31st May

2012 (aged 45)
Evie panicking about her birthday party. 'What if no one can come? What if everything goes wrong?' Mikey and I tried to reassure her, but honestly, with us as parents, what hope has she got?
1998 (aged 31)
Glasgow. Walked into town and saw 'Sliding Doors.' C studied for her vivas.
1996 (aged 29)
C & B having coffee; each blathering about her own problems and not listening to the other; periodically B pats C's hand and says, 'Darling, you're so beautiful' to disguise the fact that she hasn't heard a word C has said for the last five minutes.
B: (talking about K & L) It's so hard having two people in love with you...
C: (as a single and alone person) It'd be nice to have just one person in love with you... (meaning, even one)
B: (deep sigh) Yes! (meaning, yes, having 2 is so difficult & not seeing C's point at all...)
1991 (aged 24)
Second last day at work. I've been there three years and only the phone sales people know what I'm really like - cynical, swearing, running around, making sarcastic witty remarks, being emphatic. To everyone else I'm a little meek person, too shy to speak.
1986 (aged 19)
Ginned around. C rang, bored witless so asked her up for tea and the night. Experimented with liqueurs, played with the computer (ie drew pictures of The Man). Talked in bed until 1 am (mostly about The Man).
1985 (aged 18)
Last day before winter - drab and drizzling. Worked a bit in Nana's room, sat and brooded. Nana came to stay. Depressed over T moving out of college - how will I survive without the Threesome brightening up the place?
1981 (aged 14)
Tomorrow will be winter. Rehearsed by staying in bed all day.
1978 (aged 11)
We wrote things about feelings. I did loneliness. I think I got the feeling. We had Art. Mummy brought us to the library and I borrowed three books. I read them and watched T.V. Weather: chilly.
1977 (aged 10)
Scripture was fun. The news said it was the coldest day in 80 years! And it snowed quite near here! I wish it would snow here. Tomorrow's my PLC interview. I miss Eva, and maybe I won't ever see her again. Weather: FREEZING
1976 (aged 9)
I was sick in the morning and came in late. It really POURED. Went to the Public and School Library. Zarah came, for five minutes.

Mouse Tales

I opened the door of the rubbish bin cupboard yesterday and received a nasty surprise: a mouse looking up at me.

Actually it wasn't a total surprise; I'd heard suspicious rattlings and rustlings from the kitchen that morning and tried to ignore them. I knew we had a rodent living inside the wall, but I didn't want to face the possibility that it had breached the barricades and entered the inner sanctum. Luckily Michael was home. He deftly caught the offender in a fishing net and carried it far, far away, then nailed up the hole in the back of the cupboard through which Mousey had entered.

I have a horror of mice, born of too many years of living in old, rundown share houses -- shared with more mice than people. In one house, the mice were so bold that we could sit on the couch and pelt them with oranges, and they would barely bother to look up. When I woke up to find mouse poo under my pillow, I moved out until we got traps and blocked up the gap under the stairs with steel wool. This was a tricky one because we were all vegetarians and, theoretically, animal-lovers. But I just can't love mice. I am unmoved by their so-called cuteness. They give me the creeps.

The only other time a mouse has managed to get into our current house, it fled behind the couch and then made a dash under the heater, which it no doubt hoped would be safe territory. Unfortunately the heater was on, it ran straight into a live wire and expired with a dramatic puff of smoke and an explosion of dust.

Another time, in Collingwood, I came home to discover a rat in the bathroom. No one else was home, so I blocked every doorway between the bathroom and my bedroom with towels and spent a sleepless night imagining it gnawing its way toward me. Luckily, when I ventured to open the door in the morning, it was dead on the bathmat. Hooray!

When it comes to mice, I am the traditional screaming female on the chair. I can't help it. My brave strong husband has to rescue me. BUT if it's a big hairy spider - then it will be the man of the house running away shrieking like a girl, and I will be the one trapping it under the glass and releasing it outside.

So what would you rather deal with -- a mouse or a spider?

