In an excerpt from his book Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More in the current issue of Limelight magazine, Stephen Hough wrote of his reaction on seeing an elderly man being wheeled into the concert hall where Hough was about to perform.
‘My heart instantly lifted,’ he wrote. ‘It struck me as wonderful that he was here to hear Beethoven and I was the one who this evening was to bring that music to life.’
It was wonderful to read about the generous responses to the bushfires of sports people like Nick Kyrgios, international celebrities like Leonardo di Caprio and Elton John, as well as local heroes like Chris Hemsworth.
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Current statistics tell us we can expect to live to an average age of 85: twenty years beyond what used to be called retirement age. For some, the prospect of filling in those extra decades is daunting. For others – the late bloomers – it’s an opportunity to achieve the goals they set out to reach before life got too busy or too messy.
Continue readingWhen I was four years old, my parents moved their young family from the bottom of a park to the top. My parents never moved again.
Half a century later, my mother still lives there, surrounded by all five of her children within a ten kilometre radius. Her dreams are of forays into her beloved garden, not of travel adventures abroad. Everything she needs is within her castle walls. She left Australian shores only once and didn’t see any benefit in doing so again.
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In my mid-40s, I simultaneously lost the passion for my cooking career and gained a love of writing. I decided to use the skills accumulated throughout the previous quarter century to work for me in my new writing career: the ability to match menu to client, the organisational skills to run a small business and a willingness to learn.
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We went to worship at the shrine of Franz Schubert, a nineteenth century German composer with a gift for putting music to already profound texts and rendering them close to sacred.
Continue readingIt happened three months before armistice. The impact on my grandfather’s health was severe and lifelong, and resulted in his death thirty years later from the complications of nerve gas exposure.
Yes, I’m an unapologetic (okay, slightly apologetic) apologist for this tacky voyeuristic goldfish bowl of a television series that, just occasionally, redeems itself.
Conversations that start like this can go one of two ways: they can leave you feeling deflated or they can spur you on to greater things. My friend D doesn’t shy away from difficult conversations. She’s the one who tells it straight when you ask for her opinion. She’s also the one who gives you her undivided attention and support when you need it. And the best home-made scones.
Speeding down the Calder Highway on a scorching Friday in February 2009, I wondered briefly whether this long-awaited weekend away was such a good idea. The brown fields on either side shimmered and the road ahead looked molten. The words ‘bushfire weather’ hovered in front of my eyes like the steam rising from the bitumen.
