Anton Chekhov was 38 years old when he wrote “A Case History”. He was already an experienced doctor and evocative writer, and some of his best short stories, including this one, effortlessly combined elements of both medicine and human nature. The dismal grey factory town in “A Case History”, to which a doctor is summoned, […]
I’d Rather Play At Hug O’War
December 14, 2012 by
We all love children’s books. Why? They remind us of the best parts of childhood. The stories are often simple and funny and have a happy end. They allow us to escape from hurly-burly to magic adventure. But mainly because, buried in the phantasmogorical story detail, is a message. It might be Love. Friendship. Family. […]
If You Are Everywhere, You Are Nowhere
July 29, 2012 by
It was a surprise. A political story by The Australian’s Tom Dusevic @davrosz , drilling away at Labor’s thinning crust of respectability, sparing no punches, and starting with a quote. And, refreshingly, not by some old hoary ex-Prime Minister, but by Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, a polymath who lived smack bang in the middle of […]
All Must Have Prizes
February 11, 2012 by
You would never think the Dodo is extinct. It lives repeatedly on Social Media. We are reminded about its sad obliteration from the face of the earth and our attempts to resurrect the species via DNA . The flow of information about something that is dead as a..well..dodo is incessant. Why? I reckon it’s […]
Now You Tell Me What You Know
October 31, 2011 by
Sometimes you sit down and try to nut it out. Whether it’s your tax return, a foreign language, or a novel, it just doesn’t make sense on first reading. Or on the second or third… Perhaps you have a professional or business or social group in your life. It may require a ‘maintenance of standards’ […]
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
May 14, 2011 by
Leon managed to do it. About five years earlier, I had tried to demolish the old water-tank lying in a corner of our property. It lay, leaking, slightly rusted, in a shallow drainage culvert adjoining our neighbour. It had to go. But we needed to reduce its size, bend it, fold it, to fit in […]
