Very Happy

Winter of Grace was announced yesterday as joint winner of the 2009 Children's Peace Literature Award, together with Audrey Goes To Town by Christine Harris.

The jury described Winter of Grace thus:

This book deals with the unusual but important theme of the role of religious
affiliations for young people trying to understand the world and human relationships.
Readers are gripped by an engaging story about two Year 11 girls who keep us
intrigued with action and controversy and what might happen next.

The main character Bridie is searching for a set of beliefs or ideas to make sense of
life. Her encounter with Christian fundamentalism brings her into conflict with her
mother and her best friend Stella, who each have reasons for rejecting organised
religion. A variety of religious beliefs is portrayed, and Bridie's quest is not over by
the end of the book. The underlying message is that people with different religious
beliefs including atheism can all be sincere seekers after truth and an honorable
code of behaviour. Bridie comes to realise she needs to think and explore for herself.
Her reconciliation with Stella is based on recognising that friendship and trust allow
people to disagree about religious beliefs without damaging their relationship.
The model of respect for diverse belief systems and their adherents is a timely one in
our age.

So now I feel all warm and glow-y inside. And very pleased to have some further evidence that the Girlfriend Fiction books are "not fluff. Not at all."

A Small Complaint

Dear Moisturiser (and other cosmetics) Manufacturers,

Why do you feel compelled to make the lids of your bottles/jars etc ever-so-slightly rounded? If the tops of the lids were flat, I could turn the bottle/jar etc upside down and let the last of the product within trickle down to the top, so that I could squeeze it out and use it. A rounded lid-top compels me to throw away the bottle/jar etc with a goodly portion of its contents unsqueeze-out-able. This is extremely annoying.

Surely you haven't deliberately designed your bottle/jar etc thus, forcing the consumer to purchase a replacement bottle/jar etc prematurely. Surely not?

Yours sincerely,

Disgruntled

Winter of Grace, Spring of Peace

Earlier this week I was proud and pleased to learn that Winter of Grace has been nominated for the 2009 Children's Peace Literature Award.

This is a prize awarded every two years by Psychologists For Peace to a book for children "that encourages the non-violent resolution of conflict or promotes peace at the global, local or interpersonal level."

What made the news especially delightful was that Penni's book, Josie and the Michael Street Kids, was also nominated, along with half a dozen other worthy titles. It's lovely to be short-listed together, particularly for such different books, and for such a wonderful award.

Josie, a firm bedtime favourite at our house, is the story of a girl who moves to a new neighborhood and gradually makes friends with the other kids in the street (we love this book especially dearly because we know that Penni based "Michael St" on the street where we live!).

Winter of Grace is a young adult novel, about a teenage girl whose search for spiritual answers turns her world upside down, and sets her in conflict with her mother and her best friend. It's not a novel that I expected many people to read (can I say that?) but the journey of writing it was one of the most challenging and fulfilling I've experienced, and I'm so quietly happy that it's earned this recognition.

Congratulations to all the nominees, and (how can I not say this?) peace be with you all.

Lost in the Forest of Empty Words

Caught part of an interview with the wonderful Don Watson on The 7.30 Report last night.

The admirable Mr Watson has been conducting a campaign for some time now against what he calls "weasel words" -- the kind of meaningless corporate-speak that clogs our airwaves, our newspapers, our workplaces and even our classrooms and football fields. He pointed out that kids in Grade 2 now have to write their first mission statements; eight year olds are being asked to evaluate their key performance indicators. I winced; this is all too true.

However, I must disagree with the fabulous Mr W on one point. He claims that all this jargon (value-adding, birthday-ing, lines of sight, synergies*) is burgeoning and multiplying in the name of efficiency. No. It's arse-covering. No-one wants to be held responsible for anything. If no-one can understand what you say you're trying to do, it's that much harder for someone to realise that you haven't done it. So we all float around in this cloud of vagueness, in the foggy foggy forest of weasel wordage, where no one says what they mean and no-one ever has to take the blame for anything.