A Night in the Country

Next week I will be on the road! I'll be visiting the Wimmera for a couple of days.

If you're in St Arnaud, drop by the library at 1.30pm on Tuesday 22nd May and say hello. Or if you happen to be in Horsham, and you're free in the evening, say around 7.30, you might like to swing by the Horsham library and have a chat.

My other sessions will be for schools, but I'm pretty sure those two are open for general punters.

See you there!

So I Went To The Library...

And I saw this on the shelf.

My first mistake was to pick it up and take it home.
My second mistake was to start reading...

...because I COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN!

Cooking dinner? Running baths? Supervising homework? Pah! Writing my own book? Trying to sort out an email fiasco? Who cares! Sleeping?? Forget it!!

I loved 'Brief History of Montmaray.' I adored 'FitzOsbornes in Exile.' But this third volume of Michelle Cooper's Montmaray Journals was the best of all.

Serious warning: I cried. A lot. Not always from happiness. But it's worth it, oh, it's worth it!

The Thrill of the Hunt

Earlier this year, I wrote a guest post on Michael Pryor's blog about one of my favourite books, Peter's Room by Antonia Forest. I mentioned the thrill of finding this rare book on the shelf of a Spanish restaurant in Collingwood, and actually being able to buy it for three dollars.

There is something very special about hunting down your favourite books -- not on eBay or Amazon, but out in the real world of second hand book shops and op shops. For years I dedicated myself to tracking down every book Iris Murdoch had ever written, which was no mean feat, as she wrote twenty-six novels in her long career. (The only one I'm missing is The Italian Girl, which I lent to someone years ago and never saw again.)

I found most of the Green Knowe books second hand; last year I picked up a volume of Joan Aiken short stories I had been searching for ever since I left Mt Hagen. But Antonia Forest is the toughest challenge. Most of her books have been out of print for years and are hideously difficult to find, even on the internet, where they regularly fetch prices of a hundred pounds or more.

Alas, I've only managed to acquire a few of her books. I found End Of Term in a charity shop in Oban, Scotland, in the 1990s. Peter's Room, as I said, surfaced miraculously in a Collingwood cafe a couple of years later. I succumbed and bought Autumn Term in a reprint edition and also The Ready Made Family, which I had never even read, for an exorbitant price online.

And then, just last weekend, I was browsing in a tiny second hand bookshop in Bacchus Marsh when I saw the magic words: Attic Term, Antonia Forest. I thought I was hallucinating. I clutched the book to my breast, scanning the bare two shelves of teenage books for any more, but that was it. Two dollars, people. Two dollars!

I've been exalting ever since. Now if only I could find Cricket Term...

