The joy I feel shovelling compost on this bright winter’s day is close to delirium. Our latest load of grandchildren has just been to stay, the weather is unseasonably warm with the sun slamming my shadow hard against the back of the compost bay, and magpies, currawongs, and cockatoos are singing somewhat wildly after the recent rain, and I think: “Oh, what a feeling!”, in much the same way the purchaser of a well-known brand of car did in the even better-known television commercial.
Perhaps I’m hallucinating. A few hundred years ago, and if I were a woman, I might have been burnt at the stake for a witch. As it is, as a male in 21st century Australia, the worst that can happen is a neighbour might demand I turn down the volume of the Beethoven belting away in my overalls pocket.
Lately life has got to me like that. It might be hysteria but
