Another story about two degrees of separation — I was shocked when the queen died and surprised at my response. Even though I gave her six months after Prince Phillip died (old couples tend to expire within months of each other), she lasted another 17 months in pretty good shape right up to her sudden demise last week. …

It was fun, swimming naked and having my body painted — There were two notable times photographers took pictures of me naked in the early 70s. The first was in the summer of 1973 at the Great Ngaruawahia Music Festival, the first of its kind in New Zealand and modelled on Woodstock, which had been held on another farm on the…

If we don’t prepare for this, we’re in denial — There’s a tsunami of sex addiction coming — and the smart phone will be at the crest of it. It’s so easy to access porn on a smart phone that very young kids are doing it. What can start out as harmless fun — ‘Look! This is what adults do!’…

Quitting alcohol wasn’t as easy as I thought — Alcoholism is rife in my family. I come from a long line of big drinkers — my mother’s mother had a drinking problem and my father’s mother used to drink like a fish. …

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail — or why quitting alcohol is not as easy as it seems — If you think your drinking or other substance use is a problem, it’s probably time to quit. You’re sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, right? You know you’ve got a problem, but you just can’t stop. As an addictions therapist, I know it’s relatively easy to stop, but…

Downunder idiom is a funny thing, and why I love semantics — My love of the use of language got started very early on. The first language I learned was Hindi. I’m a sixth-generation European New Zealander, so it was a bit odd that the first words that I spoke were Indian. My mother was busy with my twin sisters, who were…

Reflections on a few of my favorite things that light up my life — I love being prompted to write because I’m not always moved to write something of my own volition. This is a bit of a turnaround for me; one of the main reasons I stopped being a news reporter was because back then I was increasingly being asked to write what…

A ginger male without a tail is missing in action and I’m feeling sad — My daughter’s 14-year-old cat died two days ago. He’d been miserable, and the end had been imminent for several days as he gradually went downhill and he was a shadow of his former self. They got him as a kitten and when he matured he embarked on a lifetime of…

Nothing really prepared me for getting old and I’m constantly amazed at what I’m learning — I must’ve been in my 50s when it occurred to me that time was speeding up somehow. The days had started to whizz by. When I was a kid time seemed to pass so slowly. The summer holidays would stretch on endlessly and I would look forward to getting back…