If you have ever had a video camera fixed to your eye at an airshow, or at the car race track you will understand what I mean by the camera trap – so fixated are you on capturing the moment (to be stored forgotten in your camera) that you miss the real experience. When filming…
32,984 total views, 88 views today
Readers can be very kind, even if it is sad news they bring. Ray Pearce has just brought to my attention the death of Nigel Hankin, a COMPLETELY eccentric, gentle, likable old chap who won our hearts when we met him in India. Thanks Ray, I had missed it. 33,016 total views, 88 views today
33,016 total views, 88 views today
One of the more gratifying experiences I had when serving as an officer in the military was to hear, in the wee hours of the morning, after midnight when no one was stirring – except perhaps those Russian submarines – one of the junior staff, emptying bins and sweeping floors, declare he was forsaking his…
32,970 total views, 88 views today
It was a World Series Clash held in Mumbai. It was hot. In the mid thirties and steaming, with the heavy salt air hammering the city with a humid blanket that never lifted. The tamarind trees around the ground had their foliage blasted off and shade was notional at best. Sri Lanka was batting, there…
32,980 total views, 88 views today
Memories of summers in younger years always include rounds of cricket. In the driveway. On the beach. At a picnic. School days. Games against Waitaki Boys High or St Kevins where more passion than technical skill invariably led the play. Later it was getting down to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) 33,044 total views, 88 views today
33,044 total views, 88 views today
You can call it Macho Drowning. Pigheaded Drowning. I know Better Drowning. Don’t tell me What to Do Drowning. I Am Stronger than the Rules Drowning. Or just Plain Dumb Drowning. OK, it is not as exotic as a Taipan bite or being bitten by a Red Back Spider while on the toilet (I have…
32,978 total views, 88 views today
There is a general acceptance that cartoons can indeed be literature although one would need to be selective about which cartoons were selected for the library shelves. As ten years olds, or thereabouts we used to devour Commando Comics. One of our friends had a father who absolutely prohibited “this rubbish” from his house –…
34,309 total views, 88 views today
The news that David Hicks is out of prison (released from Adelaide (Australia) prison this morning) has barely rated a mention here. “David who?”, you may well ask. Otherwise known as Detainee 002. Or perhaps more infamously, the only person to have been convicted by the US as part of the the post September 11…
33,522 total views, 94 views today
Having spent a few weeks in Baghdad this year means I am a bit like a reformed smoker – paying close attention to as many related issues as I can and probably driving people crazy with my newfound interest in the place. But it does mean that occasionally you find articles which provide interesting and…
33,706 total views, 96 views today
I must have been asleep to have missed this one. A novel published in 2003 that is 350,000 words off the pen of first time novelist Gregory David Roberts. I found it while shopping for Christmas gifts for others. I often buy books at random, if only to expand my reading horizons. 32,984 total views, 92 views…
32,984 total views, 92 views today