The Hinge Factor

In this totally absorbing book, Erik Durschmied looks at the turning points in famous battles when something as fickle as the weather - in short, the unpredictable "hinge factor" - has changed world history.

I rather liked his account of the battle of Waterloo which he called 'A Fistful of Nails'. The "hinge" is that the French cavalry, after making its daring charge into the guns, failed to spike them. In Durschmied's somewhat over-tidy view of history, the loss of these guns would have forced Wellington to withdraw.

There are many such "hinge factors" in our personal histories. I can think of several in my own life which I shall reflect upon as I quietly sit here at this bend in the river.

How many "hinge factors" have you had in your life?

Patent Pending

We're well into spring which prompted me to possum- and bird-proof the vegie patch.

Why, with those heavy wooden frames, it's even 'wife-proof'!

Don't you wish other things could be made 'wife-proof' so easily?

Ten years later

Will we ever know what really happened? Click here.

And here are some reflections by the former NY Times Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Chris Hedges. They are blunt and honest.

Musical Memories

Peter Paul & Mary will always remind me of Canberra in the mid-60s. I lived at Barton House and owned all of Peter Paul & Mary's records which I played endlessly on my radiogramme. Remember radiogrammes?



Marianne Faithfull's 'As tears go by' takes me right back to Lüderitz in South West Africa in the late 60s where my flatmate Karl-Heinz played that record night after night.



If it's Neil Diamond and 'Cracklin' Rose' and 'Hot August Night', I'm taken right back to Camp 1 on Bougainville Island in the early 70s where "Bulldog" threw his Neil Diamond parties.



When I listen to Lobo, I live once again in Komin Kuchin Avenue in Rangoon and think of Khin San Myint.



Not much music in Saudi Arabia but 'The Rivers of Babylon' always reminds me of Jeddah ...



... while Stevie Wonder's 'I just called to say I love you' takes me back to my frequent business trips to Singapore.



Needless to say, Nana Mouskouri's 'White Rose of Athens' makes me want to relive my time in Greece ...



... but I now call Australia home.

Some days are diamonds, some days are stone ...

Please click on the image and LISTEN!
Everyday domestic life when stripped of all the little distractions - the telephone calls, the trips to the supermarket, the evening news, walking the dogs across the bridge - is pretty empty. It consists mainly of waiting. For the sky to clear, for something to happen, for dinner, for bed. Any fool, as Chekhov said somewhere, can deal with a crisis - it's day-to-day living that wears us out.

All those past jobs, more than fifty, in more than a dozen countries, all those big challenges and small triumphs, those people I met, those things I saw, are distant memories now. Some friends suggested I write a book about them. Un livre sur rien ?

... some days the memories won't leave me alone.