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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Hello, Happy Easter from me, Editor Des. Here is the story of my lost Easter eggs. Well I’d been looking forward to the Easter Bunny visiting for weeks, but on Saturday everything started to go wrong. See, we were in Sydney visiting my Granny Jean when
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When I was very young my guardian Pauline Conolly took me to the Sydney Olympics. That’s me on the right in the green and gold. So much classier wearing the bloomin’ flag! 🤑 Since then I have had a go at many different sports. Mind you, I
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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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