There was no shortage of red faces… Back in the day, when I was impressionable and fresh out of Year 11 at College, I made a momentous decision. Based on the very encouraging school report comments from my art teacher (“Mark has refined and developed his drawing skills” and following…

Even a scammer called me Maam…. I inherited an interesting collection of bodily features from my father, including my bushy eyebrows, pointy Kleimann nose, barrel chest and, best of all, a voice that tends to go to a higher pitch when I am excited, or a bit nervous. It was…

Don’t be like this guy who couldn’t even make it through a drive-through… Well, it wasn’t actually this guy. This morning, I read on the ABC Website that a 30-year-old man was struggling with the effects of extreme snooze while waiting for his order at a McDonald’s drive-through in Darwin…

This cat had an agenda… Long ago, when I was a wide-eyed secondary school student with a slight case of acne, my sister mentioned to me that she had noticed an absence of cats in our backyard. …

Your legacy will be your decency and compassion When I heard two days ago that Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Australia’s Pacific neighbour, was resigning by February 7, my first reaction was dismay; the second was sorrow. The reasons that she gave were that she wished to…

No Experience Required? Opportunity to Network? Exercise and fresh air part of the job? Too Good to Refuse? What was I thinking? It was the early 1980s, and I had just completed Year 11 at College. Being proactive, and needing cash, I scoured Melbourne’s (Australia) tabloid papers, zeroing in on…

Farewell to the Home of Memories We visited my family home in Melbourne’s (Victoria, Australia) eastern suburbs regularly, to spend holidays with my parents. Many memorable Christmases were spent there. This changed when my mother became ill in late 2019. passing away in February 2020. …

I paid off a five-figure debt After my first marriage ended (many years ago), I paid Child Support to my former wife, maintaining these fortnightly payments until they finished upon my son completing high school in late 2017. However, due to personal circumstances at this time, I had accumulated a…

Applied 500 and Poker? George Orwellian socialism 101? An English teacher who bore an uncanny resemblance to Graucho Marx? What was this academic newbie getting himself into? It was the mid-1980s, and after following my artistic dream and pursuing a rather challenging vocational art course, I was at a crossroads. …