It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m half-watching “The Simpsons” on Foxtel. It’s the episode where it’s revealed Principal Skinner isn’t really a war hero after all. I really love this show and in the last few days I’ve also seen one of my all time favourites, the one where Mrs Crabopple and Principal Skinner fall in love. It’s the one where Mrs Crabopple utters the classic line about her nights at home, “It’s just salad for one, soup for one and wine for three”. I’ve also just been watching three or four episodes back to back of “Will & Grace”.
Does that give you enough of an insight into my Sunday? Actually I received an invitation to see “The Producers”, but I’m feeling a bit anti-social so I’ve decided an afternoon indoors is probably the right thing. And why not? After weeks of delay, and the warmest April on record, it seems that winter has finally arrived in Sydney. I wore a jacket for the first time yesterday and looking out my window I see the park across the road, which is normally quite busy, is empty aside from a rugged up father and son on the swings.
Speaking of miserable weather: I had two days in Melbourne this week. On my first night there, my friend Sue and I had planned to go out for dinner with a colleague at one of Melbourne’s best-kept secrets, the Supper Inn. Along the way, we paid a visit to Heffernan Lane in Chinatown where there’s an interesting community arts project underway based around moments of wisdom and poetry featured on ordinary street and neon signs. Phrases, such as “Commit No Nuisance”, “It is the opposite which is good for us” and “We listen to it and do not hear it” made for an interesting diversion on our way to dinner.
There’s actually a brief story about Melbourne’s lanes on the website of the Melbourne Age. Although it’s interesting, I couldn’t possibly agree with the classically Melbournian self-serving assertion that Sydneysiders envy Melbourne’s lanes. They have an intimacy, a palpable history, you won’t find amid northern skyscrapers and harbour panoramas. Has the author ever gone beyond Circular Quay, ever taken a walk say a hundred metres to the oldest evidence of European civilisation in Australia around the lanes of “The Rocks” or “Surry Hills”?
Unfortunately though we didn’t actually get to eat at the Supper Inn since my workmate fell ill just after we ordered and I had to take her to the hospital. I’ll tell you what the Supper Inn is like next time I visit Melbourne.
The other social highlight of my week was yesterday when I went to the 16ft Skiff Club at Manly for Donna’s birthday drinks. Unlike most occasions when I catch the Manly Ferry, this time I caught the Jet Cat which takes a slightly different route and which allows you really great views. The Skiff Club is one of Sydney’s great secrets with its spectacular views and cheap beer and food prices. It was a great afternoon and it was really lovely to catch up with “the usual crew”.
Not much else to report at this stage, except that father and son have moved from the swing and are now just sitting having a chat. The next two weeks will be fun with visits by Patrick, Sue and Anthony and next weekend’s Eurovision Song Contest Party. Also sometime this week, Damo and I are gonna catch up for a meal.
As part of my plan to see as much of this year’s Biennale of Sydney as possible, I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art this afternoon. Compared with the AGNSW, there’s a LOT of video art on display at the MCA. And although I really like video art a lot of what was on offer held little or no appeal, with much of it nothing more, in my view, than video documentary.
However there were some pieces I really liked. In particular, my favourite video piece was by Navjot Altaf, an artist from India. The combination of projection screens along with with tiled mirrors on the floor in front, as I watched the ocean waves rolling in to shore, (with accompanying sound), I was transported out of the gallery magically and briefly. And then, suddenly, the ocean turned blood red, and then was divided up into smaller screens, revealing many hidden layers of meaning. This piece worked on so many levels.
Another favourite work was by Calin Dan, a Romanian performance artist, whose worked included a small video of him wearing a virtual reality headset and running in circles. It was both intriguing and interesting to watch and I actually began to feel a little giddy myself just watching.
Of the non-video work, I quite liked the installation by Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena from New Zealand, who had created a series of alien heads straight out of Star Trek. The other interesting installation piece was by Julie Mehretu and Stephen Vitiello whose work consisted of a series of speakers hanging from the ceiling which you could see vibrate thanks to the accompanying ambient sound.
It has been a full week of deep involvement with the limb loss and limb difference community, balancing personal rehabilitation with community connections.
On a personal front, I’ve started some therapeutic activities as part of a clinical trial focused on addressing phantom limb pain (PLP). PLP is a complex medical issue where discomfort originates from a limb that is no longer physically there. The trial aims to see what methods actually work and what doesn’t help address this unpredictable condition.
