Ian Dury, new wave singer of the 1970’s and 80’s, wrote a song called What a Waste, in which he regretted, amongst other missed roles, that he could have been the ticket man at Fulham Broadway Station. In the twelve years I used the District Line in London, I was never able to go through …
Stevie Nicks just turned 73. When I heard this on the news, I shouted it out to my husband in the sort of voice that would suggest a tree had fallen on the house. I know why this news shocked me. It’s because Stevie is supposed to be forever young. Except that she isn’t, and …
Over the course of a long meeting, I sat across from a man who kept repeating a favourite phrase that had me wincing with embarrassment for him. The phrase was: this is really a catch two situation. There was a part of me that felt bad for him and wondered if I should take him …
The Swedish have a word, Jantelagen, and It means that you should not boast about yourself or pretend to know more than you do. In Australia, we have a less attractive phrase for people who do this. We call them bullshit artists. About a decade ago, after a few days watching a freelance trainer mess …
My mother was so appalled by the first drive through take away we detoured into, that she insisted on getting out of the car at the ordering microphone and walking up to the startled young girl in the window to apologise. Look, I am so sorry, she said to the bewildered teenager, I feel …
My colleague Jay was telling me about a young woman who came to him for counselling. She was caught in a workplace nightmare in which her boss was an overt sleaze. He had made extremely aggressive moves toward her on work trips and she was in no doubt that her tenure would be short lived …
While sitting in a café with my colleague Mike, who had a quieter year in 2020, we kept our voices down to admit that 2020 had done us a few favours. It was not the train wreck for us that it had been for so many others. For that I am grateful. I think, said …
My son has been given the name of his Secret Santa person at work. If anyone is unfamiliar with this ritual, it means he must buy a Christmas present for that colleague. He is not unhappy and said that at least this year it was someone he knew. The office has kindly stipulated a limit …
I continue to have conversations after my post on Lost Words about using expressions from another era to bamboozle younger colleagues. Some contributors said they had been openly mocked for using phrases such as pyrrhic victory, litmus test and wanting to ‘send something across the ether’. Others drew quizzical looks for using the terms; Straw …
I have been spring cleaning, and may I say that it is hard to thin down old work papers using the Marie Kondo Method because I don’t have a lot of files that spark joy. Take, for example, the fat file on the increase in violence from customers, once gathered in the name of research. …