John Howard is a gigantic piece of shit and don't ever forget it.

Most days I ride home past the oval where Euridice Dixon was murdered. For a long time after her death, the physical landscape bore the traces of what had happened. There was the circle where flowers and candles were laid, then there was a ring of bare soil cut into the grass when these were taken away. And then there were the sheets of fake grass stretched and pegged over the place where a man drew a cock and balls on the ground just to show everyone what he thought about the notion which was in the air of the city for a while, ie that things like that should not happen, ever. The grass under the astroturf died and then the council had to replant it, and it was months before the ground healed.

When I went to the vigil for Eurydice, in the surreality of that night, I saw half a dozen women wearing an identical kind of hat. It was a wine-coloured knitted cap topped with a fluffy tan pompom. For the rest of the winter, whenever I saw someone wearing one of these hats someplace, I thought about this woman's death. I saw them often because they were being sold in supermarkets to raise money for a mental health charity. Mainly the hats just prompted me to think about her.

On days when I get up earlier than usual and swim laps at the pool before work I ride into town on this same street. This morning I was there as the sun came up, in the east across the cemetery, flickering pink and gold through the iron railings and stone crosses. There are birds singing and a rich sharp smell rises off the pine trees.

I could have said a lot about what we've all heard and read today about George Pell and his friends and supporters, but honestly, I just envisaged this  choking, foaming flood of hatred and rage spewing out of me, and then I thought about that golden light streaming across the morning sky.