Five blogs that make me think

I’m blushing right now because Kerryn has tagged my blog as one that makes her think. Kudos aside, one of the great things about this is that now I get to tag five blogs that make me think. Here goes:
The Legal Soapbox makes me think about all sorts of things: the law, parenting, the environment, religion, current affairs in [...]

At the movies

I’ve borrowed this meme from Delicious Days but have reduced the number of questions:
1. Name a movie you have seen more than 10 times
I can’t think of any movies that I would have seen that many times. I’m a Hitchcock fan so I’ve seen some of his films several times – Rear Window, Vertigo, To Catch [...]

Backwards and forwards: imagining wartime

I’ve recently read two fascinating novels that take place during the Second World War. Both of these books, Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky and The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, follow several characters (and groups of characters) through a range of wartime experiences in the 1940s.
Over sixty years separate the writing of these wartime imaginings although both novels were published (in English) at around the same [...]

100 years of du Maurier

I’ve just read an article in the Guardian about Daphne du Maurier. I love the sense of spooky atmosphere that pervades her writing (as I’ve mentioned previously I have a weakness for the gothic in literature and film). In the article Kate Kellaway theorises that:
Du Maurier was mistress of calculated irresolution. She did not want to put her [...]

Blogging tips

 I’m new to this blogging game but in the non-virtual world I write, edit and generally try to improve the usability of website content, for a living. As a result, I read quite a lot of articles on web best practice. I just came across quite a good article on blogging on the I’d Rather Be Writing [...]

Listening in on life

I saw an intriguing thriller, The Lives of Others, over the Easter break. The film takes place in 1980s East Germany, a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. At this time, the Stasi, or secret police, made it their business to monitor the behaviour of citizens of interest (apparently a high proportion of the East German population).
The film centres on Gerd [...]

Community-fired

I’ve written in a previous post about my own oven troubles and now I’ve just read on Kerryn’s blog that she’s suffering a similiar fate. If only we had access to a community wood-fired oven like the one they have installed in an Albury-Wodonga park …
 It’s a lovely idea:
By the banks of the Murray River, in the [...]