Category: health
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Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken (Cornerstone Press, 2023)
Definitions of Tragedy When I mentioned in my last blog that everyone inevitably suffers tragedy, that’s not quite correct – some people do escape it – because tragedy refers to untimely death. The death of parents, even though it might feel tragic to their children, is not a tragedy (unless those children were really young)…
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Jules Clancy’s new e-book, Love Your Waistline and Your Food
Jules Clancy (pictured) was living in Cooma when I first discovered her blog, https://thestonesoup.com and I was working at the National Rural Health Alliance. Jules was a good example of an enterprising rural woman and I shared much of her nutritional and culinary advice as well as her blogs and books with my readers. She…
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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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Titans and sex goddesses: on Tim Ferriss and Helen Gurley Brown
What do you have for breakfast? This is one of the questions that Tim Ferriss asks those he interviews in his Tools of Titans: the tactics, routines and habits of billionaires, icons, and world-class performers (Vermilion, 2016). Protein shakes are popular with many of these titans. Tim Ferriss (See www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog ) is the best-selling American…
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Writing Ergonomics: Tips for a Healthy, Happy Writer
Don’t do what I do; do what I say… It wasn’t as if I could plead ignorance. I’d done the Alexander Technique course on how to sit properly and how to iron out the kinks in my spine every day. I’d been told about the importance of taking a break every thirty minutes. I also knew about…
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Psychic space and an unusual recipe for mitigating a cold
When I was chosen to be a blogger in residence at the ACT Writers Centre I planned to supplement those once a month blogs with more frequent postings on this personal blog. But I’m going to have surgery soon (nothing serious) and I’ve been psyching myself up for that and doing all the things I…
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Eating real food: a quick comparison of cookbooks
‘Gosh it’s easy to write a cookbook. Well, it’s easy if your primary role is “quality control”, and all the actual work is done by seasoned professionals and my slave-driven wife,’ writes David Gillespie in the Acknowledgements of his The Sweet Poison Quit Plan Cookbook (Melbourne, Viking, 2013, p. 199). He states that he ‘did…
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Cheerfulness is an achievement: favourite books of 2015
The Guardian Weekly ‘Books of the Year’ (18-31 December this year) is where writers and critics present their favourite reads of the past year and it is a reliable guide to some great reading. You can also hear authors speak about their work on theguardian.com/books/series/books Popular choices of ‘Books of the Year’ were Ali Smith’s…
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Lost in the corridors of time
I’m back. Because finally I sent in my draft of Chapter 2 of the Churchill Trust book. I’d been working on it for ages, getting up at 5.00 am and writing before work and it was a hard one plus had been very busy at my other job, my real job, and the day I…