Sunday Blog 232 – 3 May 2026 A trigger warning applies to this blog as I end it with a disclosure of sexual assault I survived more than two decades ago. Please take care when reading. It’s always illuminating to sup with the youngsters; Millennials, Gen Z’ers. At a recent dinner, the subject of the …
Author Archives: pipbrennan
Reflections on war
Sunday Blog 231 – 26th April 2026 November 11, Remembrance Day 2025. I’m at Perth airport on my way to Melbourne for a meeting. The incessant cacophony of plane announcements is interrupted just before 11am. A recorded voice breaks out with The Ode. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we …
On a Garner kick
Sunday Blog 230 – 12th April 2026 “Are you going to read all that?” the young waitress asked as she laid down my cappuccino in a mug in front of me with a flourish. And not a drop spilled. “That’s so impressive!” I caught her accolade deftly, but I was hurtling along on the crest …
Easter Cheer
Sunday Blog 229 – April 5, 2026 While still in Denmark for my writing break last week, someone or something I can no longer recall directed my attention to Rebecca Solnit’s latest book, The Beginning Comes After the End. Notes on a World of Change. The reviewer promised that it was a book of positivity …
Losing my voice
Sunday Blog 228 – 29th March 2026 I could be forgiven for thinking that Mercury retrograde had its claws in me. Only it finished a couple of days before I found myself on Monday in my very reliable car at my local shopping centre, everything packed for a self-guided writing retreat getaway. Well, almost everything. …
New Salt Path revelations…
Sunday Blog 227 – 22nd March 2026 When The Observer article first dropped in July 2025, questioning the truth of the memoir The Salt Path, I was riveted. The article is entitled ‘The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation.’ Let me summarise for you. The Salt Path author’s nom-de-plume is …
No longer the butt of Kitty Flanagan’s jokes
Sunday Blog 226 – 15th March 2026 As the youngest in my family, I am the only Gen-Xer in a sea of Boomers. I take some pride in that. After all, having suffered for all those years being the smallest, weakest and slowest, I am now basking in the smugness of being the youngest and …
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I saw “Wuthering Heights” and I liked it…
Sunday Blog 225 – 8th March 2026 [With apologies for the ear worm I’ve planted] Like many youngest children of large families, I read books when perhaps I was too young to fully comprehend them. Wuthering Heights was one such book. I can’t count the number of times I read it as a teen, stumbling …
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Art, death and all the things
Sunday Blog 224 – 1st March 2026 I’m in Hobart for a week – a few days’ work trip with several more of pleasure tacked on. To be in my 60th year and never having been to Tasmania before seems shameful, but I have a long list of places not yet visited. So now that …
Analogue writing
Sunday Blog 223 – 22 Feb 2026 This is my love note to handwriting. At some point in my school life, possibly in primary school, I developed a writer’s bump on my right hand. As someone who can be spatially challenged, I have by now an almost unconscious habit of touching my right hand to …