*Michael, who works for...er, the government... can supply me with plenty of examples.

Fear of Meat

I was vegetarian for about ten years. Not that I had particularly strong ethical views about the rights and wrongs of eating animals, it was just what all my (more strong-minded) friends were doing and it was easier to go along. The cooks in our share houses were always vegetarian; vegetarianism, even now, seems to be a default position when I think of meals. It astonishes me when my father, for example, hurrumphs about a meal being incomplete without meat. Pasta, curry, risotto, frittata, soup - what could be easier than putting together a meatless dinner?

Michael was a vegetarian, too, and stayed one long after I'd lapsed back into my evil bacon-and-sausage eating ways. It was having children that brought him undone. The temptation to finish off that abandoned sausage roll or shred of chicken on Alice's plate was just too strong.

Ironically, now we're both full blown carnivores again, it's the girls who turn up their noses at meat. Alice's crossbite makes it almost impossible for her to chew on anything, and she objects to food that looks like it came from an animal (I entirely sympathise with this position, having some residual squeamishness myself). Evie likes warm chicken only, and Nana's roast lamb, and otherwise isn't interested, though they will both eat mince. My lack of cooking practice means I'm nervous about cooking big hunks of meat like roasts, and anyway, we get bored before we can eat it all.

So we are not a big meat-eating household. I have to make an effort to include meat in our meals, rather than leave it out. Shepherd's pie, meatballs and lasagne get a big workout on our menus. These days I feel bad about meat-eating on environmental grounds rather than animal cruelty. Save the planet, have one vegetarian meal a week! I heard on the radio the other day. ONE vegetarian meal? A week? If it's that easy, why isn't everyone doing it?

And yet there are people like my dad, who can't really come to grips with any form of protein that didn't once have a face. Friends in Scotland once planned to open a vegetarian cafe in Edinburgh (this was in the early 1990s); there was no such thing in existence then, and they met so much hostility and disbelief that they eventually gave up the project. (This from the city that invented the deep-fried pizza slice.) At college, our ex-army cook was so baffled by student requests for at least one vegetarian option at each meal that he resorted to eggs every night, and, on one memorable evening, served up a curry made from the fruit scones left over from that day's afternoon tea.

There's something to be said for the belief that if you're going to eat it, you should be prepared to kill it. I know I'm a coward; I don't want to have to think about what the poor animal goes through before it reaches my plate, let alone actually wield the knife myself. But animals do eat each other, and I don't have a problem with that, as such. I don't want to have to grind my own flour, make my own cheese or pick my own oranges either; is it more wrong to out-source meat production than any other food? Do I have an ethical stance? In the end, it's easier to eat the little bits of incidental bacon on top of the roll, make the soup with chicken stock, throw some chorizo into the risotto, than make the effort to be purely meat-free.

There are philosophical tangles here that I will have to face at some point (when Alice starts to quiz me, which will happen any day now). In the mean time, I've got some fruit scones to curry. Bon appetit.

A Room of One's Own (and a minute to one's self)

Oh my God. School holidays. Lord knows I love my children, and they are excellent company; but I am not a sociable person, and my daughters have now reached an age when they count as People. They don't need bums wiped any more, but they do need conversation.

I need my time alone. I am someone who has always largely lived inside my own head, and it's a hard habit to break. Even in crowded share houses, there was always my own bedroom to retreat to, my own door to shut. It's not so easy for a mum to be unavailable. Michael is very good at disappearing to the gym or the shops if he needs some space; for some reason, I find it difficult to just vanish like that. I'm not sure if it's a mother thing, or if it's just me.

I find myself relishing the minutes spent hanging up the washing at the bottom of the garden, or guiltily extending my time in the shower (not that abluting is any guarantee of privacy). Or now, these precious moments snatched in front of the screen while everyone's busy elsewhere. No time to think, no space to write, no time to string a coherent thought together.

And here comes Evie to ask for lunch, and the solitude dissolves almost before it's begun.

