Yesterday at Circular Quay I took some photographs of the best of the inscriptions in the "Writers Walk". There are perhaps twenty of these plaques in the pavement stretching from the Opera House all around the quayside as far as The Rocks and they all have something reflective to say about Australia or about Sydney, which as I'm in love with both, you'll understand I could read over and over again.
Anyway, I've taken the same photographs before and they're in an album at home but my absolute favorite is this one by Clive James because I read it the first day I ever came to Sydney, just after we'd gone sprinting down to Circular Quay to see the bridge and I was blown away by the colours and the sights. I can almost feel the longing he has and the reason that Australians almost always go back home in the end because they're like the feelings I struggle with when I consider whether we ought to emigrate.
(Incidentally, his book "Unreliable Memoirs" details his growing up in Sydney and it's a cracking read).
However, in the absence of my photo albums, I've been liberally misquoting Clive James all over this blog for the last five months. For the record, it's crushed diamonds on the water and powdered sapphires in the sky.
Sorry.
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