MrsUnderhill.com

My new blog for the professional woman

2010-08-30T19:15:00.000-07:00

Well I am proud to say it is almost spiffy, still needs some work, but do visit http://jacquiebyron.wordpress.com/ and let your pals know I am OPEN FOR BUSINESS. (:

So ends the hiatus

2010-07-12T20:32:00.000-07:00

Let’s work backwards.

My last post was on May 19. My last entry into the lovely diary I keep by my bed was June 10. Did I have a car accident? Did I have a baby? Why does my mind go to both those extremes? (Probably because I am reading 'We Need to Talk About Kevin'.)

No, I am happy to say that, by and large, no real hideous dramas befell me, just your garden variety ones BUT my creative output in other areas of life went into jet propulsion motion and I walked away from a media course I did confused about the kind of (wanker alert!) online presence a professional writer like myself should have.

I was told and was convinced that a more formal, writer-for-sale blog was required, that I should Twitter only for business and that I shouldn't say anything on Facebook I wouldn't mention before a table full of colleagues in the office. The result? I stopped all communications.

Offline, in the world where real oxygen is required, I was pumping out so many words, strategies and 'concepts' for new (much appreciated) clients and the now-in-production magazine I am working on that the idea of either recounting those days to myself in my diary OR banging on here about other topics was just the straw that would break this slapper's back.

Now I am feeling slightly re-energised; I attended July’s Year Of The Novel class at The Wheeler Centre on Saturday where author, Andrea Goldsmith, popped in to take questions on her book, Reunion, which had been a set text.

Thing to note! She reads for two hours every morning before she does anything else. Ah, the pressure!

I came home and got straight onto my homework, a technique called CLUSTERING. Have a read about it here. I also went back to a short piece I wrote about Glengarriff, a small town in Ireland I have some connection to. I might spit and polish it and post it here for my own gratification.

In the meantime a big girl professional blog spruiking for work is on the way. Probably. I think so ... we'll see ...

PS: How about the Julia/Kevin imagery I posted in May. Am I a Canberra insider?

PPS: The book pictured here is 2010 Birds of a Feather diary by Jean Lowe and Greg Johnson, truly gorgeous and currently not in use at my place.

Mrs Underhill Book Club update

2010-05-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

The next book for the Club is We Need to Talk About Kevin, a 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver, concerning a fictional school massacre. Do not confuse it with a book called ‘We need to talk about me taking your job Kevin’, a new book by Julia Eileen Gillard.

This is the suggestion of ‘founding member’, Fiona Findlay, who is about to move to Sydney and still be a clubber. We love her!

We will meet in the flesh at my place at 8pm on the evening of Wednesday 21 July OR you can make online comments about the book by that date here on www.mrsunderhilldotcom.blogspot.com.

Please do come along on the 21st though and have a wine or a tea or a cheezel and have a laugh with us.

I believe Lionel is a guest on First Tuesday Book Club With Jennifer Byrne 10:05pm - Tuesday, June 1 on ABC1.

If you would like to hear a journo from The Guardian interview Lionel, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2008/may/16/guardian.book.club

Alrighty then. Happy reading

PS: Image source: www.globalactint.com/Humour.html

In praise of small lives

2010-05-06T00:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes sayings, words, or thoughts come up in life in a synchronistic way. Chatting with someone recently about their frustration over their partner’s “small life” and his disinterest in engaging in the outside world, I began to wonder what is meant by such a thing.

What is a big life and what is a small?

- Is a big life full of big ideas ... daring political thought and activity or ambitious actions on career and financial fronts?
- Is a big life one lived very publically, one that requires loads of people to be involved – perhaps by community participation, public performance, a huge family or so on?
- Or is a big life one that encompasses lots of travel and risk taking?

- Is a small life one that centres on the domestic, the personal, the egocentric or the quiet?
- Is it one that is crowded with unchallenging interests like daytime TV and magazines about pop culture?
- Is it one lived locally, not globally, occupied with personal concerns, hobbies, day-to-day tasks and routines in housekeeping, child rearing and the like?
Is it simply one that doesn’t involve seeing other people’s viewpoints?

Living a “small life” was something that concerned me much more when I was younger. Then it represented a life of claustrophobic boundaries where I did not meet many new and interesting people, I did not travel enough and I was not a global commercial success of some kind, any kind.

Today I fear a “small life” that does not bring service and joy to others, that is too self concerned and doesn’t impact on others enough in helpful ways and one that doesn’t expose me to new ideas and information.

A recent trip to Sydney brought this home. I was so blessed (staying at The Observatory Hotel for God’s sake) and seeing some very dear old friends and meeting some new ones and thus I became intensely aware of how privileged I am compared to so many people - hence the man sitting at the traffic lights outside the QV building was the recipient of $5.

I am aware of this privilege every day and try to honour and appreciate it but, hell, I am not the Dalai Lama.

Sometimes I think the feeling of “the small life” can come simply from getting stuck in too much of a rut. Personally the sunroom has been home to too much distraction lately. Despite – ironically - recently finishing RAPT: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher my own attention has been wondering, mainly because of that feeling of being a whiskered mouse chasing the wheel.

Being in Sydney, solo, got me some mojo back I hope. Frustrations with my main client are not as exhausting as I was making them. Good ideas and talented people are everywhere and there are new tricks to try if only I open up my eyes and see the rabbit and the hat before me.

I did my YEAR OF THE NOVEL homework (reading an article by Orham Pamuk) about ‘The Implied Author’ in the cafe of the Gallery of New South Wales while a frilly bummed Ibis picked and pecked around me. One of my art heroes – Edmund Capon (Director and Chief Curator of the Gallery since 1978) – was meeting over lunch at a table nearby. In the gallery shop was a copy of his book (I Blame Duchamp, published by Penguin) plus pairs of colourful mismatched socks inspired by the man himself.

I remember hearing an interview with Capon on ABC radio back when I was enjoying my ‘sabbatical’ in Byron Bay six or seven years ago and really enjoying it and becoming intrigued by him. What passion, what humour! I should have bought the coloured socks when I had the chance so I could look down and remember those qualities on days when I need ‘em.

Then I headed round the Archibald show (the winning SAM LEACH/Tim Minchin portrait is extremely impressive up close) before walking back through gorgeous Sydney city to the Rocks, dumping my gear at the hotel before walking, for the first time, over the city’s famous bridge. (I listened to interviews with Peter Carey and Ian Rankin on ABC Radio National’s book show as I walked and took some photos that I really like.)

While not listening to the podcasts I found myself pondering some of what I’d read at the gallery. Orham Pamuk had said, “I feel happy the moment I reach my desk, my pen and my paper. In no time at all I can leave behind the familiar, boring world of the everyday and step into this other, bigger place to wander freely, and most of the time I have no desire to return to real life or to reach the end of the novel.” And he’s mentioned that his “daughter can tell that I have not written well that day from the abject hopelessness on my face in the evening. I would like to be able to hide this from her, but I cannot. During these dark moments, I feel as if there is no line between life and death. I don't want to speak to anyone, and anyone seeing me in this state has no desire to speak to me either.”

No one can say Pamuk lives a small life (a little thing called the Nobel Prize in Literature 2006) but he reminded me of something that bothers me with writers sometimes ... do you have to observe life but not participate in it to be good artistically?

Peter Carey spoke about being a voyeur and how that is a necessary quality for a novelist. Many writers speak of that. Hell, even in my humble magazine writing I sometimes find myself wishing to change an interviewee’s quotes so they sound more erudite or express an idea more elegantly. (Tisk tisk, I don’t do it of course!)

Then Ian Rankin chimes in and lists all the rock concert ticket stubs he has on his pin board in his office, proof of his passion for music and his alter ego of a frustrated musician. He has people like REM inviting him to his concerts when they’re in town because he’s mentioned one of their songs in a book and they’re fans. Now THAT is a big life!

Death at a funeral versus Celine Dion being there ...

2010-04-15T16:30:00.000-07:00

Well she lives, she blogs.

Let’s ignore the fact it’s been more than three weeks since I wrote here. After all it only really matters to me. As I had formed this blog to support creative writing and literary efforts and interests generally on my part, however, it’s a bit of a concern.

Let’s not bang on about what’s been taking up my time. It certainly hasn’t been anything too deep in the realm of art ... though I have put together some pretty saucy emails of late.

The book, DROOD – A NOVEL, by Dan Simmons has finally been completed. I love a big book but 771 pages, when you’re trying to get through a page and a half before nodding off each night, may not be the right way to go just now. Especially when On Chesil Beach (Book Club) and This is How (Year of the Novel course) are waiting in the wings.
Simmons had a review in April 11’s M Magazine (The Sunday Age) for his new book, Black Hills. The first few chapters of that book are included at the end of Drood. The reviewer, Lucy Sussex, says Simmons “makes a number of risky moves” in this new book, “but succeeds”. I’ll leave it to someone else to check out for now. I’ve got to get on with my knitting.

Speaking of knitting, the craft magazine project I was launching in August has now moved to November. Sighs of frustration but frank relief all round. We will now have the opportunity to produce a truly mind blowing mag. After months of planning and spread sheets and mind numbing office politics it will be my great pleasure to kick off the creative, for me, side of the mag today by interviewing an interiors stylist I used to adore in my PR days – one Megan Morton – who has a new book out called HOMElove. Read this piece about her and you will see why I look forward to this conversation.

While not immersed in creative activities of late I have, of course, continued to enjoy and experience the best and worse that life has to offer. I saw two acts for the Comedy Festival – Cardinal Burns and (now novelist) Julian Clary. I took Mum to see Julian ... now how many fisting jokes did he make?

And, sadly, between late March and early April I went to two highly contrasting funerals. I won’t belittle the emotional drought of one by comparing it to the other but I will say that Celine Dion belting out ‘I’m your lady and you’re my man’ at the funeral of an 81-year-old widow is probably NOT the ideal choice. Still, as her middle aged son pointed out, it is one of HIS favourite songs!!!!!

Mr Underhill says there’s a short story there for me to tackle. I find it hard to write while gagging however.

Over and out XX

Planning and magic

2010-03-22T22:54:00.000-07:00

Life currently is all about planning and looking ahead; namely planning for the first issue of the new quarterly magazine I will be part of in mid August and looking for a house to buy with all that entails. It’s tiring but inspiring and is often leaving me with that panicky feeling of a mountain of work to do and no idea where to start.

My neck is a stiff rod at the end of many days and I keep moving two things in my diary – write blog and do some Year of the Novel work – from one page to the next.

The Year of the Novel (YON) gang have kicked off a blog ... so I can now bang on there plus at Mrs Underhill and the new one for for the magazine ... overload me thinks!

Of course life in all its glory has continued amidst this with THE WORST HAIRCUT IN TWO DECADES arriving on my noggin, attendance at THE JUNES (with the wonderful Suzannah Espie) at The Caravan Music Club, a visit to Federation Square to see Spotlight’s event as part of the L’oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival, boiled bacon and cabbage for Saint Patrick’s Day, a full day at the Fashion Festival’s Business Seminar ( great line up – I took notes; let me know if you want them) and a trip to Docklands to Pier 21 to see the Harpers Bazaar runway parade with Ms F, a couple of house inspections, a houseful of wonderful overnight guests after mad dinner party and various other girly girl catch ups.

I am slaving away on planning documents, excel sheets and power point presentations for the new mag so my literary adventures have been on the lean, lean, lean side. I would point however to a lovely podcast interview I listened to with the author Dan Simmonds whose book, Drood: A novel, I am currently enjoying.

For those of us who carry all round white man guilt he has a wonderful passage in one of his books where a Native American character ends up in New York and is wowed by the Brooklyn Bridge and expresses the thought: “So ... they have their magic too”. I don’t know, just liked it!

Elvis' daughter married Michael Jackson for God's sake

2010-03-10T21:37:00.001-08:00

February passed by quicker than the bad dim sim my pal, Miss G, once consumed - then ejected - in the time it took us to drive around the block from the Chinese take out.

I often say that February is a crazy month. Following on from all the Christmas and New Year shenanigans I have always either had (in the old days) L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival (LMFF) duties or, in the past six years, magazine duties as soon as the New Year kicked off and, so, Mr Underhill’s birthday would fly past, then mine would (Valentine’s Day in case you’re asking), then more and more festivities and celebrations. Finally, March arrives and I roll into a new size pair of undies and examine new broken capillaries around my nose and I start talking about “taking stock” and really making some life changes. Yada yada yada.

This year really has been crazier than ever and non work-related writing has not just hit the curb, it’s been washed down the drain and I’m not sure I can even find it now.

