It's An Ordinary Day

It's the pile of laundry behind the door.
It's what's for dinner, what's for dinner, what's for dinner?
It's picking up the books, the textas, the scraps of paper, the toys, the clothes, the newspapers, the hat, the toothbrush, the breakfast bowl, the coffee cup, the footy scarf, the bandaid, the coins, the abandoned pyjamas.
It's what can I put in the lunches?
It's the washing machine jammed again.
It's making the beds.
It's unpacking the dishwasher; stacking the dishwasher; unpacking; stacking; unpacking.
It's the mud on the back verandah.
It's bucketing out the grey water. It's hanging out the clothes.
It's Mummy, can you...?
It's brushing hair, brushing teeth, scrubbing gunk off the basin.

It's noticing that the Happy Wanderer is in flower.
It's the lorikeets.
And the little one says, I'm going to make a present for my sister.
That's what it is.

A Real Job

I sometimes think that what I'd really like is a proper job. Not instead of writing, she adds hastily, but as a supplement -- an occasional job, a day or two a week perhaps, no more. My ideal job would be dull and repetitive, mechanical, fiddly, the kind of work that other people find impossibly boring.

When I worked at the record company, my favourite tasks were things like order entry, or alphabetising the CD library, or proof-reading the indent catalogue. Nothing made me happier than the arrival of a fat parcel of orders to be keyed from the affiliated video company, which meant I could sit quietly in a corner, not talking to anyone, working my way steadily through the pile. A nice defined job, poorly paid and tedious, that's my dream... If anyone happens to know of a job like that, I'm available!

Dear Diary

I kept a diary for many years. I still do, technically, though these days I only write in it a few times a year. To say "a diary" is misleading; it implies a single volume, like Arrietty's diary in The Borrowers, with one economical line used each day. But of course there were many volumes, beginning with a tiny book with a shy 70s girly on the cover, when I was nine, through tall impressive business diaries, ending with the fat black-and-red notebooks of my twenties and thirties, bursting with dried flowers, cinema tickets and other mementos.

I discovered my earliest diary recently when I was searching for New Guinea stuff. Flipping through it, you'd hardly know I was living in Mt Hagen. I wish I'd included more local colour; I wish I'd kept a list of the books I borrowed from the library (every few days: "went to the library," but hardly ever a mention of what I was reading.) I'd forgotten what an anxious child I was, always fretting about maths tests and whether I'd earn a Merit Card.

Some entries spark memories that would otherwise be lost: "Went to Siberia for a BBQ." Siberia was a block of flats in Mt Hagen, inhabited by other pilots. I'd forgotten what a busy social life we had -- lunch with the Blacks, the Herolds came, lunch at the Highlander Hotel -- but mostly I'm preoccupied with my own projects. I make a housepoints chart, make a boat, write to Rowena, make macrame and batik (it was 1976!), hold a meeting of the Flower Club. It's all school and squabbles with my friends and "my sister infuriates me." If we'd still been living in Ferntree Gully, I suspect my diary entries would have been almost identical.

There's only the odd hint that we're living in a foreign land. My teacher comes down with malaria. Dad flies us to Wewak on the coast for the weekend. "Went to Tanya's. Some native boys chased us." We hang out at the airport (where Dad worked), scrambling over sacks of coffee and playing with kittens in the hangar, and shop at the market (where the meris spread their produce on the ground and you have to walk gingerly to avoid betel spit.) "There was an attempted burglary. We couldn't get in" -- I guess because the lock was jemmied?

And there are things that make me catch my breath, because it's like seeing a premonition of my daughter captured on the page. "I made the Stone of Power..." Alice has three stones under her pillow: the Stone of Light, the Stone of Worries and the Stone of Rain and Darkness. And so we spiral round.

Love In the Time of Swine Flu

Outside, it's a crisp clear winter's day. The wattles are beginning to flower, the bushes sprinkled with miniscule bright yellow baubles. But we're all inside, trapped at home with various flu-y symptoms.
The girls are playing trains. Alice has decided her vocation is to be a diorama maker, or a model railway builder. She relished the construction of a dinosaur diorama for homework (see above, T Rex chowing down on its fallen prey in the shade of magnet-and-pipecleaner trees by the lagoon), and was enthralled by the dioramas at the War Memorial. Evie is acting out an elaborate saga involving her new Littlest Pet Shop cat, a supermarket and a load of coal. She insisted today on being dressed in "a jersey and skirt" like the Ballet Shoes girls. I know I should be making Alice read to me, but I'm nursing my vague aches and chills by the heater.
One third of Victorians may have swine flu. The streets are almost empty today, the playground strangely quiet. Alice coughs and wheezes. Her train wants to go to sleep.

