New Year Old Stories

Thank you for reading in 2024!

There’s a stripey concrete pylon that rises from the ocean. Black. White. Yellow. Three thin frayed ropes run down its backside, and sharp pseudo-steps have been eaten into the concrete by feet and by time. Its actual nautical purpose is unclear, forgotten, and in any case not important. Kids jump off it into the sea.

Baking heat pushes through high grey clouds. Any moment they will part. The water is cool and sweet and I think pretty still. Perth waves are not real waves.

Kids crawl up this thing like it’s a ladder but I find the moss to be very slippery. Plus I get rope burn. I do something bad to my bicep while hauling myself up, and my arm will go dead on the swim back to shore. My jump is timid and yet my splash is very big. The kid after me does a front flip.

The feeling of flying, soaring free and fantastic over the wide blue sea, lasts but a moment. That feels long enough.

And in this spirit I will keep this 2024 wrap up very brief. Thank you again for your readership and the occasional nice comment. I really enjoy doing All My Eggs and I hope you like it too.

In case you missed or would like to relive any stories from last year, here are links to a few of my favourites.

Gnarly, Dude

It’s probably okay—it might even be a good thing—to have a near-delusional self-belief on the inside of you. Keep it there. It would be a mistake to, for example, tell your family at Christmas lunch that you just have a feeling that you’re going to be really good at surfing. You actually say you think you might have ‘a knack for it.’ You who is pathologically afraid of skateboards, you who has a high hospitalisation rate on ice skates and electric scooters. It is only really now, teeth chattering, glancing at the turbulent sea, that you think about how small and inconsequential you must appear to the roaring Southern Ocean. This first tremor of doubt is indistinguishable from your body’s other cold-related tremors, so you let it go. You’re going to be fantastic.

The Trials and Traumas of Gusman McTooth

Australia Post text to say my parcel is “on its way”—this phrasing for a moment conjured images of an anthropomorphic toothbrush waddling through the streets of Newtown. Be still my beating heart. Ever since I’d placed the order my teeth have felt dirty. My manual analogue disgusting plastic toothbrush is like a relic from some bygone era of oral hygiene, as if I’d been brushing my teeth with a clay pot. I am ready for 21st century tooth care. Goodbye gum disease. Hello whites so pearly I have to keep my mouth closed around Oyster farmers.

MOUNTAINS

The longer you are up there the higher it will feel. This is a universal rule of diving platforms—no exception is made for the Alps. The view from the top is of boats and distant cliffs and glinting water and piers and bucolic shores and old Swiss women drip drying on the pontoon, waiting for you to jump. When the sun burns through the clouds it’s like standing in a postcard.

‘You will be the last people to do this,’ the lifeguard calls up. It’s not immediately clear that she just means for the season. The Swiss can be cryptic. When we said we live in Sydney, Australia, the lifeguard asked how far that is from Nimbin.

---

Obviously, starting today, I will be a completely new and much better person than I was in 2024. I’ll swim a kilometre every dawn, ingest every atom of kale I can get my hands on, that kind of thing. One of my New Year's resolutions is to answer every incoming phone call with, ‘Go for Angus.’ But mainly I just hope to have another nice, joyful year, and this creative outlet is a big part of that. Looking forward to sending more silly stories on the last day of the month in 2025.