3rd May

2012 (aged 45)
Evie is home sick - her first sick day ever. She's lying on the couch watching a movie and looking at old photos of me which I dug out for her. 'Are you going to blog about me being home sick?' 'No, of course not...!'
2004 (aged 37)
Alice (2): Let's make a boat! (How will we do that?) Out of cucumbers!
2002 (aged 35)
4am Alice crying; Mikey goes to pat her back to sleep; 'Patting doesn't work,' he announces, and dumps her in our bed
2001 (aged 34)
Heard her little heart racing away. She is kicking and wriggling around all the time, quite violently now. It'll be funny if she does turn out to be Charlie after all -- we have bags of nana presents which are all pink and covered in flowers.
My darling Mikey asked me to marry him... His mum said, 'Der!'
1996 (aged 29)
YES Taylor can be the Jordy character (can I do this without utterly destroying our friendship?)
the link is that he is doing in a more accomplished fashion what Ally does - hesitate on the edge of really connecting with other people  (a tricky line to walk) AFFECTION
1993 (aged 26)
Like a spoonful of sugar slowly slowly lowered into a cup of coffee I was slowly dissolving  where he touched me
1991 (aged 24)
Saw the most divinely beautiful boy on the Brunswick St tram last night, couldn't stop staring. He stared back a bit which was gratifying.
1990 (aged 23)
A quarter to two, feeling unreasonably pleased with myself because of seeing G &S in the Evelyn and having long incoherent chatty chats and G walking me home. Far too many beers and will be sorry in the morning but I don't care. Talk about resurrecting the past...Had a really good time and REEK of smoke.
1986 (aged 19)
Love life non existent... Scandal on Wednesday night: the fiance of the girl RW has been sleeping with came banging on his door; PF called the police but no one got carted away -- the three of them stood arguing in the gutter while the entire population of college leaned out of Eggroll's window with binoculars.
1985 (aged 18)
Saw T at lunch, listened and gazed but no communication. R & M kept bloody talking to me while I wanted to absorb... Heaps of people going to Vet Ball. T dressed as Malice ie Alice plus stud leather bracelet. Never seen him look more unutterably divine. Absolute agonies!!
1981 (aged 14)
Finally got sneezes done. Spilled pepper at lunch and inhaled it. Took about two minutes, then sneezed twice abruptly. Can't understand how people took snuff. Then Fiona B rang up and put me right off schedule. Just watched "Testament of Youth" which is really excellent and leaves Mum in floods of tears every Sunday.
1978 (aged 11)
We finished "The Hobbit" and it was sad. I'm the emergency in Newcombe. Everyone's trying to teach me. We're voting to see what to name the new car. I think "Veronica."
1977 (aged 10)
Something's happened that's so rude I can hardly tell you. Martin L wrote f*** on a desk. Tracy was away. Rotten long division. I had homework. Daddy should almost be down [from PNG] Weather: Warm.
1976 (aged 9)
Went to Lisette's. Played in their swimming pool. It was good. Got a letter from Rowena.

Slow Reading

I am a fast reader. I gobble my books down like a handful of popcorn, barely bothering to chew. Observant readers of this blog may have noticed the rapid movement of titles in my "What I'm Reading" list. For me, reading is a reflex, an addiction. My automatic response to an empty moment is to reach for a book, and race my way through it at top speed.

This means that I consume a lot of books (good). But it also means that I don't absorb what I read (bad). A couple of weeks after I've finished a book, I struggle to remember exactly what happened. And this weekend I realised that sometimes I struggle to recognise what's happening even while I'm still reading!

You see, this weekend I went to yoga camp (good). I only brought one book with me (bad). By the second evening I had only one chapter to go. Cue panic!

I finished the book. It was William Golding's The Inheritors, his novel about a group of Neanderthals and their first encounter with homo sapiens. The Neanderthal protagonist doesn't understand a lot of what he observes - to him, the homo sapiens' boats are logs, their bows and arrows are bent sticks and twigs. Most of their actions are incomprehensible to Lok, who watches dumbly, confused and frightened.

After I finished the book, I dimly realised that something Very Bad must have happened. But I couldn't quite remember it happening. I had to go back and reread the last few chapters to pinpoint the exact moment of the Bad Thing. And sure enough, I found it. But like Lok, the first time round, I hadn't understood what I was seeing.

Lok had some excuse: he is a Neanderthal. But I was just reading too fast. If I hadn't been at yoga camp, I might not have taken the time to reread; I might have just moved on to the next book.

Perhaps this is the true lesson of yoga camp: slow down. Be mindful. Pay attention. Take the time to digest what you're reading, and be nourished by it.

Om...

Bluffers Guide To the Western Bulldogs Part 3

Yay! The boys had a win this weekend. Enjoy it while it lasts because we probably won't be hearing 'Sons of the West' very often this year.

Here are a few players that every Bulldog bluffer needs to know - arguably four of them are actually our best players, though they're not my own personal favourites. But we would be a lot worse off without them...

5 Bulldogs You Should Know

Matthew Boyd (5)

He's tough. He's our captain. He gets hold of the ball a LOT - which makes him a great Dream Team/Supercoach pick. Also he came third in the Brownlow last year, so he is obviously very good. But sometimes (very quietly) even though he gets the ball a LOT, he doesn't always do great things once he's got it... sometimes he tends to give it to the opposition... but he is still very good. Very good indeed. Ahem!


