"For just a few seconds I stood by the window, staring out at the sea that was drawing closer all the time, at the grey sky that rocked gently against the grey water, the grey light falling in wide faint shafts. I could see how the wind was riffling the waves into the tightly corrugated patterns of squalls and how the sea-birds, a long way out, gathered in spiralling patterns around a lone fishing-boat, half shrouded in the faint mist."
Nicci French.
The fatal undertow was all that he felt; a keening sadness that stretched out across the marshlands and conflicted utterly with the bright brick colours that surrounded him. He didn't know why these echos kept coming back; why this brutal sadness had become his sole emotion, the grey, featureless flatlands of his inner-life. He trudged through work, which was invariably exotic, invariably took him into situations most people would regard as fascinating, and the worms that lept across the flat fields, withdrawal worms, hallucinatory, not really there; he embraced these chimera as his own dark lot; his sad destiny on the featureless plain.
He had always known he would die in Belmore Park, that rare stretch of open space next to Central Staiton through which thousands oi\f commuters marched everyday and where the city's crazies, infested with entities, gathered each day. The vision recurred repeatedly, that moment just after his death when his spirit was already retreating into the surrounding trees and into the skyscrapers that encircled it. He could see down to the Mission Beat man approaching him with the cup of tea. He knew it was his homeless status that provoked the tea; nit somehow he had established a rapport with the kind young man who brought it. He could see the concern, the resignation, as he approached his body. He could already hear the telescoped conversations, he used to be somebody, I'm told he used to be quite a well known jourenalist. He used to work close to hear, that's why he always stuck to this area. We haven't been able to find any family, although he told me once he had two children. He said he couldn't stop drinking, just couldn't stop; and used to tell me, in a cackling sort of way, beware the demon drink, it will get you in the end. I was sober for years, and I still ended up here.
The Mission Beat man was on his radio back to the office. We've got a sleeper, he was saying, better ring the cops and the ambos. Already passing the trees, drifting up the sides of the indifferent skyscrapers, he could see the small collection of people beginning to gather around his body. He hadn't changed his clothes in the last two weeks, during that last terminal binge, and knew he stank. He wished now he had showered, before the passing. In his old newspaper days it was as if he specialised in death; the paper always pulled him out for funerals and memorials. Tributes flowed in yesterday... The tiny coffins of the children breaking everyone's heart. The weeping parents, or the weeping relatives. He had always thought he would live forever, be a great, eccentric, wealthy success; but as the years rolled on those dreams and self-perceptions slowly disappeared, eaten away in the alcohol; the good stuff on the good days and the sting, the metho and orange juice, that was a lifsaver in his final days. He didn't know why he had poured scorn on sting in his younger days; it did the trick alright.
He saw the ambulance arive, his bloated body, his scraggly beard, his stinking clothes a far cry from the man he used to be. If only you had known...he wanted to scream down at them, if only you had known... But all his friends were gone now; anybody who would have known it hadn't always been sadness and decay and uncontrollable alcoholism, they had been relieved of this sad, inevitable end by younger deaths, in their prime deaths, when everyone wept at their funerals and their passing reverberated out through overlapping social sets. Now almost gone, the park returning to normal, he saw the ambulance officers and the police and his friend the Mission Beat man share a sad joke and the shake of a head, and he disappeared, as he had fought so long to do. Thanks, he said, telescoping the thought down to his friend, his last remaining friend, the only man who had been kind to him in his final derelict year. Thanks. And he was sure he saw, in those misty, distressed eyes, appreciation for the person he had been, the stories he had told, the days that had been his, and he telescoped the thought again, down from above the rooftops of the city buildings: thanks. And knew the message had got through.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/60-killed-as-female-suicide-bombers-strike-776881.html
Two women suicide bombers killed more than 60 people in separate attacks in Baghdad today.
The first came at the main pet market in the city centre where at least 46 people died and dozens were wounded in the deadliest bombing to strike the capital since the US "surge" of extra troops flooded into central Iraq last spring.
About 20 minutes later, a second woman struck another bird market in a predominantly Shiite area in south-eastern Baghdad. That blast killed as many as 18 people and wounded 25, police said.
The attacks shortly before the weekly Islamic call to prayer resounded across the capital were the latest in a series of violent incidents that have been chipping away at Iraqi confidence in the permanence of recent security gains.
The first blast occurred about 10.20 am when the woman detonated explosives hidden under her traditional black robe at the central al-Ghazl market. The pet bazaar had recently re-emerged as a popular shopping venue as Baghdad security improved and a ban on driving was lifted.
Police initially said the bomb was hidden in a box of birds but later realised it was a suicide attack after finding the woman's head.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/rudd-rules-out-compensation/2008/02/01/1201801035355.html
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has moved to ensure the Government's historic apology to the stolen generations is not misread as opening the way to compensation.
"We will not, under any circumstances, be establishing any compensation arrangements or any compensation fund. Absolutely blunt on that," he declared yesterday.
But Aboriginal leader Mick Dodson said compensation would stay on the agenda.
The apology remained a source of division in the Liberal Party, with shadow treasurer Malcolm Turnbull giving notice he would strongly urge his colleagues to support it.
While leader Brendan Nelson was waiting to see the Government's wording, Mr Turnbull said, "I do support an apology", adding that he would "have a lot to say with my colleagues next week" when the party room met.
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