Good news for the addicted

The prime time TV show Location, Location, Location features an on-screen husband and wife team who scour urban Great Britain for a house to suit clients who all seem to have one thing in common. They want their new dwelling to be within walking distance of a café. The café culture is one of the great paradoxes of the modern world. Walk down any main street in New Zealand today - and I may be exaggerating here – and every second shop...

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Actions worsen and time softens

My earliest recollection of life is visiting my father in hospital when I was nearly three years old. I vividly remember this for two reasons. First we weren’t allowed to go into the hospital proper because he had diphtheria and was therefore isolated. I recall my mother holding me up to the window so I could talk to my father from the wide concrete window-ledge above the solid brick wall.The main reason the memory endures however, was...

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Building a wall against progress

Surveys suggest the presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has a 50-50 chance of being elected leader of the free world later this year. Should he succeed I fear he will take America back from the future. His slogan, Make America Great Again seems to have caught the imagination of a large number of constituents, but I wonder if the country has really lost its way in the world to the extent Mr Trump and his followers...

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Paradise lost?

The trouble with having a roof over your head, food on the table and a nice warm bed is that you are constantly reminded that others are not so fortunate and your conscience is perpetually pricked.Television news nightly show us disturbing images of people living on the street or in cars and then widens the scope with heart-rending advertisements requesting assistance for some African region where skeletal infants are dying for aid.You...

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Contrasting generations and cultures

Knowing how young men’s minds work - after all I used to be one once - I wasn’t particularly surprised when St Dominic’s Girls College in Henderson suggested their ball-going pupils wear attire that refrained from exposing cleavage, kept any split in their skirts below the knees and covered their backs. I would imagine that’s the sort of advice you’d expect from a catholic girl’s school.However St. Dominic’s liberal-minded parents were...

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