Articles from the author

The other day I stood with my legs apart, holding a cricket bat over my head, waiting for a mouse to emerge from behind my car.

I love food festivals - those delightful happenings where people compete against each other, make exotic dishes (or simple dishes and give them exotic names), taste other people's wares and then win for themselves a trip for two to Switzerland.

For birthdays, anniversaries, and often for no reason at all, I tend to gift books. Nothing wrong with that except I often run into these same books later at second-hand book stores.

Around the middle of the 19th century, the rules of games were codified, and mass-participation sports like soccer, cricket, boxing, hockey and a host of others became popular.

Remember the good old days? You are just getting into your bath, wondering whether you should hum the first few bars of the Ninth Symphony or compose one of your own, when the telephone rings.

A recent study has shown (as recent studies tend to show) that too many of us take too many pills and capsules and tablets.

No one has done a survey, but I would guess that the most common verbs in the recent centuries would be 'work'‚ and 'love'.

Remember the movie Girl Interrupted? Winona Ryder plays a young girl on the wrong side of sanity. It is a marvellous performance, as she keeps alternating between hanging on and letting go.

It is too early to give up on mankind. No, there doesn't seem to be an immediate end to wars, but there is something else that is guaranteed to (in the mangled words of a colleague) warm the cockerel spaniels of your heart.

In the old days, newspapers had a few guys who could read without moving their lips (who were designated 'correspondents'), a couple who could talk without moving their lips ('managers'), and at least one who could sleep without moving his lips ('editor'). This happy state lasted till recently when newspapers realised (without moving their lips) that the modern reader wants more. Thus was born the following special correspondents.

In England, two years ago, to report cricket for Gulf News, I needed to pick up a mobile phone for the duration of my stay. The lady at the counter needed some identification. No, the passport was not good enough; the press badge didn't make any difference. What she wanted was 'proof of address' in Dubai. No, the credit card was not acceptable. My ears were beginning to turn blue, indication that an explosion was just around the corner.

New Zealand has given the world Ernst Rutherford, Edmund Hillary, Richard Hadlee, Katherine Mansfield, men and women of exceptional talent, courage and foresight.