Over lunch yesterday, one friend shared his battle with severe pain—the kind of intense pain that prevents sleep. Even during that lunch, my friend noticed my residual leg twitch a few times, demonstrating how varied and involuntary the sensations can be.
My therapeutic activities are designed to address the neural miscommunication:
Left/Right Identification: Visual exercises to help the brain recalibrate its map.
Sensitivity Testing: Determining what my residual leg can feel.
Both of these are precursors to eventual mirror therapy, where visual input provides the brain with a plausible image of the missing limb moving normally, helping to recalibrate the brain map.
Mirror therapy is a treatment for phantom limb pain (PLP) that uses a mirror to create a visual illusion of the missing limb moving painlessly, thereby tricking the brain into correcting the faulty neural signal that causes the pain.
The discussion about PLP occurred at a lunch yesterday for amputees in Sydney hosted by the organisation Limbs for Life. These gatherings are invaluable. The shared experience allows for conversations that move very quickly to a deep level, whether we are discussing frustrations or shared joys.
This deep connection is what motivated me to start a personal project focused on collecting amputee stories—the unique narratives of limb loss and limb difference. The aim is to highlight the incredible resilience and varied experiences within this community, and then to offer a resource that might be useful for people with limb loss and limb difference, and their family and friends.
The accounts I’ve gathered so far demonstrate some compelling journeys of transforming trauma into purpose:
One story highlighted an uncompromising philosophy of “tough love” instilled by parents. Despite intense childhood bullying, the individual’s father provided pivotal advice that forced him to reframe his situation by asking: “Why not you?” This simple question completely changed his perspective, transforming his missing limb from a source of torment into his “greatest asset.” This philosophy of simply “getting on with life” is exemplified in his continued drive to push physical limits, including trekking the Kokoda Track twice, all while managing chronic pain.
Another powerful story came from a prominent advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights whose path to amputation began unexpectedly in 2020 with a Charcot foot diagnosis, a severe complication of Type 2 diabetes. She refused to accept the passive patient role, taking control to choose amputation for pragmatic empowerment. Waking from surgery, the greatest distress came from the immediate institutional failure to manage expectations: the conditional word “if” instantly replaced the confident “when” regarding receiving a prosthetic. This lit a fire in her. She transformed her rehabilitation into an urgent, full-time commitment, remembering thinking, “I feel stronger now than I did before I went in for the amputation.”
Sometime next year, I’ll share these stories here, and on some other platforms.
On Friday night, my friend Michaela and I went to see the show Sing It, Louise upstairs at the Oxford Hotel. It was a good fun Broadway Tunes sing-along show inspired by Marie’s Crisis, an iconic, acoustic show tune piano bar in New York City’s West Village. The original New York venue is known for its intimate atmosphere where patrons gather around the piano, singing their hearts out alongside the pianist without a microphone, creating a spontaneous community vibe.
Sing It, Louise at Ginger’s, Oxford Hotel
We had a terrific time, though didn’t stay for the whole night because, well, we’re simply “getting a bit old these days” and appreciated an early night.
On Saturday, I had a lovely catch-up over coffee and cake with Andrew, whose blog I have followed for years. https://fromthehighrise.blogspot.com/ It was a terrific meeting as we discussed our changed and changing lives right now.
On the weekend, my friend Andrew mentioned he wasn’t really very happy at work, and hadn’t been for quite some time. Still I was surprised to read in his blog that today he quit his job, without another one to go to. It’s a brave move in many ways, but Andrew is very employable and I’m sure he’ll be fine. Fellow blogger, Tom did something similar a few months ago, determined to forge a career in a new more interesting industry than the one in which he worked.
Twenty years ago I did something similar. After university I got a full-time job working at a supermarket chain. It was never really my “dream job” but it paid the bills. And for a while I thought it may have been the basis of my future career. Although I never really got the hang of the electronic ordering system, I really understood shoppers. I knew, for example, that when you’re selling hot crossed buns over the PA system, you don’t just say they’re on sale and leave it at that. Instead, you describe how they taste covered in butter and how happy your family or neighbours would feel if you invited them over for morning tea with a fine cuppa and some Easter Buns. Our store at Sunnybank recorded the highest sales of hot crossed buns in Queensland that year.
