Still Life With Cat

It always bemuses me a bit when people start talking about their needs , as though the mere act of declaring them were some kind of claim to...

It's been a difficult couple of weeks and it's about to get worse; in addition to the usual four novels a week I have a fifth novel,...

Currently featured in the 'Say What?' spot at the Doonesbury site (see links in sidebar) on Slate: "Let's hope that the key...

Last night Roger Woodward played the first of two Adelaide concerts organised by Recitals Australia. Tomorrow night is Shostakovich; last ni...

From today's edition of Crikey : Next week Crikey launches a new music blog from on-line legend Tim Dunlop. Music reviews, gig reviews a...

It's a month since the World Health Organisation declared that the swine flu situation had reached Stage Five, the point at which the F...

After almost 20 years of fearing it, late last year it finally ha ened: I ti ed a glass of wine straight into the com uter keyboard. Had t...

Tonight in Week 2 of my WEA class, I did something I've never done before in my life: I used a power drill. Unfortunately I've been ...

I started this post two days ago and have been dithering about putting it up ever since, but I've counted no fewer than five articles an...

In today's Doonesbury (see sidebar) strip 'Say What?' feature, in a quotation from this article , we hear from one Bristol Palin...

It's been nearly eleven and a half years since I bought and moved into my little house, a ten-minute drive from this beach. Some days it...

Mere days after the volcanic explosion of a giant and pulsating boil on the muscular Aussie arse (otherwise Sarah Ferguson's 'Code o...

I love working at home. I do. Anyone still toiling in academe will see that lovely phrase 'working at home' and feel their heart rat...

Ten years ago today I was in the little Austrian city of Klagenfurt, capital of the southern province of Carinthia, teaching a four-week sum...

He thought a little and then said: 　　`I have found the Zoological Gardens of service to many of my patients. I should prescribe for Mr Ponti...

This story was on the news last night. They had to evacuate and close the Adelaide Zoo. Hundreds of Mothers' Day outings were derailed....

Neil Cross's novel Burial (which is neither Australian nor cinema, but bear with me) made me feel sick for the same reasons some of the...

For a raft of reasons, some of them going back many years, I have been following the saga of (ex-) editor Sally Warhaft's precipitate de...

The part of my job that I routinely most enjoy is the piling-up and eventual ripping-open of bags of new books for review. Today, one of the...