20th July

2011 (aged 44)
Trying to coax Rex out of his brumation (what bearded dragons do in winter when they lose interest in living and curl up in a box). Tempted him with crickets, but all he wants to do is burrow down in the sand and sleep. I know exactly how he feels.
2010 (aged 43)
Alice to her teacher: Is 'school' from the Latin for 'boring'?
2008 (aged 41)
Evie (4): Don't squash me, I'm precious. I am the cutest, Daddy is the funniest, Mummy is the kindest and Alice is the scariest.
2007 (aged 40)
Poem by Alice
Green and pink are nice
But it's not my colour.
Purple and blue are nice
But they're not my colour.
But I can do this:
Climb doors.
I love you and you love me.
We love jumping up and down. 
2005 (aged 38)
Alice (nearly 4): What's the hell in here? I'm not comfy, with this big fat baby. This is Messyland. If you move to another house, we will come and make it into Messyland too.
2003 (aged 36)
Alice (nearly 2): More sheeps. More-more cup of tea. Daddy up up up! Come on, Daddy. Spoon, spoon, please a spoon! Naughty wall, Alice drawing naughty.
2002 (aged 35)
Alice in chair, listlessly eating baked beans; spits them out, picks them off the tray, drops them on the floor, throws the spoon, tries to grab bowl and tip it in her lap. Mummy takes the beans away. Turn around to find Alice has vomited beans and phlegm all over herself, just in time to see her do it again.
1998 (aged 31)
B is desperately unhappy... Of course I'm completely wracked with guilt and helplessness, but he won't hear of me not moving out - whether this is bluff I don't know - but it's the only thing I can think of to try to help... Also there is the awful itch to start packing and shifting, which I just can't do while he's like this. I'll go out to the living room in 5 minutes then 10 minutes after that Tays should be here to rescue me...
1996 (aged 29)
Nana died on Saturday morning. Tired, tired, drained. Bitter cold but not raining. Picking out clothes for the undertakers - her paisley dress, a petticoat, new stockings. The first time I've felt like an adult, really. And I'm so sad.
When I told WP I was going home because my grandmother was dying, he said, 'So can you come in early tomorrow?' And when I told him she'd died, he said, 'Oh. So how was your weekend apart from that?'
1995 (aged 28)
Thinking more & more about MT. Impossible not to love him - he is so sweet and neurotic and funny and bright - so like me in fact. He only likes pretty little girls though not ugly old harridans like yours truly DO NOT RISK IT KATE
1991 (aged 24)
First night in Paris and I am rigid with terror. Absolutely stark staring bonkers with fear. I've barely eaten for two days, I feel numb in the legs, upset stomach, dizzy. I have to get through this night somehow. Tomorrow I'll go out into the streets and it'll be okay, it'll be fine. I can't cope with this. I have to.
1989 (aged 22)
Talked with B about whether greenism could potentially be a much stronger and broader based opposition to capitalism than communism is or could be. B said as communism is now and I said no, whole Marxist analysis limited b/c concentrates on human relations & society & materialism whereas greenism can include the relation of humanity to the non-human. Restoring the balance?
1987 (aged 20)
This depression & silliness is obviously going to continue till I put a stop to it. I have to be strong. For my own sake.
1986 (aged 19)
Worked on essay till tea. Watched Countdown and Mary Poppins - both TV rooms full!!
1984 (aged 17)
first Latin option assignment due

PANIC

1982 (aged 15)
NATIONAL PUDGY FACE WEEK
Learn Latin again extremely well!!!
1979 (aged 12)
Arvestall Parvastell Basilinka Perethane  Kalysons Valrava Vestoram Firthana
1978 (aged 11)
I hate Geometry. Lines squares, angles, diagrams... I could go on and on. Ugh! During Handcrafts Club Carolyn said I was kind to everyone. I really appreciated that.
1977 (aged 10)
Mr Grant gave us our composition marks. I was the only one with an A! I want to be an author. Will we ever go back to New Guinea? It doesn't seem like it, does it.
1976 (aged 9)
Went to the Public Library. We did sport. We are going out for tea. The Herolds came. We played horses.