But after about eight months I quit Coles and joined the ranks of the unemployed. I’d reached the point where going to work was unbearable. Although I really liked the people I worked with and I liked some aspects of the job, I felt absolutely no satisfaction or sense of fulfillment in what I was doing on a daily basis. And I didn’t really like my boss, usually the most common reason why people leave their jobs. He was one of those bosses with “something to prove” which, eventually brought him undone. One too many resignations from his store, and after state management intervention, he too was gone. I think it was my resignation that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I told my colleagues a white lie, that I had something to go to, when in fact I had nothing. It was better, I thought, to take some time out to follow that dream, as Elvis once sang, than remain in a job where I was really unhappy. Such is the luxury of not having dependants.
During my period of unemployment, trying to find something that would give me some sense of meaning, I became quite dissilusioned and quite depressed. The CES (Commonwealth Employment Service), in those days, didn’t offer a lot in the way of creative, interesting occupations. One day, however, I saw a job advertised at a radio station in Western NSW. I applied for the job, travelled to Bourke, was interviewed and was offered the job.
They had received Federal Government funding for an Outback Drug Awareness Project. With no experience in community education programs, I hit the road running, talking to locals about the many ways in which we could use radio to reduce the incidence of drug and alcohol abuse in remote communities. A year later, the project won a national award from the Community Broadcasting Association of Association.
Twenty years ago, this week. I was heading off to Hungerford on the NSW/Queensland border to report on the annual “Hungerford Field Day”.
Although a lot of my friends from Brisbane thought I’d gone mad, relocating to a small town on the edge of the outback, to me it was pure bliss. I got to meet a broad range of interesting and colourful characters, to experience the great outdoors, and to get paid for it. Sometimes you gotta listen to your heart and not your head.
“They’ve been playing for twenty minutes and nothing’s happened”, I heard the five year old sitting next to me say to his father at today’s soccer match at Gosford. I was reminded of the episode of “The Simpsons” where there’s an off-field riot due to the lack of on-field activity at a visiting soccer match in Springfield.
His dad was one of those blokes who you just know could have done a much better job than the referee if given the chance. The referee was clearly an idiot without anywhere near the level of experience or insight as the bloke sitting next to us.
Unfortunately his level of interesta and enthusiasm seemed to be washing over his son. Although I discovered the son was playing soccer at school, he seemed far more interested in trains. “Can we catch the XPT back?”, I heard him ask. Peppering his conversation with words like”Countrylink”, the son seemed far more interested when he saw a freight train go by than with anything to do with what was happening on the ground before us.
I was reminded about my own similar lack of interest in sport as a child. “They’re running away from the ball more than I did”, I commented to Damo, at one point about the team from New Zealand. “They’re phoning it in”, Damo responded with a laugh, noting the lack of activity in the match between Central Coast Mariners and Wellington Phoenix (NZ).
As Damo was born in Wellington, and then settled on the Central Coast in his teenage years, I asked him who he was going for. At the end of the day I think we both hoped Wellington would win (and they did, undeservedly in a Stephen Bradbury-like contest). I don’t know about Damo, but I kinda felt sorry for Wellington because in the vast sea of yellow and blue (I could have worn my Swedish shirt) of Central Coast supporters, Wellington seemed have just one sole supporter in the audience, sitting in the row in front of us. Given his response to the sole goal scored during the match in favour of Wellington, I suspect he’s still celebrating now.
I don’t remember the last time I’ve been to see a soccer match, but when I got the invite last night, I said yes instantly I thought it would be an interesting and different way of spending the afternoon. And it was.
I caught the train to the Central Coast around lunchtime and it was reasonably quiet, meaning I could read the papers (the most interesting thing was the Madonna-Guy Ritchie divorce stuff), and even have a sleep before arriving at Gosford station.
Mariners vs Phoenix at Gosford Stadium
We both enjoyed the match a fair bit. In the boring bits, Damo had his new camera to play with while I enjoyed the father-son commentary with a sense of familiarity and amusement.
We left just before the end when the result was clear, to avoid some of the crowds. As we walked towards the car, we passed the now infamous Iguana Joes where Belinda Neal and John Della Bosca met their Waterloo. Unfortunately it was closed, which we both thought unusual for a Sunday afternoon. So we hopped in the car and just came back. As it was, the trip back to Sydney was fairly smooth sailing, aside from a few snarls here and there.
Back in Surry Hills, we had a bite to eat an old favourite, the Dhaba Restaurant. A pretty good Sunday, eh?