Ballet Shoes

We taped the BBC telemovie of Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes last week (is that illegal?? oh well). The girls have been watching it on high rotation ever since (literally – I think we've played it twenty times in the past week).

They already know the story, thanks to an audio dramatisation that Alice got for Christmas, so they are a couple of steps removed from the book, but that will come. I have my well-thumbed and corner-nibbled copy waiting for them.

I loved all Noel Streatfeild's books but Ballet Shoes was my favourite. I read it over and over. It was so detailed, so rich and sprawling, that I felt I was living alongside Pauline, Petrova and Posy as they rushed from the Academy, to lessons with Drs Jake and Smith, from auditions to Mr Simpson's garage to backstage at the theatre. The panics over clothes and money, holidays and celebrations, the big old house filled with fascinating boarders, daily life in 1930s London, were all more vivid to me than my own life.

Ruth Gervis' delicate, lively illustrations forever fixed the Fossils in my mind. I was thrilled to discover, only recently, that Ruth was Noel's own sister, well-known to me as "Isobel" from Streatfeild's thinly fictionalised childhood memoir, A Vicarage Family (close second favourite to Ballet Shoes).

Streatfield handles family relationships superbly, and the family in Ballet Shoes is all the more striking for being thrown together by circumstance rather than blood, and also for being so dominated by women. The only significant men in the story are Mr Simpson, a benign uncle-figure and role model for mechanically-minded Petrova, and the absent Gum.

The TV adaptation is largely faithful to the broad brushstrokes of the story (apart from a love triangle between Theo Dane, Mr Simpson and Garnie, which I could have done without), and it was lovely to see the clothes and the house. It was a pity that Posy couldn't really dance, since she's supposed to be a ballet prodigy. It was the minute detail of practice routines, morning teas and performance licences that I missed. But then, that's what books are for.

The Thin Ice of Love and Hope

I've seen two films in less than a week - a record! (since children, anyway.) Both Australian, both wonderful, but very different.


Samson and Delilah, recent winner of the Camera d'Or at Cannes, is a love story between two young Aboriginal people. It's confronting, beautiful, and it go to some very bleak places before it crawls out into the light again. Perhaps the most haunting element for me was the dull, distant, irregular ker-thunk of cars travelling over the bridge in Alice Springs, while under the bridge, out of sight and out of conciousness, Samson and Delilah struggle to get through another day, sinking into a seemingly hopeless haze of brutality and despair. When the light returns, it's like a miracle, but we know that the struggle for survival is far from won.



Michael and I went to see My Year Without Sex in our usual uniforms: me in my long cardie, Mikey in his jeans and hoodie top. From the moment Sacha Horler and Matt Day appeared in identical outfits, I knew this film was about us. Forks in the bedside drawer, nit treatments, the Bulldogs song, all the texture of my daily life was there. Another suburban Melbourne family, holding it together in the joyous, painful, precarious muddle of everyday life, skating on the thin ice of luck, one slip away from catastrophe, with only hope and love to haul us onward.

Ultimately both films are about the same thing, though the daily hurdles Samson and Delilah must negotiate are a hell of a lot higher than those faced by Natalie and Ross. But in the end, it's the power of connection that gives us all the strength to put one foot in front of the other, one day at a time.

Generally speaking, I go to see films for the same reason I read books (though not nearly as often) - to see the world through someone else's eyes, to escape the prison of my own perceptions. Samson and Delilah certainly opened a window for me on the lives of young Australians who live, in every sense, a long way from where I do. But having said that, it was actually more unusual to see lives that so closely mirrored my own in My Year, and I loved it.

PS It was especially refreshing to see an adult film where the kids took up so much space, as people in their own right, not just ciphers or symbols or bit players in the drama, and not as precocious semi-adults either. Kirsty Murray once said she was sick of reading kids books where the parents weren't real people, and I think the reverse is also often true of adult books and films and particularly TV, where real kids are practically invisible. Remember when Rachel had her baby on Friends, and we never saw it again? Her mum was always minding it. Rachel's life went on exactly as before, apart from the cot and mobile in the background. Whereas any fule kno, in reality, kids turn your world inside out.

Guest Post

The sparkling Steph Bowe of Hey, Teenager of the Year! has kindly invited me to contribute a guest post to her blog. You can find me there, discussing the long and winding road to Cicada Summer - I'd forgotten just how long and winding it was until I started going back over my notes and all the false starts I'd made. It was fascinating (for me, anyway!) to see how many of those sidetracks have eventually led elsewhere. You might find it interesting too. Or not. Have a look if you like.

Deep Winter

According to my Aboriginal calendar, we're now in deep winter. This is one time where the Aboriginal calendar agrees with the European calendar (the European calendar for Australia, anyway). It's cold, it's wet, the seas are rough. Luckily we only have to put up with about six weeks of it before pre-spring arrives, hooray! (And the more rain we have, the better.)

