We have been in denial for 170 years. White gold has lost its lustre as farmers’ faces droop even lower than Daisy’s udder, and the world has so much oil you can buy it by the barrel. Faced with the frightening prospect of slipping out of the rich kids club, New Zealand is turning to […]
My Food Bag is a great idea – as far as it goes. What makes living in the first world so awesome (apart from the free prostate examinations) is that we don’t have to do everything. Ask a peasant in Laos or Zaire “how’s life” and you are likely to be greeted with a wide […]
So much has been said about him yet he’s not the one to blame. For us baby boomers growing up in New Zealand during the sixties and seventies life was good, actually life was better than good – we didn’t have to worry about on which side our bread was buttered, it was buttered on […]
You know you want to wear them, just do it. When I visited Japan several years ago, I couldn’t get over how well dressed everybody was. And I mean everybody. From those on the cooly named Thunderbird bullet train to clattering chopsticks on the delicious sushi train, the Japanese dress with precision and style, paragons […]
You can have too much of a good thing. The place, New Plymouth, Nu Zilland The year, 2003. We had suffered a decade of soggy rain and economic depression. The landscape was verdant green but our spirits were as glum as an accountant on holiday. Our destiny as a provincial hub seemed precarious, as talk […]
What was the government thinking? By all accounts, Paris was balmy and fine on the 14th July 1789 when revolting peasants stormed the Bastille, armed with nothing more than authentic french accents and pointy baguettes. In fact, the weather had been so hot that crops had failed, so, tired of nothing to plough, Pierre and […]
Darth Vader and chicken have something in common Darth Vader was such a great character in the original Star Wars. Faceless, breathless, pure evil. But then they went and ruined it by making him Luke Skywalker’s father. Suddenly his allure of evilness evaporated like fairy dust. He now had a history, a story, a personality. […]
I received this from my daughter in response to last week’s blog about self help books. Papa Bain thinks self help books don’t work… I beg to differ. This past year, I’ve had my heart ripped out and chewed on. Other than the obvious recovery techniques of moving to Amsterdam, substance abuse (sorry Dad) and […]
So do self help books really help? As the new year advances faster than seagulls on a sandwich, we are optimistic, if not darn perky about the year ahead. We make resolutions about exercise and diet, desperate to reinvigorate what once never sagged. For us blokes we dream of a thick head of hair and […]
Drownings need not occur, and we all know what the answer is. As we flop like freshly caught snapper into our deck chairs and crack open our newspaper apps, the summer headlines are dominated by drownings. Too many are throwing off their T shirts never to return. The tragedy is that we all know what […]
