Category: Writing
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Hello and welcome … 2016
Hello to all my blog readers at the beginning of 2016, as the Year of the Goat (in Chinese Astrology) is coming to an end. And the Year of the Monkey is going to begin. I hope this year will be even better than the last one for you and yours. Here in the southern…
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The Anna Karenina Principle
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way(Leo Tolstoy 1878) Tolstoy’s Impact Tolstoy is a philosopher/narrator within his novel Anna Karenina. He invites the reader to philosophize about happiness, as they read the doings, the thoughts and the feelings of his characters. The Oblonsky family’s happiness is destroyed by…
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Life is a Beach: a guest post by Ian Wells
Life is a Beach Have you heard the saying, Life is a beach? Have you ever strolled along a sandy shore? Scrunching wet sand deliciously between your toes? I have I’ve watched the spray fly, heard the waves pound marvelled at dolphins dancing enjoyed the birds’ aerobatic antics. I’ve felt the sting of the hot…
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A Guest Poem: “First Loves” by Roger Britton
Roger writes… One night, on hearing a piece of music, grief overwhelmed me. I sat down and wrote this poem, fifty-seven years after the event. I rushed into it with little regard to rhyme, rhythm or scan. Ode to Jennifer The strains of Carrick Fergus reeled my memories in, while flooding tears filled my…
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An Aussie bloke remembers: Guest post by Ian (Harry) Wells
“Life in the Forties and Fifties” by Ian (Harry) Wells “Take-away” back in the forties and fifties, when I was a kid, meant a sum in arithmetic at school. Nothing else. Certainly not a source of food. There were no mega-giants like Maccas, KFC, Pizza Hut or the like, just “chippies”. A “big mac” was…
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Welcome to a Long-Awaited Grandson
December 13th November, 2008 You can’t know the sheer joy and wonder of grandparenting, until it happens to you. It was around 4am when Grandad Mark’s mobile phone rang, waking us from our sleep. Thirty minutes earlier, our daughter Kate had rolled out of bed onto the floor in a cascade of waters. Your Mummy…