Last weekend we went to Canberra. Canberra really knows how to do winter. Even when it's not actually raining, it's bone-freezing cold. We had a fabulous time, taking in the War Memorial (twice), a great game of football at an old-fashioned oval, the National Gallery and Questacon, as well as visiting an old mate of mine who has created an inspiring eco-garden in the suburbs, complete with reed-beds to filter her grey water and a dry creek bed that flows after heavy rain. She also grows delicious home-grown strawberries that explode with flavour. Mmm.

In other news, the Urgent Secret Collaborative Project is now finished! At least, the main creative part is finished; we still have to go through it together and tidy it up, but the writing is substantially done. Penni and I both felt a bit teary when it was done, and reluctant to let it go. Pen's blogging about it today so I won't say much more, but it was the most fun I've had writing for a long time. Though I'm looking forward to getting my friend back - for some reason, while we were communicating via the novel, we almost stopped communicating via other means. The less we spoke to each other, the better the writing went. Maybe we had to stay in character? Anyway, it was certainly an unintended consequence.

Ridiculous Footy Comment of the Week (2)
"The fans are among the most important stakeholders in the game."
- Caroline Wilson, Footy Classified, 1/6/09
Among the most important stakeholders? Gee, thanks for conceding that. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? If a ball is kicked and no one's watching, is it a goal?

1) Ridiculous Footy Comment of the Week

"The players do add value to the game."
Er, yes. Hard to argue with that one. It would be rather dull if we turned up every week to watch a ball sitting in the middle of the ground and a few umpires twiddling their thumbs, wouldn't it?
(From "Footy Confidential," Ch 9, 25/5/09)

2) Perils Of Writing

This week I went op-shopping with Penni (we're allowed some time off, aren't we? We have to slip free from those shackles and emerge from the Writers' Dungeon occasionally.)

As we wandered the aisles of my local super-savers, I found myself drawn to all kinds of odd garments, things I'd never normally try on. I ended up with a great haul - a long purple velvet skirt, two gorgeous velvet jackets, a soft dull green top. It was only after I'd bought them that Penni said, "You do realise all those clothes belong to India?"

India is "my" character in the book we're co-writing. She's a tarot-reading, goth-y, hippy chick who drips with velvet, scarves and silver jewellery. I had been channelling India the whole time we were shopping, and I now have half her wardrobe. Gulp.

Fifteen Minutes, Two Points and Heartbreak

The lovely Steph has interviewed me here. I love being interviewed but I find it very hard to say what my favourite books are; there are so many. I need a whole library. It was fun thinking up a superhero though. My team was actually banned from one particular trivia competition because we were just too good (that's our story anyway.)

In other news, my boys had a heartbreaking near-win on Friday night, against Geelong (who are the best team in the competition, so far unbeaten, and were themselves cruelly robbed of the premiership last year). Captain Brad Johnson had a shot at goal after the siren which would have stolen the game; the kick went wide and we ended up losing by two points. Michael and I were watching on TV and we'd jumped up when Johnno got hold of the ball; for one ecstatic moment we were sure he'd kicked a goal to pinch the win, but then we realised he'd missed and the world came crashing down. Ah footy.

It was interesting that the victory song in the Geelong rooms was the most half-hearted rendition I've ever heard. Mick Molloy later described it as "a devastating two point win" which is how it must have felt for the Cats. And poor Johnno looked in agony. Michael couldn't sleep for hours, god knows how Johnson must have tortured himself all night. Of course it's nonsense to say that one kick can win or lose a game, but boy it must feel like it sometimes.

Next weekend we're taking the whole family to Canberra to watch them play the Swans, so let's hope for a victory to soothe the pain.

Collaboration

Did I mention I'm working on a top-secret urgent collaborative project with a good friend of mine? It's going really well, in fact we're in the final strait, with only a handful of chapters to go. If anything, we've written too much already, which is a luxurious position to be in!

I don't want to talk about the actual book itself (more on that later), but my Mystery Friend and I (oh okay, you all know it's Penni) agreed the other day that it's the perfect project for working mums.

Because we're taking turns to write chapters, the person who's "off" can't think too hard about what to write next; you have to wait and see what happens, so you can fit in with what the other person's said. (We do have permission to tweak each other's chapters, but so far we have only used that right sparingly.)

Because each chapter is only a couple of thousand words, there's no temptation to push yourself too far -- "Oh, I'll see if I can write four thousand words today..."

Conversely, because we know the other author is waiting for the next installment, there's no temptation to be completely slack -- "Oh, I think I'll forget about writing today and just eat chocolate in front of Oprah." (Not that I would ever do that.)

