I tell myself today is not the day to write a love story, a story about a great painting or a tale of the coast, panel vans, waves and zinc. I am not going to write about Skyhooks playing at Tom Katz in Sorrento or Noosa and living on bananas and milkshakes. Or my little boys in their Cats jumpers taking screamers at dogshit park. Those days are not today.

Today is the hum of the traffic on Punt Road filtering across a bare tree I am gazing at. It is winter 2012. I am lying on a couch. Tell me about death, says the voice behind me. Images and still moments come to mind. The man dying on the beach at Portsea as I try to resuscitate him, the family drowning in the ocean at Pearces Road, friends killed in motor cars, heroin overdoses, victims in the trials I did at the Bar, Sergeant Hatfield and Penrod’s nightmares. How has this affected your view of life, the voice asks? The bare tree shifts across the cold grey Melbourne sky.