Things I've Been Doing Instead of Blogging*

building toy railways
building replicas of Hogwarts castle to stand picturesquely beside railways
rescuing runaway trains from under beds
swimming at the pool
cooking sweet potato and roasted corn soup
watching season 4 of Dr Who
supervising playdates
visiting grandparents
picking Littlest Pet Shop pets out of the bath
helping to make a papier mache volcano
attempting to answer the question "can humans fly?" for the upcoming school science fair**

** the answer is, sadly, no -- not with wings made from old shirts and balsa wood, anyway

Things I Haven't Been Doing
writing


* with apologies to Poppy from Dear Swoosie, who loves a list

Muddlehead

Last night, Alice and Evie and Jeremy-from-next-door took themselves off to play the Muddle-headed Wombat. Alice was Wombat, in a battered straw hat and an old green cardigan with a pillow shoved up it. Jeremy was Tabby, "because he's a boy, and he's taller than Wombat." Evie put on my gold-rimmed spectacles and a squeaky voice (no difficulty there) and became the Mouse. "Tabbeee, dear! Oh, you dear old Muddlehead!"

It warms my heart to know that it's not all Bratz and Ben 10 and training bras for pre-schoolers; that it's still possible for children to play Muddleheaded Wombat. Yay.

The Last Chance

I'm in a flurry of nerves all week. Which is ridiculous. It's only a game of football, after all. And pointless, because there's absolutely nothing I can do to influence the outcome. But the days drag, waiting for Friday -- our last chance at the Grand Final.

Yesterday I go to get my hair cut. My hairdresser asks, "So, do you follow football?" I admit that I do. "Which team?"
"Bulldogs," I say sheepishly.
She pauses, scissors in hand. "Me, too!"
So for the rest of the haircut we earnestly discuss football (does this happen anywhere in the western world apart from Melbourne?) She thinks we need Big Bad Barry Hall; I'm not so sure. She's not impressed by Will Minson; I think he's improved a lot this year. It seems that every Doggies supporter except me had a Nana who lived round the corner from the Western Oval; my husband did, and so does my hairdresser.
We agree that we don't stand much of a chance against St Kilda tonight. They've thumped us twice this year; in fact they've comfortably thumped just about everyone and are hot favourites to win the flag. No one gives the Dogs a prayer tonight. "But there's always that little crumb of hope," groans my hairdresser. She wishes the day would last forever, to keep that hope from fading; I want it to all be over. I can't stand the agony of suspense.

The day passes; the hours count down. I'm busy with copy-editing, and school pick up, and creche pick up, and fish and chip pick up, and dinner with the next-doors. Michael's coming home late, so while the kids watch TV, I turn on the radio and pace up and down the darkened kitchen.

And the Bulldogs come out snarling. They are on fire! They have seven shots at goal and the Saints have nothing on the scoreboard but a measly point! They completely dominate the quarter; the are playing out of their skins.
I pace and I gnaw my nails. The second quarter starts; we're still way in front. My god, we're winning.

Michael comes home and I hastily switch the radio off. He eats dinner, we bundle the girls off to bed. When we switch on the TV, he shouts, "It's 15-1! Dogs in front!" I try to look surprised. The Dogs are in front, and we stay in front. It's a ridiculously low-scoring game, tight-fought and tough. Every possession is contested, nothing comes easy.
Just after half-time the Saints snatch the lead. Painfully the Dogs claw it back. I can't look; I'm playing patience on the living-room floor, muttering, "Come on Doggies, come on Dogs." We're behind, but not by much; it's goal for goal.
With six minutes to go, we're in front. I feel sick. I say to Mikey, "The boys have played so well, they've got nothing to be ashamed of," as if we're losing, not winning.
Then St Kilda kicks a goal to nose in front by a single point. All those fluffed shots in the first quarter have come back to haunt us now. I'm pacing. Come on, boys! They scrabble over the ball; all the players look exhausted. The Dogs have the ball, but it's hard work, inching it up the ground, and there's no result.
Then St Kilda grab possession and just like that, bam, they have another goal. Why don't we ever get easy goals like that? There's only a minute to go. Bob Murphy bombs it long but it's no use. The siren sounds. It's over.
Ryan Griffen covers his face with his hands. Callan Ward collapses to the ground. The Saints are ecstatic; the Dogs are gutted. They go through the motions, patting each other, mouthing congratulations. Later, in the rooms, one player covers his head with a towel. Is he weeping? Griffen blinks away tears. No one moves. They slump, motionless, against the walls. In the end, it was seven points. So close. So close.

