Lifestyle

I stumbled upon The Bad Baby Names Blog today, and it is quite hilarious. Sarcastic to the extreme, and with a fair bit of research, methinks. Check it out on http://turabiannights.blogspot.com/. These are a few of my favourite bad baby names: McKendrianna Soucily Luane Mercury Sappho Meadow Raegun Baieleigh McKenzie Dycanne Discovery Echo Lily Fern […]

Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning for the title line, which I creatively adapted from one of her poems. We have survived another frantic flower-buying, champagne-popping, pink-penguin-attack called Valentine’s Day. The retail industry, every year, lugs huge bags of money to the bank while gleefully chuckling at the foolish consumer who buys into the hype. In […]

When I moved into my flat in Melville a few months ago, the wall of the school situated across the road was a depressing, sludgy grey expanse of concrete with a fence on top of it, punctuated by the occasional messy tag of some egotistical scribbler. Seeing it first thing in the morning was an […]

I have it! Uh huh. After a whole month of being transport-less (after the debacle of my scooter being stolen and then dropped off the back of a truck), I am now, once again, a scooter girl! Hallelujah! These are a few of my favourite things about being mobile, and, in particular, mobile on two […]

Henry Rollins impressed me so much more than I ever thought he would, and my expectations were pretty damn high. I knew he was clever. I knew he had interesting stories to tell. (Who wouldn’t, knowing the people he knows and having been where he has?). I knew he was funny. What I didn’t expect […]

Listening to the UK’s Classic FM today, a dramatic and thundering rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto by the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Herbert von Karajan and pianist Yevgeny Kissin gave me goose bumps. It also reminded me of a recent article on Von Karajan in the newspaper. Celebrations of Von Karajan’s 100th birth-year […]

… what with all the cheesy red and pink decorations, fluffy animals, shiny hearts and over-priced roses. I’m in the “It’s too commercial for a real emotion” camp. That said, I can find a few redeeming factors about the day of love … So (gulp) here are a few of my favourite things about Valentine’s […]

A day in which love is expressed is a day well-lived. Last Valentine’s Day, I sent these words by WH Auden to my Irish lover: “I’ll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.” For those of you that missed […]

With the legions of people who complain about our country but never actually do anything to make it better, it’s always a welcome relief to discover somebody who has stopped complaining and started acting. It’s one of my favourite things, in fact — pro-active people making a tangible difference to others. I’ve just been introduced […]

One of the funniest series of books you’ll ever read is John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey. Each one tells a different story about Horace Rumpole, a criminal barrister who spends his days in the criminal courts of England trying to keep his rogues out of jail. My son Joshua and I love reading them […]