the Grassy Knoll (bottom) ... the giant buck kangaroo I call the Kangarilla occasionally hangs out here ... on one really windy summer day with an evil northerly I heard a clamourous banging on the front door I never used in the alcove . On looking out the window, that Kangarilla was violently raping a little doe against the door ... most kangaroos hate wind, and she was already terrified ... upon my interruption, she escaped straight across the main road, looking neither left nor right ... somehow missed three fast cars ... he sauntered off across the empty farmyard ... on another occasion, I'd awoken to take some 2AM relief, of which I felt sufficiently confident and private to conduct outside naked it being a Moonless cloudy sky and all ... half way through I felt I was being watched ... about five metres off in the pitch black stood the Kangarilla ... he's about my shoulder height on his pads, but he when did the tripod and stood there on his toes and tail, he was a good head height taller than me ... micturition was promptly halted by the Snail Eye Reaction and the author retreated backwards across the grass ... apologies for surplus detail, but, you know: beware ... photos Philip White
 

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