I haven't even looked at the papers yet, I don't know what they'll say. The boys played well; they've got nothing to be ashamed of. They came closer than anyone expected.
But close is not the same as winning.
It's over.

The Sea, The Sea

This weekend I sat with my back to the dunes and watched my little family jumping the waves. My parents and sister were looking down from the holiday unit behind us; we'd all gone away to the beach together to celebrate my sister's birthday. The Lark and the Owl were in heaven, building dams, playing trains, digging in the sand, cooing at baby lambs.

Perhaps it's the sheer vastness of the sea, its impersonal beauty, that gives us a glimpse of eternity. The waves roll in, the waves wash out. But as I sat there, with my birth family sheltered behind me, and my husband and children standing between me and forever, I couldn't help but feel a profound gratitude: that we're all safe, all healthy, all more or less happy, so blessed to have each other and the glory of the sea.

We asked the Owl to rate her holiday out of ten. "Two million, three hundred," was the emphatic reply.

Yeah.

Geelong 14.12.96 d. Western Bulldogs 12.10.82

Remember what I said about the mock? I TAKE IT ALL BACK.

Well done, Cats. You are a very, very fine football side, and if anyone but the Doggies has to win this year, I hope it's you. Congratulations, Onion ladies. I hope we'll be seeing you (again) in the preliminary final... but I'm not counting on it...

Workplace Matters

The perils of using a laptop...

For the last few months, I haven't been using my study much. Mostly because it's a bungalow in the back garden, and it's freaking cold out there. And when I've only got a couple of hours to work before I have to race out and pick up Evie from kinder, it just seems so much easier to settle in on the couch by the heater, or prop up on my bed in the sun with my lappy on my knees, where it's already warm.

But... lately I've had a couple of Whole Days at my disposal (praise be to Michael and ATO flex-time!) and I've started coming out to my study again. And whaddaya know, I've been a heap more productive. I don't think it's just because I've had Whole Days to reflect and ponder, though that certainly helps. It's also the physical fact of sitting at my desk, with my research books spread round me, sitting in an office chair. It says "I am at work. I am serious now. This is Writing Time."

I've never been a writer who could get much done scribbling in a cafe or even in a library. I like silence while I work, and no distractions. I can't even work when the children are home. And now I remember why I prize my room so highly (it's one of the main reasons we bought this house), and why I never want to give it up. Forget hot-desking (is that still happening??) Give me my cold room any day.

Putting The Mock On

Another grand old Aussie expression, meaning to jinx something or someone. It seems to be a variation on the slightly more common "put the mozz on" which derives from the Hebrew mazel (pronounced mozzle), meaning luck. But we always talk about "the mock" in our house. (Also, "the false mock," to deliberately tempt the gods by pretending loudly not to care about an outcome while secretly caring very much indeed, in a kind of elaborate double bluff. Yeah, I'm not sure how it works, either.)

A belief in "the mock" goes hand in hand with its opposite: warding off disaster by purposefully imagining everything that could possibly go wrong, in the belief that by articulating the worst, one somehow prevents it from actually happening, perhaps on the grounds that catastrophe is, by definition, unexpected. Western Bulldogs supporters, like my mother-in-law, are expert at this, as previously discussed.

On these grounds, I tipped against the Dogs two weeks in a row, and thus guaranteed that they actually won. But this week I threw caution to the wind and tipped them and they won anyway.