Quick re-cap … for my own purposes more than anyone else’s … there’s been the birthday bbq festival of the wonderful Mrs Peters, the completion of my company profile job for an architectural firm, Chinese New Year dinner at Bamboo House (tea smoked duck – an ABSOLUTE must), the final issue of the magazine as a monthly publication (it hits stands in May), dinner at Ichi Ni, the Fig Festival at Patsyfox’s house (3pm to 3am!!), renewal of yoga, the first (and really enjoyable) Mrs Underhill’s Book Club gathering for 2010, a night at The Greyhound watching drag shows, lunch with an old writing pal at The Botanical (she is going to finish her first novel this year and has good reaction from very weighty publishing reps already), Quan 88 with Ms O’B and baby Tessa, GEORGE MICHAEL, a suite of 27 press releases for a beautiful spa client, an article for Advance Global Australia (woo – an international audience AND Kevin's Rudd's the patron you know ...) and finally the long weekend at The Windsor. No wonder the back yard is full of weeds and my glass collection has disappeared beneath dust! Who’s got the time for God’s sake?

It doesn’t end you know. Last night was Donovan’s for the birthdays of Mrs Juckert and Mrs Jackson which was one of the most divine nights I’ve spent in a long time and tonight I am honoured to attend the launch night of Patsyfox’s LMFF exhibition.

The blessed life of a completely spoilt slapper – ME – continues.

Professionally I have just also powered through a complete contents breakdown for a new 176 page magazine and done an EXCEL SHEET!!!! (alert alert) for its production time line. And today I wrote my first blog post related to the magazine. My brain hurts, my neck is now officially on solid trunk (luckily I have Aurora Spa Retreat vouchers to cash in) and my poor old runners have not been getting the work out they so desperately need.

Excitingly, however, I think a new phase is genuinely about to commence with, FINGERS CROSSED, work matters becoming more settled and the commencement of The Year of The Novel (led by Sallie Muirden) with the Victorian Writers Centre commencing on Saturday. Again I will be thrown in with group of strangers all sharing a love of the written word and the aspiration to add their own voice to the world’s ever-growing library. I don’t need to write a book. I am currently reading Drood: A Novel by Dan Simmons and cannot get into bed fast enough to start consuming it. The world doesn’t need me but, when I read a book as FUN as this one, I want to join in the fun too.

Hell, we’ll see. As Mr Underhill says to me whenever I wonder if something unlikely will come to fruition: “Honey, anything can happen. Elvis’ daughter married Michael Jackson for God’s sake”.

Mrs Underhill Book Club update

2010-03-08T19:47:00.000-08:00

Alrighty, it's been soooo long since I posted. The Book Club had a WONDERFUL gathering, really illuminating, I've been to see Mr George Michael, two babies have been born (not to me), I've stayed at The Windsor, I've had joy, I've had fun, I've had seasons in the sun but now I have just recovered from a computer virus and need to get two huge jobs finished today so ....

Our next book, with TWO months to read it, is On Chesil Beach, a 2007 novel by the Booker Prize-winning British writer Ian McEwan.

We will gather in peson on the 12th of May. Make contact if you wish to come.

Or you are most welcome to submit comments by that date over the blog.

I'll be back on air soon.

In the meantime, check out a videod discussion of this book from ABC TV's Tuesday night book club here

Strengths, disabilities & McQueen

2010-02-11T15:10:00.000-08:00

It’s amazing how those who inspire others to great heights, those whose lives cause others to strive and emulate, those who are worshipped or envied from afar can find those very lives a dark burden. They can find craters in those lives so deep they can no longer be negotiated.

I’m not a huge fashion aficionado but, over the years, my work has taken me behind the runways in the local fashion scene and I appreciate the artistry and hard graft that goes into beautiful clothes. So I was saddened to hear of the death of Alexander McQueen, especially as it seems it was at his own hands.

Did you know Alexander McQueen once created hand carved prosthetic legs for a woman called Aimee Mullins who is an athlete, motivational speaker, actress and model? She is also a double amputee. She modelled these beautiful, artful creations on a McQueen runway in 1999. In a truly engaging and meaningful presentation at TED last February, almost a year from Alexander’s death, and this is what she said:

“I did my first runway show for Alexander McQueen on a pair of hand-carved wooden legs made from solid ash. Nobody knew - everyone thought they were wooden boots. Actually, I have them on stage with me: Grapevines, magnolias, truly stunning. Poetry matters. Poetry is what elevates the banal and neglected object to a realm of art. It can transform the thing that might have made people fearful into something that invites them to look, and look a little longer, and maybe even understand.”

Later she observes: “And that's when I knew that the conversation with society has changed profoundly in this last decade. It is no longer a conversation about overcoming deficiency. It's a conversation about augmentation. It's a conversation about potential. A prosthetic limb doesn't represent the need to replace loss anymore. It can stand as a symbol that the wearer has the power to create whatever it is that they want to create in that space ... I think that if we want to discover the full potential in our humanity, we need to celebrate those heartbreaking strengths and those glorious disabilities that we all have.”

Heartbreaking strengths and glorious disabilities, how gorgeous are those two terms? You see these strengths every day and they make me proud (and humbled) to be human, a feeling that waxes and wanes. I felt it when I lunched with a woman this week who’d just lost her husband. The grief glistened, just below the mascara and, yet, I saw her two days later, in full couture, ready to donate her time and mentor some young creative professionals in a role she’d committed to before her loss.

I saw it when I watched The Children’s Ward on TV and saw two little boys who’d been maimed by fucking land mines promise each other they’d never pick anything that looked like a pen again on the road - in Afghanistan one child is killed or injured every day by unexploded munitions.

“I know,” said six-year-old Murtaza, his left arm ending in a stub, his right one sporting one or two blackened fingers and some stumps. “Mummy and Daddy can buy my pens.”

Why did Alexander do it? What was the heartbreak he could not overcome, the disability that was not glorious?

Have a look at the Aimee Mullins video if you’re feeling a bit hard done by today, if some arsehole cut you off in traffic, if you’ve just had the bad test result, the screaming child’s tantrum, the bill that can’t be paid. It won’t change anything in a tangible sense I guess but it will remind us what fine creatures we can be and why it’s worth hanging on just a bit longer to see what fine creatures can do together.

Sunday is "trance" day - blame Alexander

2010-02-02T18:27:00.000-08:00

I spend too much time comparing myself to others. Ok, I know that. And I spend too much time marvelling about how much other people achieve in my life (perhaps explaining why not enough time then goes into achieving anything in mine) but, really, when an author's Wiki entry begins like this, what's a girl to do?

"Alexander McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, (born 24 August 1948) is a Zimbabwean-born Scottish writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In the late 20th century McCall Smith became a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees concerned with these issues. He has since become internationally known as a writer of fiction. He is most widely known as the creator of the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series."

I heard a tiny snippet of Alexander on Jon Faine's Conversation Hour this morning whilst driving to the office from an interview. I am working on an article for the group called ADVANCE. I'll come back to that another time.

Anyhoo, over the airwaves came the educated Scottish tones of a writer talking about his notorious prolificness. I was driving so can't quote him direct (didn't jot it down) but basically Alexander said he goes into something of a trance and the stories just come. In a wonderful interview with the Times online he said he tries to "fence off January and February" to write but he can write on trains and in airports and so forth and he describes writer's block as "another way of saying you're depressed".

I'm not completely going in circles with this. Yes I will chase one of his Scotland Street novels up and yes I will look at some of Alexander's literary influences, as mentioned in the Times article, and yes I will podcast the Faine interview but ... I am also committed to "fencing off" some time.

I think the festivas that was December and January is finally dying down. I have touched base with walking meditations, returned to yoga with the divine Caroline and I climbed on the wagon for the week. Hell I even went for a walk before going to work this morning. Next Tuesday, fingers crossed, writer's group starts again and, before I know it, it will be March 13th and my first Year of the Novel class will have commenced.

'Til then I commit to giving some time over to trance this Sunday and get something non work related written. I am making a promise to myself here in blogland. Do you want to commit to doing something you keep saying you want to do this week as well? Lay it on me friend. We can hold each other to it.

just because it's cute

2010-01-19T22:18:00.001-08:00

While researching a story today I found this at http://cgi.www5a.biglobe.ne.jp/~mite/topics/topics.cgi
LOVE HIM!

Mrs Underhill Book Club update

2010-01-18T20:04:00.000-08:00

Word on the street is that end of Jan is TOO SOON for finishing The Brain that changes itself. Let’s try for Wednesday Feb 24th at 8pm – 10.30pm at my place to meet. Let me know if you think this is doable. Online comments in time for this meeting are welcomed too.

Our current book is THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF by Dr. Norman Doidge. Yep we are doing nonfiction. The book is available widely and Amazon is selling second hand copies of US$9.

As it happens Patsy Fox has reported that she has "just ordered the book from the Book Depository, for a price including shipping, which is free, of AUD 13.16. This site is bizarre and cheap. It has about 5 versions of this book - I went with the cheapest option, looks the same to me. Here's the link for anyone interested:
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/search?searchTerm=THE+BRAIN+THAT+CHANGES+ITSELF&search=search"

Thanks Patsy!

“Dr. Norman Doidge introduces principles we can all use to overcome brain limitations and explores the profound brain implications of the changing brain in an immensely moving book that will permanently alter the way we look at human possibility and human nature.” - See the website at http://www.normandoidge.com/normandoidge/MAIN.html

We will also discuss DISGRACE by J.M. Coetzee which is long OVERDUE!

I will check in for RSVPs the week before. We’ll just do after supper nibbles as before.

Looking forward to seeing y’all.

Til then, happy New Year.

PS: Knitted brain by artist: Karen Norberg, Location: Boston Museum of Science

Behind the scenes in the musuem

2010-01-17T16:44:00.001-08:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again. You may read fiction just for fun but along the way you'll end up learning something - despite your best efforts.

As usual, because I have some weighty tomes beside the bed waiting to be read, I turned to fiction popcorn. This time it was The Bone Vault by Linda Fairstein who, in 2002, retired from her position as head of the Sex Crimes Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office and turned to book writing. Over-achiever! Anyway, it's a formulaic gold mine with her DA protagonist, Alexandra Cooper, righting wrongs all over New York and beyond.

This time we got a behind-the-scenes look at the Metropolitan Museum and its offshoot for medieval art history, The Cloisters, as well as the New York Museum of Natural History. Funnily enough, with Mrs R and the bairn in town this week and spending two delightful nights at my place, we ended up at the Melbourne Museum looking at its wild taxidermy section. My mind was crossing over between fictional and non fictional representations.

Whilst reading The Bone Vault however I learned of Minik, an Inuit (AKA - Eskimo) who was brought to the USA from Greenland along with five other Inuit in 1897 by explorer Robert Peary. This little boy was only six or seven when he, along with three men and two women, were brought back as living specimens to the American Museum of Natural History to be studied. Can you believe it? To our modern minds it is bad enough to think of graves being plundered to bring back skeletons for scientific study but actual living, breathing human beings...

Surprise surprise the five adults all expired ASAP in the germy client of New York. Minik was farmed out to a man involved with the Museum who, sure, raised him alongside his own son but who is also thought to be the man who bleached Minik's father's bones to be put on display in the Museum at a later date. Get your head around that one.

Legend has it that Minik actually stumbled across his Dad's skeleton on display when he got a bit older and, of course, was destroyed by the experience. When older, and troubled, they tried taking him back to Greenland but by then he couldn't speak his native language anymore and his seal hunting and polar bear whispering skills were a bit rusty after a childhood in NYC.

There's an interesting article about all of this at the NY Times site because in 1993 the Museum of Natural History packed four skeletons into separate boxes and shipped them back to Greenland.

There is so much to think about and meditate on when you discover a story like this. It somehow puts new perspective on the reports we might see in the news such as the 2009 one when a skull and other bone fragments, discovered in the home of an elderly British academic, were handed over to the Australian government in a solemn Aboriginal ceremony. Australian diplomats had discovered the remains in an auction of the contents of the academic's home.

It's easy to feel removed from these stories because it all seems to have taken place so very long ago but imagine for a moment if it was one of your own loved family members up for display in a glass box somewhere. I mean it's not like these people donated their remains to this cause; most of the time they were in fact looted from the grave. Sensibilities have changed. Science is supposedly conducted with more sensitivity and humanity - we hope - but it has an unseemly heritage me thinks.

Where is James Cameron when you need him?

2010-01-12T18:06:00.000-08:00

What a bad little blogger I have been. Ten days since my last instalment and not a valid excuse in sight.

