oNe PhOtO a DaY jUnE 2026

JUNE 1st GLIMMER: The lovely vegetable vendor, who we most often purchase from in the local market knows us well enough to never give us plastic bags and today as the only thing I needed was parsley, she presented it in a lotus leaf and declared, “A posy of parsley for you,” when she gave it to me

JUNE 2nd GLMMER: wandering through the Wat and detecting the wafting scent of gardenia 

JUNE 3rd GLIMMER: Unbelievable. We slipped out earlier today with a brief errand, then decided to see an exhibition and stopped at two other places on a whim on the way home, and had just put the keys in our front door when we heard the rain. After rushing to retrieve the washing from the balcony clothes line, wham this near white out monsoon storm happened! Gotta be lucky sometimes

JUNE 4th GLIMMER: We have been cooking up a storm together all afternoon: sour dough focaccia, stuffed mushrooms, grilled capsicum and tomato, roasted veggies and mixed berry and apple cake. Lazy days ahead a lot of the meal prep until the end of the weekend is now done 

JUNE 5th GLIMMER: of gold at golden hour to kick off the weekend 

JUNE 6th GLIMMER: This morning  I finally tackled the daunting task I’ve been putting off since February. I filled in the Fearless File with all the numbers contacts passwords and details of our everyday lives for whoever has to clean up after us.  It wasn’t glamorous but it was satisfying to finally have it almost complete

JUNE 7th GLIMMER: For as long as I can remember I have been obsessed with colours and patterns matching. Refusing to dress for school if my socks weren’t matching at least one other item of clothing in primary years for example. I love this matching coaster and water bottle and only a week or so ago I left the bottle on the train to Sihanoukville when I got off in Kampot. With the assistance of several Khmer people, I got it back and today’s lazy day reading I looked up at it and smiled again at the memory of its purchase in Adelaide last year, its return to me last month and the sheer delight of using it daily with its matching coaster 

JUNE 8th GLIMMER: After a pretty ordinary day it was photos of memories from this day in 2024 that sparked joy for me. Haa River at Twilight 

JUNE 9th GLIMMER: I never tire of seeing monks on their morning alms walk and young children learning the rituals of offering alms ….. notice just like the monks, he has taken his shoes off 

JUNE 10th GLIMMER: Feeling blessed as is our abode. I hung the fourth set of prayer flags on our terrace to celebrate it being four years to the day since we got the keys our apartment in Phnom Penh. In a household with no ladder this was no easy feat.

 our ingenious climbing apparatus

* amazingly this glimmer was selected as a Fab on Facebook 

JUNE 11th GLIMMER: There is a sense of delight when the living room is spotless, smells like Lemongrass oil and all the cushions have been beaten, dusted, fluffed and aired before being returned. It amused me to see how many of them there are when they were piled up on the terrace table 

JUNE 12th GLIMMER: We play this regularly. Although I lost the game by a mere ten points, I got the highest word score for this turn. It’s not really about who wins since we always both help each other anyway 

JUNE 13th GLIMMER: …… mackerel sky not long dry. I took this earlier this morning as I love a mackerel sky and right now the rain is so heavy on the tin rooves all around us, it’s nearly impossible to have a conversation indoors 

JUNE 14th GLIMMER: We spontaneously decided to eat at a favourite riverside restaurant where we have previously only ever gone for special occasions and with guests. This afforded us the opportunity to sit at the balcony tables which are all only for two. Feeling like true locals - not letting the monsoon rain dampen our spirits and living in the present 

JUNE 15th GLIMMER: A monsoon moment after getting caught in a downpour might just as well shampoo and wash on the roadside 

JUNE 16th GLIMMER: Today I finally sourced an orange hibiscus at the plant nursery and bought it for our terrace garden 

JUNE 17th GLIMMER: A huge smile from a local as we strolled through a narrow laneway, where he was sitting outside his own front door catching the breeze and reading a newspaper. It creates a sense of nostalgia to see a real newspaper and someone reading it these days, says she who reads the news online

JUNE 18th GLIMMER: Fireworks ……  Birthday of Her Majesty the Queen-Mother Norodom Monineath Sihanouk of Cambodia

