I came out of my front door the other day and there was a man walking past on the phone going "…yeah yeah yeah I got Sky - but you’ll never guess what I’m getting next: floorboards…". It’s a question of priorities I suppose: With a sofa by the door for pizza deliveries and a good remote you’d hardly need flooring.

The sky is better than Sky©TM; no repeats; very [...]

"Look" they say, don’t they? People generally and Australian media figures particularly - politicians, experts, opinion mongers. It’s the verbal equivalent of grabbing the listener by the lapels. "Look mate, it’s like this..." meaning, "your arguments, facts, whatever are all very well; but look at things from my perspective and you’ll see." It precedes not a rebuttal or refutation (that would be "No, mate..." and might lead to genuine debate) [...]

Too many cooks spoil the broth; unless it is cook broth.

Poor Gordon Ramsay: His super enlarged face looms from billboards all over town. His image dwarfs him - anyone meeting him from now on cannot help but be subconsciously disappointed that his head isn’t six feet wide. "He seems so small in real life", they’ll say.

Before the billboards impinged upon my eyes I’d only been dimly aware of [...]

Here I be, Edinburgh festival, goldfish bowl, cauldron of the vanities, ensconced.

It's tough at the top, they say, the ones at the top presumably, to remind us to not even try it. It's not particularly easy at the bottom. It's tough baby, tough - was that not what you wanted? You came here to suffer; don't you remember? Perhaps you've changed your mind; very well then change your mind: [...]

Less than an hour ago for the first time I killed a mouse with my bare hands. Well, not bare hands: I did it with my wife's shoe.

Hadn't seen one for ages; thought we'd got rid of them. Heard a noise in the kitchen; investigated and saw it. I stood still. So did the mouse. For ages. I thought "Can I get it?". I noticed the shoe. (I'd noticed [...]

Recently I’ve been thinking about the many forms of help.

Advice is the easiest to give, and the least use.

President Truman said: "I’ve found the best way to give advice to my children is to find out what they want to do, and then advise them to do it."

"If you want my advice…” folk say, and before you’ve had a chance to say “No! No! A thousand [...]

I’m informed there’s been a change of leader. I feel as a passenger on a long-haul flight might when woken at 4am to be informed that for the rest of the journey the co-pilot will be at the controls: almost indifferent.

The outgoing leader wanted history to be his judge. That’s good; so let’s not even talk about him. We’re encouraged to condemn our leaders, but is that fair? Shouldn’t [...]

Everything you’ve known will be swept away. Sometimes I lay in bed trying to recall the faces and names of my class at primary school. They come back in dribs and drabs but overall there is so little I can remember of those seven years, and anyway a fair proportion of my memories are of photographs - secondary memories - and it strikes me with horror that I can never [...]

A man walks down the street shouting expletives at the top of his voice. Is he mad? Or on the phone? And since - from a distance at least - you cannot tell which, may we conclude that they are equivalent; that shouting on the phone is a form of madness? Certainly it makes no sense; the increased volume is not transmitted; the signal breaks up; and the person on [...]

We are drawn to the coast. Well, dragged there by our parents initially. Look at the sea; remember the past. Look at the sky; imagine the future. Look at the land; think of the present. And at the most profound place, where land, sea, and sky are one - there ye shall play volleyball. What is it about the sight of a flat horizon that eases the mind? [...]