post-teen trauma

1. Prince Caspian by C.S Lewis (30 cents)
2. Children's globe - old, old, old: "Tropichode Capricorno" ($5)
3. Hippie artisan dish ($3)

I woke up in Melbourne this morning feeling anxious -  and the feeling didn't go away until the city was a jagged line behind me ....I was homesick! Came back relieved to see the house still standing and not gutted by vandals  or  flattened by the plane tree, and now the cold's starting to creep in and the gas fire's going and it's just lovely.

I lurked at CBCA and managed to scoff food and talk exciting future projects with both my editors and other newish writer friends. Neil Gaiman's address was good (if a bit long) - I loved what he had to say about books belonging to both the author and the reader - a contract - a hand-hold - that readers build story as they read, add their own images and effects.  He said it is the child's job to 'sleep unwisely' like Goldilocks, but these days he's more like Papa Bear, checking the locks etc etc. He makes me want to stay in bed reading folk tales and Gogol.

I also scored a ticket to the swanky dinner at the Museum. A literary blind date! (I was a little worried, my only other blind date experience was at a high school ball when my ape date got drunk, threw up and tried to pash me while he still had flecks and spittle on his chin. Anyway, it was all okay because my blind date turned out to be Leonie Norrington, who is a star. The vegetarian option wasn't much chop - green-ish curry with excess sprouts - but the meringue for dessert more than made up for it.

Watched the Logies. I don't know why. Perhaps to see if someone would take out Sam Newman. But alas, no. And then I think, take them all out. And would someone please give Dannii Minogue a turtleneck?

In other news. I'm waiting for my copyedits for Everything Beautiful. There's a new issue of Mixtape out, with a cool article about non-crafty books including one on revolutionary pop-art nun, Sister Corita! The jumper I bought off Ebay arrived but it is bear-sized. Please pass on your tips for shrinking mohair... 

We've been watching so many because we haven't got a TV aerial, but only a couple stick in my mind.

Savage Grace, about the life and death of Barbara Baekeland, based on the oral biography by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L Aronson (which shares enough of the 'secret life of rich people' of Jean Stein's Edie to go as a double bill bookfest). Barbara is a social climber from a no account family who marries in the Bakelite fortune. Her husband is a Jack London throwback who calls himself a writer but never publishes. They have one of those violent, rampaging kind of marriages. Their son, Tony, is  fine-boned and precocious. He gets all his mother's love along with her neurosis and ultimately, she 'seduces' him in order to 'cure him of his homosexualty and he stabs her with a kitchen knife. Lurid? The film is by Tom Kalin (Swoon). It glides through glamorous locations. Julianne Moore looks strained but beautiful and you can never quite feel sorry for Eddie Redmayne because he's such a cold fish. And in the end all you can say is that rich people - really rich people - have about as much in common with you or me as early man. I was reminded of Poor Little Rich Girl and Mommie Dearest or Citizen Kane. It wasn't a truly riveting film- I guess because I couldn't empathise with any of the characters. The event at the end was everything and even the incest  - while ooky - didn't count because they were so weird anyway. I'm sure the book is much better, more illuminating. But it made me feel okay about the fact that at 36 I still don't live in a house with ducted heating.

Ladies & Gentleman, Mr Leonard Cohen   This is from 1965, B& W and full of shots like you might see  from John Ford - Leonard Cohen is the solitary hero, the city of Montreal his unforgiving landscape. The film starts with Leonard giving a performance - and he could be a stand up comedian. On the one hand he's dry and urbane. He drops grand eloquent statements without even lowering his eyelashes. But then he has this giggle, and calls to mind the creepy over-sexed hunchback of Terry Southern's Candy. Leonard smokes in beatnicky cafes where women with helmets for hair eye him off. He stays in a three-dollar-a-night hotel and papers the walls with his I-Ching prophecies, while the narrator waxes about Leonard's house in Hydra, the woman who waits for him there.  he tells us that 1964 was a good year, Leonard made $17000, but even if he'd made nothing he would still live the same way. Leonard is "deeply concerned with the style of his soul." I love his records, but I'm not sure if he poetry is any better or worse than Rod McKuen's (or John Laws' for that matter). Once upon a time you could be that kind of man...

A Star is Born - of course, the Kris Kristofferson, Barbra Streisand version. I borrowed from the library for the special extras which included Babs doing the commentary. Most commentaries relate directly to what is happening on the screen, but Barbra pretty much just spoke about herself. She produced the film - it sounds like she directed it, really - she showed the cinematographer how to put a halo of light above her head during the performance scenes - seriously. She wanted to save money so used her own wardrobe - she collects vintage clothing - which explains why she looks like Lawrence of Arabia in the adobe scenes. ('I got attacked for wearing that turban.") I love her. There's a bit in the commentary where she says that as a child she was ignored. She would walk in to a room and no one would say anything. She has been making up for it ever since. I know it's unfashionable but I love this film. I think it's exciting and romantic! I love that KK has a triple-barrelled 'rock' name (John Norman Howard) and that his band is called 'Speedway', and I love that Gary Busey is in it, being so 'real'. I must borrow it again so I can hear all about Barbra's vintage pieces in the special extras. Something else - initially Babs wanted Elvis Presley to play John Norman Howard, because he really was fat and washed up at this stage, but the Colonel vetoed it.

I will be at the CBCA conference this weekend signing (mooching) at the Pan Macmillan stand Saturday lunchtime - come and say hi!


Also I'm hosting what may well turn into hearty, balls-to-the-wall, bunfight at the Emerging Writers Festival: The panel is:

Critics are just failed artists…aren’t they?

Looking at the art of the critique; writing it, surviving it and thriving on it. Told from those that do it and those who have been done by it.

Matthew Clayfield, Rjurick Davidson Ryan Paine and Alison Croggon.

Hosted by Simmone Howell

Saturday May 18 at 1pm


The festival looks great. Check out the program and be sure to listen to 3RRR's Max Headroom on Thursday May 8 between 7 and 8pm where Lisa Greenaway and Stella Glorie will talking in and around and over and under and through the whole shebang with voxpop from various writer-types, emerging and otherwise.

I have been tagged by Amra Pajalic - whose YA book I will one day get my mitts on. The way the meme works is: 1. Pick up the nearest book. 2. Open it to page 123. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the next three sentences. 5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you ...

The book is: Anton Chekhov - The Kiss and Other Stories

Petrov and Yegerov were given bad conduct marks, put in detention, and finally, were both expelled. He had the strange habit of visiting us both in our digs. He would call in on some teacher and sit down without saying a word, as though he were trying to spy something out.

- from the story Man in a Case

I am tagging: Penni Russon, Adam Ford, Gillian Howell, Justine 62Cherry and Stephanie Kuehnert...

And just to make things challenging I am asking said tagged folks to list what (if any) reading material they have in their toilet. Currently I have a copy of ID (sans cover) and a brochure for the Castlemaine Poetry Festival (which is happening right now!! ) Also on the wall there is a long transcription of an interview my husband did with a band called Moonshake, once upon the 1990s... " I wanted to live in the world of ideas..."