by NRB | 3 Jul 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
One of our weekly domestic pleasures is doing the quiz in the print edition of the Saturday Sydney Morning Herald. We rope in family members and guests whenever possible and compete with another couple who do the same. Results are variable but my impression is that...
by NRB | 26 Jun 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
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...
by NRB | 19 Jun 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
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...
by NRB | 12 Jun 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
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...
by NRB | 5 Jun 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
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...
by NRB | 29 May 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
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...
by NRB | 22 May 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
‘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...
by NRB | 15 May 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
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...
by NRB | 8 May 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
‘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...
by NRB | 1 May 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
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...
by NRB | 24 Apr 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
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...
by NRB | 17 Apr 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
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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