I have been having fun. From dinner at The Exchange in Port Melbourne with one of my favourite women to completing and paying my July – Sept quarter BAS and tax (ok, not fun but a sense of dread is removed), and from seeing Avatar to returning to the suburban wasteland of my youth to attend an extremely lovely 60th birthday. If variety is the spice of life, my life has been a whopping big jar of All Spice.

Avatar

Let’s discuss Avatar because my film studies self found this an absolutely riveting release. We saw the 3-D version. Mr U, the original student of film (he was buying books on the topic before he was 11 or so), said I was witnessing filmic history and this movie represents the kind of jump in technical possibilities that Star Wars did when it was released.

I will take that as gospel but still hate the feeling of the Poindexter glasses increasing my awareness that I am seeing a film rather than being part of something. Truth be told, however, that feeling died down after a half hour into the movie (it’s something like 2.5 hours long) and I stopped pulling the glasses up and down my nose to see what the screen looked like sans specs.

It’s difficult to get one’s head around the role a director plays in a movie like this where so little on screen time is given to bricks and mortar sets and live actors and so much is given to CGI sequences. I would LOVE to see behind the scenes to understand how it is achieved and how James Cameron’s role works.

This movie cost more than two hundred and thirty million (USA) dollars. What could that kind of money do to villages, hospitals and schools in different parts of the world? You just can’t think about it because it is kind of depressing. And, yet, the entertainment that movie brings to all of us with the luxury of time and money to go see it is undeniable. It’s one of those quandaries of modern life, hey?

The computer-generated aspects of this movie are basically magical. In the New Yorker they wrote: The digital elements of “Avatar,” he (Cameron) claims, are so believable that, even when they exist alongside human actors, the audience will lose track of what is real and what is not. “This film integrates my life’s achievements,” he told me. “It’s the most complicated stuff anyone’s ever done.”

[Read more: www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_goodyear#ixzz0cSAll5iQ]

The colours, the textures, the strange mining of all our stereotypes of magical forests, rainforest Amazon type locations, mythical creatures and prehistoric predators combines to create something incredibly original yet intensely familiar. Crazy! The colour is probably what resonates the most. Then there is the classic, stereotypical “hero’s journey” that main character, Jake Sully (AKA the very cute Aussie, Sam Worthington) embarks on. There are weird new age ideas of the noble savage and of modern man’s distruction of the planet and his lack of connection with the natural and spiritual world. I know, it all sounds like a bad mixed pasta from Lygon Street, complete with spaghetti with clams on a plate with curried rigatoni. It’s hard to explain. The thing works. It’s bigger than life and the most perfect advertisement for the real product that Twentieth Century Fox is undoubtedly going to make the real profits on – THE GAME!!! Even me, fat, forty and cyber-proof felt the urge to get out a console and occupy the world of the Na'vi people. Were they pumping drugs into the air of the cinema?

Other things

Book-wise I am still loving My Life in France and really, strangely, feel renewed in the spirit after this dose of Julia C. I can’t really explain it; I think low biorhythms had me off my normal enthusiastic view of life. Could be that, could be all the Christmas and New Year boozing that I am trying to distance myself from now. Could also be the thought of Mrs R and her brood landing on my doorstep soon and making me so, so excited (and busy – Mrs R is the tidiest, cleanest woman in the world. She deserves a dust free guest room!).

Of course I still can’t resist dipping into some crime porn (The Bone Vault by Linda Fairstein) and hit the library for a huge cache of books including The Children's Book by AS Byatt which I am in no way going to finish before it is due back. And, of course, the Mrs Underhill Book Club is meant to be tackling The Brain that Changes Itself AS WE SPEAK. Lordy, I love to read but there are just not enough hours in the day. I need an Avatar who goes to work, washes the clothes and exercises the body while another self sits and gorges on books. Where is James Cameron when you need him?

Happy freakin' New Year

2010-01-03T15:47:00.000-08:00

The urge to declare resolutions, examine one's life, stocktake one's failings and promise new bursts of energy and commmitment as January 1 comes about is like a noxious weed. I want to stand apart from it, to deny it and remain separate but it's just too hard. The weed is in my garden and I keep fiddling with it.

We went OUT OF THE HOUSE this New Year's Eve and that alone should indicate the start of a very different year. I can't remember the last time Hank Williams was switched off (he died on NYE you know) and glad rags were put on. We went to a party/gig called Bam a lam at a place called Magnolia Courtyard in the charming Collins Quarter. Melbourne has a place called Pink Alley, did you know that?

Anyway it was a wonderful evening, too many margaritas bla bla bla, lost a shoe on the way home, lost a stunning vintage brooch while there. Now we all know why I stay home! You can see why I have resolutions for a more 'mature' 2010.

I've worked on and off over the Christmas New Year period. Contrary to popular belief it's quite a nice time to work. It's soooo quiet on the roads and there are not many people around to bother me with emails and phone calls. Mr Underhill and I have entertained and been entertained, mooched around, ridden our Santa bikes, and I've watched movies and read books.

I saw 'Volver' which renewed my love for Ms Cruz, the dreary 'Have you heard about the Morgans', the challenging 'Public Enemies' and the surprisingly wonderful 'Zombieland', possibly one of the best genre movies I have seen in ages. It's like a roadmovie, a buddy flick and a zombie movie all rolled into one but with some great writing, good gags, good acting and some interesting visual treatments. Get it!

Now I am all about the work, a fresh year, getting motivated and finding Nemo but not necessarily in that order.

Seriously though I have to stop watching crud TV to all hours of night, stay on the wagon for a few miles of the trip, read some of the clever books I buy and not just the fluff and get some projects happening to battle a subtle existential crisis that is currently permeating my being. I think I need to read some texts by smarter people who have already been where I am and were paying more attention when they got there. So I am off to the library to look at Richard Rose, H.P. Blavatsky and others. Luckily I have found an article called 'Existential depression in gifted individuals' which says: "Although an episode of existential depression may be precipitated in anyone by a major loss or the threat of a loss which highlights the transient nature of life, persons of higher intellectual ability are more prone to experience existential depression spontaneously."

And there you have it. Even my laziness and lack of focus points to my innate brilliance!

Ordered today on Amazon!

2009-12-20T15:22:00.000-08:00

The Element by Sir Ken Robinson

British creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson believes we're all born with creative capacities but we lose them the more time we spend in the world.

Here him speak at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2009/2598512.htm

Another interesting interview on the go at the moment is between Richard Holloway, former bishop of Edinburgh and author of 25 books, and Ramona Koval (The Book Show, Radio National) . He calls himself a Christian agnostic.

Interesting bloke ... not that flattering about organised religion but this is a nice quote hey?

"So the saints I'm talking about are the people who see power and challenge it, who speak against it even though it may end in them being crucified or killed, and there are always very few of them, but they make me shiver at the thought of their courage, and I hope occasionally, just occasionally, to emulate it."

Ok - that's my acknowledgement of this 'religious' time of year.

Season's greetings!

Old dogs, new tricks

2009-12-15T17:33:00.001-08:00

VALE Louis Vuitton, pictured here, who - last weekend - had a fight with a car and he lost. I took him for an imaginary run on Monday when I got the news. We had a lot of fun. Bebe, THE dog of my girlhood and truly a girl's best friend, ran out from the bushes too and joined in the run. I feel ok. They are going to be friends in pooch heaven.

Learning from a 'made up' world

2009-12-03T16:34:00.001-08:00

I have a relative who does not read fiction. She says there is too much ‘real’ stuff to learn about in the world so who has time for made up stories? I get her point, I really do, but I cannot tow her line. Made up stories, as she calls these, have kept me sane for years. Reading widely and voraciously is essential to my wellbeing. Now if that means I have some problem dealing with reality then, so be it. I do have problems dealing with reality. Deal with that!

I learn from my ‘made up’ sources though …

For instance, when in periods of brain drain where the "leetle grey cells", as Hercule Poirot calls them, are working overtime on claustrophobic matters, like the budgetary topics I’m working on for the mag currently, I really need easy reading. Hence, when Mrs P handed me a copy of John Grisham’s The Summons, last week I danced around for a minute and then snapped it up, knowing Grisham’s expert tale telling skills would carry me along without me having to think too much.

Still … a writer like Grisham doesn’t miss his chance to get across some theories about modern politics and society in the USA’s South and one can delve into that further if one wishes. I did not wish but I did FINALLY look up the term ‘antebellum’ which has come up a million times in books about the South. Now, with my growing interest in interiors and architecture, knowing what this word means takes on even more relevance.

To quote my favourite office researcher, Wiki: The Antebellum Period (from the Latin ante ‘before’ and bellum ‘war’) was the time period in America from after the birth of the United States to the start of the American Civil War. The Antebellum Age was a time of great transition because of the industrial revolution in America. It also was a time of growth in slavery in the American South. It was a phase in American history when America spread towards the west coast which among historians is generally referred to as ‘Westward Expansion’.

The term antebellum is also used to describe the architecture of the pre-war South. Many Southern plantation houses use this style, including the one I have pictured, the Parrott-Camp-Soucy House built in 1890 ~ Victorian Antebellum. Fantastic! And what a great prompt for a story or novel.

Now other books I have read recently, while fiction, have led me to pick up books of fact. One is The Essential Golden Dawn, an introduction to High Magic. Bet you did not know that The Golden Dawn is one of the most influential and respected systems of magic in the world. Over a century old, the teachings of this once-secret society are considered the capstone of the Western Esoteric Tradition.

Now I am no witch, I don’t even see a naturopath but I have an open mind and, more to the point, I love to know about the other-worldly things great men of history have been captivated by. This group, Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, sound so bizarre I just have to know more. In this matter it is certainly a case of truth being stranger than fiction.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (or, more commonly, the Golden Dawn) was a magical order founded in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy (rites for bringing down to earth planetary and other spirits or gods and spiritual development). Apparently it has been one of the largest single influences on 20th-century Western occultism.

Now I can’t remember what brought me to this book. I think Golden Dawn members were mentioned in a particularly dreary English novel I read a few months back. I think a few members were authors (including Yeats) and I decided to find out more. I can’t promise how much of The Essential Golden Dawn I will get through but I’ll bloody well enjoy trying.

Actually Algernon Henry Blackwood was one of the members, I remember now. Blackwood, CBE (14 March 1869 – 10 December 1951) was an English writer of fiction dealing with the supernatural, who was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. Hence I am also reading his book, John Silence, Psychical Investigator. See how it all works?

Vicki Pollard sold this house

2009-11-25T19:24:00.001-08:00

I swear to God ... I was walking home from dropping the car at the garage today for daylight robbery service (the bend over while we give it to you gold standard from Holden) when I saw that Vicki Pollard from Woodards Bentleigh is running around selling houses. I ask ya, "Would you buy a house from this woman?"

Reading Science Fiction has changed my wardrobe slightly

2009-11-16T16:21:00.000-08:00

I recently read a Sci Fi book called House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. I hadn't read Sci Fi since I was a teenager but I've wanted to branch out in my reading and a young lad in my writing class earlier this year was an aficionado. Plus, I have a library card. It's a failsafe doorway to varied, no cost reading.

Reynolds is no simnple fantasist, creating a Harry Potter like world that relies on nothing more than imagination and memories of fairytales gone. He has a Ph. D in astronomy and spent years working as an astrophysicist.

See this is what I like about my blog. I can remind myself that I got through this BIG book - 473 pages - because, as complicated and 'sciency' as it was, it had a good story at its heart, full of adventure and romance, just based six million years after man first walked the earth. That's all!

Anyhoo, he is apparently famous for his space operas. Now I had to look these up straight away. Wiki says: "Space opera is a subgenre of speculative fiction or science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing powerful (and sometimes quite fanciful) technologies and abilities. Perhaps the most significant trait of space opera is that settings, characters, battles, powers, and themes tend to be very large-scale." So now we know that.

I don't see myself reading a whole heap of this but I was intrigued to know more about some of the things in Reynolds' bio. One for instance, was his position as a 'Gollancz' bestseller. I looked up Gollancz and discovered it's a publishing company, part of Orion Books. It publishes a range of popular and critically acclaimed authors, including Alastair Reynolds, as well as a number of Terry Pratchett titles. Its Science Fiction and Fantasy Masterworks series, reissuing the great novels in the two genres, have been widely acclaimed. Since 2005, Gollancz has also published Manga. See, now if I ever decide to write a SF book, I know which company to approach.