Brian Lake (36)

Ah, Bri-Bri. When he's good, he's very very good -- one of the best, if not THE best, defender in the game. Has an uncanny ability to read the play and position himself under the ball. Had a terrible year last year, trying to recover from three major operations, and his body just wasn't up to it. Seems to be improving this year though... but then he has to go and whack someone get in the mouth and get himself suspended. Must have been one of those famous Brian 'brain fades.'

Adam Cooney (17)

He was a dead set superstar, bursting out of the packs at explosive speed, breaking the game wide apart... But now his knees are buggered. He can still do it, but only in spurts. Which is a real shame. But even half of Adam Cooney (COOOOOON) is still better than a whole of most players... Has ginger hair and tatts all over one leg - a leg sleeve? A leg warmer?? Noice.

Ryan Griffen (16)

GriffEN. Not GriffIN. Get it right! Another dead set superstar, but a largely undercover one. If he played for Collingwood or Carlton, people would never stop raving. As it is, he's like Batman in Bruce Wade disguise. Ssh! Don't tell anyone how good he is. Or they might try to steal him... No, wait, he's just signed a contract for the next few years. Loyal and modest as well as talented. What's not to love?


Liam Jones (19)

Look at him! He's a tall, skinny, Tasmanian baby. He has the hardest job in the AFL. Now that Big Bad Bazza has retired, Jones is the Bulldogs only tall lead-up forward (ie he's expected to mark the ball in the goal square, or somewhere nearby, and kick a goal). But now he has two or even three opposition defenders trying to stop him. Not easy. Also, he is a fantastic mark but a slightly wobbly kick. He is the future -- as long as he doesn't get burnt out first. Fingers crossed.

A Dreaming App?

I spent quite a bit of time over the Easter holidays being driven around Victoria and staring out at the landscape through the car window.

And I got to thinking -- you know those amazing apps where you can point your phone at the night sky and it tells you what constellations you're looking at? Or that one where you point it at a building and it tells you all about its history?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was an app that you could point at a landmark, a mountain or a lake, and it would tell you the Dreaming story that belongs to that place? It wouldn't have to give away anything secret or sacred, just the stories that children are told, just the absolute basics that anyone can know. Wouldn't that add an incredible depth to our appreciation of country? Imagine if all those invisible stories suddenly became visible; if we could all be helped to 'read' the landscape the way the first Australians can.

Just a thought.

Bluffer's Guide To the Western Bulldogs, Part 2

Okay, it's three weeks into the season and we are 0 for 3. We are officially rubbish and it's officially going to be a long, long year.

But at least being crap gives you lots to moan about in football conversations, and supporters of other teams can afford to be kind and sympathetic when your team is going badly. They get to enjoy that warm glow of satisfaction that at least their team is higher than yours on the ladder.

So here are five lines you can throw into conversation to make it sound as if you vaguely know what you're talking about:

1. 'Of course, the player we're really missing is Dale Morris.' 
(Jettison this line once his broken leg has healed and he's playing again)

2. 'You can't tell how we're going to go this year until at least Round 6.' 
(Actually, I think you can: woefully. Obviously this line is only useful until Round 6, when our cellar-dwelling woefulness will be confirmed beyond all doubt.)

3. 'Funny how our rookie picks seem to work out better than the first rounders.' 
(To be delivered with a rueful shake of the head. If pressed, mention Dahlhaus and Boyd as great rookies, Grant and Wallis as dubious first rounders. Don't worry if you don't know what first-rounders or rookies are. The other person will.)

4. 'Tom Liberatore missing out on a Rising Star nomination last year was an absolute scandal.' 
(Can be followed up with the more recent scandal of Clay Smith missing out on a nomination for his first senior game, despite kicking four goals and playing so hard his body shut down and he had to be subbed off for sheer exhaustion.) 

