Year: 2026

  • Paul Scofield

    ByMikeRudd

    .. of not acting, but being. I have only seen Olivier on film, but always, from Othello to the character of Archie Rice in, ‘The Entertainer’, you went away thinking that you had seen a magnificent performance, superb ‘Acting’ but not the quiet revelation that Scofield could give. Most of our generation know him in…

  • Talking Trees

    ByMikeRudd

    ..and roost there? In the spirit of inquiry I paused under the first talking tree and looked up. Yes, there they all were. I couldn’t really tell what brand they were, and just as I was thinking that they started to get nervous and about half of them fluttered noisily from the canopy in some…

  • The Three Monkeys

    ByMikeRudd

    Dick’s Toolbox cont. .. the Iraqi population believe that they are worse than before their country was ‘liberated’. No matter – we now have a new democratic Iraqi government that represents the forces of truth, hope, and unification but which, as ‘The Age’ noted, took five months to elect a Prime Minister who still hasn’t…

  • Underpants

    ByMikeRudd

    Mike’s Pith & Wind cont. .. under my breath, I eventually opted for XL, and then spent another five minutes trying to find a Bonds’ five pack in the right size. I eventually found a pack of gaily-coloured XL cotton hipsters down the back of the L rack. By this stage I just wanted to…

  • The Great War

    ByMikeRudd

    ..marking Australia’s ‘coming-of-age’, should be seen as a quite brilliant Turkish victory against superior forces that led to the creation of the modern Turkish state led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – the country’s first president. It would be better to say that Australian forces really distinguished themselves on the Western Front under the brilliant General…

  • Quo Vadis

    ByMikeRudd

    ..as my Latin teacher for the last two excruciating years of Latin – and so I found it expedient, if not absolutely necessary to become a conniving plagiarist rather than bear the brunt of Harry’s ire or, God help me, actually do some serious study. It was in my last year of Latin when I…