She Who Pays The Bills has been keeping a household budget since long before we took up the business of joint accounts and sharing one car (more on that later). When I was perusing The Courier-Mail’s comic-book summary of the Federal budget (a free read in a coffee shop, OK), it came to mind what a jolly old mess households would be in if, like our dim-witted leaders in Canberra, they had doubled their debt…
I had a ‘jump the shark’ moment this week. What, you don’t know about jumping the shark? It is a buzz phrase coined to describe the point in a TV series when far-fetched events are included merely for the sake of novelty, indicative of a decline in quality. The term originates from an episode of Happy Days where The Fonz goes water-skiing and literally jumps a shark. There are loads of examples of bad choice…
watch video Even though I have lived in the southern hemisphere since I was six years old, Kath Tait’s song about prejudice and xenophobia resonates with me. My folks immigrated to New Zealand, taking up residence in a two-horse North Island town in the 1950s. Kids at our school had strident voices and peculiar accents. I was a novelty – a six-year-old boy with a broad east coast Scottish accent. Women would come into the…
One bitingly cold Toowoomba morning at 4am I dragged myself out of bed for an assignment. The Chronicle’s chief of staff had asked me to cover the dawn service on Anzac Day, so I started at the local RSL, where returned servicemen were getting an early start on coffee and rum toddies. In the early 1980s, the Anzac Day service took place in the middle of Ruthven and Margaret Streets at the 8m tall Mothers’…