Be seen and not heard
Growing up, our father warned us ‘Children should be seen and not heard.’ It was his parental way of controlling or at least stifling our behaviour. If my sister and I were expected to be seen but never heard—we were being trained to be passive observers without a voice or opinion. This saying has an emphatic […]
The thinking woman’s crumpet
The term ‘the thinking woman’s crumpet’ always makes me laugh. I first heard it in London in the 1980s and since then I have used it sparingly but effectively to describe the elusive appeal of certain male actors. These performers exude something more than just sex appeal. Pardon my French but there is a ‘je ne […]
And the runner up is…
As I wrote and revised The Newcomer’s Dictionary, there were a number of excellent words that I did not have the space to include. ‘Nomad’ lost out to ‘Newcomer’; ‘Alien’ was left behind for ‘Abroad’; ‘Immigrant’ was the runner up to ‘Itinerant’; ‘Homesick’ won out over ‘History’ and ‘Transient’ beat out ‘Transfer’. At times, I […]
Learning to speak photography
Generally, families have one main photographic collection to preserve their memories and history. In fact, I have two: a collection of private memories and a collection that documents my activities as a working photographer. The private collection has the standard snapshots: ones of children (whose names we have long forgotten) brightly smiling behind a series of birthday […]
Singing during Covid
Gene Kelly sings, dances and playfully splashes in puddles in one of the most iconic scenes from the 1950s’ Hollywood musical Singing in the Rain. Despite being soaked to the skin, he remains optimistic while ignoring the drenching rain. We suspect that tomorrow he will wake up with a temperature, but in the meantime, he […]
The year of Marley Spoon
Here in Australia, as well as elsewhere in the world, the pandemic brought changes to our daily routines. As we struggled with the strangeness of it all, it was also a time for making creative changes to routines that now were anything but routine. How we shopped for food and dealt with meal making was […]
A major geographic
What is a “major geographic”? Is it an earthquake, a national emergency, a religious conversion or a cocktail? No, in fact, a major geographic is the noun that is used to describe the action taken by someone who decides to escape their problems by moving around the world. Within Australia itself, a major geographic can describe a […]
Attachment theory for beginners
We were off to a post lockdown party at a park in downtown Melbourne. I really didn’t know anyone except our hosts, and so, I took the initiative and introduced myself to a man who was sitting next me in a camp chair. I asked him what he did for a living, and he told me […]
Audrey Hepburn has gone missing
We were visiting a friend in Vancouver, Canada and I was exploring the city. There was a commercial gallery selling studio portraits of Hollywood stars from the 1940s to the 1960s. I entered the gallery. It was a large, brightly lit space. Framed black and white photographs were displayed in single rows on the walls. As a serious student of […]