Life
My vote winner? Banning ‘fun’ runs
One of us must once have told a political pollster: ‘I really have no idea at all who I’m going…
Aussie life
From a nation that gave us riot police, rude waiters, baguettes and non-negotiable submarine contracts we have a new word,…
Language
The expression ‘non-racist’ is still missing from most of the world’s major dictionaries (Oxford, Merriam-Webster, Collins, Macquarie) but perhaps this…
Who decides which politicians are liars?
This week the Welsh parliament has been debating a law that would ban politicians from lying. Assuming it ends up…
Dear Mary: how can I help pay for an expensive lunch without seeming rude?
Q. My husband and I (both in our eighties) recently visited a carpet shop with a view to replacing the…
The strikers giving Southgate a headache
Poor Gareth Southgate. Having three outstanding finishers is giving him a thumping headache ahead of the European Championship. Harry Kane,…
Can MPs really defect?
‘He did it years before William Donaldson did The Henry Root Letters,’ said my husband querulously, as though I had…
The real reason I don’t drink
It’s been 30 years this month since I last touched alcohol and I still can’t face the prospect of a…
How to make ham and parsley sauce
Poor old parsley sauce. As someone who writes regularly about old-fashioned food, it often feels that we are living through…
Amo Racing’s Flat supremacy
You don’t often walk into a racing yard and find the trainer engrossed with two owners –apropos of horse names…
My parents and the sorry state of the NHS
Pushing through a crowded hospital corridor behind my father, I heard a voice calling me. Then a nurse grabbed me…
Aussie Life
Almost exactly 50 years before James Cook’s first encounter with the Gweagal and Gameygal peoples on the shores of what…
Language
Writing in the current issue of Quadrant magazine, Paul Prociv says, ‘The field of Aboriginal affairs is awash with sloppy…
Where does ‘stuff’ come from?
Pelham, the hero of the novel of the same name (which came out in 1828, the first year of The…
