.. Paris and Spain, to which end Dick purchased the latest in trendy back packs, which he proudly showed me on the night I visited them recently in Warrandyte. (See Dick’s Toolbox). I said it looked very fine, but one should be careful when wielding such an item in polite society, and told him this…

.. a nice fellow but he spent too much time playing football without a helmet.” Not that being on the wrong side of clever means all that much as it is apparent that most people can be convinced to believe anything no matter how ridiculous. You may be with me in thinking that anybody who…

..simple, but in any case I’m generally pleased with the result. It seems that a lot of second-guessing has been replaced with an instinctive but apparently reliable certainty about what is required and how to get it. I don’t know if it’s a style exactly, but it’s a good starting point. No thought yet as…

..the diary I note down odd words and phrases that catch my attention and one of them was a comment on a popular bit of Newspeak. i.e. ‘forward’ is the new black. This touches on another gripe that probably falls into the realm of yer Grumpy Old Men, but just as the notion of progress…

.. sound of rain relentlessly thundering down on my roof – and filtering down through the loungeroom ceiling into my now inadequate symphony of pots and pans and thudding damply onto the attractive pooh-brown carpet. I realised that I was far too annoyed to go back to sleep, and concluded that the light was only…

..socio-economic status of the students. Private schools send all their problems to State schools where teachers cope with extraordinary generosity of spirit. Most of the time. But this, perhaps not too tangentially, brings to my attention the absurd amounts that CEOs of large corporations are paid, which is both disproportionate and absurd in relation to…

..in place. The fact that the country was a democracy, beholden to the separation of powers, was regarded as an inconvenience to be circumvented by any means. The law and the legislature were routinely ignored by hiding activities behind a wall of secrecy justified by legal opinions that were never revealed to those who asked….

.. footnote as it’s not at the bottom of the page ) there are some interesting parallels with another of my favourite movies ‘Ikuru”, the far more understated yet more touching work, by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. If I have any regular readers they may, hopefully, have realised that I am not a…

..dollars a year to launch ships, entertain foreign dignitaries, tour the colonies and open fetes. The Royals worth as an English tourist attraction is greater than Stonehenge – which has endured a lot longer – or Big Ben – which has the benefit of being somewhat more timely than the House of Windsor. Perhaps there…

.. tastes embrace the elegant and refined, she still prides herself on being able to spot a bargain. Understandably she’s been hassling me for quite a while about the medieval trackie pants and a few weeks ago she spotted some bargain trackies coming up in Aldi. Aldi. Aldi was unknown to me before she and…

But not for me, however, given that the few tools I had possessed unique migratory habits, flying with the Terns and Godwits to Siberia and beyond; this would leave Bunning’s unique selling proposition looming very large and very empty. Which leads me to Christmas and the inevitable “Wadja wunt” (which is etymologically related to “Emma…

..the family when I was a little boy. I think camping’s the present-day manifestation of men’s need to talk to Nature – and perhaps for Nature to talk back. It’s safer in this case to have Nature represent God and I think that most blokes would be comfortable with the communing with Nature metaphor. ‘Going…

..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…

..are carried away by the northerly wind that bends the trees; the sand is now too hot to walk on in bare feet unless one adopts the hot-foot walk of a Namibian lizard; canvas is cracking in the wind and the horizon has upside down mirages of the container ships queuing to pass through the…

.. species into a myriad breeds many of whom would be lucky to survive for more than a week in the wild. I may be wrong but a snotty, gasping little creature like a pug with its appalling sinus problems has no evolutionary niche apart from the second floor of a high rise apartment. A…

..whilst trying not to be disturbed by the repetitious recounting of weekend exploits of the young, old and terminally stupid. Should I so choose I won’t be working again, as just before Christmas I was packaged out from my place of employment of the past 20 years, the result of one of its periodic and…

.. traditional fasteners, but its use has spread into areas where buttons or studs do a perfectly serviceable job, and have done throughout history. Apart from anything else, I dislike the sound of velcro, and I imagine women who have hair removed from their legs and other more personal bits with wax strips like it…

..happened all those years ago maybe a few inchoate memories and feelings. When you become you is somewhere about the beginning of language and the ability to objectify yourself. Who is that little person in the mirror? Why is my brother hitting me? Why are other people bigger than me? Anyway, it is a delight…