Archive | Life columns & features 14-15

I HAD a very strange experience a few years ago which has made me think about the nature of love. I’d been advertising for a room-mate for my spare room to get me over a financial hump. Continue Reading →

IT’S been confirmed. We don’t just go to work to make money, we need satisfaction. Gallup research has shown that there’s a strong link between corporations’ success and staff happiness levels. Lost productivity due to employee disengagement costs more than $300 billion a year in the US. Continue Reading →

Bette Midler used to sing a song I loved: “You’ve got to have friends…” which we all sang along to as teen­agers, surrounded by lots of buddies. Continue Reading →

My teenage daughter recently went to what marketers described as a “Hippy Festival”. What is a modern-day hippy festival? I asked her. Continue Reading →

I NEARLY killed a young woman the other day. It was her lack of foresight but I can’t get over the shock of it. Continue Reading →

THERE was a time when my relationships were going through a rough patch. It wasn’t my man or daughter or friends. It was me. I suddenly found that everything in the world around me was not to my liking. Continue Reading →

MY mother says: “No one ever really changes.” But I’ve just been travelling with a friend who has. She survived a very aggressive form of cancer; and there’s not a second of life — good or bad — that she doesn’t cherish. Continue Reading →

WHEN my father died I was trying to be strong and brave. The eldest child and executrix of his will, I wanted to get everything done and organised efficiently. I was not in any space to grieve because there was just no time or space. Continue Reading →

It was a phrase used about Schapelle Corby that has finally done me in. A news story promoting a Seven Network segment about her first day of freedom bragged that the show captured “extraordinary vision of her throwing herself into the ocean off Seminyak”. Continue Reading →

Something happened when I was in India recently that made me reconsider how I act in the world. I’d been queuing up for a long time at the door of a concert and once inside, secured a good place upfront. Continue Reading →