Nothing quite focuses the mind on mortality more than a family bereavement. It’s been a long time between our family’s episodes of sorry business. However, I headed to New Zealand on pure instinct, arriving in time to support my sister as she said goodbye to her husband of 62 years. They say that 95 is a ‘good innings’, but it is no less hard for the family when the time comes. The manner in which…
As I have just returned from 10 days in New Zealand on sorry business, today I’m reposting a piece from 2018 when my best half broke her wrist and I became chief cook and bottlewasher. Normal transmission will resume next week. This topic would not have raised an eyelash in my Dad’s era, a generation of men who did not cook or do housework. Many men of my vintage grew up in households where duties…
By Bob Wilson and guest writer Lyn Nuttall Apart from sharing my life with a teacher in the 1970s and much later spending a couple of years on a high school P&C, teaching is not really on my radar. Image Gerd Altman www.pixabay.com But it should be, with the teaching profession in tatters, if you follow the global headlines. First there is the teacher shortage, a situation worsening by the year, as teachers take the…
On the eve of what was to be Australia’s first time as host of the Quad meeting, let’s reflect on the proposed cost – some $23 million according to Budget papers. It is understood more than 20% of the budget was allocated to the Federal Police, to ensure the security of invited dignitaries. The planned Quad meeting, with the leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US to be arriving in Sydney, was scrapped after…