There's also the matter of his Arthur C. Clarke Award. Apparently this is the most prestigious award for science fiction in Britain. Clarke wrote 100 books and more than 1,000 short stories and essays over 60 years. Among his best-selling novels are Childhood's End, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezvous with Rama and Fountains of Paradise.

One of his short stories ('Dial F for Frankenstein', 1964) inspired British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee to invent the World Wide Web in 1989. Another short story ('The Sentinel', 1948) was expanded to make the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he co-wrote with director Stanley Kubrick. They shared an Oscar nomination for the best screenplay in 1969.

See ... I learn something every day ... when I blog.

Not quite Oprah's Aha moment!

2009-11-15T14:46:00.000-08:00

The temperature has dropped and I can open the sunroom doors. "Big deal" says you but, for a chick who filed 12 pieces for the February issue last week and wrote a complete proposal for a new project upon which her income relies, this is akin to celebrating rain in the Kalahari Desert. The sunroom was hot last week, my cheap-o fan working overtime, and a box full of cans of Zero Coke was not helping. My blood and my thought patterns seemed to slow down along with my typing ratio. Glad to see the back of that one I promise you.

So as I wrote my TO DO list this morning, cool fresh air tickling my bare shoulders (ah ... I am wearing new fave strapless working from home maxi-dress. The glamour!) I stopped in my tracks and thought, "Blog - you must write something there today". Knowing I have been patchy to say the least in my postings I began to wonder why I had started this thing in the first place. I remember last year I had a re-think of the blog and wrote myself a new mission type statement about it.

This is what is great about a blog when you have a mind like a sieve like mine. You can go back and research what you previously thought and wrote. Hallelujah! If I could do this with every area of my life ... stop, rewind and discover what I promised someone else I'd do, what I promised myself I'd do, what I even thought about something, how much easier would things be? I tell you it would make my filing system easier. I seem to change that every week or two so discover important, meaningful items that would have been pertinent to various tasks and activities LONG after their time has passed. Maybe I need a filing blog ... note to self.

So, almost a year ago, this is what I wrote:

My blog, I have been forced to remind myself, is a way of maintaining some writing discipline away from work constraints. It has a purpose but one known only to me. That’s ok. If anything, in 2009 I hope to use it more constructively as a place to explore some thoughts and as a workroom. This is, I suppose, my online shed. Maybe I should redesign it to look like one? I have a constant supply of sticky notes and paper scraps with words, events, websites, ideas scribbled on them. My blog should be the place I pull this stuff together, research and investigate the various threads and chart the results of this activity, similar to the way a home handyman might gather design ideas and bits of woods to try and knock something together.

Hmmm … sure did sound like a good idea at the time. I still have the sticky notes. Pussy Prue is sitting on two of them now. If I look back at some of my postings I find I have investigated some thoughts and ‘leads’ from things I’ve been reading and listening to. Because I do have a shocking memory and am prone to speed reading and multi-tasking this has been good because I’ve actually stopped and looked a little more closely at certain things, researching them for a post and, therefore, understanding them a little better. I will stick to this for now but try and improve the writing.

I presented the first chapter of my book at my writing group last week and the response was warm (they’re nice, nice people) but I dreamt that night that I had a beautiful, sweet and loyal dog that I kept at a caravan park and visited every couple of weeks. When there I slathered it with love and attention, then just jumped in the car and took off, expecting it to fend for itself. I think the dog is my personal, creative writing. I focus in for a minute, get absorbed in character and plot and so forth and then wrack off back into the ‘real’ world and don’t think of it again for ages. Every thing comes before my writing, even drinking alcohol, going grocery shopping and watching crap TV. I know this is not good. I’ve read Habits of Highly Effective People for God’s sake!

Question: Can I change this situation? Does it matter?
Answer: Only to me but, then, doesn’t 90 per cent of what happens in our lives only really matters to us anyway?

Ooooh … deep.

PS: Mrs Underhill Book Club on hiatus til New Year. Nominate a book for us to read over summer.

Away from home and blog

2009-11-01T14:08:00.000-08:00

I am ashamed, deeply ashamed, at how long I have neglected my Mrs Underhill ramblings. Yes I had three weeks holiday and yes I vowed to stay away from the computer as much as possible over that time but, really, it just won't do!

Too much has happened to bang on about ... 10 days in a miner's cottage in Daylesford (writing darlings, writing), a soujourn down the west coast and much local drinking, eating, movie watching, napping and wide-ranging exploring.

General discoveries included the fact that, when presented with tracts of time to simply write fiction in, it is not as easy to knuckle down as one imagines. On the flip side, however, once immersed in a story, it is amazing how much in life can come in useful for your characters and setting.

Also discovered was the unique charm of the locals at Daylesford's Farmer's Arms on a quiet Friday afternoon, the fact that the Lake House restaurnat is hugely expensive but fun to frolic in and the fact that, five kilos later, all such culinary frolicking (and boozing) must come to an end.

So here are a couple of shots ... of Daylesford and of the 17th John's Rod and Custom Picnic (which we attended this Sunday just gone). Say no more!

Watching, reading & seeing

2009-09-29T15:29:00.000-07:00

My senses have been overwhelmed of late & my life as the luckiest woman in the world proceeds unabated. (Loud knocking on wood will be undertaken now!)

· I was up close and personal with a 10-day-old baby, born to one of my dearest friends. I swear she eyeballed me and searched for answers though they say she can’t see yet. (I also got to see part of animated film, Ratatouille, until newborn’s brother decided to throw up. Seems he doesn’t like flicks about rats.)

· I’ve sat in a darkened theatre and watched the costumes and conniving of The Young Victoria. (A pretty film but forgettable!)

· I’ve finished listening to Harlan Coben’s The Woods.

· I’ve read and loved The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

· I’ve discovered I can load complete audio books in both MPS and old fashioned CD format onto my MP3 player.(I've fallen asleep to it too many nights already.)

· I’ve discovered loads of old Stephen Fry podcasts about language and travel and movies and more.

· I’ve rediscovered the library and can barely squeeze around the bed because of the 'topple' (a new collective noun I have come up with) of books that have formed a high rise development along the bedroom wall. There is everything from books on the history of automata, self-operating machines or mechanisms, especially robots (Living Dolls by Gaby Wood) to a fast paced suspense thriller called Belfast Confidential (not to mention the ‘young adult’ book on CD, Down the Rabbit Hole: An Echo Falls Mystery, by Peter Abrahams - one of Stephen King’s favourite authors).

(Not to be confused with www.downtherabbithole.com.au, the new shoe selling website I discovered along the way ...)

I am STILL slogging through the production cycle of the double issue of the magazine. I am still hanging out for my 10 days in Daylesford. I am still coping with eyes as red as piss holes in the snow. I am still the luckiest girl in the world.

AND I have a new mantra as I go into every new situation and part of the day: Enjoy everything. Yep, it's as simple as that. And as lame. You have to see it in action to believe it!

Note: Clown Illusionist (Animated Worlds) from 'Musical Machines & Living Dolls', the exhibit of mechanical instruments and automata housed in the new wing of the Morris Museum in Morris Township.

Forgive me if I’m still twitchy about tweeting

2009-09-14T17:16:00.000-07:00

I was listening to a bit of Lindy Burn on the way to supermarket last night, admittedly shagged after producing about 14 pages of the double issue during the day (applause all 'round for that massive achievement). Maybe my fatigue prompted my worry at hearing the discussion about how a 'tweet' from journalist and blogger, Mia Freedman, about a narcoleptic Dachshund had inspired a war of words via The Australian newspaper. See here to read the original story.

Basically Mia made light fun of YouTube footage of a sausage dog collapsing asleep while running across a backyard. A journo at The Oz, whose son suffers from narcolepsy, took umbridge, was heart-broken and shocked really, and wrote a huge tome in response with the headline, Tweet this, Mia: the misfortune of others isn't entertainment.

The details of this actual story don't interest me that much. Not here and now anyway. What does interest me is the conversation between Lindy and her on-air commentator, whose name I never caught (bad journo, bad ... but I had to skedaddle and get the steaks and red wine - it's about priorities people!).

Basically the two women went on and on about the hoardes of journalists and 'commentators' who are obsessed/addicted to Twitter and how, once you start using it, you are so prolific and so speedy that there really is no time for thoughtful processes, for reflection and meditation, the weighing up of facts, the educated pursuit of ideas and opinions. Oftentimes, it seems, you Tweet before you think.

Oh I am scared! This is what I constantly bang on about. History is peopled with great minds, people who really took a step back from the hurly burly and thought about things. Are we on the brink of losing that kind of tempered and intelligent thinking, educated/informed analysis and commentary forever? It’s seeping into every sphere ‘til we have the best selling music artists (Britney Spears) saying things like, “I don't really have time to sit down and write. But when I think of a melody, I call up my answering machine and sing it, so I won't forget it.” Yeah, that’s how The Rolling Stones probably wrote their classics.

I am not one of the great thinkers. We all know that! But I kind of count on there being some others out there who fit the bill. If George Bush was in office still he'd probably be Twittering. It sounds like the kind of thing he'd get into. Then, with a couple of key strokes, he'd have the USA in some new type of violent scandal.

Of course I did find a poseur with his name on Twitter and his latest comment was: "i can write boobies on a calculator!" Probably not far from the truth.

Are thousands of journos and commentators obsessed by Twitter? The woman with Lindy said she personally tweeted constantly throughout the day, in her office while doing seven other things. Great! A new form of multi tasking but one that may further undermine the evolution of the human mind.

I haven't taken care of my mind. For God's sake, I'm blogging! Thing is ... soon I am going to be in the brain dead majority ... and I had such high hopes for mankind.

Not trying

2009-09-08T17:52:00.001-07:00

Anyone who is anyone knows I love a little Dolly Parton. I am also a fan of actress, Allison Janney (Juno, The West Wing) so I felt a little pulse of glee when I checked in on an old favourite podcast American Theatre Wing and discovered Allison was on speaking about her career and her role in the Broadway version of '9 to 5'.

I LOVE living in Melbourne, Australia, but when I see shows like this come and go and know I will a) never see them in that location (NY) and b) never with that cast, I feel a little c) gloomy for a second. Of course no matter where you live, unless you have caravans full of cash, you'll never get to see everything in every place so a nice dose of shut-the-fuck-up is required when these thoughts trot on by.

One thing I WOULD like to see, though, is one of the plays that Janney was in a long time ago called 'Five Women Wearing the Same Dress' by the uber talented Allan Ball. (Stolen from Wiki ...) The play is a comedy set at a wedding reception in Knoxville, Tennessee where five bridesmaids have found refuge in the room of Meredith, the sister of the bride. The women come to realise, among other things, that they are closer friends with each other than they are with the bride.

Allan Ball - who has created my wonderous TRUE BLOOD just seems unable to put a foot wrong. How is he capable of turning his talents to so many different genres? Is it just because he simply tries?

I have been trying to "not chase things" and, instead, allow them to come to me. Of course this does not rule out actually doing work. Work must always be done and effort exerted, but chasing is a different thing. In my mind it is about sucking up, creating work, opportunities and maybe, unconsciously, obstacles before giving other people (and dare I say it, the universe?) the chance to put some natural opportunities in your path.

I am very excited about the writing/holiday break I have booked in for October in lazy old Daylesford. I find myself thinking of plot points and so forth for a little project in my head and this has not happened for SO LONG.

I am completely energy zapped currently from the toll of getting the double issue of the mag together and out the door, hence the paucity (good word huh? Sounds like a disease of the gut!) of this post. Yet, I feel great excitement about writing about non quilting topics.

Also, providing a little stimulation, was last week's attendance at The Man in Black with the sexy Tex Perkins. Ah, where would the music world be without the spirit of Johnny Cash?

No group hugs please

2009-08-30T20:28:00.001-07:00

Saw M.J. Hyland at the Melbourne Writers Festival on Friday. She's the author of three novels - This is How, Carry Me Down, and How the Light Gets In. She also lectures in creative writing in Manchester where she lives now. She's not an Aussie though she has Australian connections having, studied English and law at the University of Melbourne.

I'd only read How the Light Gets In which I won't go into now because I am meant to be writing about craft and Australia's indigenous population for the huge double issue of GC we're putting together. Suffice to say it was an amazing debut novel, very original and worth getting your hands on. You'll loan out your daughters to worthy causes before they grow into teenagers after meeting the central character in this book.

Anyhoo, M.J. (we're on first name basis now) was talking about trying to instruct her students on good writing and how hard it is now that they all have blogs and access to amateur publishing websites and the like. Argggh, the ongoing blog bashing that feeds my paranoia. (I am thinking this while rushing through writing this post hee hee.) I took some notes but not direct quotes. Suffice to say she felt they were publishing what I believe she termed as "shoddy shit" and receiving group hugs from family, friends and cyberspace pals in response and they were shocked when her slightly more biting critiques were put forward.

