It's the Saturday morning fruit and

vegetable market in Berkeley, California.

There are trestle tables with artichokes,

bok choy, carrots, sugar cane, strawberries,

looking as though they would taste sweet, and a

stall selling organic sauerkraut.

It's not a big market, but there's a

kind of enthusiasm about it. The sight

of all this fruit and all these vegetables

makes me feel the sharpness of the distance

between me and my kitchen.
In my limited experience, when somebody dies

people have something to say about it.

That she was too young or he had a good innings,

or died well, or very hard. That

he was well liked, or she was always difficult

and nobody ever really and where were they anyway.
Bankstown, I like the sound of it. My Mum and Dad

grew up there, I was born there and we lived there for a while.

When my grandfather got sick, his last illness,

I went to see him. I took the train up from

Wollongong to Central, then out to Strathfield. Dad

picked me up from the station and we went to the new Bankstown hospital.
We could only see him one at a time. We walked along corridors

past the chapel, the wards, the waiting rooms.

He'd had a piece of his lung taken out and was

just coming out of the general anaesthetic,

the nurses yelling 'Wake up, Mr Smith,' the way they do it now,

but I couldn’t help whispering and

not wanting to disturb him. 'Wake up, Mr Smith,'

they said. They knew what they were doing

and I didn't have a clue.
Afterwards Dad and I went to Freedom Furniture

and followed the walkways looking at arrangements

of loungerooms and bedrooms

and indoor-outdoor areas.

We bought glasses with detachable handles

that could be used for tea and coffee, as well as cold drinks.