Songs are the soundtrack to my life. Quite literally, in fact. Whether I am out exercising of a morning – this year saw me back at my 8km exercise routes which I couldn’t do without music – or commuting (a far rarer thing this year thanks to COVID-19) or simply Continue Reading
Lost in a sea of beautiful words: My 20 favourite books of 2020
Books have always my go-to place to get away from the horrors and sadness of reality. Whether it was way back when I was a kid and bullying defined my (almost) every waking hour, or more recently when a pandemic has redefined life to pronouncedly for the worst that the Continue Reading
Merry pop culture Christmas to all … and to all a good night!
2020 – what a year! And not in the “Woohoo! What a great year!” sense either. I mean, it wasn’t entirely awful, but every time it seemed like things were on the improve, everything went south again in spectacular fashion; case in point, Sydney is once again in the grip Continue Reading
Book review: The Nine Lives of #Christmas by Florence McNicoll
All of us long for some kind of profound connection. More than that, we need it, in ways too complex and unknowing to articulate at times, and we often need more of it that we realise, especially at Christmas which, possibly more than most other festivals, near-demands an intense and Continue Reading
#Christmas TV review: Home For Christmas (season 2)
Christmas and romance … Christmas and romance … go together like, well, nothing rhymes satisfactorily with “romance” so let’s just say that falling in love during the festive season is seen as pretty much the most perfect time of the year to give your heart away to someone special. (Unless, Continue Reading
Book review: The Parisian #Christmas Bake Off by Jenny Oliver
Can Christmas transform your life in the most magical and transformative of ways? We all like to think so; there’s something about this most wonderful of seasons that makes most of us believe that it is somehow set up from the humdrum, pell-mell banality of life and thus is capable Continue Reading
The Mandalorian – “Chapter 16: “The Rescue” (S2, E8 review) / Star Trek: Discovery – “Terra Firma (Pt 2.)” (S3, E10 review)
THE MANDALORIAN SPOILERS AHEAD … AND A SURPRISE GUEST … OR TWO … So, that’s what it feels like to have your heart metaphorically ripped out. The finale of The Mandalorian‘s brilliantly good second season, in which the bonds between Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu aka the Child deepened Continue Reading
On 12th day of Christmas … I listened to A Holly Dolly Christmas by Dolly Parton
As you might expect from a bright, larger than life personality like Dolly Parton, Holly Dolly Christmas, her new Christmas album and the successor to 1990’s Home For Christmas, opens on a joyously upbeat note with “Holly Jolly Christmas” that starts off an album with exactly the right kind of Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: Once Upon a Snowman
SNAPSHOTThe previously untold origins of Olaf, the innocent and insightful, summer-loving snowman who melted hearts in the Academy Award®-winning 2013 Disney animated feature, Frozen, and its acclaimed 2019 sequel, are revealed in the all-new Walt Disney Animation Studios animated short, Once Upon a Snowman. The film follows Olaf’s first steps Continue Reading
Book review: A Dog’s Perfect Christmas by W. Bruce Cameron
If ever a Christmas called for some feel good love and wonder, it’s this one. Coming at the tail end of a year of pandemic, which shows no sign of bowing out gracefully for a 2021 unfettered by sickness and death, Christmas 2020 feels like it needs all the help Continue Reading