OPINION: "Because I am waiting I am finding it hard to concentrate."

'How quick we are to take such things in, to read physical cues.'

As with all small dogs, Little Boo doesn’t know he is small.

The obvious solution is to give them away, to feel the joys of generosity.

The confusion at the crossing was clear.

OPINION: 'Don't be 80,' my mother advised; she was 80 herself at the time.

Morning webs on the ranchslider often lead to frantic face-wiping.

It’s an odd feeling, knowing that the power is going to cut off in 45 minutes or so.

For the apple is the fundamental fruit, the fruit that’s in the supermarket all year round

In one sense it would be good to know your date of death.

Posting a letter today is compared to riding a penny-farthing.

OPINION: Once in Vancouver and once in Dubai I paid to be shaved.

The photo is a sermon on the passage of time.

The council hired a poet, adding his work to the latest rates demand.

There is a manly pleasure in striding into a door department and saying, ‘I want a door’.

From coffee to Hayfexo: Exploring humanity through a Tuesday shopping list.

Castlepoint's perilous beauty: A tale of explorers and dramatic coastal views.

After his death, Wenceslas was considered the model of what a good king should be.

OPINION: Chance leads to prison for Sammy, a former schoolmate turned hashish smuggler.

A chaffinch hesitates to eat, torn between fear and desire, as Joe Bennett watches.

OPINION: I've learned to live with my to-do list and its nagging reminder of incompletion.

OPINION: Order another round before health and safety meddlers take the pub.

OPINION: Shortly thereafter I ordered my first pair of prescription glasses.

OPINION: To teach a writing course today feels like a subversive act.

Long-time cricketer urges change, denouncing sexist language in cricket's rules and terms.

Joe Bennett reflects on life and the modern digital archiving of information

OPINION: Joe Bennett recalls learning how to outwit a dog

The Odyssey's customers are not passengers. They are residents. They live on board.

OPINION: Joe Bennett on the anatomy of a moment.

Opinion: There was fire behind her eyes. She wasn’t happy.

OPINION: We are all different, and manners respect difference.

With 137 years between them, Joe Bennett and his friend Fred play squash.

OPINION: Joe Bennett muses about birds after watching them springing about in a tree.

OPINION: Memories - the rich window of the past.

Joe Bennett on watching the final of the women’s 10-metre air rifle competition

OPINION: The recent global technical outage showed our dependence on electronic systems

OPINION: Last weekend Joe Bennett proposed The Best Bits of Shakespeare at an event.

Joe Bennett on enjoying his time in Türkiye

OPINION: After just 13 hours the detritus we had generated was impressive.

OPINION: Shopping is not for everyone

Opinion: I still don’t understand why the people in the auction room applauded.

Opinion: Joe Bennett got plantar fasciitis after a squash game

OPINION: Today’s mobile phone barely ever makes a phone call.

OPINION: It’s years since I ate a home-grown apple, because of the possums.

Opinion: Joe Bennett found four fundamentals to writing a song.

Why seek to please a gull that would cheerfully eat our eyes?

OPINION: John Tinniswood, of Stockport in England, is now the oldest man on Earth.

OPINION: At the age of 66, columnist Joe Bennett washed his car for the very first time.

OPINION: The word oval is an imprecise term.

The device is advertised, of course, as labour-saving, but how much labour does it save?

OPINION: And the plain fact of the matter is that I’ve got an excellent back.

I have loved toad in the hole for as long as I can remember.

Opinion: People feel powerless before it and threatened by it.

OPINION: Nothing new in any of this, of course.

Opinion: The sun and heat drive us to the beach.

Opinion: Dogs are better at seeing only the here and now.

They say a nice person wouldn’t hurt a fly. I am not a nice person.

OPINION: "We love to sleep. To deprive someone of sleep is a form of torture."

I would be invested only in the novelty of fishing for these items, and novelty wears off.

Robert Graves the man is less clear-cut than his poetry.

OPINION: I have just discovered there is such as thing as a solar cycle.

Perhaps the most famous sparrow of all is an imaginary one.

OPINION: If girls had come for the music they wouldn’t have drowned it out with screaming.

The modern day Puritans are desperate to interfere with our diets.

Opinion: An alumni magazine sparked within Joe Bennett a revelation about death.

OPINION: Listening to them would do us good. We would live better.

OPINION: An old dinner jacket brings memories

Joe Bennett's weekend in Havelock North.

This time of the year there are young birds about.

Only one Chilean bowler took a wicket.

Jeans blossomed by being emblematic of youth, glamour and American prosperity.

'What a virtuous little nation we are.'

OPINION: Suddenly the grey and greasy chuckled all away.

OPINION: It is a constant reminder of the earth’s massive forces, of our impermanence.

OPINION: The mangled grammar, the weird ‘take with’: where was this going?

There are probably as many personal injury lawyers in the US as there are burger joints.

OPINION: It is neither fancy nor difficult to make. But it turns my knees to jelly.