AN EARLY STAMP OF STUPIDITY At the age of seven I decided to become a stamp collector. In a generous act of encouragement I was given a stamp album assembled over many years by an older cousin. I cut out the largest and most exotic of his
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LAWS OF LINGUISTICS In Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, chief protagonist Jude Fawley naively assumes that learning a foreign language is like cracking a code; that mastering two or three words will miraculously provide the key to understanding the entire vocabulary. Hardy refers to this as Grimm’s
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DAYDREAMS I was raised on a small dairy farm near Ulverstone, on the north west coast of Tasmania. Many would consider this an idyllic childhood, and in retrospect it was. However, owing to a steady diet of American comic books I eventually longed to be anywhere else
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You know what? Lately my editing hasn’t been going so well, because I missed a few errors in one of my employer Pauline Conolly’s articles. In my defense, she does make a lot of typos. The pay isn’t much good either. Hardly enough to keep a person
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Hello, well bottoms are very funny, aren’t they? Q. WHAT HAS A BOTTOM AT THE TOP? A. MY LEGS! That’s a joke I made up by myself. We have all been talking about our bums lately haven’t we, what with the mysterious shortage of loo paper.
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When I was very small I went to the Sydney Olympics and since then I have been a sportsman extraordinaire! Mind you, I do face certain physical ‘challenges’. I find it helps if I limber up with a bit of yoga before breakfast. After that I eat
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A DECIDEDLY FISHY STORY! Back in the 1980s my partner Rob and I owned a little half cabin cruiser called Sixpence. I loved catching blue swimmer crabs in Mosman Bay. We also used to fish for snapper off Sydney Heads, although heavy swells often forced us to
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THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE TASMANIAN ADVOCATE. THE GHOST OF ULVERSTONE HIGH Some years ago I drove past my old high school and realized I had subconsciously avoided writing a single word about my years there. It’s not that I was particularly unhappy at Ulverstone
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HOW THE DRAMA BEGAN Well one day I was sitting in a planter pot talking to Pauline’s little goose when we heard a funny noise. Goose peered down at something, so I did too. Whoops, nearly over-balanced and ended up on my head! And do you
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Hello, Editor Des here! Well Pauline was going to do some research at the State Library in Sydney so I went along too. I thought I might start trying to find my ancestors. Just hope I don’t turn out to be related to Paddington or Pooh…especially Paddington.
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