Best of all, there is the constant fresh surprise of a new chapter, new action in the story, appearing every few days without any effort on your part! It's magic! It's like the novel is writing itself!

And because we've set up the outline and agreed to it, we're free from that torture of indecision that always strikes midway through any writing project -- "The second half is rubbish, the plot doesn't make sense, I know, maybe I should write it from the pig's perspective!" Paradoxically, there's been some security in giving up total control.

But equally, for the first time, I genuinely can't see inside the heads of all my characters, because, well, they're not all mine! At first it was deeply scary writing dialogue and action for someone else. But it's become easier, as I've grown to know and love the characters better.

The whole thing is/has been a huge amount of fun, and in unexpected ways. More later.

Things I Could Do Right Now Instead Of Writing

stack the breakfast plates in the dishwasher
listen to the Grade 2s reading at school
fill out Steph's interview questions
make the beds
footy tipping
yoga
ring my mum
confiscate all the toys in the living room in accordance with my new pack-it-away-or-lose-it policy
read the paper
make a cup of tea
check the letterbox
figure out the route to my sister-in-law's where I have to drive tomorrow
blog

What I Picked Up At The Library Book Sale

This sale in the local scout hall is my three-monthly treat. Lots of people seem to treat it as a book exchange, so you can often pick up good quality non-library books, too. This was my haul:

For Evie
The Fairy Catalogue, Sally Gardner Full of fairy and fairy tale items (wands, dresses, castles) you can order by wishing.
I Spy School Days I pretend this is to encourage Evie's powers of concentration and observation, but I secretly love these puzzle books myself.

For Alice
The Kid's Book of Chess A good basic primer with lots of pictures of knights and queens and soldiers. Alice knows all the moves but she likes it best when our queens and kings chase each other round the board.

For Michael (who almost became a military historian and knows more about WWI than anyone I've ever met; one day we'll have to write a book together)
A Foreign Field, Ben Macintyre "A true story of love and betrayal in the Great War." Michael's read 100 pages already so it must be good.
Boys of Blood and Bone, David Metzenthen Another war book. I'm looking forward to this one too.

For me
Great Ideas for Tired Parents, Michael Grose Because I can't resist a parenting book. And I'm tired.
Oyster, Janette Turner Hospital Don't know anything about it, but I know JTH is an amazing writer, and I have to read grown-up books sometimes.
Life Lines: Australian women's letters and diaries 1788 to 1840. Now my interest in Aussie history has been piqued, I snatched this up with glee.
Queen of the Flowers, Kerry Greenwood Because I love Phryne Fisher and I haven't read this one!
We Are The Weather Makers, Tim Flannery An early cry to action on global warming. I'm kind of dreading it but I need to read it.
The Adventures of the Christmas Pudding, Agatha Christie I seem to be on an Agatha jag at the moment. If anyone asks what I read as a teenager, I must remember: lots of Agatha Christie. This is short stories so it should take about five minutes to gulp down.
A Sound Of Chariots, Mollie Hunter I grabbed this because it's a Collins Lion from the 70s and some of my favourite childhood books were Lions (Gillian Avery, Noel Streatfeild, Alan Garner). It's a very intense semi-autobiographical account of a young Scottish girl dealing with her father's death (he was wounded in the Great War -- another war book!) by writing. Having never heard of Mollie Hunter I was surprised to see that she's still alive and was writing in 2003, and there was a list of books as long as your arm. and she won the Carnegie Medal. I'm astonished I haven't come across her before. Not sure if it would appeal to kids now, but I'm immersed in this one.

All this for $7, not bad eh?

Transformations

I'm in the middle of a top secret urgent collaborative project about which I can say very little, except that it's a YA novel. This morning I found myself writing a scene where two girls alter their appearance, and in doing so, take on aspects of each other's personality.

It struck me that variations of this scene have appeared in several of the books that my collaborative partner and I have written lately. The girls swap clothes, change each other's hair, put on makeup or take it off, and become different people. It's all about trying on different identities, becoming someone else for a night or a day. It's almost too obvious to note that this experimentation with identity, trying to work out who am I? is a central project for most young people. It's the time in your life when you have the most freedom to play with different looks, different ways of being, when all your options are open.

Little kids do it too. This week Evie has been to kinder once as Snow White, once as a fairy and once as a "schoolgirl."

I wish I'd had more confidence, when I was sixteen, to try different styles of being, but I was crippled by acute self-consciousness and my main desire at the time was to be invisible. I didn't realise then that strong visibility can be a disguise, too, and perhaps a more effective one, than trying to melt into the shadows.

Cicada Summer Is Released!

And some good news - Cicada Summer has been officially set free into the wild.

Good luck, little book. I hope you thrive out there. You're small, but you're beautiful and tough. Let's hope you'll find people to pick you up and love you.