Viviane Albertine released her autobiography under two titles - the first Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys and the second more succinct Clothes, Music, Boys which we will further abridge here to CMB. Reading CMB is an uneven experience - the book is separated into two ‘sides’ like any scrawled on punk cassette each side consists of short punk-style chapters. The first details her ascent as the lead guitarist of all-girl punk band The Slits, throughout which she is immature and self-absorbed, the second more interesting side in which Viv becomes introspective and involves her post-Slits battles with divorce, cancer and IVF.

Viv has earned the right to have her story told and now is the moment to tell it. For decades women excelled in silence while their male equivalents were lauded with honours in arenas from skateboarding to modern art. Now, in a slate...

Are we still in the golden age of television? Surely the mean quality has declined since the finales of those shows that heralded that term screened (The Wire and Sopranos), yet the gold itself still flows with competing streaming services willing to dispense vast amount of cash to commission series after series. Some are good but many aren’t. I suffer from an acute case of second-seasonitis - having been seduced by the initial vision which maintains its grip all the way to the first finale but then losing interest in the inevitable lull that marks the second season. Although there is still gold in them hills - Search Party can withstand its second season and have me coming back for more.

I suspect it was the writers themselves that were suffering from second-seasonitis. That they came to their production company with a tightly written (and plotted) first season but never planned a...

Today a new US President will be sworn in and the eyes of the world will watch power shift Westward. Of course it will not shift back to pre-Trump levels, if this is even possible. What it will mean for Australia though is that overnight the cluster of countries willing to delay or deny action on climate change will seem much much leaner.

Biden has promised action on climate change, pledging money in the trillions. And while the next four years will see an escalation of friction between China and the US, the one thing they appear to agree on is that without a climate plan - whichever victories are reached in the ongoing trade, diplomacy and territory wars will be pyrrhic.

Consider then Australia’s international position - a country that has gone all-in on coal exports. As of today fifty-five percent of its exports going to trading partners that have since vowed to decarbonise (or...

When the Sydney Christmas COVID outbreak struck the NSW-VIC border was closed for the second time in both a hundred years and a few months. My plans to spend summer down NSW’s south coast beachside with friends was shot. Again I was confined to Victoria without the winter, the work and sense of delayed gratification to justify it. If any gratification was going to happen, it was now. Usually on a nice day in Melbourne I will go for a long walk, listen to an audiobook but I had become bored with every house in the neighbourhood in a five kilometre radius I needed to break out of this ring. It was with this impulse I began to go for long bicycle rides.

Melbourne is unique amongst Australian cities in that it’s possible to both use a bike as a form of transport and have somewhere large enough to be worth exploring. There are bicycle paths in Sydney but nobody except the steel nerved and...

Last week I was lucky enough to interview Professor Glenn Albrecht, the former Professor of Sustainability at Murdoch University, who became (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31ecopsych-t.html)[world famous] for coining the word solastalgia - the despair that one feels when their home place has been destroyed or irrevocably changed. Towards the end of the interview Professor Albrecht mentioned that grief was not a legitimate response to climate change because the climate had not died and framing it so devalued the grief that felt at great loss or someone’s death.

This was followed up later in the week by a (https://glennaalbrecht.com/2020/08/26/covid-grief-climate-grief/)[blog post] on the same subject.

Valid and real grief is certainly the tenor of the times as Professor Albrecht states:

In many countries, during the worst of the pandemic, victims of Covid-19 have been...

They say having a kid gives you a new perspective and they’re right. I began to see things much more clearly since the birth of my first child - Jeremiah. Mine was not a flash when I first held Jez in that hospital flannel but a slow dawning throughout that first year from so many late nights spent cotside. I wanted to be the responsible partner and let Sam sleep. Society heaps expectations on the mother. I wasn’t working so it wasn’t like I had morning looming up with its demands and calculations. We were living with Sam’s mum, Debra, so there was no rent to pay and I could just be a dad. Plus, it was peaceful in the guest room, just before first light - the distant honk of a car, the ding of the first tram grinding down the tracks.

I had listened to an audiobook about micro-habits. You can become the person you want to be - one small habit at a time. I figured that while watching Jez...

After two years I am single again. This time in Melbourne at the crest of the second COVID wave. My status has been downgraded from boyfriend to housemate. I am moving into the back room.

Our relationship lasted on-and-off for over a decade, with the final year being in couple’s therapy. Living with the legacy of relationship norms established in our mid-twenties (read: fun and drugs), it was only in this final stretch we learned to communicate, and through that communication, that we were not suitable life partners. There were simply too many irreconcilable differences between our characters. We could have doubled down, had children and ended up bitter and resentful but we called it. I have no bitterness but confidence that this is the right choice.

In our final session the therapist chalked it up as a victory - leaving for the right reasons was superior to staying together for the...

I was halfway through leading a meeting yesterday when I received the call. It was my sister Edwina. Her twin sister Philippa was 39 weeks pregnant. We had taken bets to see when she would “pop”. I had picked June 4 in two days time, firmly in the middle of the spread. My buzzing phone stopped, exhausted it attempt to get my attention. I continued through the list of requirements on video chat. Then a message appeared on my screen “It’s URGENT!” I made a note to call back. Then another two in quick succession “Phil’s at the hospital. Bub wasn’t moving. They can’t find a heart beat” then “Phil’s Bub passed away”. In that instant: shock - when the normal folds back and in it’s place is a vibrating void.

I told the others in the meeting that something was wrong with my sister and I had to cut it short. I was not frenzied but my mind had gone very quiet. I phoned Edwina. She was composed...

Right now I am typing as a Melbourne winter is closing in. Raindrops hang from the leaves outside my window. I cannot imagine a moment when the sun will shine again. The sound of the 7 am bus roars past outside - the whoosh of tires on a wet road. I am happy within this moment of tranquillity.

One of the [top five regrets of the dying](theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying)(number five to be exact) is I wish I let myself be happier. Baked within it is the proposition that people on their deathbed realise it is not something outside blocking personal happiness - but something within. You have control over what is within and, so, happiness is an act of personal grace away. You must let yourself become that way. Of course, it’s not as easy as all that.

I can feel this when I am meditating or afterwards. I am naturally a very anxious and socially difficult...

It was at Lord Robert’s Hotel in Sydney that I discovered this crucial piece of information. I was standing at the top bar ordering a round of drinks when a woman came up and asked another bartender to turn down the airconditioning please. It was too cold. My friend had accompanied me to help carry the drinks back agreed that the woman had acted in such an entitled way. The pub was quite full - this being a Saturday afternoon - and this woman decided that temperature should be calibrated for her own personal comfort.

The room was not particularly cold for me - I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, although I had been living in colder Melbourne so my blood had thickened as the Hungarians say. Yet it struck me that there was no ideal temperature for everyone.

The conversation continued until we got outside and I placed the drinks in front of friends, including the girlfriend of the friend...