Birthday

Today was my 63rd birthday and I’m happy to say I still get Happy 21st Birthday cards from my eldest daughter. She understands me so well!
I had a lovely day, did some retail therapy with my youngest daughter and she cooked and her partner Mani the Chef cooked a delicious dinner and Kat made a [...]

Our Mini-Flood

Recent heavy rains, which caused devastating floods along the Queensland and NSW coasts, barely touched us on our granite mountain. It did rain heavily for almost a week, but most of it just ran away from us – except the creek.

Ths was the sight that greeted residents heading for the centre of town after the [...]

It Wasn’t Easy, Being Green

When my kids were young, Sesame Street was the most politically correct children’s programme on TV – or so we thought. Kermit sang the virtues of learning to love yourself, the whole show radiated tolerance and universal understanding like a giant lighthouse, and kids started school already knowing how to read, count and live with [...]

The Story of a Rose

About two years ago, I bought my daughter Kathy a Betty Boop Rose for her birthday. As she adored roses and loves Betty Boop, it was the perfect present.
We planted it in the back garden of the house we lived in then, and waited hopefully for her to bloom. Alas, she did not. She didn’t [...]

Why the world does not revolve around baby boomers

Young people keep telling us that baby boomers are a selfish lot who always want their own way and think the world revolves around them. What rot! The world is not designed around baby boomers at all.
If it were, mobile phones would have 27 inch TV screens and typewriter keyboards so we could see [...]

Words of wisdom from Mrs Beeton

I love reading old household management books and my favourite is Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. I had to share this lovely recipe for restoring whiteness to scorched linen.
INGREDIENTS.–1/2 pint of vinegar, 2 oz. of fuller’s-earth, 1 oz.
of dried fowls’ dung, 1/2 oz. of soap, the juice of 2 large onions.
Boil all these ingredients [...]

A Motorway on the Hill of Tara?

It can’t be true – it seems almost unbelieveable that such vandalism could take place. But the Hill of Tara, the seat of Ancient Kings in Eire, is under threat from a motorway which will be built right across the top of this ancient site.
You don’t have to be Irish to be outraged. Tara may [...]

Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are

That song by Meatloaf often haunts me these days. My mother is 80, and it is obvious that now it is the memories of long ago that seem closer than they are, than the most recent. She remembers her childhood and youth very clearly, but has to be constantly reminded of things that happened just [...]

After a long hot summer..

It’s sobering to read the latest news on global warming. I subscribe to the National Geographic newsletter and have been avidly following the discovery of a dinosaur that makes the T-Rex look like a pussy cat as well as the `Judas Scrolls’ but it is the articles on global warming that claim most of my [...]

Blackberry Memories

Today I bought a punnet of blackberries for $3 – therewas barely a couple of handfuls, but at the prices growers have been charging recently, they were a bargain.
In terms of memories, they were priceless.
One look at the shining fruit, like clusters of tinyblack pearls, and I was back in England, a child again, setting [...]