Promotion of anorexia - it isn't just the likes of Facebook - try Twitter today ... Read More »

I reckon I have had my hair cut every 6-8 weeks since I was four, which makes last week’s my 500th. The trouble is that I have disliked each and every one, finding them at best unpleasant and at worst, plain horrible. I have nothing against barbers, I just don’t like keeping still and I’m not that ... Read More »

Ballina Boy is an autobiography of childhood in the 1950s in an Australian sea-side town of Ballina. The main character is my father who was formerly a classics scholar and whose impractical nature is balanced by my mother who was a trained nurse working alongside him in the practice. ... Read More »

The author muses on the joy of bread making on  the summer holidays ... Read More »

After the usual pleasantries we sat down to lunch. The soup was served without a hitch. Not so the distribution of the bread which was greeted with some consternation. A guest, or was it my wife, had noticed that one end of the baguette was missing. Somebody had removed, and presumably eaten, this much-coveted crusty ... Read More »

Woken at sunrise by rustling and grunting outside my room, I groggily poked my head around the door to find tree branches shaking, and lithe bok (Afrikaans for antelope species) dashing around my rest hut. Something was amiss if both the blou aaps (vervet monkeys) and nyala (a type of antelope) were so restless. And then I ... Read More »

 
It seems that the arts are slowly being integrated more and more into both the medical curriculum and academic screening processes, a welcome development that students should embrace with great enthusiasm. 
Medicine, by nature, requires a very strong science knowledge base to produce ... Read More »

The debate surrounding tuition fees has reached a new level of ferocity as students are preparing themselves for a commons vote that could wreak havoc on an already costly university experience. Now, I was always taught from a very young age that education, hard work and perspiration would reap their own rewards, and having ... Read More »

Addictions come in all shapes and sizes and we know to recognise and ask about them.  But social websites - perhaps not. Be it contact with real friends or 'virtual ones' (people you meet on social websites) games, giving 'virtual' presents etc and all sorts of things - slowly all these can become addictive ... Read More »

Just as I have a system for recalling words, I now have one for faces. For words I do a mind search. As others do, I scan through the alphabet focusing on each letter in turn looking for those that best match the starter letter of the lost word. I then run through second letters and go on until the whole word appears, which ... Read More »