My Day On Two Plates

This is possibly my least favourite section of The Sunday Age's Life magazine (you know, the chicks' bit). Are the people they select for this column for real? Apparently everyone in Australia starts their day with pro-biotic organic yoghurt, topped with raw muesli and fresh fruit. So who's buying all the sugary cereals I see lining the supermarket shelves?

It's not that hard to put together an ideal (and sort of truthful) 'Day On A Plate.'

My Best Day

Breakfast: bowl of natural yoghurt, topped with a handful of toasted muesli, extra pepitas and almonds; freshly squeezed orange juice

Lunch: tuna salad with chopped tomato, spinach & rocket leaves, hard boiled egg, squares of Edam cheese and hunks of sourdough bread, with olive oil and lemon juice dressing

Afternoon snack: uneaten carrot sticks and apple filched from children's lunchboxes

Dinner: pumpkin risotto; square of dark chocolate (for the antioxidants)

My Worst Day

Breakfast: bowl of Fruity Bites, white toast with butter and peanut butter; two coffees; tea

Lunch: French toast and bacon, plus scraps left on children's plates; tea

Afternoon snack: little bag of chips; tea

Dinner: meatballs with oven chips and creamy faux-Ikea gravy; half a Krispy Kreme doughnut; two glasses cheap champagne; lolly pinched from child's party bag

Might I venture to suggest that, like most people, my typical day comprises a little from column A, a little from column B? Surely no one, even the dancers, professional athletes and personal trainers who, according to this feature, make up the bulk of the population, is perfect all the time?

The only DOAP that I could relate to this year was the one by the comedian — and I got the impression we weren't supposed to take him seriously. Come on, Sunday Age: get real!

BYA (Before Young Adult)

Back when I was a teenager, 'YA' hadn't been invented. There were childrens' books, and adult books, and a grey area in between.

In those days, I hadn't begun to keep my handy-dandy reading diary, and now I find it hard to remember exactly what I was reading at high school. I know I was reading a LOT; it was a rare day that I didn't make a visit to the school library, but what was I borrowing?

But every so often, I'll come across a certain book and think, 'Ah! That's what I was reading...'

One such rediscovery was Gerald Durrell's My Family And Other Animals, and its several companion volumes. Durrell's memoir of his idyllic childhood on Corfu, exploring the island's wildlife and enduring the eccentricities of his wayward older siblings (irritable writer Larry, gun-crazy Leslie, and flirtatious Margo, all kept more or less in line by long-suffering Mother and the apoplectic Spiro), is just as entertaining as I remembered it, and the later books, where his family's antics move to centre stage, are even funnier. Along similar lines (and aided by the TV series) I read my way right through James Herriot.

I also devoured quantities of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps there is something about the neat puzzle of the old-fashioned murder mystery that is particularly soothing to the troubled adolescent mind. And I got through tons* of Jean Plaidy's historical novels, from which I acquired all my knowledge of British history. Oh, and Georgette Heyer!

And then there was my Stephen Donaldson / Dune phase. More tonnage. Eventually I gave up from sheer exhaustion. Can't remember a single word of them now.

I think I can discern a theme here. I was obviously reading for quantity. I'm told that nowadays it's impossible to interest young readers in picking up a book unless they can be assured that there are plenty of sequels to follow... so maybe things haven't changed much after all.

Faithful readers of a certain age, what did you read before YA came along?

* Probably literally. They are very fat books.

Ancestral Home

This is the house my mother grew up in. It's a few streets south of my family's current home. In the forties, my mum went to the same primary school that her grand-daughters now attend, sixty years later.

I often drive past Mum's old house, but I've never set foot inside. By the time I was born, my parents were staying in my great-grandparents' old house in Preston (a few streets north of where I live now), and Mum's parents had moved to Cheltenham. But this old house is a shabbier near-twin of my own Californian bungalow - the same bow window, the leadlight glass, double doors, gables, the same squat pillars to the verandah.

