Still Life With Cat

The item on top of the work pile at the moment is a now very battered advance proof copy of a novel called The Little Shadows by the C...

The inimitable Alexander McCall Smith is as we speak in the South Australian outback mining town of Coober Pedy. At this very moment -- an...

Okay, so a lot in life is currently awry if not completely cactus, but every time I go out into the back yard, the smell of the jasmine all ...

The Good: NewSouth Books who have just sent me my advance author copies of Adelaide , which were waiting for me tonight when I got home...

Edit edit type type think think think. Except when I go out with friends, I'm living on rabbit food and microscopic servings of lean p...

I hate crying. Not only am I one of those people unable to cry prettily (red-eyed, blotchy etc) but it doesn't even help, as it is popul...

Eighteen years ago, when my parents were mere spring chickens of 65, the most recent in a long line of family moggies padded off to the big ...

Since last Thursday I've seen Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 , gone to hear my friends D and M sing in the Mozart Requiem a...

You know you're truly, madly, deeply mired in domesticity when in spite of the fact that you have to meet a weekly deadline, grade and w...

Finished this week's copy with time to spare; lots of good ideas for the statue-of-Colonel-Light chapter of the Adelaide book that I...

I've been trying intermittently to become an official organ donor for nigh on twenty years. Anyone who watched the 7.30 Report last nig...

Yes, it's Agony Corner. I haven't even been asked a question, I just feel like dispensing some good advice. I don't know what ...

(Photo: AAP via the ABC website )

One of Joni MItchell's relatively early songs begins like this: Papa's faith is people Mama she believes in cleaning Papa's f...

On which of course I am at home, preparing for today's chairing gig, a session with Michelle de Kretser late this afternoon which I am e...

TO DO (in order of importance) Pull oneself together Accept the fact that it's going to be 41 degrees today and suck it up; everybody...

1 horrible old neck injury (high-speed highway rollover, 1986: C4 and C5) x too much housework and gardening (yesterday) x general stress (o...

As I pulled up round the corner from the late-night supermarket, they were standing across the road in a little car park. Both in their twen...

So when I got home this afternoon from fifteen rounds with a sibling -- the ferocious upfront one, all teeth and claws all the time, and no ...

Random blog posts I would write if only [insert excuse here] One about the common motivation behind nearly all of the negative reactions I...