Three pictures of a Covid year
As 2021 drew to an end, the quest for the Speccie Christmas Special front cover began. How best to sum…
Australian notes
A great reset of one’s own When the last long New South Wales lockdown was imposed, I was probably exhausted.…
Christmas diary
Christmas staff parties. Who goes with Christmassy joy, not apprehension or a need to ‘show your face’? I’m just back…
Sigrid Thornton
It was the thought of Stephen Sondheim’s death that made us watch Imelda Staunton in Gypsy. It’s the second musical…
Aussie Life
One of the reasons I still buy newspapers is that what no longer seems to be true of vocabulary and…
Aussie Language
This appears to be a case of ‘What were they thinking?’ The good folk at the Macquarie Dictionary have announced…
Real life
Someone else with my name is wreaking havoc with my attempts to control the Twitter account I don’t want. Obviously,…
Bridge
Bridge is not too enticing if your parents had card evenings when you were a child, which often ended in…
History is less clear as you are living through it
I was recently reading the works of the 17th-century antiquary John Aubrey, who at one point mentions a ghost craze…
Mum, Dad and the migrant question
A friend, a Cambridge professor, passing my old college last week, was startled to encounter a young lady standing outside…
Moomin marvellous
Moomins do not like winter. In one of Tove Jansson’s stories, Moomin’s Winter Follies, young Moomintroll bumps his head when…
1963 and all that
For people who like a good upper-class scandal (or ‘people’, as they’re also known), 1963 was definitely a vintage year.…
Girls, girls, girls
Lolita, the Lady Chatterley trial, the pill, Christine Keeler, ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, love-ins, Oh! Calcutta!, the Oz trial…
