ARTICLES
Herald Sun, Courier Mail and other News Corp newspapers article, May 2026
Women Writers, Women’s Books – 20 May 2026 – Secrets we carry and the stories we finally tell
WORK IN PROGRESS:
Diary of a Diagnosis
2025
In April 2025, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I decided to write about my journey as I was going through the various stages of treatment and recovery, and to reflect on what I have learned about it all – and myself. The result is Diary of a Diagnosis. I guess writing it has been therapy for me, but I also feel that it could be of interest to others facing similar health challenges.
More details when finialised for publication.
SOME MORE CREATIVE PIECES
My Happy Place
Susan Simon, 2023. Recorded for ABC Radio National.
Onehouse Road, Stowmarket, Suffolk, 1965
Onehouse Road, and it’s a Sunday lunchtime with the mellifluous English cricket commentators’ voices oozing from our faithful red transistor radio sitting on the serving shelf of the hatch between the kitchen and dining room. Dad had installed this home improvement shortly after we moved into the house when I was five years old to make our dining activities très à la mode. These serving hatches were all the rage at the time in our neck of the ‘Middle England’ wood, and we felt very smart to be able to pass things through this hole in the wall to avoid an arduous walk, piled with serving paraphernalia, from one room to another – the distance of all of ten steps I imagine. But we were sure all very proud of the new perspective it gave of the dining room from our kitchen.
So, Mum’s busy with the lunch preparations, and I have been out into the garden to pick some mint for her to pop into the boiling pot of new potatoes. She then asks me to make some custard to go with one of her delicious apple pies. I find the Bird’s Instant Custard Powder in the pantry and proceed to gather bowl, sugar, milk, and a bit more vanilla essence. I love this job because I sneak little tastes of the custard powder once it is combined with a few drops of milk whilst we wait for the rest of the milk to boil in the saucepan. I am always rather worried that there is not going to be any mixture left by the time we are ready to pour on the frothy final ingredient. But today, so far so good, and a bowl of the gorgeous dessert accompaniment will sit on the kitchen bench whilst we eat our Sunday roast and be ready for the grand finale of Mum’s pastry pièce de resistance. No doubt Dad will proudly tell her in front of us all (as is his custom) that it is a Sunday roast ‘fit for a king’. And it is. We all agree.
In all the years I have been making family roast dinners, I have never, ever, achieved the splendid results of Mum’s Sunday Roasts and I miss them still: Yorkshire puddings, sometimes to start the meal, simply served with mouth-watering gravy; perfect roast potatoes or delicious new potatoes with English farmhouse butter; the joint of the day – either beef, lamb, chicken or pork, done to perfection with crackling that is still hard to surpass in terms of crispiness and general succulence; stuffing (with the chicken); apple sauce (if it was pork), horseradish (for the beef joints) and mint sauce (when we had lamb); all topped off with lashings of extra gravy. Even though I have now been a vegetarian for at least fifteen years, if Mum was still here to rustle up one of her amazing roast dinners, I would eat every last crumb. And be queuing up for seconds.
Dad commending Mum on her roast dinner – ‘Fit for a King!’
Passage of Time
Susan Simon, 2022
My Mum, she lives in England,
I visit her twice a year.
Summers often spent there,
Followed by warmer winters here.
And while the motherland freezes
Floods and fires rage down under.
Seasons without order now
Her world is all asunder.
Last time that she came here
Bags were packed again and again.
Had to be home for something,
She couldn’t quite explain.
Butter rationing story was on
Constant mealtime replay.
Her hands had started shaking,
It was the dawn of a new day.
Psychologist’s proclamation
Expected but alarming.
Mum rebels, tells her straight,
‘Well, that’s just charming.’
Barricades carers out,
Loses the car several times,
She fights and lashes out as
Kidnapping becomes our crime.
Installed in her new ‘home’
She’s quizzical in the mirror.
‘Can this be for real?’
For a moment, things seem clearer.
Then, she’s in a school,
Now a flat owned by my brother.
It’s better than the days when
She feels completely smothered.
I arrive at her Grimston room
To take her to Sunday lunch.
Still in nightie, cornflake remnants,
She sits there all hunched.
I find her nappy’s soaked – and,
To add to Mum’s distress,
Under her chair shoes are also
Pee-sodden. Such a mess.
Now her needs are greater,
Deerhurst’s more intensive care
Helps to soften my distress
When I must leave her there.
Saying goodbye so many times –
I always think it’s the last.