For the past few years I've watched Mum's house slide into neglect, the garden tangled, the paint peeling, and wondered when someone would make a move. This suburb has been overwhelmed by a tide of relentless gentrification, and the shabby houses have been picked off (rescued?) one by one.

On Friday I drove past and saw with a shock that it was happening at last. The guts had been ripped out of Mum's house and piled in the garden; its bones were exposed, the doors gaping wide. I pulled over, telling the girls, 'I have to look inside.' They didn't want to come with me - Evie was scared of getting into trouble, and Alice wanted to examine the stash of new books we'd just acquired, so I went in alone.

I found an elderly couple, ankle deep in a sea of plaster and ancient insulation. The walls had all been torn down to the frame, even the ceilings were gone, except in the front two rooms where gorgeous plasterwork remained. Haltingly I explained myself. Their English was poor, but they smiled and allowed me to pick my way between the ribs of the house, to peer at what was left of the rooms my mother had described - the once-sunny sitting room, the tiny bedroom she'd shared with her older sister, the pocket-hanky bathroom, the walled-in sleepout off the kitchen. The house looked as if it had remained structurally untouched since the 50s. But from the devastation, I guessed all that was about to change.

Later, on the phone, Mum sounded sad. Could I go back and salvage her a keepsake, she begged? A chunk of plaster, or a doorknob? So that afternoon, armed with a camera, Alice and I returned. The elderly couple had gone home and the house was locked up. I hopped the fence and took some photos. ('You're trespassing,' warned Alice.) From the heaps of stripped timber and plasterboard that lay in the front yard, like the flesh from a chicken's carcass, I peeled a small strip of wallpaper that seemed very like my grandmother's taste - pink rosebuds and golden curlicues. I found a smashed chandelier, and pocketed a fragment. The long moulded cornices were too robust for me to snap off a section, though I tried. (Alice was scandalised.)

But when I described my finds to Mum, she was dubious. 'I don't think we had wallpaper like that. I can't remember a chandelier. Our bath wasn't blue, it was white. We didn't have an inside toilet. We didn't have tiles around the heater.' In the fifty-odd years since she'd lived there, the house had been redecorated, rearranged, overlaid with other people's memories, other people's lives.

Sentimentally, I'd thought it was Mum's memories that the present owners had pulled apart, pieces of Mum's home that were discarded in the yard.

But that house was already gone.

PC: Political Correctness or Plain Courtesy?

Yesterday I found myself in an interesting discussion about 'political correctness.'

Someone suggested that authors must feel frustrated or resentful at having their imaginations constrained by anxiety about offending others (I'm paraphrasing). Do we dare, as non-indigenous authors, to write from the point of view of an Aboriginal character? Is it okay to pick out pieces of another culture's mythology (whether that be Maori, Persian, Irish, Ethiopian or whatever) and insert it into our own narratives? Shouldn't we be able to write whatever the hell we like?

I have to say I have a real problem with the phrase 'politically correct.' It's always used as an insult, denoting a timid, yet repressive regime that tiptoes around the perceived sensitivities of others. And it's generally implied that such sensitivity is unwarranted.

Setting aside the latter point, why not simply replace the term 'politically correct' with 'respectful'? Personally, I don't feel comfortable writing from the point of view of an indigenous character, because I recognise that I don't know enough about what it's like to live as an indigenous person. But that's not the same as saying that I won't put indigenous characters into my books. I don't feel confident to write from the point of view of a sixty year old white man, either (luckily there are plenty of sixty year old white male authors to take up the slack on that one).

If I write historical fiction, I want to get the details right, and I think I owe it to the readers to do so. As a reader, I'm irritated by sloppy research or dialogue that doesn't ring true. Equally, if I'm going to draw on a culture that is not the culture I've grown up in, I need to get it as right as I possibly can, or readers who know better than I will be annoyed and offended, and rightly so. Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like that big a deal. It seems like respectful common sense, and simple courtesy.

'I'm Bored' Sundays

I couldn't blog yesterday because it was Computer-Free Sunday.

A few months ago we decided to institute one internet-free day a week, because Evie was so addicted to the computer. We were hoping that she would find alternate sources of entertainment, but instead we have signed ourselves up for a day of whingeing and moaning and 'I'm boooored!' But still we persist...

