The Godfather: Peter Corris on the winter of his discontent
I hate winter – my nose runs, and due to poor circulation from long-term diabetes, my feet get cold in bed. I use a walking stick these days and juggling stick, umbrella and a bag of groceries is no fun. Gloves off to handle the credit hard, scarf coming loose, eyes...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on being Grandpa
Our ten-year-old grandson spends Saturday night with us each week. On Sunday mornings he and I go up the street to buy the papers and I give him a five-question quiz on a variety of subjects. At first I did the quiz off the top of my head, but as I scrambled for...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on Americanization [sic]
My computer wants to enforce spelling in the American fashion, particularly in the use of ‘z’ rather than ‘s’ in words like realise, and it dispenses with the ‘u’ in colour, honour, labour, and so on. It’s partly a function of word-processing software but also an...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on hunting and gathering
Until well into the second half of the last century many, perhaps, most, Australian suburbanites were, if not hunters and gatherers, at least part-time gatherers. When I was quite young and my father had the occasional use of a car at weekends, our family would drive...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on city songs
Continuing my interest in themed popular songs, I lighted on the idea of songs celebrating the physical and social attributes of cities. There are a number of songs that mention cities, but celebrating is a different matter. Will Fyffe’s ‘I Belong to Glasgow’, for...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on Dominick Dunne
‘Write what you know’ is often good advice for would-be scribblers. Not much help if you don’t know anything, of course, but it certainly fitted the bill for American journalist, author and television presenter Dominick Dunne. Dunne was born into a wealthy New...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on nicknames
In Anglo-Saxon times, surnames did not exist and nicknames were used to help identify a person. Originally, these were called ekenames, as eke meant ‘also or added’. Over time, through changes promoted by writing and alternative pronunciations, the word ekename...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on the decline of the political insult
‘It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.’ Lyndon B Johnson on J Edgar Hoover Most authorities agree that the greatest of all political insults in the English language came from the 18th-century radical John...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on cigarette songs
Cigarettes and smoking featured in many popular songs of the 20th century but seem to be absent since, say, the 1990s. A good early example of the association between smoking and romance (and nostalgia) occurs in ‘These Foolish Things’, written in 1936 and made...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on some national changes
Occasionally, out of boredom or as an anti-Alzheimer’s disease exercise, I try to write down the names of all the American states. I’ve got to the high 40s but never the whole lot. Doing this recently and reflecting on the interesting names of states derived from...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on superstitions
When I was young many people were subject to various superstitions, some taken very seriously, some less so. To walk under a ladder was bad luck, as was to have a black cat cross your path. To shiver meant a shadow was passing over your grave. These everyday things...
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