Kilts & Porridge ‘While the men are decked out in Braveheart black tie, with traditional sporrans, fly plaids and kilts designed by Siobhan Mackenzie, the women are given nightclub-ready black heels, skirts that can be hemmed to your personal highlands and sporran-shaped purses.’ … [Read more…]
Autumn It’s been a particularly lovely autumn this year but now the days are getting shorter. Winter is coming this week. When I lived in Melbourne I enjoyed taking the city bound tram and heading off very early to work on golden autumn mornings. There weren’t many passengers on the first leg of … [Read more…]
The Year of the Fire Horse 2026 ‘The fire is kind of a symbol for energy, rushfulness, and the symbol for horse will be meaning energy, vitality, speed and passion’. Fan Shengyu – ANU School of Culture, History and Language. If your 2026 New Year’s Eve wasn’t great in January, … [Read more…]
Love in the Age of Distraction ‘Love activates the same brain areas as cocaine … being intensely in romantic love takes so much attention, it can be hard to keep your life going, let alone have other relationships.’ Professor Arthur Aron Many folk secretly hope that hiding in the wings is their … [Read more…]
Summertime ‘Summertime, and the livin’ is easy Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high Oh, your daddy’s rich and your ma is good-lookin’ So hush little baby, don’t you cry …’ George Gershwin’s lyrics to Summertime On the island chorusing cicadas are marking the arrival of summer weather in my … [Read more…]
Just breathe deeply … Some time ago, when I was living and working near Tokyo, I got to know a Japanese bullet train driver. Roshi was a witty joker, a rabid opera lover and a layback kind of guy. He drove trains on the Tōhoku Shinkansen line. Roshi’s job carried a lot of … [Read more…]
Halloween While nobody was paying attention, Halloween surreptitiously crept over most of October and Christmas decided to manifest early. But Halloween wasn’t always orange pumpkins, plastic skeletons and job lots of candy. At this time of year Christmas trimmings and Halloween decorations are fighting for shelf space in mega stores. Life-size effigies of witches … [Read more…]
Uber Luxury Goods Earlier this year Amy Odell, a fashion and culture journalist, informed a US journalist she’d sold fifty of her super-expensive handbags, ‘just as a result of being sickened by myself.’ The interesting question is – just how many uber luxury handbags does Odell have left? Having sold off fifty handbags, has she … [Read more…]
The Sphinx And at yet another dinner she produced a revolver and placed it beside her. A startled guest enquired: ‘Duchess, what are you going to do with that?’ To which she replied: ‘Oh I don’t know, I might just shoot Marlborough!’ (excerpt from biography The Sphinx … [Read more…]
Winter in Melbourne St Kilda road can be a tad gloomy just before sunrise but the trip improves when the tram trundles past the National Gallery. The bare trees are festive with coloured lights and city buildings are silhouetted against a sky that’s slowly lightening. The tram is past its prime and the … [Read more…]
The Rise & Rise of Chatbots ‘… users are now having genuine problems parsing reality. Peruse AI chat forums and you’ll see women asking one another if they should tell their husband that they’re having an affair with their chatbot.’ Tim Elliott, AGE newspaper article In Bot we trust One of my … [Read more…]
Champagne Wishes & Caviar Dreams Robin Leach – host of the 80’s television series, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous – provided humorous descriptions of yachts, mansions and private jets on his show. He signed off wishing his viewers, champagne wishes and caviar dreams. When I was a child, my mother used to … [Read more…]
The Perils of Romance Some time ago I went to hear Alain de Botton – philosopher and author speaking about modern relationships and love in Melbourne’s gloomy town hall. I’m not sure our drafty town hall is conducive to love. The couple in front of us were engaging in covert hostilities. De Botton is … [Read more…]
The Queen of Crime ‘Poetry is not the most important thing in life … I’d much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.’ Welsh poet Dylan Thomas author of Under Milk Wood (1954). It was described by Thomas as ‘prose with blood pressure’. Agatha Christie was a prolific … [Read more…]
Spring is sprung Spring is sprung, the grass is riz I wonder where the birdies is. They say the birdies on the wing, but that’s absurd. I always thought the wing was on the bird. attributed to Anonymous/Ogden Nash/ obscure 19th Century poets. This year Spring on the island has been preceded … [Read more…]
My old neighbourhood It’s always great sneaking back to my old neighbourhood. Fitzroy has become increasingly gentrified – old houses have been tizzied up and sold for exceedingly high prices. Subsequently most of the artists, writers, junkies, musicians, booze hounds, poets and reprobates I once knew have moved on. Some of them moved to … [Read more…]
All the world’s a stage ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.’ Will Shakespeare ‘Macbeth’ A connection exists between … [Read more…]
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend ‘This period showed us that it is not clear whether we will live tomorrow or not, so if you have a chance and some money saved, then spend it according to your wishes, hence the luxury boom.’ Alex Alamsyah Head of Knight Frank (Australia) retail … [Read more…]
There Goes the Neighbourhood A small furtive movement attracted my eye. I dropped the hose and reared backwards. It looked like a coiled snake. From a safe distance I gaped at the reptile. Two well-nourished lizards eyeballed me. They were luxuriating in my garden bed and had no fear of me. Indeed, they were … [Read more…]
ASTEROID CITY There’s comedy and tragedy in real life. And there’s a need to not play comedy overtly in comedy, unless you’re doing something that’s very superficially funny … but the key is to be well in on that joke and play it very straight … That’s what kills, right?” Adrien Brody who plays … [Read more…]
Do Ghosts Exist? I was very much of a fan of the idea that ghosts were real because that suggested there was hope … I think there is a very good reason we haven’t put ghosts on the same pile of redundant superstitions as unicorns and elves … They are the buffer … [Read more…]
Caught in the Act The great thing about Courtney Act is that she’s not a “dumb blonde”, even if she chooses to act like it sometimes. Beneath Courtney’s wig, Jenek’s brain is working, taking an almost scholarly approach to issues of gender, sexuality, and society that would make him the talk of Britain and … [Read more…]
The Cake and I Once upon a time – before the outsourcing of dogs and children’s parties – mothers and caregivers made birthday cakes themselves. But sometimes a shop bought ice-cream cake was required. Usually for girls this involved a legless doll about the size of a Barbie doll, embedded in a sturdy … [Read more…]
The Perils of Pickup Trucks Somewhere tucked away in my family tree is a property developer. I’ll call him Geoff. He appeared for a few months and then disappeared. However for many years he continued to visit my mother, bearing huge boxes of chocolates and seasonal fresh flowers. Geoff invited me to lunch … [Read more…]
Hold Your Fire Seek the company of people who, when left alone in a room with a tea cosy, will always try it on. Billy Connolly – actor, comedian & writer. We live in an era where it is astonishingly easy for pretty much anyone to be ‘cancelled’. Meantime many … [Read more…]