Her message here was that good writing cannot be produced in half an hour and that many of the students spin words like fairy floss, and just as quickly, for the Net but that revision and rewriting is the cornerstone of the real deal.

She tooks three years to write This is How (a copy of which I picked up in Readings special MWF bookshop at Fed Square) so she is clearly not one to be rushed. She also received a nomination for the Man Booker prize in 2006 for only her second novel so - yeah - Mrs Underhill will give her words some thoughts.

I don't normally write notes from a one hour talk like this one but, as a character in a project I am tentatively working on is a writer and a festival regular, I thought MJ's real life reactions would come in handy for dialogue. As I started this project almost a year ago and am only five chapters in I am already doing well on any three year plans I might have and can definitely NOT be accused of rushing.

PS: Hosting the Hyland talk at MWF was Michael Williams, Head of Programming at Melbourne's new Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas. He was bloody funny!

Mrs Underhill has just seen THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE

2009-08-24T22:27:00.000-07:00

And so I must applaud the artistry that is and has been for forty years or so the great GRACE CODDINGTON!

See more about The September Issue at http://www.theseptemberissue.com/#/home

Mrs Underhill Book Club kicks off with a bang and a snowball

2009-08-20T17:11:00.000-07:00

I think it's safe to say that the first IN THE FLESH meeting of the book club went off with a bang and a riesling last night. Thank you to the three book babes who came along. Many topics, outside of Middlesex, were tackled, from the inane (housework) to the profane (adult women having sexual fantasies about characters in Twilight). The main thing was that, as well as a pop quiz about the book (thank you Oprah.com for having the author, Eugenides, on the show at one point and posting Q & As with him afterwards) we also discovered the delights of chocolate covered snowballs and a shared love of Yumis Tuna Mousse.

Yes - if you come along to a future meeting you will be able to taste such literary delights yourself.

So ... next book is Disgrace with the aim to finish around 3 October and then the aim to meet up sometime after that though comments from members 'in the ether' are more than welcomed. Chime in with interest via email or via the blog, http://mrsunderhilldotcom.blogspot.com/ - and we'll be chowing down on some good words soon.

Life illuminated. No wonder I love books ...

2009-08-11T20:33:00.000-07:00

Let’s say I list five books here for you and you can see why these bricks of paper and words mean so much to me, how they can alter one's life, dance in one's head and why I can’t see them going the way of the dinosaurs just yet:

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
Meet Me at Mike's by Pip Lincolne
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Number one carries a plot outline (stolen from Wiki) where a South African professor of English loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his cherished daughter.

This book is going to be the next one to be read by the Mrs Underhill Book Club. Try and finish it by 3 October. The ‘communal' reading of this book forges connections between old and new friends, stimulates conversation beyond work, kids, clothes and current affairs and allows us to see how other people’s heads tick.

Number two is a really gorgeous craft project book featuring the work of 25 different Aussie makers, spearheaded by Melbourne gal Pip Licolne.

This book took me to Brunswick Street Fitzroy yesterday to meet the author and have her bewitch me with her magical eyes. It gave me a chance to see how an open heart and soul affects those around them and showed me a new concept when it comes to the idea of business success.

Number three is written by one of those characters of history that you wonder whether the world is capable of producing anymore. Living in the 1700s, Walpole (son of Britain's first Prime Minister) built Strawberry Hills, a gothic mansion, folly type thing that he seemed to have built stage by stage, sometimes creating façades out of cardboard and so forth from what I can gather.

This is part of a three gothic tales book I ordered on good old Amazon recently. It’s giving me the chance to read a learned and academic intro from an expert in the field of gothic literature plus be reminded of the mad, bad and completely outrageous minds that have gone before us.

Closing the last page on number four - The Little Giant of Aberdeen County – ends an intense reading period I’ve gone through in the last fortnight to finally finish a couple of books I was reading at once. This book is about a girl with a health condition that makes her grow to giant proportions. It’s about acceptance, herbal remedies, euthanasia, it’s about quite a bit. I kept picking it up and putting it down. As Keith Gessen from The Nation said about a Mrs Underhill Book Club book (Middlesex) recently, this one “is a book that's almost impossible to dislike even as you're bored by it”.

And, The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, well that was described to me by the gal at Readings in St Kilda as a book that “scared the pants off her” – a great selling point to my way of thinking. However, it’s one that I again picked up and put down. It’s a bit about England after WWII, it’s a bit about class wars, and about old country houses and about poltergeists. What made it special to me though was that Sarah Waters was on the Book Show (Radio National) so I got to walk to the shops (listened to it on an MP3 podcast) and hear her talk about the research that went into it, the mountains of info she gathered about the period and the things that drew her to the topic. Pretty bloody entertaining while you’re walking around the IGA trying to decide which mayonnaise you’ll purchase!

So there you see it – why wouldn’t you make books a big part of your life? If you dive in and use them as more than words on paper, but as living organisms with tentacles reaching out into the world, you begin to live a much bigger life and tip toe through the heads of so many other earthlings … and you don’t necessarily have to even leave the soft drink aisle or even your bedroom.

Oh, did I mention I am reading an instalment of Stephen King's On Writing each night before I start my 'real' book? No wonder I get both no sleeping and no writing of my own done!

Swapping thread for words?

2009-07-26T23:58:00.000-07:00

So I have swapped the laptop for the sewing machine that I recently inherited. This weekend’s projects – an apron, napkins and a cushion cover. Don’t worry. It’s just a phase!

Mrs Underhilll Book Club meeting # 4

2009-07-20T21:01:00.000-07:00

Some of us recently finished reading MIDDLESEX by Jeffrey Eugenides. I'm not going to instigate any discussion points right now although I really do need someone to explain to me why the brother's name was "chapter eleven". And I did enjoy looking up info about Tiresias who was the son of Everes and the nymph Chariclo; he was a blind prophet, the most famous soothsayer of ancient Greece. And I still have on my TO DO list the research topics of Edward Gibbon and the journals of Madame de Stael to keep me occupied. Suffice to say there are two things to be tackled right now:

1) Do any of the readers want to meet in the flesh for a wine and cheese discussion of MIDDLESEX? (Welcome to have it at my place.) Or shall we do it online?

2) Do we have a suggestion for the next book and some inspiring discussion notes to go along with it?

Email me here (or don't, some of you I am just keeping in the loop in case you are keen now and then to participate) or log on and comment on the blog: mrsunderhilldotcom.blogspot.com.

Remember to feel free to pass this on.

This is Thriller!

2009-07-19T21:27:00.000-07:00

So a couple of people have asked me if the previous post, WRITING AT NIGHT, was based on true events. While I have imagined eyes outside the sunroom - no - this has never actually happened to me and I pray to God it never does. I don't think my heart would re-start. I'll take it as a compliment though that it was rooted enough in reality. In fact it was a little exercise set by a friend after attending the Cleary Horror Seminar. I left it to the last moment, of course, so it was rushed and hammy but, hey, it was fun.

Speaking of Cleary, I had a constructive four hours of cleaning my office on Friday (internet connection was down and this job had been on the TO DO list for about three months so the universe gave me no choice) and I discovered notes from that seminar including books and films to follow up.

If you're in the market for an old fashioned fright then look into The Penny Dreadfuls. Apparently, when tracing the history of suspense novels and stories, much is owed to these nineteenth century British publications which, according to good old Wikipedia, usually contained "lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing a penny".

As it goes the stories were mostly reprints or rewrites of Gothic thrillers such as The Monk or The Castle of Otranto, as well as new stories about famous criminals. Some of the most famous of these penny part stories were The String of Pearls: A Romance (which introduced Sweeney Todd), The Mysteries of London (inspired by the French serial, The Mysteries of Paris) and Varney the Vampire. I SO have to get my hands on that one. The library doesn't have it but good old Amazon does so come on down Mr Postman.

Also recommended by Mr Cleary was Polidori's The Vampyre. I can't get that at the library so I am purchasing a collection instead which sounds dead fascinating: Three Gothic Novels: The Castle of Otranto, Vathek, The Vampyre.

(On the vampire sideline for a second, I am slowly and steadily getting access (don't ask) to Season 2 of True Blood and, now that we have a new flash telly, the blood sucking, nipple biting, swamp stalking action is only going to be all the more gruesome and delicious. Already buff chests will fill the 40 inch screen and I'll have to have a flat lemonade and a cool bath afterwards.)

Then Cleary recommended looking at the story of Ed Gein (27 August 27 1906 – 26 July 1984) whose murderous ways inspired characters such as Norman Bates in 'Psycho', Jame Gumb from 'The Silence of the Lambs', and Leatherface from 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. Hmmm, I think I'll leave Mr Gein's story alone for now although it is interesting to see how screenwriters lift the stories from the daily news and transform them into screen nightmares.

The final Cleary recommendation, for those on a scary slope, was the script for the film, Don't Look Now. That movie was REALLY creepy. Don't think I could watch it again but apparently the author, Alan Scott, is a master so, while I haven't tracked down the document yet, I'll give it a red hot go (tips welcome!).

Writing at night

2009-07-05T20:06:00.000-07:00

She’s tapping away at the keyboard in the light of a small desk lamp. An Arthur Conan Doyle book is on her right, something about a devil’s foot. She is typing, copying word-for-word. She does this when she cannot sleep. Somewhere, sometime, somebody told her to transcribe the works of great authors to help improve her work.

Her office is the sunroom. The wall beside her is all glass, with glass French doors opening on to the patio. It is dark, cold and wet outside. The moon is full.

We are outside, in the dark, and we are watching her. Our eyes crawl over her body, from the worn, grey slippers on her feet to her breasts hanging loosely beneath the oversized ‘Bada Bing!’ t-shirt she wears, a souvenir that came with her boxed set of The Sopranos.

Her typing slows down. She feels us. She looks out into the night.

She sees the shape of the huge potted palm on the patio. She sees her own reflection in the glass. Then she sees the person outside. He stands still, just staring in at her, his hands tucked casually into his jacket pockets. Their eyes meet.

Her fright is so great she stops breathing. No sounds come from her. Her hands grip the keyboard and a string of letters spew along the computer screen. He moves a little closer to the window, peers in and grins. “Boo!” he says in a low voice. Then he turns and walks towards the gate, just steps away. She is looking at him but glancing to the right as well. The French door is the least secure in the house. A child could force it in. Where is the phone?

She moves her chair back slightly, slowly. He places a hand on the gate, opens it and walks out. He leaves it swinging open behind him.

To exit the house that way one must walk down the drive way. To do this one must pass the rear window of the sunroom, the one crowded with a wild rose bush. She hears his steps at that window now and turns. He’s looking in again. “Boo!” he says and laughs. He raps hard on the window and she jumps and screams. She is up and running through the house, searching for the phone.

Triple 0, she dials as she moves back to the dining room, beside the sunroom. She wants to know where he is now. Has he gone back into the yard, back to the patio and that flimsy French door?

He is moving past the dining room windows, his steps pass on to the lounge room and then stop. She stands in the hallway where she can see the front door and the lounge room windows. On the other end of the phone the emergency operator answers. “He’s here, he’s here,” she cries into the phone. “Send someone now. There is someone here.”

The man leans in again, to the lounge room window this time, and raps once more. And then he is running away.

(Not for publication beyond this blog site)

Who's afraid of a new laptop?

2009-06-30T19:13:00.001-07:00

Holey Moley but I am slack. This is an ongoing theme. Another deadline has been and gone, another 40th has been attended (this time in Bangalow, NSW, near the glorious but oh-so-rainy Byron Bay) and a new financial year diary has been started. Oh how I love the end of the financial year ... such a good excuse to buy new stationery. Of course, the thing I need more in life is excuses to faff around with filing, new pens and stationery!

I also have my new – dribble dribble – HP laptop which is shiny and fabulous but which has not been hooked up yet. It’s been almost six years since the old Toshiba I’m banging on now first entered my life. The arrival of the new ‘portal to the virtual world’ is quite a watershed. The Toshiba was my big purchase to launch my life as a freelancer and a self employed gal. It got dropped on the floor and damaged in the first weeks while it lived with me for three months in a granny flat in Byron Bay and it has done some rounds since then but, in recent times, it has been anchored to the desk in my sun room and it has churned out the work that I realised today has culminated in a whopping 288 or so invoices. There is probably more but I did not have my handmade invoice system quite refined. So … what will a new laptop bring? Bloody digital TV viewing for a start! And what does that say about the development of my bumbling career? That I am more interested in watching telly than working perhaps?

