I am forever amazed at the barrage of self-help material urging us to aim for the top, follow our dreams, and especially to be better than everyone else. Just a minute: how can everyone be the best? I figured out the maths around 1972, when New Zealand’s favourite poet, Sam Hunt, told me that female poets (unlike male poets) […]
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In which I contemplate the relative scariness of a first pregnancy and old age. Preparing for old age is the scariest thing I have ever done in my life. Scarier than gliding. Scarier than windsurfing in a gale. Scarier than reading poems to an audience of 2000. Scarier than reading poems to the […]
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In which I bully myself into making 12 lifestyle changes in a single year, to increase my health and happiness in old age and reduce the chances of getting dementia. This is an account of my personal boot camp to prepare myself for the extra years—the bonus years that we never expected or desired—the years […]
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What do you do when you make a big fat typo in an email? Blush and own it? This cannot be right — usually, least said soonest mended, surely? Well, yesterday I put my foot in it good and proper. In 2008 I helped to establish a group called Plain English Power, and we worked hard for our goals. Eight years on, we […]
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A few days ago, this blog gained Follower #100. I am still savouring the moment, even though I can’t swear exactly when that moment was, and I’m even uncertain about exactly which person was the 100th follower. “Exactly which person” — what a crazy prosopagnosic phrase, as if all readers were a blur of clones. Quite the opposite! The […]
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