Life
Spectator Competition: Quirk related
In Comp. 3402 you were invited to submit a poem or passage about an unusual predilection. The quirks ranged from…
No, I’m not a British spy
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The youngest of our six children, Giuseppe, nine, received the Eucharist for the first time on Sunday.…
Hell is a speed awareness course
The builder boyfriend sat nervously in front of my laptop as I logged him in to do his speed awareness…
The racing victory I’ve enjoyed the most
Allegedly the most effective rain dance in the world is that performed by Native American Hopi Indians. The biennial 16-day…
Aussie life
They call America the Land of the Free; it’s right there in the New York Times small print. But the…
Language
Speccie reader Alan writes to say he was having a conversation about Liberal party factions, and (strangely enough!) two expressions…
Dear Mary: How do you leave a party early?
Q. How can you leave a party early – e.g. at midnight rather than 4 a.m. – without everyone thinking…
A challenge for the electric car sceptics
I once heard of a couple who were teachers in their mid-fifties. Having pooled the proceeds from selling both their…
My sitcom-worthy walking holiday
I’ve just returned from a walking holiday in Northumberland with Caroline and my mother-in-law. I say ‘walking’ but that makes…
Spinoza, Epicurus and the question of ‘epikoros’
With surprise, I heard from a Jewish friend that a Hebrew term for a heretic is epikoros, apparently derived from…
The loveliness of Ligurian wine
We were talking about Italy: where and when to sojourn. I confessed to so many gaps. It is years since…
It’s time to reclaim tapioca pudding
‘Nothing will surely ever taste so hateful as nursery tapioca,’ wrote Elizabeth David. She’s not alone in her hatred of…
Must my fish and chips come with a side of geopolitics?
‘Our boys went to Lebanon and trained Hezbollah!’ shouted the drunk Irish lad in the fish and chip shop as…
The naked truth about life modelling
When I left university, I prepared for a short spell of poverty while I sent off amusing and opinionated articles…
Aussie life
In the 1980s there was a popular watering hole on Sydney’s Lower North Shore called The Plum. Its popularity with…
