This piece relates to what we chat about in Episode 4 of The Anxiety Shut-In Hour. Pop over and have a listen to our extended thoughts (and ranting). The Abbott government loves the idea of “having a go”, doesn’t it? Want to buy a house in
More than two million Australians tuned in to watch Billie McKay’s coronation as Masterchef Queen, after she pipped runner-up Georgia Barnes in a doozy of a final challenge. With Georgia leading by four points, we welcomed none other than Heston Blumenthal to the kitchen. The dish?
It's been a weird six months. What started as investigation into a flashing light in my left eye has devolved into a general decay of my body. I went to my doctor a couple of months ago because I had weird hot patches on my
This is a little bit I wrote this morning but have decided not to include in the novel, and instead to extrapolate into its own longer story. For five days we sent our bodies into the world without us. On the first day they sat in
When I was eleven I watched a brothel be raided. It was one of two brothels from my childhood. The first was a neighbour's duplex, a tiny carpeted place in which I babysat her children. She didn't fit my teenage view of sex work: she was
You may have seen this piece in today’s The Age, wherein we discover that, unsurprisingly, a large percentage of the population either doesn't understand what anxiety means, or actively denies its existence. Apparently, 50% of people think that anxiety is a personality trait. You're a
Late last week, I had something of an epiphany. Epiphanies for me are quite small. They are things like, “the supermarket is just like an indoors version of the outside, but with biscuits, which you love” and “you are probably not going to fly off
The only time I've been to Sunshine, I nearly bought a 1983 pea-green Commodore. I didn't even have my license, which is actually probably the best time to buy a pea-green Commodore, before you know what driving a car is supposed to feel like. My
Someone sent me this question on ask.fm: It's interesting that Amanda Palmer is the kind of person of whom people ask this question. There's a certain loadedness to it: you wouldn't say "what do you think about Nelson Mandela?" or "what do you think about people
Every year at about this time, I have this conversation with at least one person. ANNA: Happy New Year! PERSON: Oh, happy New Year! [pause] Oh no, I shouldn't have said that to you. I meant to say, try to have a happy year. ANNA: What? PERSON: You know, I hope it's not too
I read a bunch of books in 2014, most of them written by Australian women. Big ups to me. A lot of them were excellent. Most of them, probably. However, choosing five favourites from my pile was not difficult. There were clear standouts. Remarkable books that