Funny, I thought I would burst into a blog the minute I got back to my apartment on Saturday. A cherished place there was a chance I would never see again. But I haven’t had the urge to write about it. Not yet.

Probably because I still have hanging over me the chance that this will be my prison for some months. For these first days it’s a voluntary confinement because of the risk of infection and with my new liver still at the High Rejection stage. And tomorrow in Magistrate’s Court I will find out if I will be here under Home Detention and for how long. Assuming the magistrate follows through on his earlier indications that I will receive immediate home detention and not jail.

[Plus, I have to keep reminding myself it was only two Wednesdays ago that I was given this amazing second chance at life.]

In my last blog I said:

To start with, with the transplant  was only six days ago, I have to pace myself and rest. Be Pavlov’s Dog and do everything the medicos tell me...

For a so-called man of words, you’d think I could come up with something a bit more fitting for such an occasion. Something that would do a medical miracle more justice than a tabloid newspaper headline more akin to a Grand Final draw than a life-giving event.

Weird thing is, that I didn’t ever consider what I would say — if this day ever happened — when I started this warts-and-all blog back on September 1 last year.

Not the sort of thing you write an acceptance speech for. Partly because I did not know, even a week ago today, that I would be sitting here writing this with somebody else’s liver inside me. Keeping me alive.

A gift of life from some Australian family. A gift I can never repay. An act of compassion and generosity that tarnishes any other I have, or could have, received in a gift-showered life.

Tonight is not the time nor place to go into detail of the past week except to thank the Austin Hospital’s Liver Transplant Unit led by one of the few people I have...

Having lived for a decade in the United States I understand more than most Antipodeans how much July 4 means to Americans. Independence Day is not just a long summer weekend.

It gets me thinking on several grounds. Some fond memories in a small New Jersey town called Tom’s River where we watched the patriotic Independence Day parade, with the godawful local school band, and then retired for a clambake with steamed clams and lobster tails and corn on the cob cooked in the clam juice.

As a republican, who believes our own Independence Day should have been declared on the day of the Bicentennial in 1988, I wonder when we will finally cut the British umbilical cord. Not any day soon judging by the fawning coverage of Will and Kate’s wedding and their rock star reception in Canada at the weekend.

And on a personal note, July 4, 2011 signals a time when I have never faced such a private loss of independence.

At the weekend I couldn’t help thinking ‘ this is my third last Saturday of freedom’ and on Sunday ‘this...