Archive | Life columns & features 14-15

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 →

ONE of my favourite stories was written by author and western Buddhist monk Jack Kornfield in his book A Path with Heart. Kornfield, from an American Jewish home, had come to realise there was too much pain in his family. He was Ivy League educated, but ignorant when it came to his emotions. Continue Reading →

I HAD an acquaintance who killed a young man during a pub brawl by stabbing him with a knife. Continue Reading →