What we're slowly starting to realise is that the day passes much more pleasantly if we organise some kind of family activity. Yesterday we walked up to the Preston Oval and watched Williamstown (the Bulldogs affiliate) take on the Northern Bullants. And the kids whinged and moaned and said, 'I'm booored!' but eventually they wandered away and began collecting acorns, playing squirrels and climbing trees. After half time, they discovered a fenced off playground, and spent a fruitful twenty minutes trying to make a rope to abseil down into it. Finally they gained access by squeezing between the locked gates (Evie's head nearly got stuck - reminded me of the day she was born) and they played there happily until the very end of the game, even though the wind was biting cold and it was almost dark.

Maybe one day we'll make it all the way to Screen-Free Sunday and ban the TV as well... maybe.

Sorry I've Been So Quiet, Faithful Reader...

... but I had a lot of this to do.

23 June

2011 (aged 44)
Evie's seventh birthday. 'Mummy, were you surprised when I was born and you had a puppay instead of a human baby?'
'Yes, Evie, I was very surprised.'
2009 (aged 42)
We try to explain Holy Communion. Alice: Why would anyone want to eat Jesus? That's ludicrous!

Alice to Evie: Do you want to play vets?
Evie: I don't know. I'm a bit tired, being five all day.
2004 (aged 37)
Evie was born, at 11.16am at the Royal Women's Hospital. The cord was wrapped around her neck and they had been monitoring her heartbeat very anxiously for a couple of hours beforehand. I suppose I should have been frightened at the sludgey, uneven throb from the monitor, but when they told me, if you don't push this baby out in the next ten minutes, you'll have to have a caesar, it just seemed like a challenge I would have to rise to. I pushed, and she slid out, small and pale, and they rushed to grab and untangle her, and they gave her to me. She had a scratch on her cheek because her arm had been squashed up beside her head. Unlike Alice, who yelled and glared furiously around at everyone in the delivery room, Evie was sleepy and serene. A perfect little baby.
2002 (aged 35)
Trying to dress Alice, she crawls away & has to be enticed with her new GLITTERBALL!! Michael waves bye bye; Alice waves after he's gone.
1998 (aged 31)
(New York) Awake and ready ages before DC who wants till snooze till 10 and is right in holiday mode. Finally managed to prise him out then set off on tour of Seinfeld sites - primarily Tom's Restaurant, aka Monk's. Walked through Central Park then DC's turn to choose activity so we went to Virgin to shop for CDs!! Stayed there for hours getting tired and grumpy but didn't complain.
1996 (aged 29)
Consumed bucketful of margaritas with MT, discussed casual sex... He said, how could he know now I was putting him in my novel that I wasn't saying things like that just to see what he'd say? Which is crediting me with a lot more cunning than I actually possess!... Oh dear I'm really not up to working this morning - feeling quite seedy.
1993 (aged 26)
and there is dancing but dancing isn't everything
1987 (aged 20)
Had lunch with B; planned to open an ideologically sound bookshop with a baby upstairs. The new Cure album is brilliant.
1986 (aged 19)
Resolved to be good and wrote a timetable. Went to EVERYTHING!!! B turned up for lunch. Apparently he was shocked by my revelations of 3/6, had thought I was a paradigm of virtue. Oh well.
1985 (aged 18)
Candide rehearsal till 5.30 then home feeling whacked. Chatted to DT 3 times!!! Tea in front of Countdown.
1983 (aged 16)
English essay due (I hope - blame Rachel)
1981 (aged 14)
Rather depressed. Cried under slightest provocation in English. My stupid rainfall graph looks like a contorted rabbit.
1978 (aged 11)
I had a rotten day! These are the rotten things that happened - 1) Miss Wilkie made me rewrite a Social Studies letter. Now it's not a letter. It's a list. 2) Miss Osborn was away, so there was no library, no library lesson, no books. 3) We got unfair Maths homework. A few good things happened but not much.
1977 (aged 10)
I did my poem book. I dropped a duster out the window and Mr G teased me. We played keepings off and kicking.
1976 (aged 9)
Daddy is going to Port Morsbey for three days and I woke up early to say goodbye. Olny worked on Chitty; no school work. Chitty looks marvalous I made the windscreen.

