Taylor Swift and I inhabit two different worlds, but there was a momentary cross-over when she hit the headlines. No one could miss seeing what was interpreted as her fatphobia in a 2022 video that she had made to accompany her new song Anti-Hero. But there is another sort of fat-shaming that is both highly visible and – yet – so subtle that it stays totally under the public radar.

With all that we hear about dementia, even though only a minority of us will get it, it is – as Canadian doctor Mike Evans said (in The Globe and Mail in 2014) – very normal to be scared of losing your memory, and what that might imply. He has, therefore, provided some useful tips to differentiate what is normal forgetting, from what might be signs of dementia.

On 8 March 2023 Anne was honoured to be named Coogee’s Local Woman of the Year at the NSW Women of the Year Awards.

Recently, I was in a big suburban shopping centre. With a lot of people. And yet, to paraphrase Wordsworth, I wandered lonely in a crowd: the ONLY person wearing a mask.

Anne in conversation with Sue McGrath from the anti-ageism advocacy campaign Every Age Counts.

Recently, I heard the phrase “Stand up and speak out”. And I realised that that is exactly what I’m doing with my book, Engaging with Ageing: What matters as we grow older.

Anne was honoured to be mentioned in parliament on the 13th October 2022 by Dr Marjorie O'Neill MP in a Community Recognition Statement and was later presented with a framed copy of the Statement by Dr O'Neill.

Anne joined presenters Johanna Nicholson and Fauziah Ibrahim on Saturday 1st October for ABC News Weekend Breakfast to discuss the release of Engaging with Ageing: What Matters as we Grow Older.

How many people are – like me – taking for granted all the wondrous things going on inside our bodies to keep us doing all that we do on a daily, and nightly, basis? Unless…. unless something happens to shake us up. Like, for instance, atrial fibrillation.

True story: at our Cremorne Old Girls’ 80th birthday gathering, which I wrote about recently, we had fun sharing our thoughts on which three people we’d want at a dinner party. George Clooney was the man of the moment there, but when it came to my turn, I managed to resist him in favour of one of our old friends who was missing in action, Ronnie Kahn of OzHarvest – and whom, not being a monarchist, I proposed should be Australia’s first president.

I certainly wasn’t planning to follow my review of Elvis with another film review, but I’ve just seen Good luck to you, Leo Grande, and I do have to report that it is well worth seeing, in a much happier and very different way to Elvis.

Last Sunday I was at a celebration to mark the 80th birthdays of a bunch of us from the same school and Leaving Certificate year (1958). A lively, vigorous group with a lot to talk about, comparing notes about our active lives and having – as usual – loads of loud fun.

We were driving across the Harbour Bridge at the time, pleased that we were going to arrive early enough at our destination to have a leisurely cup of coffee, when our education about a serious flaw in our EV car began.

When you’re planning a holiday in an unfamiliar place, you’ll probably enjoy it more if you do a bit of research before arriving. That’s exactly how Dr Anne Ring has approached ageing. She’s a health sociologist and writer who, thankfully for us, has written the travel guide on old age. Engaging With Ageing will be available via her website.

Remember when SBS and then the ABC had film reviewers Margaret (Pomeranz) and David (Stratton) going at it hammer and tongs over their polar opposite views about a movie, and you had to decide which one of them was more you when it came to filmic preferences?

As these two photos show, wrangling a snake for the first time is momentous at any age, whether being helped by your big brother at five, or deciding at 80 that maybe it’s time to be a bit braver about a life-long fear of these legless reptiles.

For a recent edition of The Sydney Morning Herald, Dr Marlene Krasovitsky – the director of the EveryAGE Counts Campaign – wrote an incisive opinion piece about the “sheer power” which is invoked by the societal prejudice against old age that is inherent in ageist jokes. But joking aside, there’s another and more subtle but equally powerful source of ageism…

I fear that there are many of us who literally cannot bear to listen to the news about the horrors that are unfolding in Ukraine, while the protesting world looks on, largely helplessly, sanction-escalation notwithstanding, as the big bear of Russia galumphs destructively and murderously through a country whose population – like most of us – just wants to live in peace.

In my article on the benefits of a home gym, I mentioned the fact that I listen to podcasts as I exercise. What I didn’t reveal then is just how vital these podcasts are to my keeping on with my daily circuit, which otherwise could become pretty boring.

There are some people whose homes are filled with items that they love, inherited from their parents, collected in their own travels, interesting purchases, precious gifts. Just so much stuff.