I've always been a firm believer in the power of the mock. But to hell with it! The day of the mock is over; the era of positive visualisation has arrived. I'm going to say it loud and say it proud, even if my words come back to bite me:

WE CAN WIN THIS THING!!!

(Maybe. Possibly. If Brian Lake doesn't do a hammy. If Nick Riewoldt does do a hammy. If the Cats haven't been just toying with us the last few weeks. If the Crows don't get up after all. If the Pies weren't shamming. If everybody fires on the day... And what a day, what a day that would be!)

True Spring

According to my trusty Aboriginal calendar, True Spring is upon us, and will last until the beginning of November. "Warm, wet, windy" -- well, the windy part is certainly true, and there have been moments of warmth lately, albeit interspersed with icy blasts. For some reason, the playground of Alice's primary school is the coldest, windiest place on Earth, especially as you're counting down the minutes till the bell goes. Anyway, here's hoping for a bit more rain to go along with the winds.

The Grade 2s and 3s have gone off on an excursion today. They were feral this morning, racing around shrieking. I'm glad I don't have to sit with them for two hours on a bus. There is excitement in the air at school, as our stimulation package finally gets underway. A nice big hole has been levelled in the ground where the new building's going to be, and soon the foundations will be poured. Next year Alice will have a beautiful new library and flexible classrooms to enjoy, instead of the shabby old asbestos-ridden shed that currently comprises the "Senior School," and the library shoe-horned into an upstairs classroom. I think the old shed was there when my mum was at the school in the 40s.

By the end of True Spring, Evie will be starting Prep Orientation; my baby will be a grown up school girl. I'm both glad and sorry; but you can't have spring sunshine without the winds and rain.

Writing My Way In

I am writing. No, honestly, I am!

My current work-in-progress is evolving in a new way; I've never approached a book like this before. Generally the jumping-off point for a new novel for me is a scene or an image, like a scene in a silent film. For Singer, it was an image of a girl gazing over a snowy landscape, seeing an unconscious stranger carried to the tower on which she stood; for Taste Of Lightning, it was a herd of white horses flowing over a hill. Gradually I begin to see the figures in the landscape more clearly, their situation evolves, my characters come into focus and take on their own life, and the story accretes around them, like a pearl forming around a morsel of grit (well, hopefully it's a pearl). Often the piece of grit (that initial image) doesn't survive the writing process, but it's the foundation for all that follows.

This time it's different. Because I started out wanting to write about a particular time and place (PNG in the 1970s), I didn't begin with any characters, or a clear situation. I've accumulated lots of characters now (exiled schoolgirl Julie, dashing young pilot Doug, hard-bitten housewife Barb, haus meri Koki, explorer's son Simon), but they're just milling around, staring at me mutely, waiting for directions. I have to find something for them to do.

It's complicated, too, by the fact that my own memories keep getting in the way. It's hard to push my personal history aside, to remember that this story is not about me or my family, that this is fiction, that I have to imagine my way in, just as I would with any other story, not fall back on reminiscence. I'm not Julie, and my sister is not Nadine; Allan and Barbara are definitely not my parents.

So I've been writing my way in: fragments of scenes where two characters interact, talk to each other, go to a party, argue, swap books. I never know what's going to happen when I put them in a room together. Julie and the mission wife next door unexpectedly began to play Monopoly; Julie's mother cast lustful looks in a surprising direction; Julie's sister Nadine turns out to be a compulsive fibber. This is all very interesting (for me), but it isn't yet a story.

Then yesterday the scene that I've unconsciously been waiting for dropped into my mind -- the spark to ignite the narrative, the push to start the story rolling. Once I'd seen it, it seemed so obvious: of course, that's what happened! This is how X and Y and Z first met, this is what binds them, this is the source of the tension between them, this is their shared secret. The mists lift and there is the solution, plain and simple and true. Everything else flows from this; the shape of the story begins dimly to reveal itself, like a mountain range lifting out of the clouds. Which is a very appropriate metaphor in this instance, as anyone familiar with the Highlands will recognise.

Now I just have to write the damn thing.