Sunday Blog 50 – 21st August 2022 The month was November, the year 1997, and in Thessaloniki, Greece’s biggest city where I lived at the time, it was already getting bleak and cold. Many people find it hard to picture a cold Greece but believe me it was – and November was the beginning of …
Author Archives: pipbrennan
Wherever you go, there you are
Sunday Blog 49 – 14th August 2022 “I thought it was the job, but it’s just me.” I met a dear friend for coffee on this crazy full moon Friday. It was not me who said this, but it very well could have been. I had to say “me too, me too”. We both solemnly …
Diet plans are not lost weight…
Sunday Blog 48 – Sunday 7th August 2022 Trigger Warning: This post begins with mention of sexual assault – please take care when reading. I remember my very first time giving my all as a citizen to an Inquiry in my home state of Western Australia. It was the Inquiry into the Prosecution of Assaults …
The idea of home…
Sunday Blog 47 – 31st July 2022 It’s Sunday morning in a Wheatbelt town and we’re closing out a Song Writing Retreat with a voice lesson in the church next to the Quindanning Hotel. The acoustics are amazing. We are doing vocal warm-ups, just singing sounds but no words. The magic that comes from voices …
Freedom of speech?
Sunday Blog 46 – 24th July 2022 My latest podcast rabbit hole is Jon Ronson’s BBC Sounds Podcast Things Fell Apart. It looks at sliding door moments in the recent history of our culture wars. Each episode is compelling, but I got particularly stuck on Episode 5, A Scottish Jewish Joke, set in 1988 when …
Age should not weary us…
Sunday Blog 45 – 17th July 2022 I found myself thinking recently – do I need an interview outfit? Then I thought that no, I was past it and I was Past It. There are no interviews I want to subject myself to, no jobs I want to obtain. It is both Miserable to be …
Second Opinions
Sunday Blog 44 – 10th July 2022 The quote above is from book I have been obsessed with for some months now. The book is called Hippocrasy – How Doctors Are Betraying Their Oath and is written by two doctors – Rachelle Buchbinder (a rheumatologist and epidemiologist) and Ian Harris (an orthopaedic surgeon). It’s the …
The Patient Centred Myth
Sunday Blog 43 – 3rd July 2022 When I first started my Sunday Blog 43 weeks ago – back in the dim distant land of August 2021 before I had taken the radical decision to leave the Health Consumers’ Council – I had on top of my list of “blog topics to write” about the …
Twenty-Seven
Sunday Blog 42 – 26th June 2022 Inside, I feel 27. No matter that I am that plus 30 years. There was something about being 27 – I felt like I knew who I was, and starting to kick some ass in life. Perhaps because my birthday is on the 27th I resonate with that …
A bit too culty…
Sunday Blog 41 – 19th June 2022 In 1979 when I was just 14, life became a little interesting in my staunchly Catholic, very suburban household when my eldest (kind, thoughtful, smart, gentle and idealistic) sister joined the Orange People. At the time they wore orange clothes (hence the name) and followed Bhagwhan Shree Rajneesh, …