So … Edward Albee was on the 7.30 Report the other night. I confess I did not even realise he was still alive. Came across as a very civilised (81-year-old) man. Hard beginnings - adopted by a family who seemed to have no understanding of him and for whom he felt little affection. You don't hear people admit to that often ... everyone these days is too busy talking about being grateful and bla bla. He did acknowledge that they'd provided him with a fine education and the worth of that could not be measured. My folks - whom I did feel a great bond to and who did not adopt me but had me forced upon them by the good Lord himself (or the bloke down below depending on who you talk to) - also directed their funds into my schooling rather than buying a home and other grand investments and I have always, always, felt that that was money well spent and put me on a path of abundance they could never have imagined.

Apparently Albee is in Australia to conduct script development workshops. Man how do you find out about such things and which lucky sons of bitches get to go? I confess I've only read Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Such a pleb I am!

Albee was particularly erudite on the topic of race relations in the USA. He once wrote The Death of Bessie Smith, based on a night in Memphis in the 30s when a celebrated blues singers bled to death after a car accident because a white hospital refused to treat her. I've just done my favourite thing and placed an order on Amazon for the play so stay tuned. I haven't read a play since The Little Foxes. Should be fun.

Should I mention the passing of Michael J? Everyone else is ... I'll just say that on Friday night Mrs Peters and I cut the rug to a bit of Jackson 5 in the loungeroom and I did do a memorial moon walk in the office last week, just to show my respect you understand. (And, of course, Farrah died and we all know the impact the hairy one had on me recently.)

Back to bookish topics, have you heard about BookCrossing where people leave perfectly good books lying around in public spaces to be read, shared and passed on anonymously to anyone, anywhere? I heard about it on The Book Show, of course.

Here's the organisation's spiel should you be interested:
BookCrossing is earth-friendly and gives you a way to share your books, clear your shelves and conserve precious resources at the same time. Through our own unique method of recycling reads, BookCrossers give life to books. A book registered on BookCrossing is ready for adventure.Leave it on a park bench, a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym -- anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel. Track the book's journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person.

Cool huh?

Time travelling

2009-06-15T23:25:00.000-07:00

I am so bad. I mean, how long was the last time I wrote here - about 800 years ago? So much has happened. So much does happen doesn't it? Unless you're locked up in an iron lung somewhere.

I mean almost a month has gone past since I bleated and blogged. I know I only do this for myself but surely I could be a more faithful and dedicated correspondent to me, my one and only reader.

Everyone says you have to keep blog posts brief. I make it a habit to listen to everyone and believe all that they say. So, in a snapshot, recent writerly connected activities include:

The writing of my final folio piece for my RMIT 'Introduction To Fiction Writing' short course (we also presented it in front of an RMIT big wig and now I must decide if I will enrol in Professional Writing and Editing next year and actually try and pen a novel).
A small piece by moi in Epicure, The Age, about the Henry Jones Hotel
The writing of a press release and the various hawking of it to get coverage for The Rehe Family Benefit we recently held. See Patsy Fox - aka illustrator Angie Rehe's - artistic presentation of moi above. Her pencil flatters and lies but it's nice to be immortalised like this. Angie I have blatantly stolen this from your site!
Interview after interview for the September issue of Get Creative magazine (find out about Biddy Bags here for instance)
The writing of a media release for Circa, The Prince

AND

The finishing (finally) of Middlesex for the Mrs Underhill Book Club - so heads up book club members ... let's pull our arses into line to get some discussions happening. I need a vote on whether we stick to online only or gather for an 'on wine and on cheese' format. Get it? Genius hey?

As usual I am behind on everything and the emails and so forth are piling up. My attendance at the Cleary Horror Seminar has led to a group challenge to write a thriller horror piece - I have nightmares regularly so this should be a shoo in* - and the RMIT class has turned into a fortnightly Tuesday night writing class at The Victorian Writers Centre.

Life is kind and good to me, so much so that I feel forced to head up to Byron Bay the minute I close my computer from this deadline and flop there for my bestie's 40th. Spoiled? Me? So?

*PS: Shoo in = was originally a racetrack term, and was (and still is) applied to a horse expected to easily win a race, and, by extension, to any contestant expected to win an easy victory (Find out more at www.word-detective.com)

Stuff this white girl is liking

2009-05-24T19:05:00.000-07:00

The lad who has written STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE is in town. I just caught the end of the interview with him on Jon Faine and I can't believe this blog of his, ironically listing all the crap we whities are in to, has gotten to book stage. The hysterical thing is that Stuff White People Like and Jon Faine are BOTH, I am aware (!) stuff white people like. Ha ha!

Are you aware of this website and book? The book's subtitle is 'A Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions' meaning, of course, that people who think of themselves as unique actually share shed loads of identical tastes and wants. I'm not sure of the point of it all, wagging a finger at self indulgent wankers mostly, but I always laugh when I read it because ''self indulgent wanker' is the t-shirt I am currently having printed for myself. One glance at the list - attending writer's workshops, liking David Sedaris, going to Africa to feel really guilty - are all on my personal CV.

Anyway, on to other topics ... this week is deadline for our folio pieces for my (what white people like) RMIT writing class. I have (almost) decided to do a piece on a workplace for special needs people. If I like it I might post it here.

Over the weekend I caught up with the first three episodes of PUSHING DAISIES. While I don't think I'd become obsessed by it I do think it's worth a look, paricularly for its gloriously colourful art direction. It's all bold colours and 50s silhouette dresses. The lights are brighter, the smiles whiter and the buildings are crazier than in real life. The main character, The Pie Maker, has a pie shop called the Pie Hole. It is round and the roof is in the shape of a pie. Love it! The local morgue is red and white - very pretty - and the female lead, Chuck, played by Anna Friel, has one of the most beautiful smiling faces I have ever seen. You just instantly fall in love with her. She's like the 2008/9 answer to Simon the Likeable from Get Smart.

It also has the wonderful Kristin Chenoweth in it who is a big stage and musical star in the USA and originated the role of Glinda the Good Witch in Wicked, which earned her a Tony Award nomination.

Saying all of that I think it has now been cancelled in the USA, explaining why it has not been on free to air here but is in the video shop. Also picked up at Blockbuster on the weekend was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. I am still in my (production designer) Ken Adams obsession mode. See this film for the design of the escape pod if nothing else. This is the Bond film that Ken got his Oscar nomination for.

Book Club update

2009-05-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

It's not too late. Read this excerpt ... so good:

In front of me girls were entering and exiting the showers. The flashes of nakedness were like shouts going off. A year or so earlier these same girls had been porcelain figurines, gingerly dipping their toes into the disinfectant basin at the public pool. Now they were magnificent creatures. Moving through the humid air, I felt like a snorkeler. On I came, kicking my heavy, padded legs and gaping through the goalie mask at the fantastic underwater life all around me. Sea anemones sprouted from between my classmates' legs. They came in all colors, black, brown, electric yellow, vivid red. higher up, their breasts bobbed like jellyfish, softly pulsing, tipped with stinging pink. Everything was waving int he current, feeding on microscopic plankton, growing bigger by the minute. The shy, plump girls were like sea lions, lurking in the depths. -From Middlesex, page 297-

The Farrah Fawcett Effect

2009-05-18T00:02:00.000-07:00

I am officially too lucky. There is no denying this.

Do you know what I did today? It is deadline week ... I am home all week and concentrating on the August issue of Get Creative which promises much entertainment for me as I interview quilters who are helping out survivors of the hideous Victorian bushfires and finding out tricks from crafty bloggers who make their blogs look crushingly artful.

I am tres organised this month which, lo and behold, meant I fricked around this morning and, after getting another little job off for another client, I did NOT settle down to concentrate on my writing. No, instead I watched the Farrah Fawcett documentary on the computer. I know! I am shocking!

Anyhoo I got all fired up about making the most of each day while I feel fit as a fiddle and DO NOT have anal cancer (how uncouth is that for the poor woman?) and, knocked off a quick story and then headed out in my new convertible with the roof down to lap up the wonderful winter sun we enjoyed in Melbourne today. I jogged my way around my fave track at North Road beach before heading home again to get back to the mag and knock off a phone interview with the good folk at Oxfam. In the midst of it all I got invited to see the Martin Short show next week at Crown.

So much sadness goes on around me, dear friends are laid very low with depression, there are deaths of young and old people in my close circle of friends and even my poor old muddah has to have a 'procedure' this week but I am in tripping off to writing seminars, eating great Lebanese food at Ablas (Abla Amad was born in Lebanon and arrived in Australia in 1954 at the age of nineteen. In 1979 she opened Abla's, a restaurant that has become a Melbourne institution) and planning for a birthday lunch with one of my besties (see one of her wonderful articles here) at the John Brack exhibition at the Ian Potter Gallery later in the week. I mean, seriously, how can the universe dole out such good with such bad?

Of course I have NOT done my RMIT homework which is bad of me and I have not had a good look at Project Gutenberg Australia (free ebooks or etexts that may be read on a computer using a simple text editor or viewer) but the key to happiness, so they say, is having someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to. I am blessed on all accounts and all the things on my TO DO list simply mean I have that much more to look forward to ... which includes cleaning the tiles in the shower and scrubbing the stove top. Told you I was too lucky!

2009-05-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

I develop little obsessions about things. I’ll give you an example. Lately, while walking and listening to podcasts on my MP3 player, I’ve been listening to old style radio plays of Agatha Christie classics. They’ve really been fascinating me. It’s intriguing to see what kind of world is created through sound effects to bring a script to light. Also interesting to conjure up characters in your mind just based on voices. I am enjoying it.

BUT, I cannot leave it there. Yesterday I rented and watched both ‘Evil Under The Sun’ and ‘Murder on the Orient Express’. ‘Evil Under The Sun’ is a classic. You should see the costumes … divine … and the cast - se magnifique … Peter Ustinov, James Mason, Roddy McDowall, Maggie Smith, Diana Rigg, to name a few. The other film was less successful, downright awful really. It’s fascinating to be reminded of the role the brain can play as its own art director, set dresser and cinematographer. I think I could produce a better ‘Orient Express’ in my own head, certainly there would be less over-acting. Kids should listen to radio plays. Like books they really allow the imagination to soar.

My imagination will be soaring … fingers crossed … when I go to ACMI this week to do two days of Stephen Cleary's thriller and horror lectures. God knows what I am doing at this thing but how lucky am I to be able to go? For me this is the ultimate voyeuristic thrill ride. I am not looking to write, direct, produce or develop horror films, but many in the audience will be. How much fun to hear their ideas and get an insight into the creative lives of these people! Plus I get to hang with a writerly friend who may one day walk the red carpet, Oscar in hand. Hopefully she will remember the little people when the time comes.

I am wasting my time

2009-04-30T17:02:00.000-07:00

Patsy Fox’s blog is too good. She is meant to be drawer, not a writer and yet – read her stuff – she is hilarious. Of course she is hilarious as a real life raconteur too so I shouldn’t be surprised. But I am often described as pretty “funny in the flesh” too (fleshy and funny also) and yet, when I put pen to paper/key to board I am singularly unfunny. In a recent post Patsy discusses hilarious going ons as she tries to track down The Sartorialist while he was in Melbourne recently (THIS IS HER DRAWING OF HIM, I HAVE STOLEN IT FROM HER SITE). She then talks about the fun of simply doing ridiculous things. Maybe that is the case – I do not do enough ridiculous things.

On Saturday just gone I did catch a taxi home from Croydon North (8000 miles from home) which cost 85 freakin dollars!!!! Now that’s what I call ridiculous. Of course it’s also too embarrassing to share with others … which maybe is the problem. I am not willing enough to share my embarrassments – like the fact that, as well as the $85 price tag, I also had the driver waking me up from snoring as we arrived at my doorstep. Classy!

2009-04-28T16:41:00.000-07:00

Rose coloured glasses are a must-have fashion accessory for me. Recently a lot of things have been pulling on my memory threads, from requests to write a bio for a magazine I used to edit, to the beginning of a short story for my writing class, to time spent with a friend’s family at her 40th.
As I get older I am struck by how much I can re-write my history to be a much more pleasant place than I felt it was when I was younger. For instance, in terms of the job, I found myself thinking oh-so-fondly of the wonderful travel I did – flying in a glass fronted chopper in Vicenza or listening to Andrea Bocelli sing in an open air palazzo – and remembering some of the friends I made and have kept in touch with in the decade since. I did not think of the lifelong insomnia I developed during that period, the weekends I spent at the desk and the family losses I experienced when there.

