My MS
by Ian Heydon

Well… I’m pretty much over the ‘look back at 2011’ montages on TV and online. Amid all the natural disasters and BIG global issues, this is the memory I will take with me.  If you haven’t seen it before, it’s about 90 seconds long, and is a video of 29-year-old Sloan Churman, who was born deaf, hearing [...]

Qantas: n. 1. Unnecessary and unearned bonus. Combo-contraction of the words ‘quantity’ and ‘ass’, stemming from the decision to grant CEO Alan Joyce a bonus of $600,000 yesterday.  2. An airline. Just. This takes his annual salary to around $5million per year.  Let’s say he works 52 weeks a year and they are 40-hour weeks, he [...]

Right then. I know I said ‘no resolutions’ but this diet has to happen. I need to shed around 8kg – that should make me feel generally better and give my widdle wegs less to carry around. I have my neuro and cardio specialist appointments on January 30, so I’m putting that as the deadline [...]

This could be the final post for the year and I thought I’d leave you with something quite beautiful. I mentioned Marc, the Wheelchair Kamikaze, in the previous post. Marc takes stunning photos when he is out and about and I’ll close with these three pics, taken recently in Marc’s New York…

No party planned… no NY resolutions… not gunna be a ‘January joiner’ (those folk who sign up to gyms with good intentions and fade away over a few weeks). Well, there’s one sort of resolution – and that is to focus on living more and more in the ‘now’… as Marc (the Wheelchair Kamikaze from [...]

Holding on to a Memory When did it become my normal way of being to watch others walk? How did I forget how easy it was for me to run down the street? How do I retain my fast fading memory of who I was then? Judy’s blog and BarefootReview, that has published Judy’s poems and [...]

In my ‘look back’ at the year (above, ’2011: Was It Really Necessary’), I mentioned  Kurmudgeon’s Korner. Currently, the Korner is having its first ever ‘recruitment drive’. There aren’t too many rules for members. You have to have MS. And a healthy hatred for the disease that probably goes without saying. You must also have a sense of [...]

As the tide goes out on 2011, I thought I’d jot down my thoughts on the year that was – for our family and the planet in general. Rather than take up a heap of space here, I have given it a page in the navigation above, under ‘2011: Was It Really Necessary?‘.

So many disturbing travel tales about Aussies in Asia. Why are Aussies so naïve or stupid that they do stuff overseas that they wouldn’t think of doing back home? Got the 14yo lad buying dope and the tourist getting HIV through an impulse tattoo. They seem to blame Bali for having strict drug laws and no [...]

Yes, it is that special day that sees the beginning of Australia’s three most torrid, aggressive and ‘in-your-face’ competitions – the MCC test match, Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race and the Boxing Day sales. I’ll be busy scribbling about ghosts, gravy, lost property and Chinese New Year so thought I’d make do with a wee seasonal joke… Two snowmen are [...]