When I told my mate Orville the beer tasted like pyrethrum, he stopped mid-sip and looked at me in the careful way people do when they’re deciding whether to ask a follow-up. “How do you know what pyrethrum tastes like?” he said. I said this was a misunderstanding of the senses. Smell, I explained, is… Continue reading An acquired taste

Having mentioned Tim Tams in my last post, I find myself morally obliged to deal with them properly. You can’t just drop Tim Tams into a piece and walk away. That’s like mentioning the pub and not shouting a round. The Tim Tam was introduced in 1964 by Arnott’s, inspired by a British biscuit called… Continue reading A Brief, Necessary History of the Tim Tam (And the Correct Way to Eat One)

Writers spend a lot of time worrying about the wrong things. Font choice. Notebook brands. Whether drinking coffee after noon is a moral failure. Nutrition occasionally wanders into the discussion. Fruit, we are told, is good for us. Sensible. Clean. Full of vitamins and virtue. But if fruit is going to earn a place on… Continue reading Food for thought

My poor deluded friend Orville is sad. He knows now that he will never ride to the top of Mont Blanc. I keep telling him it’s academic, but that word has never brought comfort to a man in active mourning. The realisation came after Orville took possession of an electric wheelchair and he read the… Continue reading Retch for the sky

Journalism is a fine apprenticeship for fiction, provided you’re willing to unlearn large parts of it later. Top of the hit list is the inverted pyramid. I don’t remember being formally taught this template for writing newspaper stories. I suspect it was simply knocked into me. My first news editor was a crusty old bloke… Continue reading What Journalism Taught Me About Fiction (And What It Didn’t)