When it comes to the short story I played with in class, I began to laugh at what a funny, eccentric and special man my Dad was when, the story in question, really only brought me embarrassment and further proof of how he was trying to ruin my life when it took place. This even led to a whimsical reminiscence of my long lost sister and a stroll through my mind's landscape to our happier times.

And the time spent at the 40th made me think about how people’s lives change dramatically, especially the lives of busy parents who go from having houseloads of blustering adolescents and argumentative teens to having sporadic connection with these offspring as adults and watching them from afar, almost as if they are strangers. I also saw dramatic, staggering effects of age on the good old human body. Obviously I drank to stop those images becoming long term memories.

A rich man died in Melbourne today, a bloke by the name of Richard Pratt. Already on the radio they are debating whether he deserves a State funeral – he gave mountains of cash away in philanthropy but recent times saw him come under a legal shadow in his business dealings – and the memories surrounding his life, the stories from colleagues and friends, are already being edited and polished to give off the finest hue.

We all have a history. We all have our own stories but do they change as time goes on and, if they do, do they become more or less accurate? In class last night we discussed genres. Many stories, upon reflection, can be written equally as well as a romance, a drama, a mystery, a work of science fiction, a poem or graphic novel. Which genre are we living in today?

Does it make you a Twit?

2009-04-21T22:02:00.000-07:00

Well I have looked into the Twitter thing ... never like to critique something until I have experienced it first hand ... and I would have to say I think it has a short use-by date. Surely people will realise, fairly soon, that faffing around with this kind of shite all day distracts you from actually achieving anything.

I am not going to sugar coat it. I have canvassed a few busy women in different age groups. They agree the arrival of such a 'phenomenon' is troubling. Concentrated thought, real learning, achievement and even, dare I say, relaxation cannot be achieved with this constant disruption. People bang on about "turning off " the chatter in their heads. Then they turn to this kind nebulous chatter come twitter on their laptops. Madness, I say! And I don't care if it makes me unpopular or middle aged. This is one of those things where I think I will be proved right.

It’s funny how things come onto your radar at around the same time. The week or so ago when I signed up for Twitter was also when I heard a repeat of a radio interview between Margaret Throsby on ABC Classic FM (I know … elderly) and the novelist known to most as John Le Carre whose real name is David Cornwell. He worked for MI5 and MI6 in the 1950s and 1960s, before leaving the secret service to devote himself to writing after the success of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (you may also know his book The Constant Gardener). This was one of those men whose knowledge is so sweeping, whose tastes so varied and references so learned and fascinating that you wonder just how and when they are able to be exposed to so much information – politics, music, literature, psychology – and, more astoundingly, retain it.

Will men (and women) such as this ever come again when the temptations of twitter and twat abound? I suppose I lack this kind of intelligence and education (and memory) and admire it too much. Perhaps that is why I am made nervous by the new, seemingly tedious, media mediums.

Certainly Twitter seems to be handy for marketing and everyone from Ellen to Kerri-Anne Kennerly is on to it. That should tell you something people. This is yet another selling tool. Don't be sucked in. And, if Ashton Kutcher's Twitter is anything to go by, it is also for people with no command of the English language. Seems a shame to be encouraging them when, surely, a scarlet letter branded on their arses would do the trick. Of course a 17-year-old just told me that Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal's Twitter is hysterical. Naturally I must now check it out. See how the illness permeates and pervades.

And, of course, you can Twitter me at TheMrsUnderhill but ... not for long. The minute you sign up you get emails from people wanting to be your followers. Now I have as strong an ego as the next egotistical, spotlight seeking, attention starved Baby Jane of a woman and swoon at the idea of finally locking in a posse of disciples but this is too much. They all seem to want to - surprise surprise - sell me something or get me to vote for them. Hmmmm.

Mrs Underhilll Book Club meeting # 3

2009-04-13T21:18:00.001-07:00

So I can’t say the first book club attempt, getting a group reading of Brideshead Revisited, was the biggest success every but it has promise. Ms LP and I are forging ahead. We are even considering moving away from an online discussion of the book (or adding to it) with some over wine discussion of it. Whatcha think? The book in question is Middlesex. We have two months to read it, aiming to come together to discuss remotely or face to face around 15 June. Feel free to let us know you’re on board. It really does bring a whole new layer to the reading experience.

And, to whet your appetite, consider that Middlesex is an epic tale of a hermaphrodite bound up with social history. Jeffrey Eugenides spent nine years writing it.

Read an interview from The Guardian with him at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/oct/06/fiction.impacprize or perhaps hear him speak on this NPR podcast http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12485470.

Get on board the hermaphrodite train!

Write somone else's book

2009-04-13T20:59:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard of Fanfic? The term is short for fan fiction. I heard it recently during a radio interview with an author. Apparently fans and avid readers of certain books get so into the books, the themes, the characters and the fictional world that they cannot wait for the author to produce another book so they get just out there and do their own. Amazing huh?

I know the feeling of coming to the last few chapters or pages of a book and thinking, “I don’t want this to end” but, seriously, this is taking things to the nth degree. I think that fans start up their own fan sites for books and characters; they establish boards where they chat to each other and, in this environment, might also publish their fiction. The author I listened to sounded fairly dismissive of the movement, saying she obviously could not publish any of the writings on her official site and closed the topic down pretty quickly. Imagine if the Fanfic was better than your own? Too weird. The thing I wonder about is that, surely, what you love about an author and their books is the unique voice and imagination that individual brings to the work. But maybe their talents are sooooo good that having fans wanting to keep on and on and on with the narrative is the ultimate compliment … they just can’t get enough, literally.

I had, as usual, a little Google on the topic. JK Rowling is the progenitor of a tonne of Fanfic. Take a peep at http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/ and prepare to be awed. “Founded in February 2001, we currently hold over 50,000 stories and receive, on average, over 40 million hits per month” is what they say about themselves. The site runs novel writing contests and more. Authors create lives for the Harry Potter characters long past JK’s literary adventures.

Thoughts?

I AM WHAT I DO

2009-04-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

You are what you do. That’s the quote I read from the book, Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart, by psychiatrist, Gordon Livingston, M.D. This man has had a testing life. Won’t go into it here suffice to say he has lost two kids along the way and spent his working days listening to other people’s problems. It’s a nice book, a collection of essays. He does not sugar coat things. I’ll steal a quote from the foreword to say that he is “is at once stern and reassuring, hopeful but unwilling to proffer any guarantees”. He suits me. Anyway, take a peep at Psychiatry Online and don’t just take my word for it (http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/40/6/26).

Every year that passes I ponder exactly what things I truly believe – deep down and without reservation. To date there has been one: Do unto others as you would have them do to you. Now there is a second. At this rate I may truly be confident of about another two things by the time I am 60. In the words of UK comedienne, Catherine Tate, “Am I bothered?” I think not. The older I get the less I know. Full stop!

So recently what I have not been doing is blogging. Which is a shame because I often enjoy it, though not always, and it is a shame because it keeps my free-wheeling writing happening and, finally, it is a shame because two different sources (www.ampr.com.au and my fashion illustrator friend Angie Rehe) have both asked if they could link my blog to theirs. Now that is flattering to the Nth degree but a worry too. After all, the last time I blogged was in February. Hells bells, where has the time gone?

Not going to go into it here. I have my refreshed Ms Hepburn image to inspire me, a weekend at Hobart’s Henry Jones Hotel under my belt, an interview in The Age this Friday quoting me as an expert on all things crafty (with the always amusing fashion editor, Jan Breen Burns) and Easter is looming which signifies (she says with valiant ambition) a chance to catch up on the hum drum and the inspiring all at once. I AM WHAT I DO and not what I say I am going to do. I am going to learn about Twitter though I feel one more way of communicating in this world might make me drop off the perch forever (‘Perch’, get it? Bird – Twitter. Oh, will the hilarity ever stop?), I am going to tidy my office and discover the bills I should have paid eight months ago, I am going to try and tackle my BAS and I am going to look at the feedback my writing tutor gave me on my Penguin/AWW Short Story Comp entry piece. And then I am going to submit the damn thing just before the deadline.

I am what I do. I am someone who completes things. I may also be someone who goes see a flick – Last Chance Harvey or The Reader or the scary Uninvited. You don’t know!

Mrs Underhilll Book Club meeting # 2

2009-02-03T15:32:00.000-08:00

Alrighty then, let’s get this show on the road.

As mentioned on the 18th of Jan, we had delays in getting the book club up and running. Now let’s try and get the ball rolling with some discussion of the book, taking a ‘suck it and see’ approach to how and if this online dialogue will work or not. I’m going to kick off with a few points here and maybe that will prompt other members to comment on these topics too and then add their own:

I suppose the first thing to comment on is if we liked this book in a general sense?

Liked it or not, what were the things that swayed us one way or the other?

Across the board, what special themes or incidents would one like to discuss.

I am going to run an experiment by posting my feedback to these three points in the COMMENTS section of this blog in the hope that fellow members will ‘comment’ back. If you have any trouble accessing it, let me know or just email the answers to me direct if you have my details.

* A few notes on language and terminology:

I loved reading for bookclub because I was more scholarly in my approach. Hence, in Chapter one of book one I saw a reference to “men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman’s Day” (page 23 of my Penguin version). Newman, I discovered, was a vicar in Oxford who headed up a movement to bring the Church of England back to its Catholic roots.

In that same section is a reference to Oxford’s “Eight Weeks”. This, apparently, is a major annual rowing event.

I have to draw our attention to an observation on this book from TIME magazine that I found amusing: "Some of the writing matches Waugh's best (and there is little better); some of it is equal to his worst (sample: ". . . at sunset I took formal possession of her as her lover. ... On the rough water ... I was made free of her narrow loins.").

I did not discover what “Hogarthian page boy” refers to … does anyone know?

* * Before I sign off, on the 18th I ran some ‘biding time’ questions which I stole from elsewhere and Miss L P answered them thusly:

Q. A plot structure question: why is Lord Marchmain's death the novel's finale? Isn't he a minor character? Who cares if he dies?
A. Even he comes back to the Church on his deathbed. Julia can't deny her faith any longer - leaves CharlesQ. What shifts do you see - in theme, tone, style, plot structure, or anything else - between Book One and Book Two of Brideshead Revisited?
A. B1 – carefree, partic. Oxford days. B2 - sense of foreboding, era coming to an end.
Q. Besides Charles, whose side are you on as a reader, and which characters just aren't likeable? What do you think of Lady Marchmain, for example? Julia? Brideshead? Lord Marchmain?
A. Bridey, Charles father is a hoot and Anthony Blanche - he reminds me of a friend of mine!

Finally ... Ms L P suggested this for next Mrs U Bookclub read. "Can I vote for a book called Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides? Sounds amazing."
Votes please!

Additional Waugh reading might be enjoyed by some. He has an autobiography, A Little Learning.

Book club members caught in heat wave

2009-01-28T19:42:00.000-08:00

Please do not think that the bookclub is doomed. I do my work at home from my sunroom - it's 40 million degrees - I cannot be in the sunroom. Miss L-P has made some comments on Brideshead bless her. Mrs J is at teacher training and her daughter starts prep on Monday. Mrs R's little treasure, my own goddaughter, does the same. We'll get there though people. Please don't dispair and please DO put forward some book titles we can vote on for round two.

Ms L-P's comments: 1. Even he comes back to the Church on his deathbed. Julia can't deny her faith any longer - leaves Charles. 2. B1 – carefree, partic. Oxford days. B2 - sense of foreboding, era coming to an end. 3. Bridey, Charles father is a hoot and Anthony Blanche - he reminds me of a friend of mine!

Do I look good in this blazer?

2009-01-21T21:07:00.000-08:00

Man the shed has been busy. I think I have been the most industrious I've been in months. See what a week of sleeping and overeating can do.

Besides powering through paid work, I am 2122 words into my Australian Women’s Weekly Penguin Short Story Comp entry piece. I know this is dangerous to say out loud; akin to telling people you’ve gone on a diet then having to face them six weeks later when you've actually gained wait but, what the hell! I seriously have no intention of winning this thing. I am just really pleased to have got cracking on something. It makes such a difference. I do believe I will finish this thing.

