Sue James

Stories, Reflections & Journeys

Copyright © 2025

City Lights

Filed Under: Reflections · · 1 Comment ·

I love our city of Melbourne.

I don’t live there .. I choose to live way out of town. Not actually in a rural area, as I’m in the outer eastern suburbs. But I love my little corner of the world at the foot of the Dandenong Ranges, where I’m surrounded by trees, possums use my garden fences as their thoroughfare and I wake to the sounds of magpies and kookaburras each morning.

However I also adore visiting the city, a busy, bustling feast for the senses. It’s a fabulous smorgasbord of sights, sounds and smells. A colourful cornucopia that is ever changing, always fascinating.

I especially love the pastime of people-watching. Such variety and diversity to absorb!

I was in town on Saturday night, heading for a show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

And, as always, the walk to the venue is almost as enjoyable as the show itself! My people-watching hobby can go into overdrive. The noisy, glittering crowd becomes a series of snapshots …

[Read more…]

Revisiting Brideshead

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I’ve recently finished re-reading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh – and re-watching on DVD the 1981 BBC TV series, produced by Granada Television.

Brideshead Revisited is probably Evelyn Waugh’s best-loved novel, first published in 1945.

It’s the epic story of a great Catholic family in a doomed aristocratic age prior to the second world war and over sixty years has delighted many readers – including myself .

In haunting prose it captures the dying years of an era of British aristocracy and opulence, which would never again return after the war. Another major theme, as Waugh says in his preface (1959) to a modified re-issue of the novel, is “the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters.”

In the book there are many passages of lilting prose – somehow wistful and with a lingering melancholy. And in re-reading, I experienced all over again my initial delight.

Here’s an example … [Read more…]

The Storyteller

Filed Under: Journeys, Reflections, Resources, Stories · · 2 Comments ·

Unshaved, unkempt,
black nails, black teeth
and an old, tattered coat.
You’d dismiss him as derelict
and walk straight past.
Yet when he spoke
eagles soared,
mountains talked
and I glimpsed infinity.
“I’m a storyteller”
he said.
His stories wove spells
of dreaming and meaning.
The universe expanded,
and I felt for a moment
that I touched its limits.
Derelict,
Storyteller,
Spellbinder …
The essence of truth
lies perhaps in all three.