I remember when Anna and I lived at Thondley Street in Windsor, in a cheap brick apartment building.  We were terribly poor, and most nights we ate dinner while listening to the Acid House King’s album, Sing Along with the Acid House Kings.  And every five or ten minutes someone would walk past our front door, which directly faced into the stairwell of the apartment building, on the ground floor, where everyone needed to walk by.

-25 June 2017

This post is part of the I Remember series.

I remember when Harry Mulisch died, and he was one of the first authors whose death created in me a true and outraged sense that a greater writer had missed out on the Nobel.  (And to think, I was alive when Borges was, too!)

-24 June 2017

This post is part of the I Remember series.

I remember when I truly was writing these daily, and hadn’t fallen terribly behind, constantly racing to catch up to the true memories of today (which invariably become the faded memories of yesterday).  That stressful need to dredge up important, interesting memories, even though the entire purpose of this project is to recall the small, tiny, insignificant, nothing memories which make up the entirety of my life. (This particular entry was actually written on 9 April 2018 and posted on 8 August 2020).

-23 June 2017

This post is part of the I Remember series.

I remember walking home, at different hours of the day (1pm, 2:30pm, 5pm, 11am) and there, almost every single time, waiting for me, was my little dog Captain, his face pressed against the window watching, watching, watching.  For how long had he been there?  How long?

-22 June 2017

This post is part of the I Remember series.

I remember farewelling Elle at an all-you-can-eat Brazilian restaurant.  An endless, meaty, sweaty haze followed by a meat coma and rest.  So much meaty rest.

-21 June 2017

This post is part of the I Remember series.

I remember going to a Xero conference in 2016 at the BCEC.  It was fine, and at the end of it I caught the bus home.  I was reading a Modiano book on the bus, which I finished on the way home.  And because of that, when I got off at the bus stop, instead of returning home, I jumped on the next bus into the city and returned to the conference to take part in the free drinks I had been initially too shy to attend.

-20 June 2017

This post is part of the I Remember series.

I remember recommending three books to people who did not read much but expressed a desire to read more and better books.  The three were, invariably – Life of Pi by Yann Martel, because it was easy to find and sufficiently different to genre fiction to encourage further reading; Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, because it was a solid example of contemporary realism and had a strong and interesting female protagonist (I was always and only asked for book recommendations by women: men do not read); José Saramago’s Blindness, for the adventurous, a book to which I went to great pains to convey would be unlike anything they had previously read, but – stick with it.  Of the three, most often the favourite that came back was Blindness, and to those readers it became very dear.

-19 June 2017

This post is part of the I Remember series.

I remember starting up daily coffee runs with Ashley and Bridget at work.  And on the days that Ashley was not there, Bridget and I would not go for coffee together, and on the days Bridget was not there, Ashley and I still would.  Bridget and I were friends only through Ashley and not through one another, and it was via the purchasing of coffee that we discovered this.

-18 June 2017

This post is part of the I Remember series.

I remember a night at home, alone.  I lived at the time on Turbot Street in Brisbane, in an apartment I could hardly afford.  I received a text – Nadia wanted to go out drinking.  I agreed.  Hours later we were at Rics in the valley.  I was drunk and wandering.  I went upstairs and saw my friend Kane.  I said hello to him and asked how he was.  The girl next to him, mishearing, answered and said she wasn’t all that great.  I asked her why, and then about nine years later we were married.

-17 June 2017

This post is part of the I Remember series.

I remember Ashley and I sharing and wearing a pair of cheap blue-shaded glasses, which vaguely – very vaguely – made me look like a Beatle, or, I suppose, Harry Potter.  Ashley thought Ringo and I, in my arrogance, though John.  Nobody really mentioned Harry.

-16 June 2017

This post is part of the I Remember series.