We had lots of new normals to absorb, but like most kids we were only learning what life is all about, and we passively got on with it — When I was almost seven years old, my Australian diplomat dad was posted to Jakarta, Indonesia. Our family of six flew there from Canberra, with a two-week stop-over period in Singapore. When we got off the plane we walked across the tarmac to the tiny, two room building that was…

I was everyone’s confidante, but no one knew it — If there was a stampede before, now there was practically a riot when the phone rang. “Is it Beep?” “BEEP!” Doors slammed open from every direction, as fourteen and eighteen-year-old girls alike sprinted to get to the phone first; dressed or half undressed, book or pen or hairbrush in hand…

Saved from the gravel road, bears and hypothermia — Three days in, it was bucketing rain, it was windy, it was cold. We’d had a sleepless night at this campsite, surrounded by jeering drunken men and their so not witty Lesbian slurs. We’d got up late, and ate shivering in shorts and t-shirts — the only clothes we had…

Karma came back to bite me when my sister got me a home help — Three months it took to get a reply to my ad. Far be it from me to complain when Seka downplayed my disclosure of my lack of mobility. She demanded that I come and meet her in town, so that I could show her exactly where I lived. I agreed. …

Intimacy was open-ended, there was no need to define nor limit your physicality in relation to someone else — London is a Gemini city. It swings between identities and has phases that, in turn, stimulate its huge population to excited openness, followed by push-backs and retreat. When I first went there on holiday (in 1979), London’s aura was excited openness. In the lesbian circles that I was in, one…

Enthusiastic early days as a stamp collector — Like magic, the stamp floats off the envelope. The bowl of water stealthily and passively pans its gold. My uncle was giving a demonstration, having presented each of us with an empty stamp album. He had also brought his one, full of colourful postage stamps from all over the world. …

I am trying to shun Morsha — Take One A month ago, I opened the back door to give Morsha his breakfast in the porch, and for the first time ever, he wasn’t there. “Morsha?” I asked, wondering if he was still asleep in his bed in the shed. “Moosh?” Then came the most hesitant, guiltiest sounding mew I…

I asked my mum where babies come from, but wished I’d gotten the short version — I am sitting in the back of the car, in the days before seatbelts. My mother is driving and talking. Every two minutes or so I lean over my mother’s seat, interrupt her lecture and whine: “But Muuum, where do they come from?” With matching impatience, she answers every time: …

Defined on paper, by how their corners connect, and using dots to represent gaps — A Mobius Twist strip traditionally uses a separate seam to join the two short ends, and that seam is not part of the continuous edge. (Though my method of crochet grows Mobius Twists from a chain, and does without a separate seam, see below at very bottom). The Mobius twist…