Q: You talk about your new garden and I wonder if you’ve got any of your worm compost to spread on it? To explain, this time last year we’d just purchased a worm farm. Unfortunately, not long after I wrote that post the worms went back up to Mr. Worm Creator In The Sky. I…
Fiona Capp’s take on writing and writer’s festivals: “I love writing because it’s a solitary activity and because I don’t have to be there when other people read my books. I love surfing for similar reasons. You can be sitting out in the water with a bunch of other surfers, everyone quietly waiting for a…
1) Being kissed on the back of the neck while piggybacking my daughter. 2) Taking the first sip of a glass of champagne. 3) Skimming the foam off the top of a cappuccino and licking it from the spoon. 4) Sopping up the pan juices from a cooked roast with bread. 5) Facepaint: Celebrate the minutiae…
Together we lie on the bed under the blast of airconditioning. It is 2.30pm. Normally a nothing time, we’re between meals, between television programs, now it his once-upon-a-napping-time. We lie there, tired from a lack of sleep the previous night. The evenings stick to our sleep like a demon’s breath – tormenting, and vile. We…
Every year I pick a charity and pledge to donate to it a percentage of the profits I earn on this blog (here is the original explanation why). This year, I could not choose between two that are very close to my heart. Without further ado, here they are: Back in October, my father was diagnosed…
Keira looking at herself as a baby About to blow out the candles © Christopher Bird Reproduced here with permission
It is entirely in nature with the happenstance and at times distracted nature of this blog that sometimes I finish a year, look back and think, “Wow. I don’t think I actually said anything of worth or depth. I record then move along.” Then when I do sit down and make myself write something that…
Happy Australia Day, Aussies. I hope you’re all watching sport, or BBQing, or drinking, or all of the above! What am I doing? I will be baking… ****** Let me, if I may, take you on a flashback… It was almost the mid-1990s. Swedish pop was again dominating our airwaves. We warbled ‘I saw the…
“A few years ago, scientists began to calculate just how much energy the Sahara holds. They were astounded at the answer. In theory, a 35,000-sq.-mi. (90,600 sq km) chunk of the Sahara — smaller than Portugal and a little over 1% of its total area — could yield the same amount of electricity as all…
