Roy Colbert

This is as fine a body of grumpy men as you could hope to meet

Grumpy Old Men was a successful and often entertaining television series a few years ago. It is also a medical condition and an anthropological phenomenon.

Installation of bedroom piano step towards realising bucket list

Installation of bedroom piano step towards realising bucket list

There are three phrases which most rational thinkers would agree have gone way past their use-by date - bucket list, elephant in the room, and Peter Dunne.

Black-haired Maria just an Aegean memory

The book was 20 cents. A tad mangled, but you get mangled with 20c books. Charisma by Orania Papazoglou.

Tenacious shopper gets his thing

Ratioanl thinkers have argued for many years as to the worst card that could ever be dealt to a human.

Buying your own gifts: stupid is as stupid does (times 10)

A tink-tonk xylophone. Photo by Roy Colbert.

Buying your own gifts: stupid is as stupid does (times 10)

The disadvantage in buying your own birthday presents is that if they are wrong, you look 10 times stupider than you look when buying incorrectly for someone else. You are, after all, meant to know yourself pretty well.

My advice comes with best credentials

Recommendation is one those simple pesky words you sometimes spell wrong. Like commission, acoustic, embarrassed and twelfth.

Key change: from piano hating to piano awaiting

Piano playing at its ragtime best. It seems incredible that after loathing pianos as a teenager, loathing them more than rice pudding, centipedes and the Otago Boys' High School cane, I am now searching hungrily for one. I grew up with pianos. My grandfather, a music teacher, organist and choirmaster, lived with us, and he had a Bechstein grand piano and a Schiedmayer upright.

Nothing better than when I catch up with Murphy

Murphy has really been dealing it out lately. Nothing I can't handle, but it's winter, and Murphy and his infuriating Law always gets stroppy when the cold closes in.

Rotten fate: Putrid Syndrome spells social ruin

Rotten fate: Putrid Syndrome spells social ruin

There are myriad unusual human conditions out there with strange and arresting names, none stranger than the aptly entitled Putrid Syndrome. I have this awful thing.

I might feel the cold but at least I'm not 65

Cambrian-St Bathans in the snow. Photo by Grahame Sydney.

I might feel the cold but at least I'm not 65

When we were young, we loved the cold.

Phobias abound and astound

The Butler contortionists (clockwise from bottom) Jola and Nele Siezen and Skye Brobery squeeze...

Phobias abound and astound

A ferocious discussion on phobias in an inner-city cafe last Thursday saw some arresting stuff brought to the table.

Life long attachment to tonsils

A John Noakes mural at Dunedin Hospital. Photo by ODT.

Life long attachment to tonsils

Minutes from a recent Otago District Health Board meeting have been furtively leaked my way, on the promise I keep all details under my hat. Such discretion goes without saying. Tight-lipped silence is my bond.

Getting to grips with the art of hugging

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (right) and former NBA basketball player Dennis Rodman hug in...

Getting to grips with the art of hugging

Ugging. Now there's a thing. I grew up in a non-hugging family and then trotted off to a single-sex school, boys, so I arrived at university as what behavioural anthropologists call, a Wuss, a Woefully Underhugged Social Simpleton.

Hey-watch-this telly as riveting as it is awful

Hey-watch-this telly as riveting as it is awful

I was chatting rationally to a close personal friend over the weekend as to how surprisingly fine X Factor NZ has been so far.

Taking steps after a soak in satire

When my wife informed me her school was doing a history tour of Vietnam these holidays, I guffawed like a man in a guffaw tunnel. Could I come too, I said, I love history, me. No, she said.

Fun in a redneck sort of way

A curious document fluttered on to my Facebook desk last week purporting to be a list of Redneck Medical Terms.

Never too late to stop being last on the block

Never too late to stop being last on the block

Home theatre 5.1-channel sound systems that make action movies swirl around your head like low-flying helicopters have been with us for quite a while now.

Just the thing to give a man a lift

After my last bout of surgery, where a team of skilled knife-men somehow managed to find an abdominal patch hitherto undug, the chief surgeon said I would be fine, just so long as I didn't lift anything.

Monroe dramatic turn hilarious

The old chestnuts are the best. Really? I don't know. Maybe old chestnuts conk better. Remember conking?

Diving into hi-tech rabbit-holes

Diving into hi-tech rabbit-holes

Aeons ago, I cannot possibly remember how many aeons, I went out to someone's house for an evening with computer enthusiasts. Computers had started appearing in shop windows, almost as if they might become The Next Thing. I was interested. I had just bought a Sinclair ZX81.

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Roy Colbert