Joe Bennett: Hungarian barman shares fears for future

I visited Budapest last in the 1980s when it was under communist rule.

Opinion: Endless tourist tours are our modern purgatory

Apparently elsewhere in Norway there’s a town called simply 'Hell'.

Opinion: Our minds work in mysterious ways

Opinion: Answers are needed when the head is full of questions.

Opinion: The poplar prophecy came true – 15 years later

Let the firewood snobs sneer at my poplar.

Joe Bennett: The power of one name

Opinion: Mononymous means having one name and one only.

Joe Bennett: Time dawdles when you're waiting

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

Opinion: Observing drama between two girls on the street

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

Opinion: Little Boo's big spirit beats Vatican dreams

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

Opinion: Abundant apple harvest turns into burden

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

Opinion: Crossing etiquette appears to have changed

The confusion at the crossing was clear.

Joe Bennett: Navigating the challenges of getting older

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

Opinion: Why do spiders trigger fear despite being harmless?

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

The planned power outage looms, and I dread it - Joe Bennett

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

Joe Bennett: My apples are worth every battle with nature

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

Joe Bennett: Navigating the taboo and intrigue of death’s inevitability

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

Opinion: The enduring charm of handwritten letters in a digital age

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

Joe Bennett: The memories that come during a simple shave

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

Joe Bennett: The simple black-and-white photo evokes powerful nostalgia

The photo is a sermon on the passage of time.

Joe Bennett: Rates rise as councils prioritise poetic pursuits

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

Spending a penny for the toilet door - Joe Bennett

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

Joe Bennett: The poetry of a shopping list

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

Joe Bennett: Cape Palliser’s wild beauty and the story of Colenso’s Deliverance Cove

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

Unpacking the myths behind Good King Wenceslas

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

Joe Bennett: How a chance meeting made a hash of a drug-smuggling friend's life

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

Joe Bennett: Birds and the human touch - a delicate dance of fear and desire

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

Joe Bennett My to-do list nightmare: The tasks that won't go away

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

Joe Bennett: The pub can be a sanctuary from wellness trends and a source of joy

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

Joe Bennett: A trip to the optometrist

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

Teaching writing in a digital age: The struggle is real - Joe Bennett

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

Clearing cricket of sexism: Join the mission - Joe Bennett

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

Joe Bennett: The only immortality worth striving for is creating that which outlives you

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

Joe Bennett: Confronting the fear of dogs and how to outwit a charging dog

OPINION: Joe Bennett recalls learning how to outwit a dog

Joe Bennett: ‘The Odyssey is a floating gated community. Its moat is all the world’s oceans’

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

Joe Bennett: Embracing life’s little moments of happiness

OPINION: Joe Bennett on the anatomy of a moment.

Haunted in the aisles: Joe Bennett’s 'scandalous' supermarket moment

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

Joe Bennett: Honesty and manners: A social lubricant that respects differences

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

Joe Bennett: The sportive spectacle of sweaty seniors' squash

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

Joe Bennett: Birds are the beasts we see the most and fear the least

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

Joe Bennett: The passage of time in our minds is all around us

OPINION: Memories - the rich window of the past.

Joe Bennett: Rooting for the underdog in an Olympic sport that “feigns death”

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

Joe Bennett: Thw world has glimpsed the future, and its called CrowdStrike

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

Joe Bennett: Despite the clamour of the internet and the universality of the cellphone, there remains a thirst for literature

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

‘One pleasure of being on holiday is watching others work’ - Joe Bennett

Joe Bennett on enjoying his time in Türkiye

Joe Bennett: From one side of the world to the other

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

Joe Bennett: There are those who enjoy shopping and those who do not

OPINION: Shopping is not for everyone

Joe Bennett: Collectors of a feather could flock together

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

Joe Bennett adds plantar fasciitis to his vocabulary

Opinion: Joe Bennett got plantar fasciitis after a squash game

Joe Bennett: I unscrew the cap and immediately I am back in a dressing shed before a rugby match

Opinion: Excuse me while I reminisce.

Joe Bennett: We need another name for our phones, here’s some suggestions

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

Joe Bennett: Possums are eating my apples

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

Joe Bennett: The fundamentals of writing a song

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

Joe Bennett: What Henry the seagull may be teaching us about our own delusions

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

Joe Bennett: Oldest man on the planet tells it like it is

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

Joe Bennett: Spotting the signs of suburban symbolism

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

Joe Bennett: Ovally displeased with the evolution of the word oval

OPINION: The word oval is an imprecise term.

Joe Bennett: Why the dishwasher has become the bane of my life

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

Joe Bennett: I haven’t got a bad back and it will soon get better

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

Joe Bennett: Toad in the hole makes the ordinary extraordinary

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

Joe Bennett: Technology is always changing and change is daunting

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

Joe Bennett: Time flies, and sometimes you can see it on the move

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

Joe Bennett: Instinctively we go to the beach when it is hot

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

Joe Bennett: Dogs, traffic jams and the lessons about life they teach us

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

Joe Bennett: My burning yet fruitless hatred for flies

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

Joe Bennett: Words do not belong in bed, they are for the daytime

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

Joe Bennett: Fishing for teeth an encouraging start to the new year

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

Joe Bennett: Can’t beat a good book

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

Joe Bennett: Here comes the... solar flare

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

Joe Bennett: Let’s hear it for the house sparrow

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

Joe Bennett: Stones still rolling with the ages - somehow

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

Joe Bennett: Butter can be a slippery slope, but a glorious slippery slope

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

Joe Bennett: We can leave our mark to fill the sudden blank death leaves

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

Joe Bennett: The poets' poignant reminders about death

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

Clothes hide a multitude of sins

OPINION: An old dinner jacket brings memories

Joe Bennett: From rugby to the gentrified streets of Havelock North

Joe Bennett's weekend in Havelock North.

Joe Bennett: Here we go, it’s bird-in-the-garage time

This time of the year there are young birds about.

What happened to Jessica Miranda?

Only one Chilean bowler took a wicket.

Joe Bennett: Challenging denim jeans' status as a symbol of Western freedom

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

Joe Bennett: Is our smokefree crusade just a vanity project?

'What a virtuous little nation we are.'

Joe Bennett: On the summit of victory after plumbing the depths

OPINION: Suddenly the grey and greasy chuckled all away.

Joe Bennett: This is the wild wonderful coast

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