Sunday morning

I arrived early at Readings Bookshop yesterday so that I could purchase Alan Duff's novel Once Were Warriors. I was lucky because it was their last copy. It's an easy read, fast paced and highly descriptive. I've already read sixty-two pages. I'd seen the film in 1994 so was quite prepared for this particularly violent depiction of Maori culture.

In between reading I wandered through the Edible Garden display at the City Square in Melbourne, just one of the events at the Food and Wine Festival. What an amazing concept. The garden included a display of locally grown organic produce. It enabled people to swap their excess fruit or vegetables for something grown by someone else. Apparently these food swaps go on all the time in Fitzroy.

When my son was two years old we lived in a large house in Hawthorn and had enough space in the backyard to grow beans, capsicums, lettuce, pumpkin, tomatoes and bright red chilli peppers. I miss planting things, and seeing them grow.

I had nothing to swap yesterday, but ate the largest Calamata olive I've ever seen and was given a bunch of fresh home-grown sage, cardamon leaves, basil, onion and a dozen or so Sunflower seeds, which I should plant in November. As I chatted and wandered around amongst the beautiful green capsicums, dark mauve eggplants and bright red tomatoes, I thought, we may live in a highly technologised culture, but there are so many opportunities for people to resist virtual presence in favour of actual, physical engagement with others.

For the moment though I'll be living in the virtual space of the written word. I hope to finish this novel by Monday.