ABSTRACT
'Married medical life has the author in its velvet grip. Mirages from night-time seas no longer come a-ealling. All sorts of health hazards ripple the surface of rural life in the twenty-first century, such as the ever-present unemployment, underemployment and selfemployment, with their clusters of problems like boredom and low self-esteem. The only jobs available in the country are often unskilled and badly paid. The sense of life passing one by isn't as pronounced now, with satellite television and the Internet. A yoga teacher once commented that his city students had more flexibility and his country ones more strength. Darren Blinty was able to drag himself to work despite being drenched with toxic chemicals by an aerial sprayer, which he always claimed resulted in significant neurological impairment. Darren lived alone in a little weatherboard cottage on the edge of one of those tiny towns which populate our state.
