Author: Pen
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When the Couch-Potato Pill is invented will you take it?
‘That’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone do that,’ said my friend Sharon, standing above me on the turquoise-tiled rim of Dickson swimming pool. ‘Do what?’ I asked, as I completed my length and stood up in the shallow-end water. ‘Yawning while swimming,’ she said.
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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…