The One True Reader

Sometimes, on school visits, I'm asked if I've written any novels that haven't been published. And this is the story that I tell.

Once upon a time, I wrote a novel called Alison and Jordy. It was the story of a couple of diffident twenty-something friends who couldn't quite manage to translate their liking for each other into romance. These two characters were, of course, based on myself, and a friend and workmate of mine who I really, really liked, but was never sure how much he liked me back.

Anyway, I was going off on an overseas trip and I gave the manuscript of this novel to a mutual friend to read -- a very unusual thing for me to do, by the way, as I am very protective of my works in progress and never show anything to anyone. However... while I was gadding about in Scotland and New York, this friend, absolutely without my knowledge or permission, gave the manuscript to the real life 'Jordy'.

(At this point all the girls in the audience usually gasp with horror.)

When I discovered that she had done this, I was completely mortified. Now 'Jordy' would find out how I felt about him! I would have to front up to work every day, with him knowing that I harboured this massive crush! How humiliating... how embarrassing... How could I ever look him in the eye again?

Well. The day I arrived back in Australia, 'Jordy' turned up on my doorstep. Not long after that, he confessed that he, too, harboured certain feelings that he'd been too shy to express... And we've been together ever since.

(At this point all the girls in the audience go awwwww!)

The manuscript of Alison and Jordy is still in my bottom drawer. It has never been published, and I daresay will never be published. But that doesn't matter, because, even though I didn't realise it at the time, it was written for just one person to read.

Happy (almost) anniversary, Mikey.

(And thank you, Sandra!)

Whither the Children's Book?: My Two Cents' Worth

In her excellent, thought-provoking post, Misrule discusses the state of the children's novel.

Obviously I must admit to some bias here. But deep down, I believe that the perfect children's novel is perhaps the highest work of art to which the writer can aspire. It's even possible to argue that the children's novel can discuss bigger, (purer?) issues than the YA novel, because it's not yet caught up in all the messy, personal business of identity formation and burgeoning sexuality. The children's novel routinely deals with death and grief and love and pain, and the deep delight of being alive.

The really good children's novel plants seeds in the rich and hungry soil of a child's imagination. The really good children's novel is a uniquely satisfying reading experience.

Off the top of my head (by no means an exhaustive list, but from a quick scan of my book shelf), here are some the children's novels that 'built' me - not just as a child, but as an adult reader:

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken
Skellig, David Almond
The Children of Green Knowe, Lucy M. Boston
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Dark Is Rising, Susan Cooper
Arthur: The Seeing Stone: Kevin Crossley-Holland
Charlotte Sometimes: Penelope Farmer
Down In The Cellar: Nicholas Stuart Gray
A Wrinkle In Time: Madeleine L'Engle
The Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe: CS Lewis
The Ghost of Thomas Kempe: Penelope Lively
Anne Of Green Gables: LM Montgomery
Five Children and It, The Railway Children, The Treasure Seekers: E. Nesbit
Playing Beattie Bow: Ruth Park
Tom's Midnight Garden: Philippa Pearce
Swallows and Amazons: Arthur Ransome
Harry Potter: JK Rowling
Marianne Dreams: Catherine Storr
Ballet Shoes: Noel Streatfeild
Charlotte's Web: EB White

And I've left off heaps of books that I loved, and still love -- these are just a handful of the books that I think offer some special nourishment to the reader - a taste of philosophy, an introduction to ethics, a poetry of language, a richness of imagery, a model of courage or truthfulness, or a glimpse of the sheer breadth of the world out there, before and behind us.

Many, but not all, of these titles contain an element of magic, or the uncanny, or a crossing from one time into another. (Adult writing which enters this territory tends to be thrust dismissively into the 'spec fic' basket... but that's a topic for another time!)

