Art and Abart

They say in business that if you under-promise and over-deliver your clientele will keep coming back. I was reminded of this today when orde...

I don't live near a large shopping center so when my old Sunbeam coffee machine needed replacing I had to drive some way. I had done a b...

Today I made the best bread loaf ever. It was a surprise as the bread was an experiment. I had added the rest of my uneaten porridge to the...

Last weekend I was captivated by two very different musicians.  Simon O'Neill, the New Zealand tenor was one. He is one of those rare...

Interior with chair and hat I am taking an art class at the local art Centre, partly to connect with a few more members of the community...

Knitted wool jumper - old now, but warm I am not keen on the idea of electric blankets, that is, I not keen on the idea of lying on an ...

Riveting. That is the word for Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva's performance in Sydney last week. Not showy, not flamboyant, but so pe...

My neighbour ordered some bulbs and this evening she came over to offer me some. It is just the right time to plant bulbs and I am delighted...

Concert sketch: Leppänen, Selby and Valve Kathryn Selby is a fine pianist who chooses excellent musicians with whom to play. On Sunday ...

A glass of fire before the concert ....

  Nicole Car: songs of suffering If you sing songs of desperation and despair, and so many opera arias are, you look like this eve...

'I learned on my trip to Turkey last year the ability of the Turks to create joy through the appreciation of simple things, even in the ...

The Hamilton Gardens in Hamilton, NZ, are remarkable. I visited for the first time in 2014, but they have expanded in the four years since ...

Yesterday I visited Hobbiton near Matamata, a pretty town in the Waikato region of New Zealand. Hobbiton probably needs no introduction be...

The most tranquil of water will turn into a torrent if you force it through a narrow enough channel and so it is with placid Lake Taupo whic...

Trees in Taihape There are some magnificent native trees in the North Island of New Zealand, those that survive. Most were cut down last...

Dwarf from Lord of the Rings I am travelling with a hobbit obsessed travel partner so we are going from one hobbity thing to another. ...

The Cambridge Hotel is an upmarket backpackers/hotel in Wellington with a nice vibe, lots of wood and a lift like those you see in 1930s fil...

It is autumn and the spiders are building huge webs to try to catch their local human. They are succeeding.

It is the time of plums, those little freestone sugar-plums, with their purple, white sheened skin and yellow flesh. They are perfect for pl...