http://janeclifton.com.au/blog Home Thoughts From Abroad Fri, 24 Apr 2009 01:35:17 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Maybe it's because I'm housebound. I had an arthroscope on my knee (this is a tautology, I know) on Wednesday which has left me hobbling around on crutches and panadeine forte. Gazing out the loungeroom window at the world I used to be a part of. I shouted out loud at the ... http://janeclifton.com.au/blog/?p=33 My radio station doesn’t need my ears. My aural receptors are almost sixty years old and not the preferred destination of what my broadcaster has to offer. If Mark Anthony were around today even he would go elsewhere for ears. So, who’s ears does my radio station want ? Who is their ideal ... http://janeclifton.com.au/blog/?p=32 Gosh ! Two months since I blogged. Time flies when you're doing housework. Not that I haven't been writing, I have, just not this. Trying to get The Address Book finished by the end of the month but with the Melbourne Writers' Festival looming I could be dreaming. So, I've got gigs... Friday 22nd August ... http://janeclifton.com.au/blog/?p=31 On the long way home from the other side of the world to find my former addresses and the meaning of ‘home’ my path wrenched me from the loving arms of Ireland and pitched me into the steaming cauldron of tropical Malaysia. Six weeks at Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan, had dulled my ... http://janeclifton.com.au/blog/?p=30 The hotel staff are Spanish. The waitresses are from the Eastern Bloc. The Russian car-hire man has never heard of County Monaghan and asks me to spell it. My Thai drink waitress doesn’t know what Angostura Bitters are. Welcome to Ireland. The only verbal exchange I’ve had which matched my expectations was when ... http://janeclifton.com.au/blog/?p=29 Everyone else I know is flying Ryanair to Ireland. I know I'm not but I can't remember the name of my airline. It's the local one that begins with a 'c', I keep saying. When I do finally land in Dublin and see all the big green planes of Aer Lingus I ... http://janeclifton.com.au/blog/?p=28 I’ve been motoring through Nether Wallop, Middle Wallop and A Clip Across The Ear – known to its more groovy residents as Sock It To Me. A town called Abbot’s Ann…? So…there was an abbot with someone called Ann at his disposal and the locals built a town for her ? What ... http://janeclifton.com.au/blog/?p=27 May Day ! May Day ! I pulled out of Paris on the Eurostar and glanced at the station clock. It said 9.11 Hurtling towards the Channel Tunnel, white knuckles gripping the armrest of my window seat. Window seat ? Point ? The rational and the irrational going at it hammer and tongs in my ... http://janeclifton.com.au/blog/?p=26 Twenty years and twenty kilos ago Paris could be a little dangerous for a single woman like moi ‘Don’t make eye-contact,’ my French friends would warn. ‘Don’t smile’. I’m invisible now. It’s a great way to travel. Lucky to get anyone’s attention, frankly. It took a while for the old Paris magic to kick ... http://janeclifton.com.au/blog/?p=25 Germany is very punk. Leather jackets, buzz-cuts and lank pony-tails … and that’s just the women. Boom Boom. No, but seriously folks… I scandalised the good French citizens of Toulouse last week by eating a croissant ON THE STREET, OUT OF A PAPER BAG and wearing my home-made, reversible, long-sleeved tee-shirt, fashionably ... http://janeclifton.com.au/blog/?p=24