Dominic Knight

Nothing makes me feel like more of an idiot than a conversation with a sommelier. In my work I sometimes get to chat with astronomers, and even when they talk about things like dark matter and the expanding universe, I feel more in my element than when someone is patronisingly guiding me through a wine list.

You’ve no doubt spoken to one if you’ve ever visited a restaurant that’s either genuinely fancy or has tickets on itself – sommeliers are those waiters who’ve done some kind of TAFE course in wine who turn up to your table and make you feel inadequate.

Their job has no English word – the wine-snob industry prefers just to use the French term, which I would argue speaks volumes about their profession. Continue Reading →

Everyone who plays or follows competitive sport, on any level, needs to take a step back. Take a deep breath. Every single one of you. Because you’ve taken things too far. In fact, you’re ruining it.

Sport has jumped the shark. And players have vaulted further over it than any human rightfully should, fuelled by peptides, human growth hormone and an approach that says that you’re a mug if you don’t do anything that’s not expressly prohibited by the rules, no matter how unethical it may be.

In an attempt to get an edge, clubs have been re-enacting the 1980s movie Weird Science, giving their players “supplements”, and if not breaking the rules, then certainly flirting with danger – much as the two geeks do in Weird Science. Continue Reading →

A confession: I’m one of those people who frowns when they see bad parenting. Or at least what I consider bad parenting, from my relatively ignorant perspective of not being a parent at all.

And I’ll go even further than frowning – at times, I’ve even been known to tsk.

Whenever I’m in a shop and I see a child throwing a tantrum in what seems a cynical strategy to get the latest toy, I will shake my head, with what I hope, but cannot guarantee, is sufficient subtlety that the exasperated parent won’t notice my self-righteous disapproval, and think to myself how much firmer I’d be in the same situation.

The child might cry, or beat the linoleum floor with its fists, or even say “I hate you, daddy,” but I would remain as unmoving as one of Clive Palmer’s imitation dinosaurs.

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Yesterday, I got home after a long day at work and read a book in the bath. It was Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, which turned out to be fairly harrowing, dealing as it does with the harrowing impact of the bombing of Dresden in World War II. But then again, it has plunger-shaped aliens from the planet Tralfamadore in it, so that’s something.

It was a wonderful read, and kept me in the water long after my skin had turned wrinkly. And it occurred to me that there’s simply no way to enjoy the great pleasure of bath-reading with a tablet, unless you’re rich enough to have a few dozen of them on hand. It’s best done with a paperback, one that you don’t mind getting slightly damp just in case you can’t quite manage to keep one hand dry. (Keep a towel within reach is my tip.) Continue Reading →

My family and friends divide neatly into the dog-mad and the dog-skeptical. I have always been very much in the latter camp, considering hounds rather like permanently unruly children – they’re well-meaning and friendly, but they simply can’t control themselves.

They jump all over me, they run around indoors and frequently knock things over, and they drool everywhere. Especially, it seems, on my pants.

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Don’t it always seem to go, Joni Mitchell once sang, that you don’t know what you got til it’s gone? That lyric works in abstract terms as a reminder to enjoy the moment and be grateful for the good things we have in life. But when thieves ransacked my workspace this week, I can affirm that I knew precisely what I had well before it went, and could consequently itemise precisely what had gone for the police report.

In the rich smorgasbord of human existence, the feeling of being robbed is definitely the offal course. Walking into a familiar space and noticing that some of your things are no longer in their usual place is a wrench in the guts that turns into weary resignation as you trudge around the space trying to figure out what was taken, while you’re glued to the phone breaking the bad news to everyone.

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I love elections. Well, I usually love elections.

But this particular election – well, I’m not about to rip out my eyeballs and stuff them into my ears so that I can’t see or hear another moment of it. That would be foolish, and besides, when I was in hospital recovering, there’d be a TV in the ward, and even if I couldn’t hear or see it anymore, I could smell the election coverage.

Since this election campaign’s been going for either three or a bazillion years, depending on your perspective, I’m going to assume you’ve figured out who you’re voting for and just want the blasted thing to be over. So I’ve come up with ten ways to tune out of Election 2013. Continue Reading →

I recently wrote a piece about six annoying things new parents do, and offered some advice on how to avoid them. The majority of comments said something like “you don’t realise how hard it is”, “Yeah, well, non-parents are really annoying too, so there!”, or “suck it up, princess”. (In reply, Essential Baby published a piece titled ‘New parents need empathy, not telling off‘ – Ed) 

But it’s important to be balanced, especially during election season, so I thought this week I’d list six things that are wonderful about new parents. Give yourselves a slap on the back, guys! If you can somehow muster enough energy to even lift an arm, that is. Continue Reading →

So, you’ve got young kids. Congratulations!

But everyone around you already knows that you do. They can see it in your dazed, exhausted eyes, and hear it in the artificially optimistic tone you adopt when talking about how wonderful parenthood is.

You probably assume that all your single friends are happy for you, and maybe a little jealous. On one level, they probably are. But on another level – and I hate to break it to you – they find you approximately as annoying as a Billy Ray Cyrus CD. That’s scratched, and skips. Continue Reading →

I have a new Australian sporting hero. It’s been a long time since Steve Waugh’s retirement, but finally, the former cricket captain’s steely-eyed place in my heart has been filled. When I grow up, I want to be Feliks Zemdegs, even though at 17, he’s 19 years younger than me.

On Sunday, Feliks won a gold medal – yes, gold, a colour largely unknown to, say, Aussie swimmers in recent years – at the World Rubik’s Cube Championship in Las Vegas. He solved the cube that was a feature of just about every birthday party during the 1980s in a mere 7.36 seconds. Go and watch the video, it’s awesome. And it’s not like it’ll take up much of your time. Continue Reading →