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Hi all, Well another week of dramas has just passed. I have left out a lot of detail in what has been going on with my father, his behaviour is so out of character and strange that I feel if I describe it on this blog it will just take away any dignity he has left. Anyway, this blog is supposed to be about writing, not an excuse for why I am not writing, which is why I changed its title to Why I did Very Little Writing This Week. So, all up, I did a couple of hours of editing of Stalking Tigers spread over the week. I did finish reading a book, my first for the year, Year Million , edited by Damien Broderick. It's a non-fiction book filled with essays about what humanity and civilisation might be like during the next million years. The authors are scientists, some of whom, like Gregory Benford , also write science fiction. I suspect many of them played a role in Damien's research for his two non-fiction books, The Spike , and The Last Mortal Generation (both of which...

Hi all, I'm feeling tired, but that ain't unusual. I went for a slow swim this morning, thought I was making an effort to swim fast, but my time was lousy. Maybe I miscounted the number of laps as I abused God for not looking after one of his devotees, my father. So much for being an atheist . My father's rapid dementia decline continues to dominate my thoughts. We had a little stab of hope last Friday when he communicated a bit, but the two trips since then have been very painful. I don't think he even recognised my mother or me yesterday. (big sigh) I now think his quality of life is so diminished that he might as well be dead. Sad way to think of a man who I used to take great pride in being his son. I subsequently did very little writing last week again. (another sigh) I did a bit of reading, often falling asleep at night with the book on my chest. There were a few interesting book related articles in the newspapers (which I am still two weeks behind in re...

Hi all, Last week was a very hectic week that finished with a heat wave, giving me good reasons for doing very little writing. Our attempts to get my father out of hospital and into a nursery home took up a lot of time. We finally succeeded yesterday. I have no idea what my father thought of the whole idea because the hospital had drugged him up to the eyeballs. All he did was wander around, showing very little interest in the room in which he is probably going to spend the rest of his life. To illustrate how drugged he was, he turned up to the nursing home with his jumper on backwards and no shirt on, he also, for reasons unknown to everyone, had put a pair of latex gloves on his feet and then two pairs of socks. Not impressed with the way the hospital let him dress. It wasn't a great day for a transfer, with the temperature hitting 42. To top all that stress off, or maybe because of it, my left eye, which has had cataract surgery performed on it, developed a twitch every...

Hi all, I wasn't going to do a best of list for 2009 because I felt like a bit of a fraud with my lack of reading last year, but I did watch a few science-fiction movies and a lot of television so, in the hope of creating some sort of tradition, here is my belated list. I read a whole four novels last year, pathetic really, but eye problems severely restricted my reading. I am envious of facebook friends like Patty Jansen who read 39 novels and Satima Flavell who read too many to count. Three of the novels I read where science-fiction, and Time Machines Repaired While U Wait by KA Bedford would have been the best of them. It would probably have ended up near the top of a list during a normal year's reading as I have always loved a good time-travel story. I reviewed it here . I saw at least half a dozen science fiction movies this year and two stood out: District 9 and Star Trek . District 9 had an original story of aliens being refugees rather than invaders, told i...

Hi all, I have just buried the ashes of 2009 after bashing it with a Tony Abbott puppet, dousing it with petrol and setting it on fire. What a woeful year. I achieved very little in writing, hardly read a book, only got my eyes half fixed, was sick all the time, lost my job and my father's dementia took on a whole new meaning. What a pathetic waste of a year. It's way too early to tell if 2010 is gonna be any better. At the moment my father is waiting in hospital, after collapsing for the third time in a fortnight, to be reassessed this Thursday. If he is assessed as high-level care, which we think he should be, then he will be placed in a nursing home where he can receive appropriate care and my mother can start digging her way out of a landslide of stress. On a personal level, I have to wait until the 9 th of February to get the cataract on my right eye removed, which, if successful, will hopefully stop me suffering from tired eyes much of the time. I am also hopefu...