Every reader of Fifty Five Plus will be familiar with habits developed over a lifetime. Sometimes the habits are so familiar, so ingrained that they no longer feel like habits at all. More like automatic, subconscious responses to everyday situations. Some of those automatic responses will be beneficial while others may be the source […]

  The Lady in the Van features Dame Maggie Smith as the incorrigible vagabond Miss Shepherd who parks her van outside playwright Alan Bennett’s London home and procedes to stay for another sixteen years. The irascible, fiercely independent Miss Shepherd is a role tailor-made for Maggie Smith who slips with consummate ease into a character […]

 Niki shares her love of tapestry with Fifty Five Plus.  Her work is inspirational and not at all what I envisage when the word tapestry comes into my mind.  A successful artist with many exhibitions both in Australia and overseas you can check her website and full compliment of works using the addresses listed below.  This […]

Fifty Five Plus is delighted to promote the 10th Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair.  Last year we had little forewarning of the dates for this exciting event.  However, with a lead time of 4 months there will be time to organise a trip to the Northern Territory and take in this extensive festival. The Aboriginal Art […]

Anzac is a word that more than any other stirs our thoughts of courage, of sacrifice, of compassion and comradeship, of a quality that in the whole history of human conflict has rarely been equaled. The awesome experience of the Anzac Campaign welded the fledging country of Australia, formed from a collection of Colonial States, […]

I have been a member of various book clubs over the last 50 years. These have been amazingly varied. My current club is very well run and although lots of fun it has serious guidelines on membership and reading material. It is the most satisfying of the different types I have been involved in. The […]

  My husband and I have always voted for the Labour Party, and were members. We consider ourselves to be socialists, believe in justice, equality and public services, and oppose greed, rampant consumerism, discrimination and poverty. We were active in our younger days but lost enthusiasm and energy over the years, partly because we lacked […]

Nothing reveals more about the human spirit than the resilience of individuals when subjected to a reign of terror and brutality. Nothing is more satisfying than to see those same individuals, using only their humanity for one another to defy the odds, reject the oppressors and rejoice in the core values of life. In essence, […]