Rainy day notes
As I write rain is absolutely bucketing down in the form of what is commonly known in the UK as…
Teaching notes
TEACHER’S VOW TO TURN KIDS OFF LIBS: so read the lesser front-page headline of the Australian on November 21. From…
Remembrance notes
Exactly a year ago I was on my way home starting the final stage of recovery from prolonged surgery. Indeed…
Learning notes
A week or so ago my wife thought she might be losing her mind when she heard the late Freddie…
Australian notes
In the hour and a half it took me to drive to Sydney on August 23, I listened to what…
Brutopian notes
A few weeks ago I had the privilege to be present at the launch of Kevin Donnelly’s vitally necessary new…
Parklife
During more or less the whole 20 years that my wife and I have lived in the Blue Mountains we…
Home & away notes
Over the space of a decade or so, a number of young Australians managed to bring themselves forcefully to international…
Cautionary notes
It strikes me sometimes as a fortuitous coincidence that the word communism shares its start with the word compulsion because…
High horse notes
For me, at least, one of the less edifying sights of recent times was watching Australia’s Prime Minister and his…
Neo-Marxist notes
I can best explain my temporary absence from these pages by saying that I agreed to write a ‘short’ book…
Arch-conservative notes
A devoutly Catholic Polish couple I know who came to Australia thirty years ago to escape the extreme unpleasantness of…
Rhetorical notes
Some decades ago in Britain a better than average advertising copywriter came up with the following rather clever slogan: ‘Tern:…
SSM notes
How would you react if you saw a somewhat naïve and impressionable friend about to step off the edge of…
Identarian notes
It is hard if not impossible to express my sympathy for Neil Brown adequately having taken full note of his…
Arts notes
I don’t know how many were present a week ago at The Speccie prolonged lunch but do know that I…
Arts notes
I intend nothing short of a compliment by saying Australia is – or was – a land built on physicality…
Batty notes
When I was a small boy growing up in England, the expression ‘ to have bats in the belfry’ was…
Stasi notes
As the years race by it is tempting to hunt for any advantage one can possibly associate with age. Yet…
Australian notes
On my first visit to Darwin twenty odd years ago to cover the annual Aboriginal art awards a number of…
Post-modern notes
For those of us who exist long enough it is all too easy to live on somehow through decades of…
Life and death notes
Few sensible people who have ever looked at a map would dispute that we are a bit physically isolated down…
Art notes
‘Come and take a look at this – you’re not going to believe it’ my wife called out recently from…
PC notes
On May 3 Tony Abbott urged his audience at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in Perth to place…
Art notes
Prompted by Neil Brown’s perceptive analysis of the role of arts administrator (‘Brown Study’, 22/4) as among the more useless…
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