Newsletter

  • 2012

    ..the Titanic, you really just want the boat to sink and take Leonardo and Kate down with it – the plot and exposition get in the way of the cataclysm. The critical mind will find there are plenty of moments during the movie to wander and contemplate what the rest of the world might be…

  • The joys of computing

    ..computing. I realised as I poured over specification sheets, internet sites and price lists that I hadn’t bought a computer since 1989 when I commenced a Post Graduate course in Computing at the then Chisholm Institute which was soon subsumed into the cavernous qualification mill of Monash University. I remember more than twenty years ago…

  • The Election

    .. their lack of salesmanship, because after twenty minutes of standing in the bitterly cold wind that was whipping round the schoolyard in a numbed kind of reverie interrupted only by the unwanted blandishments of the blotchy-faced woman in the crocheted poncho selling wax cups of tea and $2.00 raffle tickets (prizes of this year’s…

  • Gardening

    ..painting of mine. The original purity of design has been a trifle compromised by the modifications but there were impracticalities inherent in triangular garden beds. Manoeuvring wheelbarrows around one hundred and twenty degree angled corners being one. During the reconstruction effort I have discovered that red gum is very much heavier than I thought, moving…

  • Greece is the word

    ..having no foreign-speaking nations literally on our borders takes the heat out of having to learn another lingo, but New Zealand has given respect to the indigenous Maori population by making the learning the Maori language compulsory, and while I can see there are problems emulating that gesture in Australia, it does bring up the…

  • Rudd’s army

    ..day for four weeks was one, immediate punishment for yelling out the window at the band that they should play in tune was another. Actually it wasn’t all that bad as it was the so-called ‘university intake’ with, I think, only two people in my platoon who weren’t at university. The army didn’t really want…

  • Can I quote you?

    ..which in its turn used to be known as the Bank of NSW – aah, those were the days!). She had a young son, Jack, who was at his first year at school. All the first years had to be assessed for their swimming prowess, to which end a dozen or so were lined up…

  • Democracy – Oi, Oi, Oi!

    ..however, have a patently mad Abbott and a quite peculiar Bishop. Corruption is relatively minor, flourishing at the local council level (how else does a flood plain become a housing estate after all) but is not the rampant pervasive cancer as in many countries near our borders. Governments change civilly and without rancour perhaps because…

  • Too Many People

    Dick’s Toolbox cont. ..“Brilliance of the Sea” loomed down the channel dragging a tug “The Lourdes” behind as a token optimistic handbrake. The immensity was stunning, people like a myriad coloured dots acned the decks , the sun was momentarily blocked out as if by a partial eclipse. Our fearful eyes followed the boat’s path…

  • Self flagellation

    Mike’s Pith & Wind cont. .. (I think it was on the ABC) about an apparently typical family in North Korea. (Let’s get over the ‘what is typical’ debate before we go any further). Of course, by Western standards they weren’t that well off in terms of consumer goods that may or may not qualify…

  • Maturity

    .. is as lovable as I obviously am. I think I mentioned that I heard a program on RN on the way home from a gig at The Lomond recently by a young-ish, deaf-ish BBC chap who’d ventured into the world of hearing aids and was trying to demystify the process for the large-ish section…

  • Caravanning

    ..Centre and Right’s backbone of Australia. About two years ago as I waxed loquacious about caravan parks as one model for solving the problem of too many people occupying too much space at too greater cost. If you drive around Australia’s major cities you see good arable land being swallowed up by McMansions for workers…

  • Fashion

    ..adventure couture-wise, mostly in an attempt to be the opposite of Spectrum in every respect, but also reflecting what was going on in the pop scene at the time with the advent of glam rock – you could say that visually at least we weren’t all that different to Gary Glitter and Marc Bolan, both…

  • Crazy Heart

    .. that Bad doesn’t get the girl in the end, but he does get his song-writing groove back . And about the songs, I was almost surprised that I liked them quite a lot. Stylistically they were veering towards country-rock for the most part, but they were consistently better than average with smart, self-deprecating lyrics….