In October 2005 I got an amazing phone call from Jonathan Green, then editor of A2 for The Age, Melbourne’s broadsheet newspaper. For the next six and a half years I wrote a fortnightly column for the arts section of the Saturday Age, alternating with Robert Drewe. I had four wonderful editors and they pretty much gave me my head to write whatever I liked.
Sometimes it was just whatever wittering was going on in my head at the moment, sometimes they were humorous, often they were ranty, occasionally they were humorous AND ranty, sometimes I got my serious political on and sometimes it was just me trying to find things that we all have in common even if we don’t realise it all the time.
Here are some of them from over the years… I was very sorry to stop writing them but it was a privilege to get to do them at all. Great thanks to my editors and especially the delightful readers who took the time to let me know what they thought.
Not love, actually, but gladness
The favourite cup and other animisms
Kindness at the end of the road
Where’s my fondue set? and tales of home contents insurance
Lights, cameras, inaction: not going to festivals
My eternal love for Michael Wood and history documentaries
Desperately seeking soul of Docklands
In the end, it’s only the beginning
Changing the world, one survey at a time
When words come back to haunt you
The plumped and plucked pretenders
Catastrophically captivated by my cat
Up the cliche clique without a paddle
Why my priorities are arts about
When knowledge is in the firing line
Strumming up the best years of my life
… That’s all that I have links for at the moment — unfortunately my column is available online only to Age subscribers unless one of them posts a link.