New Year resolutions – and another prize

Sunday

 

On Sundays we go to church. The roof goes up and up, and light comes through the blue windows. There is a hush, a quiet pause in the air, gold things on the altar, a red light showing that God is there.

There seem to be three Gods, all invisible, one an old man with a beard, another younger one with dark hair parted in the middle, but I decide the one I like best is the Holy Ghost, because he is a white bird, a bit like a cocky.  Clive’s mother has a cocky in a cage among the stag horns on the back veranda.  With pure white feathers, a mean old eye and a yellow crest, he screeches and calls out all day.

‘Hello Cocky, hello Cocky,’ and sometimes, ‘Bugger off ‘. If the Holy Ghost is a cocky, does he say, ‘Bugger off’? Or is he like the nuns, with a smooth gliding voice with parents, and then an angry bellow to us in class?

Will I ever know?

 

 

 

Gert’s Xmas quiz

Good King Whatsisface

Amanda Lohrey : The Conversion

No, no, don’t run away. Not that kind of conversion. It’s the conversion that Australians love and it’s about real estate. All over the country people are adding huge black edifices on to the backs of weatherboard houses. Extra floors are going up, bathrooms are being squeezed in- to every available space. I have seen houses advertised offering four bedrooms and six bathrooms. And that’s not to mention the underground garages, the swimming pools, the battery chargers for electric cars, the home offices. For those who can afford it, it is an obsession.

Jeremy Cooper: Brian

Stella Gibbons : The Woods in Winter

This is the third book in my ‘women alone’ reading journey, but like most things, it did not turn out to be exactly as I expected.

Alba de Cespedes: Forbidden Notebook

Charlotte Wood : Stone Yard Devotional

Stone Yard Devotional is the second book on the list for my self-appointed task of reading about women who step out of the mainstream of everyday life and choose to live simply and as self-sufficiently as possible.