But it’s not so hard for Mum.
She lives now in the past.
Broken hip, I race back,
But she sails right through the op.
Anaesthetic gives clarity.
She knows me. My heart stops.
But short-lived our familial bond
She’s back with her Dad and Mum.
Physios can’t help her walk,
Mum’s in a wheelchair ad infinitum.
It’s June – enter players
On a stage that’s quite Dickensian.
Angry gent laments his descent
From Nursing to Dementia.
Compulsive tidier claims territory.
Alan seems to make some sense,
Stealing Mum’s uneaten chips.
She has little self-defence.
Kaleidoscopic mural beckons
Mum out into the quad.
Sitting at the seaside now,
Sea’s calm ‘though she is not.
Ice blocks and fluro cordial
Designed to cool us off.
I guiltily slip past coded door
Now Mum is nodding off.
November. Staff at a funeral
And I wonder who has gone.
Players older, more infirm,
Some furious, or forlorn.
Could be just the time of year,
No sea breezes to extol,
Or bench-sitting outside.
Time passing, taking its toll.
Covid blank, tests and jabs,
PPE and visits banned.
Zoom calls are perplexing.
I just want to hold her hand.
September, three years on,
Her Queen idol passes away.
But now Mum’s mute, unaware
Of this – and our arrival day.
‘We’re in the final hours.’
Director Lesley’s on the phone.
‘If you can’t get back in time,
We’ll make sure she’s not alone’.
Mum, you’ve never been alone
Throughout these ten long years.
Wish you had known.
Wish I could have eased your fears.
K’gari Fraser Island Writing Retreat
Susan Simon 2020
An assembled troupe, an experienced leader,
A safe trip over, a chance for a breather,
A tale of warning, a quick look round,
A merry cook, a red wine downed.
A hearty stew, a rhubarb crumble,
A chance to share, a message humble,
A song or two, a band who were keen,
A basic cabin, a loo in between.
A second day, a work accepted,
A thought of abstention, a thought intercepted,
A stunned bird, a ranger not there,
A long sand track, a beer to share.
A piece of heaven, a swim at dusk,
A dark journey home, a tree to thrust,
A third day dawn, a sweet bird song,
A sumptuous lunch, a ride to Eurong.
A scrawny dingo, a closed pub,
A beer on the beach, a veritable club,
A pair of sea-eagles, an honest chat,
A stick to ward, a track going back.
A fitting last supper, a ponder on things,
A mango sweet, a few more songs to sing,
A fourth day, a writing frenzy,
A set timeline, a last-minute cleansing.
A beaut low tide, a dream beach drive,
A smashed van, a crew out alive,
A last warm ray, a sad milkshake,
A text to spouse, an ETA to make.
A fond farewell, a sense of belonging,
A rack of bikes, a cargo to-ing and fro-ing,
A word of thanks, a friendly smile.
These snatches of memory: may they linger a while.
Max and the Silver-haired Warriors
Susan Simon, 2023
For the past five years my husband Geoff and I have been travelling around Australia and I have been inspired to write about our many great adventures in a blog entitled G and S Under the Milky Way. Here’s a snatch of some rhyming reflections I wrote after visiting Winton, in western Queensland, where we heard Greg North reciting A B Paterson poetry. It was like an earworm travelling the country with me for a while after that and I could not write anything other than in rhyme!
Great South West Walk
Susan Simon, 2023
Tramping through ernodea and mentigi,
Across petrified terracotta, beige and ochre rock.
Towering blackened cliffs, their strata-ed facades
Eaten away at the base by yawning, half-moon caves.
Turquoise, white and jade swirling and blowing up
Through fissures so ancient that they too will crumble one day.
Flies in the warm, wind-sheltered dells,
Icy lashes in the upwind on the perilous parapet.
Giant white headless insects stand to attention on stilts,
Countless in their battle lines, they’re equipped for combat.
Climate change warriors infusing an eerie behemothic aura
Over the pristine coast. Collateral damage it seems.
Whale mad making?
I had scoffed at the assertion
With my anti-Trump lens.
But now,
Tramping and trumping seem as one.
And I am just a tad mad
At their presence in this place.
Head down, I return to the car park.
Waves
Susan Simon, 2019
A short story set in Brisbane, with a kaleidoscope of human encounters.
Spring Violet
Susan Simon, 2018
An autobiographical piece about Violet May Cotton, my paternal grandmother whom I never had the privilege of knowing.
My Uncle’s a Magician
Susan Simon, 2022
