LIFE AND TIMES OF....

18 June 2026 I first saw Ian McKellan perform when I was a teenager. The ABC showed the Prospect Theatre productions of Marlowe’s Edward II and Shakespeare’s Richard II in which he stared along with actors such as Timothy West and   James Laurenson. He’s nearly 15 years older than me so must have been in his early thirties when he performed so brilliantly in these plays. What is amazing is that he’s still performing brilliantly, this time in the Steven Soderbergh film The Christophers. It’s close enough to a 4 hander with McKellan playing an ageing artist and the exquisite Michaela Coel as a forger hired by his children to work on some unfinished works as their inheritance. The children, who are rightly peeved by a father who’s been less than kind, are played by Jessica Gunning and James Corden. And I should mention the house. Or in fact two houses next to each other, one the artist's studio and the other where he lives, endlessly going up and down stairs. I wish my knees had the...

17 June 2026 It’s hard to believe that in 30 years of politics, Pauline Hansen had never made a presentation at the Canberra Press Club. I only wish that gap in her CV had been allowed to continue. She’s a terrible presenter, stumbling over words and pronunciation at the same time that she’s demanding people have to learn English to be part of Australia’s “monoculture”. But you can see the occasional appeal. Using stories of homeless people to blame immigration for Australia’s lack of housing. Using stories of kids that don’t get three meals a day to blame renewable energy companies and the “global warming hoax”. But the horror of it all for me was when she described transgender people: “…the transgender insurgency – the transgender ideology has penetrated almost all regulatory authorities….which seeks to redefine humanity….This transgender ideology is infecting all of society. It is explicitly subversive….This transgender movement is a militant force right throughout society and...

 12 June 2026 I whinged about shower water temperatures while I was away but the worst moment was returning home. After 30 hours on and off planes and in and out of cars and airports, what one desires more than anything is a hot shower. And that’s exactly what we didn’t get. Susan and I arrived home late afternoon, unpacked, put on some washing, nipped up to the shop for the ingredients for a tasty toastie and after that, I washed the dishes. It’s a rather long way from the heater to the kitchen taps but this time, the water never warmed up. There’d been storms in Perth during the previous week so maybe the pilot light had gone out but we couldn’t work out how to check it in the dark. So a kettle-flannel-wash it was all we got before bed. Next morning, I managed to get onto a company that could send someone out that day. Not only that, they arrived within half an hour to diagnose the problem. An 18 year old system that had finally given up the ghost. Who said that you can nev...

11 June 2026 Susan is in Melbourne this week providing love and care to a friend whose daughter took her own life while we were overseas. Izzie was a gloriously glamourous and smart young woman. Of indigenous heritage, she worked to support her community in a variety of legal aid organisations. But mental health challenges had lingered since teenage-hood and finally, the pain became too much for her. I watched her funeral service online and just wished that she’d been able to see the outpouring of love from hundreds of people, white and black. Stories about her feistiness as work. Stories about her support of her half-siblings. Stories about being her mother’s pride and joy. Stories about extravagant shopping and fancy cocktails with friends. And we could have told stories about the delightful dinners and Christmas lunches we shared with her and her mother. She’s left a hole in many lives but at the same time, we have to remember that she rewarded us for many years with her com...

it took me a while to decide to go back to blogging so I'm running a little behind in my "life and times of..." 10 June 2026 I’m sure we wore sunburn cream as kids. I’m sure we wore hats as kids. But I’m sure we spent a lot of time in bathers and sleeveless tops in pools, at the beach, in the back garden, on the tennis court as kids. And the result is a deep and meaningful relationship with a dermatologist. Susan and I have found a new one in Perth, recommended by our favourite expert in Melbourne.  Ann & Susan - backyard, City Beach, 1960s Chris Heyes finds me somewhat amusing because when I have to strip off for that annual check up (please don’t dwell on that vision too long), he usually finds that my underwear matches my glasses and my rings. Clearly a first for him. Once he gets over this distraction, he then usually finds bits to burn off or cut out. I knew that I had some cutting to be done on my face by the time I got back from overseas but miraculously,...

In my next life I’m going to come back as a hotel bathroom designer. Why is that every bathroom in every hotel in the world has a fault or more to drive the visitor spare? After experiencing bathrooms in 23 different forms of accommodation on this trip, from riads to yurts, from hotels to apartments, from modest to 5 star hotels, I have yet to find the perfect bathroom.  Therefore I have drawn up a list of 20  bathroom design rules that need to be taken into consideration. Please let me know if you have more to add to the list: 1. Step in showers as default for any visitor over 60 2. If there isn’t enough bench space next to the sink, add a bench underneath  3. Have a minimum of 3 hanging points per person (hand towel, bath towel, clean clothes) 4. Make sure the light enables you to see in the mirror clearly 5. Ensure that there’s enough room in the shower to turn around  6. If a bath/shower is unavoidable, provide slip mat and place to sit to get in safe...

May/June 2026 It’s hard to write an insightful or even just an interesting newsletter about Greece when so many of you have been here already. In this journey I was revisiting some places and the impact of the landscape and the history wasn’t as powerful the second time around. Even some of my photos weren’t as good because as the number of tourists to famous sites like Corinth or Olympia increases year by year they irritatingly stand in the way of trying to get that decent shot of Atreus’s Treasury or the Temple of Hera. Mind you, I suppose I’m in plenty of other people’s pictures as well. Still, I’ll do my best to entertain you. The focus of this part of our journey was a combination of culture and dipping into the Mediterranean  but it turned out to have an unexpectedly good focus on food as well. Susan was interested in exploring the Peloponnese and I found a small group tour that balanced visits to historic sites with time to swim. It turned out to be an excellent choice - alt...

  May 2026 The Swiss come to ski and would-be Everest conquerors come here to practice. Others come to hike or explore the mountains on horseback. So if that’s the appeal of Kyrgyzstan, why on earth are Susan and I here? Sebastian loves an outdoor adventure, but the older generation? Hmmm. The answer (which some of you know) is that in the early 1990s, Susan worked here. After the breakup of the Soviet Union and the independence of its various socialist republics, the World Bank commissioned the Australian Government to provide experts to help Kyrgyzstan to set up their social welfare/pension scheme. She had three trips over two years and spent nearly 10 months here. And in the process, met Sebastian’s father. So the desire to return and see the changes was strong for her and I’d heard so many stories - from the whole sheep feasts accompanied by copious amounts of vodka to introducing people who were still using abacuses to computers - that I was eager to see the country too. I’ll ...

April-May 2026 As Susan said on Facebook, Uzbekistan is a world of mosques and mausoleums and minarets and madrasahs. It’s a world of mud colours (latte, cinnamon, beige) framed by brilliant cobalts and indigos and turquoises.  It’s a Muslim world but not an Islamic state. It’s a world where there are grape vines in front of people’s houses and decent wines found in some restaurants. It’s world where young women often wear scarfs that are more restrictive than their mothers or grandmothers but we told it’s just because it’s fashionable.  It’s a world of 6 lane highways with occasional slow downs for some of the worst pot holes I’ve seen or because sheep are being herded by men on foot, on donkey and on horse. People have to risk life and limb and run across such roads because zebra crossings don’t have much meaning. It’s a world of deserts, rather like some of ours - flat with light layers of scrub - where the houses sometimes look familiar, with tin roofs and wide verandahs. ...