FEAST OR FAMINE

    MARTINA NICOLLS MartinaNicollsWebsite    I    Rainy Day Healing    I    Martinasblogs    I    Publications    I    Facebook    I    Paris Website    I    Paris blogs    I   Animal Website    I   Flower Website   I   Global Gentlemanliness SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES  Martina Nicolls is an Australian author and international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, and foreign aid audits and evaluations. She lives in Paris.  

Past the Shallows  by Favel Parrett (2011) is set in Cloudy Bay on the remote south coast of Tasmania, an island off the mainland of Australia. Out past the shallows is deep water. The story is about an abalone fishing community and the lives of three brothers: Joe, Miles, and Harry. Their ‘deep water’ is their unpredicatable, moody, bitter, secretive father, just called Dad. Joe, the oldest, left home, but Miles and Harry are too young to leave. Their relief from their father is the beach and its treasures – seaweed, seabirds, surf, shells, fish, dunes, and driftwood.  Sometimes they visit their mother’s sister, Aunty Jean, but she is old with arthritis, and she cuts their hair too short. She comes to their place too, to collect their dirty laundry on washing day. They live and breathe the coast and its waves. Miles says, ‘There were things that no one could teach you – things about the water. You just knew them or you didn’t and no one could tell you how to read it. How to f...

The Seaside: England’s Love Affair  by Madeleine Bunting (2023) is set along the coastlines of England: ‘No European capital can lay claim to as many coastlines as London … all an easy day trip by train or car. Not to mention the delights further afield.’  Madeleine Bunting travelled to about 40 seaside resorts, staying in hotels, caravans, and holiday camps. Her aim was to understand the ‘enduring appeal of seaside towns, and what has happened to the golden sands, cold seas, and donkey rides of childhood memory.’ The book is sectioned according to the country’s beaches that the author visited, in a clockwise direction: Scarborough in North Yorkshire; Skegness in Lincolnshire; Dovercourt to Canvey Island in Essex; Margate to Folkestone in Kent; Brighton to Bognor in Sussex; Torquay to Weston-super-Mare in the South-West; and Blackpool and Morecambe in Lancashire. For her ‘research’ Madeleine Bunting talks to residents and holidayers, takes swims, and eats the local fare – main...