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 …
Author Archives: pipbrennan
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, …
Sh*t happens
Sunday Blog 40 – 12th June 2022 “I don’t believe things happen for a reason, I just believe life is actually the randomness we see around us.” Maya Shankar, Episode 17. Riz Ahmed Plays Himself, at the 17:25 minute mark It’s been a week of rich listening on various podcasts, including a favourite, A Little …
Seven Year Cycles…
Holiday Monday Blog – 6th June 2022 While I have some regrets about this, I did not send my daughter to Steiner School. She comforts me by reminding me she wouldn’t have met her partner if she hadn’t gone to the school she did, so I think I have let that go now. But still, …
Snagged on the to-do list…
Sunday Blog 38 – 29th May 2022 It’s a Saturday morning, after yoga and we’re having coffee. I haven’t been for a while so some of my fellow yogis ask me how it’s been going since I left work, almost exactly two months ago now. I reel off the things I’ve been doing – making …