Issue 48

Anthems are sung – New Zealand gets three verses one in Maori and two in English to Australia’s single chorus. Hymns are sung with embarrassed and tremulous Australian accents. The service, my first for about 60 years, is lead without apparent irony by a Vietnamese minister; there is a moving address in a Scottish accent,…

..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…

..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…

..column over the years and regular readers will know it’s a love/hate thing anyway. Regulars will also know that the year drawing to a close always bothers me as my naturally sunny disposition is occluded by the clouds of general dissatisfaction with the state of Christmases past, present and future. (And I’m not a fucking…

Anyway, the moment I shed a tear in Ricki and the Flash happened to be a line from Rick Springfield’s character (Greg) when he was putting the word on Meryl Streep’s character, (Ricki aka Linda) which, coincidentally is one of the lines featured in the trailer (that I fortunately didn’t see beforehand) so it must…