One Man's Web

Marianne was a much beloved wife, grandmother, and great-grandmother. So it says on the little aluminium plaque on a park bench in the Linear Park. There is no doubt she was much loved for there have been flowers under the bench every time I have ridden past for several years. Fresh flowers, changed as often as needed. Always there.

The plaque once disappeared, but only for a day or two. Back on the park bench, it now carries a tiny engraved cat. We concluded Marianne’s beloved cat had also died.

We went interstate for a month’s holidays. Riding to work on the first day back I saw there were no flowers. A riding companion told me they had stopped not long after we left. The man she had occasionally seen bringing the flowers seemed very old, she said. We wondered if he had gone into care, or had died.

I was surprised at my distress over the loss of the flowers. They were an icon of love in a hard world. I wondered about bringing my own; perhaps I could cut bottle brush or banskia out of the thickets in the creek. Or sprays of gum flowers.

But on my last trip in to the city, the flowers were back. Perhaps Marianne’s husband has also been away on holiday.

Andrea Prior (July 2026 Archived here)

It's been the wettest week we've had for years. Normally, Frank would be itching for it to ease off so he can get out on a tractor, but we've just been to his funeral. A crowd of us are down at the family beach shack with several cousins' caravans and a couple of adventurous tents. The rest of us are looking at a long and cautious drive back to a Moonta motel later on. I've come outside and seen that we finally have a decent bonfire going after copious amounts of kerosene have burned the wet off the wood. 

Three old boys are on the far side of the fire, two sitting in a tailgate,  and the other one on an old twelve gallon oil drum. They sound like they've moved on from beer to Bundy's, and the fucks and bloodys are flowing. And the kid is across the fire in a camp chair, watching and listening.

Suddenly he says,"Why would you use language like that in front of me? I'm eleven years old." 
The old boys look at him with some surprise and then one says, "Well, when you've had to put up with as much bloody shit as we have, a few fucks is all you've got left to deal with it." They all chuckle, pleased with themselves.

I say to the kid, "Ignore them. They're just trying to wind you up." There's the smallest twitch of a shoulder that might mean "Butt out," and he says,"My dad runs a building company, and he doesn't use language like that."

The old blokes consider their position. I say to the kid's mum, just coming outside, that I think they might be giving him a bit of a rough time. She says, "He... will be fine," as though it's the old blokes who might have a problem. So I go back into the shack where a group of us are skirting around the realisation that not only are we now the elders of the family, but that we have also started to die.

I come out forty minutes later to get some food off the barbecue. The kid has pulled his chair over to the old boys, and they are all deep in conversation. "Yeah, I got cancer," says one of them. "It's terminal, too." "How come?"says the kid. "Apparently, it's really aggressive. Or something..."
"Oh... right," says the kid. And somehow, in those two words is all the compassion in the world.

Andrea Prior 2026

The dialogue is as I heard it. Everything else is changed. Archived here

This is a very early draft of an ongoing book.  Enjoy and use as you will.

Jesus comes home. They really like him, and they really hate him, and this all happens so quickly that we scarcely notice it. Six skilful verses move us from the defeat of empire's legions to the "small things" in our own home town which undo so much of the life of the church: Simple envy and resentment blind us and separate us from the life of the culture of God as effectively as the military power of empire! Envy and resentment are key elements within the culture of empire, so much so that where there is envy and resentment, empire is at hand. In Chapter 6, we see the resentment in Nazareth mirrored by the resentment in Herod's family and palace. There is no qualitative difference between them.... Read on >>>>