JUNE 19th GLIMMER: Today was a triple glimmer. A lovely Russian woman at the pool pointed out the sun halo but didn’t want get out of the pool. I didn’t want to miss the chance and captured it before it disappeared and then when we were leaving shared the photo with her. Win win win

JUNE 20th GLIMMER: I bought some new bathers (is it only Aussies who use that term?). First time in Cambodia to find ones that fit, have some shaping without padding and I actually like. Wow. In addition, they are my favourite colour and cost a quarter of what I usually have to pay so I’m very happy about that 

JUNE 21st GLIMMER: in the skies at twilight 

JUNE 22nd GLIMMER: Dukkah on the menu today and always a pleasure to breathe in the aroma while making it

JUNE 23rd GLIMMER: I always love getting my haircut …. but what happened to my legs??

JUNE 24th GLIMMER:  Inspired by yesterday’s arrival of snail mail, today I wrote some myself. Deliberately living life in the slow lane brings me joy 

JUNE 25th GLIMMER: from the exhibition “Of Words” currently showing in the magnificent, newly renovated, colonial building originally the Bank of Indo Chine and the first bank in the kingdom. I do hope that it remains a museum space. It’s gorgeous

JUNE 26th GLIMMER: Wow, monsoon rainbows …  even a bat passing by 

* selected by Facebook (edited but unfiltered by the way) 

JUNE 27th GLMMER: I love planning and packing. It means we will soon be off on an adventure  

JUNE 28th GLIMMER: Arrived in Battambang today. Once a thriving community of artists and intellectuals and now still recovering from the ravages of the past but the legacy continues.

JUNE 29th GLIMMER: An unexpected, improvised birthday ‘cake’ at breakfast this morning for the love of my life.

 the cake

JUNE 30th GLIMMER: A sunny day, an empty pool and time to swim - even managed to christen my new bathers and now I love them even more 

 

Readings and Reflections

 

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabriel Zevin

“To return to the city of one’s birth always felt like a retreat.” 

That’s the second time this book has used that line. Foreshadowing.

It seemed so odd to me, it stayed with me when most single lines wouldn’t. Why would returning home feel like retreat? 

Everywhere is in constant change and at an ever increasing rate. Revelations appear around once familiar corners. It’s exhilarating to keep making discoveries and feels like travel, while simultaneously allowing for the renewing of long lasting connections and feeling comfortingly like home. It’s a joy….. mostly.

 

It can have a downside too, and sometimes the total overwhelm, I will concede, is …… well overwhelming. 

Too many memories. 

Too many social events. 

Too much to be achieved. 

Too many time constraints. 

Defeat or retreat has never entered into it for me. 

“Midnight Train” by Matt Haig

“I’d always thought if I came back it would feel like a defeat, but it doesn’t … I feel like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I mean look at this place. Look at these people. “ 

And then this comes up in yet another book and suddenly it occurs to me that the reflection and analysis I had written about several days ago, missed the point entirely. These characters were referring to returning to hometowns to live and I had been comparing their perceptions to our trips home. 

Travel is a completely different personal experience. 

In some ways they are right. I do not wish to return to my hometown to live right now and yes some part of me has believed that that would be defeat. Honestly I can now say that the last trip home changed that perception for me. 

I have finally seen the new possibilities of once again living in a place, which I had perhaps run away from, as much as I had run to something I found so very much more fulfilling and forgiving. 

Adelaide is not the same place I left. That is certainly true and there are many more hugely appealing aspects to life in the city there, than there once were. There are also opportunities now that didn’t exist before and some that I am so much more able to engage in at this point. There are issues I would like to be able to have more of an impact on, than is possible from a distance. Most certainly high on the list being concern about the environment and specifically the preservation of our magnificent parkland belt. Being able to meaningfully engage is appealing. 

More than anything it is the overwhelming sense of connection to family and friends, that means for the first time in very many years I do not see returning home as taking refuge or recovering from some kind of personal disaster. It will become a choice not just an eventuality. 

I finally thought I could happily live there and might even want to at some point in the future. That is not to say it is a plan at this stage because we actually do, truly love the life and lifestyle we have here, but it is to accept, that it is a possibility and a very pleasant one.