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, …
Today it feels like spring: the breeze is balmy, the sun shines warm and welcoming, birds cheep and flutter in the bountiful hedges, and the sap rises audibly in tree, plant and weed. Hullo clouds, hullo sky . . . It’s amazing how much of a psychological lift you get when all is blissful and …
Spurred by yesterday’s bike-borne expedition into the unknown, I squandered a bit of time last night looking for further local loops to explore on two wheels. Modern internet-based social platforms make this kind of thing so easy. For example, I have recently joined a service called Strava, which enables weekend warriors and endurance sports weirdos …
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