Pringles, the parched aerodynamic saddle chip ‘crack in a can’ brand, has just launched a new flavour range in New Zealand called Veggie Creations. Lacking any restorative or energy giving qualities of actual vegetables, this vegetable garden inspired line represents so much of what is wrong with the world today. Climate change, a cost-of-living crisis, and cheap factory-produced food that’s lab-designed to taste like fresh produce, in packaging that refuses to be recycled. Purported to be a “multisensory snacking sensation”, the Veggie Creations range of three includes purple sweet potato, o ..read more

White Lotus season two is better than ever With soaring inflation, daily news threatening the impending gloom of a worsening economy, a war in Europe and tech billionaires behaving monstrously, the rollout of Netflix's White Lotus season two struck with impeccable timing yet again. Creator Mike White delivers another intoxicating and hilarious portrayal of uber wealthy Americans on holiday at the eponymously named exclusive resort. Where season one looked at wealth and privilege, this year's show is themed around wealth, male desire and toxic masculinity. Once more, the show is a brilliant co ..read more

Like a surprise visit from a rainbow-coloured unicorn dancing upon a sun ray amidst a downpour, The Lonely Planet has voted Auckland the World’s Best City to Visit in 2022. That this same reputable publication also once recommended an unhygienic shack of a restaurant I made a special Tuk-Tuk trip to in South Goa, with pungent toilet smells wafting into the dusty dining area as “a must” for local seafood, can be forgiven, but selecting Auckland for this accolade is a stretch of creativity and test of humour I am not currently in the mood for. (Friggen Day 70 something of lockdown.) As someone ..read more

Do you know the scene in Fleabag (Season 2) where Phoebe Waller Bridge drunkenly delivers that brilliant speech in the confessional booth, to the hot priest about wanting someone to just tell her how to live her life? "I want someone to tell me what to wear. What to like. What to hate. What to rage about..." It's so confronting and raw and really resonated with me at the time. She then goes on to rip the priest's gown off in a very steamy immoral (almost) sex scene - which coincidentally is also totally what I would have done. Last July, I was deliberating on whether to sign up for my friend ..read more

Sydney Mardi Gras, what happens on float stays on float There are no men on Tinder, my friend lamented loudly to the table, staring into her fizzing Aperol Spritz. With her platinum blonde hair, sparkling green eyes, leggy stature, à la Charlize Theron at the Oscars, it's hard to imagine an online dating world where she isn't fighting off suitors, but then again, she does tend to have lofty Hollywood star tastes. It’s Sydney Eastern Suburbs, she explained. “Most of the men here are gay, so the dating pool for a hetero female hardly exists.” Another girl at the dinner chimed in, “I agree – it ..read more

This will be my last cat, my friend Libby declared. Her magnificent fluffy grey striped Turkish Angora cat with it’s exotic Egyptian Pharaoh eyes lay on his side like a bored muse in a fainting chair and blinked at us, before slinking over and draping his arms around my grateful shoulders and letting me carry him like a sleepy well fed baby. Around us, her enormous black Labrador puppy, emitting wet dog smells, had chewed off parts of the timber door frame, and was currently sitting outside creating a mess with some tree part, having recently been forgiven for watching her carefully plant row ..read more

Tyler: lover of surf, snow and tubs of margarine I was 27 and had just left my life in London behind to travel the globe in a clockwise direction, a tell-tale requirement of the discounted round-the-world plane ticket I was in hot possession of. These tickets were popular with the young, heedless, jobless, directionless and childless; I was all these lesses and more, in particular - penniless. At about the three-quarter mark of my great world tour, I had completely run out of money (‘savings’ would have been a gross exaggeration) but thankfully had made it as far as Edmonton, Canada, where my ..read more

This is totally what unsupervised free play looked like in our place during lockdown and there was definitely no day drinking or swearing taking place whatsoever Fresh out of the black hole of our teeny lockdown in NZ. 14 days this time, it’s nothing really. I’ve probably had bender weekends that lasted longer than that. (A particularly nefarious jaunt to Paris in my mid 20s springs to mind. The 12th arrondissement was never the same.) A mini-kin cease and desist, trifling in the global scheme of lockdowns. This time around, there wasn’t that edge of exhilaration in believing we were being in ..read more

I know what you're thinking, this posed pic MUST have been taken on the set of the greatest show on earth, ,The Bachelor. Nopeities, it's just a very cringeworthy photo from a millionty years ago, capturing a gorgeous sunset in Sydney but mostly our cutting-edge narcissism. I should add that ,none of my friends are actually polygamous (what a bunch of prudes). For a long time, before children, Tom and I co-existed happily without a TV. He was spared the blusterous intrusion of reality TV (bypassing the entire Kardashian Jenner time-space-gender continuum), and I was saved from the boredom of ..read more

The city was way too edgy and cultured for me to be able appreciate back then. Why would I visit a cafe when I could have an instant coffee mocha in a cereal bowl at home? Plays? Art galleries? Nah, I’mma watch reruns of Shortland Street on VHS in my unmade bed. I’m shocked to learn that the same bars and eateries which were around two decades ago are still here today. They look exactly the same both outside and in.  In Sydney, new stores will often be closed less than six months after opening, refitted to suit the latest lifestyle fad – the late night absinthe bar closes to make way for ..read more