“Being Boring” is one of my all-time favorite songs by The Pet Shop Boys. Released in 1999, when I was in my early 30s, it actually left a huge mark on me. With a wonderfully homoerotic video clip, the melody and lyrics captured my attention in quite a profound way.
“We were never being bored ‘Cause we were never being boring”
Simple, eh? It’s the way I’ve tried to live my life ever since: to always keep my mind and soul actively looking for new interests and adventures.
And so when people have asked me if I was starting to feel bored after almost twelve weeks in hospital, I’ve been able to genuinely say “no”. For the first couple of weeks I was either unconscious or on serious pain relief, but in the weeks since I’ve been keeping myself busy.
By nature, I lean towards introversion – I’m quite happy with my own company – but I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have received visits from family, friends, and colleagues.
Earlier in my hospital stay, my ability to concentrate wavered. This was likely due to a combination of the powerful pain relief’s impact and the shock my system endured from the illness and surgery. Reading messages, crafting responses, and retaining information became arduous. With my phone and computer by my side, I’ve been able to return to a relatively normal life, keeping in touch with the “outside world”.
Alongside the books I have on my computer, friends have also brought me additional reading material. Among them, “100 Years Of Dirt” by Rick Morton captivated me the most. Despite our age difference, Rick’s story struck a chord with me. Hailing from a rural background, he, like me, grew up as the artistic and intellectually inclined outsider in his family. Like me, he was a classic “mummy’s boy” who pursued journalism, embraced his sexuality, and settled in the city. I loved his ability to contextualize family issues with statistics and research, which told a bigger story of contempoady rural/regional life.
While many have suggested series on platforms like Netflix and Stan, I’ve favoured “guilty pleasures. ” I’ve been revisiting vintage British sitcoms on YouTube. I’ve eagerly consumed every episode of “Are You Being Served?,” “Fawlty Towers,” “Yes Minister/Prime Minister,” and a substantial portion of “Dad’s Army” and “Man About The House.” I even briefly attempted “It Ain’t Half Hot Mum” before concluding it hadn’t aged well. Despite their dated values, implausible plots, and sometimes lackluster humor, these 1970s comedies still gave me a laugh.
A couple of friends also gifted me with “projects” to occupy my time, including a book on origami and a paint-by-numbers set. Yes, paint by numbers. “I do them with my daughter,” my colleague and friend told me. While origami proved a bit difficult, I’ve found genuine enjoyment in paint by numbers. With a slow and steady approach, I dedicate a portion of each day to it, aiming to complete my masterpiece by the time I depart the hospital.
Part of the way through paint by numbers.
Oh, and I’ve been listening to a fair bit of audio, both radio and music. One surprise for me has been rediscovering the works of Janis Ian, with her beautiful tunes and thoughtful lyrics. Oh, and of course…
Looking down from the window, it’s hard to tell if the snow is masking green fields or the frozen expanse of the Stockholm Archipelago. I flew in during the dark, and my memories of flying here in the summer months are far too distant to lean on now—those long, golden Nordic days feel like a different lifetime.
Normally, I’m a dedicated aisle seat person. As an amputee, it just makes life infinitely easier for getting to the bathroom or having that extra bit of floor space to stretch out my leg. I know that for the people sitting next to me, it sometimes means they have to wait a beat longer to shuffle past while I navigate the space, but it’s a trade-off I usually have to make. However, today the woman at check-in offered me a window seat in the fourth row. I paused for a second, but contemplating the rare opportunity to see the Swedish landscape in proper daylight, I immediately said yes. There is something grounding about seeing the world from 30,000 feet, especially when you’re heading toward a city / area as visually stunning as Stockholm.
Checking in at an airport is a much more formal “process” for me these days. I usually request wheelchair support to help navigate the sheer scale of modern terminals. The reality of the situation is that it’s often a incredibly long walk to get to the plane, and in the case of today’s flight, ours was parked at one of the furthest possible gates. I had a really good chat with the young woman pushing the wheelchair. She told me she had been to Finland many times because her father is Finnish, but she hadn’t actually done much additional travel outside of that. She looked quite young, perhaps just starting out in her career, but she was incredibly professional and kind.