5. 'It's not so much the forward line I'm worried about, it's the delivery from the midfield.'
(If you get this far, congratulations. From now on, it will probably suffice to nod and smile and occasionally murmur something about 'inside' and 'outside' mids, how Liam Jones has the toughest job in AFL, and the need to give the boys time to adjust to the new coach's game plan.)

If only playing the damn game was this easy...

We Interrupt the Bluffer's Guide With Breaking News...

The CBCA 2012 Shortlists were announced yesterday.

It was a slightly surreal situation. At the time of the announcement I was attending my monthly kid lit book group with a group of fellow authors, aspiring authors and lovers of books for young people. One of our number brought in the long lists, released that morning, which members of the group fell upon with the eagerness of a gaggle of gulls on a handful of spilled chips, poring over the lists for a sight of our favourites and friends.

After that initial flurry, we were very restrained until the end of our meeting, whereupon the owner of the iPhone tried to find out who had made the shortlists. Couldn't get through... We wandered through the Convent toward the ladies' loos, still trying. No luck. I was actually in the bathroom when someone texted congratulations! and that was the first I knew that Crow Country had been shortlisted.

Congratulations indeed to all those on the shortlists and the Notable Books. There are so many worthy and deserving titles each year, there is almost always a little frisson of disappointment when a personal favourite isn't listed. So let's just take a moment amidst the celebrations to remember the other books that deserved be recognised, and congratulate them too.

The Bluffer's Guide to The Western Bulldogs Part 1

Well, AFL Round 1 has come and gone, and with it the Western Bulldogs' first defeat of the season. From here it might look as if it's going to be a long year - and it probably will.

So I'm going to make it easy for you to bluff your way through supporting the Bulldogs in what they call a 'development year' (which means we're going to be pretty terrible, but hopefully not forever).


5 Bulldogs To Love

Robert Murphy (2)

 He's smart, he's graceful, he's quick, he's creative. The thoughtful person's footballer. Played up forward until his knees got dodgy, now plays down back, which hopefully means he'll play for a few years longer. Writes a funny, sentimental, articulate column in The Age on Thursdays. The de facto guardian of Bulldog history. Puts little notes in the lockers of new players.


Daniel Giansiracusa (13)

Often underrated, perhaps because he's hot. Another clever footballer who does a lot of work to set things up for other players. Reliable goal-kicker. Never called anything but 'Gia.'

Tom Liberatore (21)

Son of club legend Tony Liberatore slotted almost instantly into the midfield. Plays with more toughness and poise than you'd expect from a second year player. Despite performing solidly in almost every game last year, he failed to attract a Rising Star nomination. Disgraceful.

Will Minson (27)

 Aka Big Will, Wilbur, Minno. Multi-talented and reputedly very intelligent, he speaks German, plays the saxophone and is fond of a purple suit. With the retirement of Ben Hudson, Will becomes the club's number one ruckman (the guy who hits the ball out from the centre bounce).

Luke Dahlhaus (40)

Cruelly overlooked in the main draft, he was picked as a rookie last year by the Dogs and has repayed their punt in spades. A pocket dynamo, the energy level of the team lifts as soon as he sets foot on the field. And just check out those dreds! Nicknamed 'Grommet' by Bob Murphy because he comes from Ocean Grove, he is apparently not, in fact, a surfer.

One More Day...

One draft, almost finished.
One chapter per day.
Two chapters to go.
Last day of term.

Why, why, why?

Attention Please

***UPDATED***

Evie is running a poll over at her blog, Evie Puppy Cadpig. She would appreciate your help in choosing a new background picture for her blog, and as she doesn't get a huge amount of traffic (well, just me really), she has asked me to ask you to pop over and help her out.

***Big thanks to everyone who's voted, you have made a little girl very happy.***

Worlds Collide

 It happens when I'm discussing the Bulldogs' chances this season at a Centre for Youth Literature event and people nod politely.

It happens when I'm listening to the sports radio station and they're reviewing the film of The Hunger Games and the commentators go, 'Huh?'

Not the same game. Apparently.