But perhaps what the really good children's novel does (and I'm thinking aloud here) is open out the boundaries of the child's world a little. It pushes and pulls and stretches, it exercises the muscles of imagination and empathy. But it's not just 'teaching' something - it is art, a thing of beauty and value in its own right, and without them, the world would be a poorer place indeed.

The Elimination Challenge Update

Well, faithful reader, we have not been rigorous about disposing of one item per day, but the elimination challenge is underway!

In the corner of my bedroom is a bag of old clothes (mostly too small for the children, but also including a never-worn dressing-gown of Michael's). A pair of ancient jeans and a skirt I've worn every summer since 1994, transparent with age, have been consigned to the rag box. A box of 21 good-as-new but unbeloved books wait on the dining table to be donated to a charity book sale. A towering pile of magazines has been dumped in the recycling bin. Some random hats and a pair of holey sneakers have also bitten the dust.

It doesn't sound like much, but it's a start.

Gen Z Have Already Taken Over

 Scene: our house, before breakfast. Michael and Kate idly watching Evie's fingers fly over the computer keyboard.

Michael: You know, I think she can type faster than me.
Kate (wanders over to look): Nah, it's okay, she's just typing gibberish... (looks more closely) No, wait a minute -- she's typing backwards!!

Dna ehs saw. Yrev ylkciuq.

10th June

2011 (aged 44)
Very grumpy. Yelled at the children and succeeded in making their moods as bad as mine.
The dishwasher has died.
These facts may not be unrelated.
Rang C for a coffee.
2010 (aged 43)
Evie has decided to be a vegetarian. 'Because the animals should die when they feel like it, not get eaten by us. It's not fair.'
2008 (aged 41)
Evie: This can be a skirt. It can. Did you know Diddy is a transforming blanket? 
2005 (aged 38)
Go for walk to creek. Evie eats tan bark. Alice says, 'What a beautiful noise that is, with a woof-woof here and a tweet-tweet there.'
1998 (aged 31)
(Glasgow) C hungover. Spent most of the morning writing an air letter to MT. Shops all shutting early in preparation for the World Cup match - Scotland v Brazil - David v Goliath. J came over and we drank red wine, ate haggis and taties and watched the game. The city shut down for the duration and probably the whole country did too. Sat up doing tarots.
1996 (aged 29)
Working on Aust Council grant application which is making me feel sick like an exam!... Now I'm formulating ridiculous notions about kissing MT after k.d. lang on Wednesday. I should know better than that, but I can't help it. But in a way it is enough to have these feeble plots and schemes. The crush is still ON - bit of a worry... Asked if I could put him in the novel and he said yes but now feels under pressure to say funny things.
1995 (aged 28)
intense physical awareness - the space between them
the dissolution - the dissolving into dark, at last the dim red glow flanking the screen fades
but it's not made up just of evasions, silences, omissions, the elisions from frame to frame, there is substance there as well
1993 (aged 26)
People are looking at me today. I can't work out whether it's because I look good or because I look ridiculous.
1991 (aged 24)
Well, I'm on the plane and have just eaten a surprisingly delicious meal -- they were right about being a vegetarian -- I got blackeyed beans, dolmade, sprouty salad and strawberries!
1990 (aged 23)
C's brother is being held hostage on a yacht full of American millionaires which he accidentally sailed into Cuban waters. The Sun rang C & asked her, 'Do you think he deserves the treatment he's getting?' C said, 'What do you expect me to say, yes?'
1987 (aged 20)
I was sick in bed with a cold yesterday and D brought me flowers - isn't he wonderful?? Nothing in the world could have cheered me up better. 
1986 (aged 19)
Woken at 8 by C, vr pissed off cos had to wash up all glasses etc from Wine Soc bash last night... P sat at our table and hasn't noticed I'm pissed off with him! How dense can you get?? All men are bloody thick or bastards or both!
1985 (aged 18)
I love it, I love it, feeding Prince of Wales tea to cultured boys in my room at 2 in the morning and quoting bits of 'The Leopard' to each other. That boy is a FIND!... How long can this go on??
1983 (aged 16)
Midsummer Night's Dream rehearsal 4 - 7.30!! History questions; practise Speech
 1981 (aged 14)
Interform sport. WE WON THE HOCKEY!! First winning team I've ever been on!!
1977 (aged 10)
I don't think TB likes me any more. We played poison ball and netball. I miss E, and she hasn't written for ages. Maybe she doesn't like me either?
1976 (aged 9)
2 wrong in maths and 3 ticks for my story. It was called 'Caught in a Storm.'.