Back home in Sydney, the process of going through airport security is usually quite fast. The attendants there instantly notice I have a prosthetic, and we have a silent understanding of how the screening will go. But being in a much colder climate and wearing long pants, it wasn’t instantly obvious to the staff here that I had a missing leg or that I was wearing a replacement. When they asked me if I could take my shoes off, I had to explain that I couldn’t—at least not easily. She understood why immediately, and the situation was handled with total grace. Interestingly, I had a woman perform the pat-down today. In Australia, that process is almost always strictly divided by gender, so it was a small but notable cultural difference in how security is managed here.
The other big transport difference I noticed today was on the Metro. I got onto an extremely busy carriage where every single seat was taken. Almost instantly, a younger woman identified my need for a seat and offered hers to me. It was a moment of genuine kindness that felt remarkably seamless. It stands in such stark contrast to my experiences in Sydney. Even when I’m wearing shorts and my prosthetic is clearly visible, I often have to be the one to speak up and ask for a seat on a crowded train.
I’ve thought about why that is, and I think the problem in Sydney is that most people are simply so absorbed by their phones that they don’t even bother to look up and see who is standing in front of them. People in Stockholm have mobiles, of course, but they seem far less “consumed” by them than people back home. In Sydney, it’s now quite common to literally have someone run into you while they’re walking on the street or even crossing a busy road because they won’t take their eyes off the screen. I haven’t seen that happen once since I arrived in Stockholm. There seems to be a different level of presence here.
The flight from Stockholm to London was a very pleasant two and a half hours—a perfect duration that doesn’t leave you feeling entirely drained. I’m treating this part of the trip as an important “greatest hits” side quest. The main agenda items are taking in the ABBA Voyage show—which I’ve heard is a technical marvel—and seeing a new modern stage version of Yes, Prime Minister.
It’s been almost 20 years since my last visit to London, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much easier the journey from Heathrow into the city has become. I caught the Piccadilly line and it was remarkably straightforward; I emerged from the Underground and arrived almost immediately next to my hotel, The President at Russell Square. Before I arrived, I’d read various reports about the “mountain” of stairs I might need to navigate at certain London stations. As an amputee, stairs—especially wet or crowded ones—are always a bit of a mental hurdle. I was bracing myself for a struggle, but thankfully the lifts were all in working order, making the transition from the platform to the street completely painless.
Tonight, I had dinner with a dear friend and former colleague from Sydney who now works at BBC Radio London. She was kind enough to give me a guided tour of her workplace, and as a long-time ABC person, I couldn’t help but notice the striking similarities between the two organisations. From the specific types of broadcast equipment to the general “ordered chaos” of the workplace configuration, it felt like home. It turns out there are also a huge number of Australians working in the BBC newsroom; it seems we really do get everywhere.
It was a funny sensation to be in an environment that was simultaneously familiar and entirely different. As I entered the building and waited for my friend, I played a little game in my head, trying to work out what different people’s roles were based on their appearance and how they carried themselves—comparing them to the archetypes I know so well from the ABC. The most significant difference I noticed, however, was the cultural diversity. The BBC felt much more representative of a global city, with many more “brown faces” among the staff than I usually see in our Australian newsrooms.
I also had a bit of a fan moment, taking photographs in various locations around the building that I recognised from the brilliant comedy show W1A. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s a pitch-perfect mockumentary that satirises the BBC’s own corporate culture—the endless meetings about nothing, the management jargon, and the absurdly over-complicated “solutions” to simple problems. Standing in the actual lobby where those scenes were filmed was a highlight.
Over an excellent meal and a great bottle of wine, we spent several hours catching up on the massive changes in our respective lives. It’s been nearly ten years since she made the move to London, and while we stay in touch on social media, I realised it’s probably been five years since we last sat across from each other in person. We were the very last people to leave the restaurant, lost in conversation.
She was also an excellent ally to have when it came time to negotiate the public transport for the trip back. It had started to rain, which made the London streets pretty slippery, and some of the stairs we encountered were quite steep. My prosthetic can be a bit unforgiving on slick surfaces, so having someone there who understands the rhythm of the city was a huge help. Thankfully, all the lifts were working at the stations we needed for the return leg too.
After several days of bracing against the cold and wearing heavy long pants, it felt like a total luxury to finally put on my short pyjamas and hop into bed. Being an amputee means I have to keep a very close eye on the skin health of both my “good” leg and my stump. The combination of the biting outdoor cold and the dry, blasting central heating indoors had caused my skin to become quite itchy and parched. I applied some moisturiser, and the relief was instant. I think for the rest of this trip, I’ll try to wear shorts whenever the indoor environment allows for it, just to give my skin a bit of a break.
