Incredible scenes today at Corner Cottage as a seasonal milestone is attained with due fanfare and celebration. As spring flourishes outdoors, with flowers unfolding, leaves unfurling, birds revealing their finest mating-season plumage, it is time for your aged correspondent to disclose his long-hidden shanks by the ritual donning of shorts. Let’s leave aside for now …
There’s an obvious topic for this blog which I’ve been reading around without really committing to, and that’s because it’s a serious, huge and complex subject. I’ve touched on it briefly when speculating about the names of creeks – but there’s just so much more to be uncovered, especially to a newbie in this fascinating …
There are days when the to-do list seems to ‘spiral out of control’ (to channel the relevant cliché) as task after task, job after job, add themselves willy-nilly to the total, and with every new addition, priorities get jumbled and it’s ever harder to work out just where it would be best to start. Such …
Australia has an indisputably macho culture. Just look at the sports: Aussie Rules Football (AFL) or ‘aerial ping pong’ as Daniela calls it, looks like the most gruelling and skilfully-demanding pursuit ever contrived. The ball-handling skills are little short of astounding, the pace breakneck, the athleticism breathtaking. And speaking of ball-handling, the playing kit is …
More and more it’s about the birds. Getting up in the morning at the moment is a musical delight, as the local avian population gives voice to their appreciation of warmer weather, and earlier sunrises, and all the things going on that excite them. Flowers are busting out the kinds of salady grub to ensure …
Quite a few of the photography accounts on Twitter do this thing on a Saturday (Friday if they're in the US) where they summarise the week in photos. Posts like that are great -- a few fleeting images that tell you a whole lot about the events of the last seven days. We're going to …
Call me butter 'cause I’m on a roll . . . The bird-feeder project that started a few days ago as a swift piece of DIY using odds and ends of this and that found here and there is now assuming the epic proportions of an Amish barn-raising. Once again, the rabbit-hole principle rears its …
I’ve never been much of a petrolhead. In the past, the idea of subscribing to the polluting, expensive, city-clogging race of ‘cagers’ (as cycling activists call them) was anathema. Sure, motorbikes and Anglia 105Es have done their damndest to weave their tempting spell, but the purity of human-powered transport tended to win out. As a …
Seems our celebrating the arrival of spring over the weekend was a few days premature – yes, the weather is still full-bore spring, but today is the official first day of the season. So what does it all mean? To be honest, for my first quarter-century or so, I didn’t really have much of an …
You know, through the long, sweaty Singapore years, cooped up in our high-rise apartment, we often talked in a misty-eyed fashion about a golden future in which we’d have a garden. It would be an elegant, well-groomed, peaceful place, with gently tinkling rills, shady trees, lush lawns and rank upon rank of fragrant roses, peonies, …
You must be logged in to post a comment.