“After all, if you just work hard everyone gets a shot at the middle class, right? Those left behind in a land of opportunity must be deficient or lazy or plain uninterested. But social mobility is not a train you get to board after you’ve scraped together enough for the ticket. You have to build the whole bloody enging. Some have nothing to work with expect a spoon and hand-me-down psychological distress.”

Rick Morton, One Hundred Years of Dirt, 2018, p58.

“It is not just a matter of more women in politics; it is a chance of transforming the political realm.” (p4).

“The importance of feminism is not that it will add its weight to one or other of two sides, but that it’s concerns might change the shape of the discussion” (p13).

Anne Phillips, Engendering Democracy, 1991.

“Heroism is often the seemingly spontaneous result of a lifetime of preparation.”

Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea, p.264

“Worry has weight and is an infinitely renewable resource. One might say worries are the only things you can make heavier by thinking about them.”

Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea, p.194.

Standing at the bus stop outside the Royal Exchange Hotel in Marrickville, waiting to head to Newtown. It’s grand final day, and my birthday eve, and I’m hoping the Swans will deliver me an early present.

A tall man, maybe my age, walks past me from behind and continues up the street. With one hand he’s pushing a stroller, in the other he’s cradling a baby less than six months old.

A shorter woman approaches them, smiling, and they stop. She hangs her bag over the back of the stroller. She reaches out and takes the child into her arms.

They walk up the street together, side by side. The man still pushes the stroller with one hand, with the other he holds his new son’s tiny hand.

The bus arrives.