Year: 2017
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Changing lives – making lists and having fun
Why write? ‘It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.’ I’ve quoted Vita Sackville West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vita_Sackville-West before but this bears repeating. Writing or any activity that produces something will prevent that feeling of empty past days. But it should also be remembered that Vita Sackville West probably had servants.…
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Robin Dalton’s exhilarating books – great Christmas presents
High dramatic comedy Death was ‘always present, cosily accepted’ in Robin Dalton’s 1930s childhood in Kings Cross, Sydney. As a single child in a house full of eccentrics, the fairy tales she was told were the amusing accounts of how her relatives met their ends. Her 85-year-old great-aunt Julia was knocked over by a bus.…
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Yellow horses: a story of thwarted ambitions and coming full circle
Silver needles in my knees I’ve been working on a book about an abstract artist and having some minor setbacks. First, a previous writing job kept spilling over into the time I wanted to be researching the new, much bigger project. (And this keeps happening. They come back wanting more and I do more because…
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Flirting with the world – lunch with Robert Dessaix
Getting the hang of leisure Robert Dessaix seems like one of the last people in Australia to be qualified to write a book about leisure. He has written many books, he taught Russian at two universities, and he has been a radio presenter for long-running programs. A glance at his achievements gives the impression of…
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Tearing sentences to pieces
Your worst fears According to Tim Ferriss, ‘the worst fears of contemporary men and women are getting fat and getting too many emails.’ Well, no wonder we’re all having anxiety attacks! The Slow Carb diet in Ferriss’ book The Four-Hour Body should solve the first problem and spending regular time unsubscribing from unnecessary emails will…
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Lamplight on the darkened path
In Sickness, in Health and in Jail by Mel Jacobs ‘The world breaks everyone, and afterwards some are stronger in the broken places.’ Hemingway said that, and Mel Jacobs quotes him in the front of her poignant memoir, In Sickness, in Health and in Jail (Allen & Unwin, 2016). The author describes the shock, social…
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Cycling and writing
A people-centred society Riding a bicycle regularly has measurable benefits for your body and immeasurable ones for your brain and creativity. In my last blog I hinted at these benefits and in this one I have the space to expand on some of the glorious results of swapping four wheels for two, and I don’t…
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How to be a gazelle – on health, fitness and match-making two writers
The human guinea pig It was already hot at 8.30 on a Saturday morning. My nightie was on the floor and the sheet kicked aside when I glanced over at my reflection in the large mirrored built-in wardrobe doors. I groaned and said, ‘Oh, God – I’ve put on weight. I’m a beached whale!’ And…
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Puns in life and puns in dreams
Fraught father/son relationships Last post was about the memoir I Am Brian Wilson. There’s an interesting aside in it that involves a pun. I’m not a big fan of puns (notwithstanding the visual one on this site – a sharp pen) but they can be interesting, specially when they involve a Freudian slip. Brian’s father,…
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A struggle with mental illness – I Am Brian Wilson: A memoir
Pet Sounds When I was fourteen my older brother gave me the new Beachboys’ Pet Sounds album for Christmas. It was and remains my favourite. I’d never heard anything like those sophisticated, layered compositions and sublime harmonies – and neither had anyone else. No one had ever put together sounds like that before. It had…