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Clive James: ‘The Australian sun reaches around the world to roast me on my balcony’

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Why did I ever leave? It must have had something with a desire to see the real world – even if it couldn’t be as good as this

The recent hot weather here in Cambridge has sent me back in my memory to Avalon, one of Sydney’s northern beaches. When I was first a student, Avalon was the weekend gathering place for the Bellevue Hill Mob, a bunch of law students I knew at Sydney University. The Mob had more money than I did, but the Australian social system, such as it was, depended on the same sun shining copiously on everybody. I hear it still does, with enough light left over to reach right around the world and roast me here on my balcony, making work impossible, except for my writing increasingly nostalgic poems about Avalon. I have plans to put a couple of them in my new slim volume of poetry, due out early next year.

I must be crazy to be planning a new book, or any new anything. In my condition, the best strategy is to lie down and expire. But while breath lasts, it seems a pity to waste any of life’s remaining blessings, and one of those is, for a little while at least, clear sight.

Related: Clive James: ‘People have come to talk about my book. Sadly, not all of them have read it’

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