Do You Hear The Bells?

I've been indulging in a Penelope Lively binge. I've written elsewhere about The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, and while that remains my favourite Lively, the three books I've read in the last week or so all share a common theme with the story of James and his battles with Kempe's recalcitrant spirit. In these three novels, all written in the early 1970s, some element from the not-quite-buried past irrupts into the present day, with dangerous consequences. This is absolutely my favourite kind of story, and it's the kind of story I hope I've written in Crow Country (albeit transposed into an Australian setting).

In Astercote, a sleepy village is galvanised with fear and paranoia when a hidden treasure goes missing. In The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy, a re-enactment of an ancient ritual calls up unsuspected power and peril for the ignorant performers. And in The Whispering Knights, for a slightly younger readership, three children who make a witch's brew are dismayed to find that they've accidentally unleashed a very old and very frightening being, who threatens their whole village.

The English countryside is a strong presence in all these books. There is a sense of history bubbling beneath the landscape like a current -- invisible to the naked eye, but immensely powerful, and ultimately uncontrollable.

'... There's a funny feeling about this place sometimes, and the wood specially.'
'Oh,' said Evadne casually. 'The bells, I suppose you mean.'
Mair stared at her. 'Do you hear them?' she asked in astonishment.
'Not now. But I used to years ago when I was younger. About your age, I suppose -- no, younger, I think... You have to be in the right state of mind to hear them. Kind of open, receiving things from all directions, not thinking too much -- dreaming in the daytime, not knowing if its Monday or Tuesday, or morning or afternoon... that really only happens when you're a kid.'

In Lively's novels, the children spend long, idle (unsupervised!) days wandering the fields and woods, fishing, lying in the sun reading, exploring cliffs and quarries, brewing up magic spells in deserted barns.

I wonder if kids, these days, still have a chance to dream in the daytime; if their senses aren't so crowded with electronica and organised activities, that they're still open to receive those faint signals from beyond. Can any of us still hear the lost bells of Astercote?

The Elimination Challenge

I had a brilliant idea for a blog the other day, but I'm not sure I have the guts to follow through with it (also, someone else has surely done it already).

I looked around my cluttered house and thought, what I would like to do is get rid of one thing every day for a year, and blog about it.

Oh, the first days - weeks, even - would be easy. The ill-fitting op shop skirt bought on a whim - GONE. The lumpy clay object that Alice made at kinder six years ago, gathering dust on a window sill - GONE. The manky old shampoo bottle that Evie plays with in the bath - GONE. Outgrown clothes, neglected toys, the jar of dried beans that's been in the back of the pantry for three years.

But then things might start to get a little tricky. There are books I could sacrifice. There are stuffed toys I would gladly see the back of. I could probably tip out the big fruit bowl full of accumulated crap and buy myself a month right there - scraps of wool, pencil stubs, tram tickets. But when all those easy items have been removed, what next?

What could I live without? Do I really need four vegetable peelers? Eight saucepans? A cupboard full of ancient lunchboxes and superseded drink bottles? All those frocks? All those BOOKS? Those essays from Year 10?

If I was brave enough, I'd go through every room of my house and apply the classic tests: is it useful? Is it beautiful? Do I love it for some other reason? (Because it was made by a child, or inherited from an ancestor, for example - the only possible reason for hanging onto Nana's old perfume bottle in my sock drawer.) And I wonder, at the end of it, what would be left. And I wonder how much resistance I'd meet from the rest of the family. Michael would be into it -- he's a great one for chucking out (sometimes a little too enthusiastic, if the truth be told). But the girls would HATE it.

What I really need is a catchy name for the exercise: My Year of Paring Down? The Simplification Test?

Yeah. That's what's stopping me.