It’s hard to pick out the happiest of happy things but this is my list of 2025 highlights (excluding books – more on those later – and holidays, and I had some amazing ones this year, notably Hobart, Cambodia, New Zealand, and my sinkholes tour). Continue reading
Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. Continue reading
Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. Continue reading
01. Going out for a sandwich is one of my favourite things – delicious fillings that I know I wouldn’t make at home (or I would, but then I’d be eating the same sandwich every day for a fortnight), and equally delicious breads (again, I just want two slices, not a whole loaf). I tend to go to the same places but for 2025 there is a new Sandwich Schedule – trying a new place, once a month, with a friend who understands good sandwiches.
First up, Warkop in Richmond. The advantage of going with a friend is sharing – we split the the Beef Brisket (toasted rye bread, with pickles and rendang sauce) and the Fried Chicken (which included shredded kohlrabi, pickles and tangy bazzinga sauce. I don’t know what’s in bazzinga sauce but it was next level delicious). Continue reading
01. The most glorious concert of Puccini’s greatest hits. I loved every single moment (but especially the Gianni Schicchi, Tosca, and Butterfly bits). (image) Continue reading
Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. Continue reading
Okay, unless you’re a hardcore ABBA fan, you can give Carl Magnus Palm’s detailed and extremely thorough biography, Bright Lights Dark Shadows: The Real Story of ABBA – a miss. I am a hardcore fan, so I persisted with all 554 pages.
My love affair with ABBA began at age six. My birthday was all planned when, two days before the party, I got the mumps. Socially devastating when you’re in prep! My dad repaired the disaster by buying me ABBA’s Arrival album and a bottle of Lucozade (“Because that’s what the Queen drinks when she’s sick.”). No party, but my new school friends came over frequently to dance to Arrival. Continue reading
Two novellas on Sunday, one nonfiction and one fiction – The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson (118pp) and The Standing Chandelier by Lionel Shriver (129pp).
I chose the title of this post based on the fact that both novellas deal with ‘unavoidable’ situations. In terms of Magnusson’s guide to ‘döstädning‘, also known as ‘death cleaning’, the unavoidable is death itself. It will find us all at some stage. In Shriver’s novella, the unavoidable is subtle – one of the key characters is forced to make a significant decision and regardless of what they choose, there is fallout (as I often say to my clients – “You don’t want any of this but of all of the choices available to you, which is the most tolerable?”). Continue reading
01. The NGV Triennial exhibition was absolutely outstanding. Highlights: Salon et Lumière; the Fallen Fruit wallpaper; Dhambit Munuŋgurr’s bark paintings and larrakitj in shades of blue; the story behind Pirjo Haikola’s biopolymers and urchin-corals; and my very favourite, Cecilie Bendixen’s delicate clouds (above). Continue reading
TV Series, because: Continue reading