I have been listening on MP3 to Marisha Pessl’s book, Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Holy Moly. This woman has more literary references than I’ve had glasses of chardonnay. (See /www.calamityphysics.com/)

The Washington Post described the book thus: ‘Constructing the novel as if it were the core curriculum for a literature survey course, complete with a final exam, Pessl gives each chapter the title of a classic literary work to which the episode's events have a sly connection: Chapter 6, "Brave New World," describes the first day of a new school year, while in Chapter 11, "Moby-Dick," a large man drowns in a swimming pool … Along the way, there are thousands of references to books and movies both real and imagined, as well as an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. The book's young narrator, Blue van Meer, has a cross-referencing mania … Pessl is a vivacious writer who's figured out how to be brainy without being pedantic.’ The Post goes on to say: ‘But hunkering down for 514 pages of frantic literary exhibitionism turns into a weary business for the reader, who after much patient effort deserves to feel something stronger than appreciation for a lot of clever name-dropping and a rush of metaphors.’

Now you see this might be why this particular book makes a good audio example. Sure I don’t get the visual aids but, as I was watering Uncle Ian's garden in the north wind today for AN HOUR it made a wonderful distraction. This is not a book I could tackle under the doona covers. I would give up by page 20 most likely. But, walking the local oval? Bring it on.

God I love books. I am also fascinated by new writers. Recently, while pulling apart an old newspaper for the kitty litter tray I was distracted by a photo of Katharine Hepburn in an education section of The Age (bad journo, should have kept date and page reference). It was by a lass called Alexandra Patrikios and was about the modern teenage girl’s (desperate) search for role models. Do you know this chick is in year 11 in Ballarat???? How does one get the opp the write for ‘the paper’? Apparently, doing a quick google, she did work experience at the Green Guide last year. What a ripper.

I too held Ms Hepburn up as an icon when a youngster. In fact, living in my first share flat in East St Kilda I had a number of books and images of the legend around my room. And, dare I say, I might have fashioned a bit of a hairstyle in her honour.

Alexandra debates the problem facing modern girlies – to be Carrie Bradshaw versus (wait for this one, my favourite fear ridden topic) ‘myspace/facebook/www.my-blog-is-as-useless-as-my-life-com - or not to be.

It was a reasoned, nice written piece. Who cares! I am just so joyful that the girl in the street gets the chance to do this kind of writing in a public forum. I don’t think anyone even mentioned The Age when I was at secondary school but, then again, I persist that I was away the day that geography was taught. Hence I could not point out Sweden or Seddon on a map to you. I am just awed at the opps some kids have these days. Maybe I will go back to school – high school – and start my career all over. I wouldn’t even bitch about wearing a blazer now.

Mrs Underhilll Book Club meeting # 1

2009-01-18T14:17:00.000-08:00

Well Book Club members, it's time for me to put out a plate of Melting Moments and offer you a hot cuppa. Of course, I have already heard from a few members that the Christmas holidays were a little crazy and they have not yet finished the book, hell one has not yet even come home. So, to stave off the inevitable for a moment and give us all time to catch up, after all this is meant to be an enjoyable pursuit, I will begin discussions about the book online and in earnest next week and hope that suits better. In the meantime, please consider the next book we will tackle.

Brideshead Revisited (1945), is an evocation of a vanished pre-war England. It is an extraordinary work which in many ways has come to define Waugh and his view of his world. It not only painted a rich picture of life in England and at Oxford University at a time (before World War II), which Waugh himself loved and embellished in the novel, but it allowed him to share his feelings about his Catholic faith, principally through the actions of his characters. Amazingly, he was granted leave from the war to write it. The book was applauded by his friends, not just for an evocation of a time now — and then — long gone, but also for its examination of the manifold pressures within a traditional Catholic family. It was a huge success in Britain and in the United States. Decades later a television adaptation (1981) achieved popularity and acclaim in both countries, and around the world. Another a film adaptation was made in 2008. Waugh revised the novel in the late 1950s because he found parts of it "distasteful on a full stomach" by which he meant that he wrote the novel during the gray privations of the latter war years.

- From www.litlovers.com

Questions to mull over:

1. A plot structure question: why is Lord Marchmain's death the novel's finale? Isn't he a minor character? Who cares if he dies?

2. What shifts do you see - in theme, tone, style, plot structure, or anything else - between Book One and Book Two of Brideshead Revisited?
3. Besides Charles, whose side are you on as a reader, and which characters just aren't likeable? What do you think of Lady Marchmain, for example? Julia? Brideshead? Lord Marchmain?

(Qs adapted from www.shmoop.com)

Current goings on in the shed

2009-01-08T17:30:00.000-08:00

Every shed is affected by the seasons. For me, as summer makes herself known, I am mulling over a lack of ready funds in the post-overseas trip and Christmas holiday period and thinking about new ways to make and/or save a buck.

Even in my magazine job I am tackling the topic of creativity on a budget, looking at 'frugal crafting' and interviewing folk both here and in the USA on the topic.

This month brings news again of the short story comp that the Women's Weekly does with Penguin. Deadline is in April. Is there motivation in the shed for writing and entering something for this?

Also in the shed this week some clearing up is going on as I make mental space for the RMIT creative fiction class I commence in Feb and for the new computer I hope to invest in when the money Gods again shine their benevolent light on us.

As well as the scent of the neighbours' freshly cut lawns there is a hint of new business with a meeting next week about a very exciting 'multi media' opportunity. Interestingly I have been thinking of late about my skills, trying to stocktake what they really are and wondering how one makes a living from being a good 'connector'; someone who sees opportunities to hook like minded people up and also often imagines new ways of communicating between groups but has no outlet for such a talent if you can call it that. (I confess I had even ordered a book from Amazon called Authentic: How to Make a Living by Being Yourself - http://www.authentictransformation.co.uk/). Ding Ding, a chat over lunch yesterday with the always intriguing Mr C hinted that there may be a job in the offing requiring just such skills. Who knows?

On the lighthearted side of things: The BBQ has been getting an airing as Mr U and I kick back into some entertaining with little people coming in to the house over the weekend and a trip into the city galleries with them on the cards. There's a wedding coming up in Tassie which has just been diarised so accommodation must be found. Tips for cool Hobart hotels most welcome!

Welcome to my shed

2008-12-28T17:18:00.000-08:00

What a manic time it has been. I have completely dropped off the perch in terms of my humble blog which bothers, I am sure, no one else but me but it does lead me to wonder.

I have created a little time bubble for the next week in which I hope to dedicate some time and energy to things other than journalism work, clothes washing and the general chores of life. Yes it is that time of year when one’s head turns to resolutions and plans but my commitment to myself this week is simple: DON’T TAKE THE LAZY OPTION.

I began last night by actually using one of the 800 bottles in my bathroom cabinet to take my makeup off. Revolutionary? Perhaps not to you but in a life of sloth, it’s the little things that add up … surely.

Getting back to some writing on my blog is another item on the TO DO list. I have taken to watching CALIFORNICATION on DVD and a recent episode has only reinforced some concerns I already have about the Net and the blog blamange that dominates it now. Is it weird that so many strangers are pouring out their thoughts and feelings to us should we choose to log on and read up? I am not sure.

Californication’s lead character, twisted and sexually liberal novelist Hank Moody, is being interviewed on the radio and he talks about the web: “People... they don't write anymore, they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it's just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people at a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King's English.”

Eeeek!

I know what he means. This clearly must be the opinion of at least one writer of the show. He has a point. However, my day to day work leads me to constant reading, analysing and interviewing of blogs and their authors and, because many of my subjects are writing with a purpose, I think I do see the value in their outpourings. Only recently a highly intriguing woman who is striving to live a “simpler” and more sustainable life in the Australian countryside, near Bathurst, explained how there were few like minded souls living in her area. While she hand washed cloth nappies, grew her own veggies and picked up old fabric scraps at the op shop to sew with, neighbours were running around in four wheel drives, eating MacDonald’s and saving for even bigger plasma TVs. It was on the web and via her blog that she had found like minded souls. There she could document her weekly efforts at saving the planet and her peace of mind, it was where she could swap tips with other “simple” folk and where she had found friends. Does the fact that they may never meet face to face matter? I don’t know. I suppose it’s better than living like we used to – lonely square pegs in round holes, forever feeling alone and alienated.

My blog, I have been forced to remind myself, is a way of maintaining some writing discipline away from work constraints. It has a purpose but one known only to me. That’s ok. If anything, in 2009 I hope to use it more constructively as a place to explore some thoughts and as a workroom. This is, I suppose, my online shed. Maybe I should redesign it to look like one? I have a constant supply of sticky notes and paper scraps with words, events, websites, ideas scribbled on them. My blog should be the place I pull this stuff together, research and investigate the various threads and chart the results of this activity, similar to the way a home handyman might gather design ideas and bits of woods to try and knock something together.

What happens in one’s shed is one’s own business. What happens on one’s blog can be the same, especially when it is visited almost exclusively by the author. Hmm, I am liking this concept. So for this week I will a) try not to take the lazy option in general and b) look at improving my shed. The first thing required, naturally, is a calendar with girls with big boobs sitting on cars. I’ll just go find one …

Potato, beer and lamb

2008-12-09T23:36:00.000-08:00

The stench of beer and potato that permeates his skin and breath turns my stomach. Watching him there, slumped ridiculously over his ancient meal, I feel nothing more than disgust and loathing. Saliva drips from his half open mouth and onto the cold plate.

He brought a dead lamb home for our son to play with tonight – how adorable! Oh I know he didn’t mean to kill it. He found it on the side of the road, abandoned. He probably did mean it as a gift for Alex but, in his drunken state, lurching and staggering along the cold road home, he squeezed the life from it. Either that or the poor thing died of shock.

Sweet Alex, he has sat in front of that fire, petting the dead lamb for three hours now. He thinks it is tired and cold. When he finally sobs himself into exhaustion I will tiptoe outside and bury the unfortunate creature. Painful explanations can wait ‘til the morning. His father, one can be sure, will remember nothing. At least, usually he would remember nothing.

Damien, of course, remains silently huddled in the corner, his usual position of retreat. His dark 10 year old eyes betray the pain and resignation of an old soldier who has witnessed many battles without honour or fairness. He will not move from beside the stove until his father has been snoring for at least an hour. He likes to be sure the beast will not stir again this night.

Anger seethes beneath those smooth, hairless features. Tonight he took to his father with the old wooden chair. As the ‘big man’s’ hand came down to meet my jaw, Damien was between us, the chair his only weapon. He must despise me too. Mother love, his protector. How uncourageous and weak I have been. Small boys, mere babes, deserve better and they will be protected.

The brick by my bed is left over from the building of the laundry outside, the one that remains unfinished. It is wrapped in Aunt Phoebe’s old lace nightgown. After all, this is a somewhat special occasion.

I will follow our nightmarish routine tonight. The boys and I will go to sleep. As the cock crows the monster will stir, head and bones aching. Scratching and farting, he will cringe at the dawn and stumble to our bed, our marital coffin. As he pulls down the cover he will mumble, “Had a good drink last night love”, then dissolve into snoring and stinking.

Poor, simple, obnoxious fool; the man I once so readily cosseted and adored. Poor fallen, pot bellied, drunken idol; the man who sucks the gaiety and innocence from my children. As sleep engulfs him the brick will end him. It’s just the stains I’m worried about. Still I’m sure it’s nothing hot soapy water and baking soda cannot fix.

Author: Me

Comfort in words

2008-11-30T14:23:00.000-08:00

Is it a sign of getting older that I find such comfort in certain routine items, especially those linked to books and words?

If I have been travelling, especially in less than joyful circumstances – like when I went to Uganda last year – there’s nothing I find more comforting that than the sound of Mark Colvin’s voice as he calmly and authoritatively presents ABC radio's current affairs program PM. It helps me know I am at home and back in my private bubble.

This came to mind when, heading off to Noosa with Mum for a few days recently, I found myself fondling a P D James book a the shop at the airport. I needed ‘holiday’ reading as I call it and I knew it had to be easy to dip in and out of and its entertainment value had to be guaranteed. I can get a bit toey when I'm with people a lot, so used to solo time at home am I, and I need a panacea. I opened The Private Patient while still on the plane and, after one or two pages, felt myself breathe out with relief. I was in safe and familiar hands.

To be honest the book was not one that will go down in the annals but bloody PD (pictured above) is 88 now. Give the woman a break! She’s quite an inspiration. Commander Adam Dalgliesh, poet and policeman and a returning character for her is making his fourteenth appearance for Scotland Yard in this book. The twists and turns are all there, the language spoken by the characters is precise and wordy, there’s a fine old English country house, some literary references, some religion and some mayhem. Ah, so reassuring. I tell you, even as I noted some repetitive phrases or had that strange premonition of what was going to happen next I was simply further appeased. That’s the power of the book, it’s like a woobie blanket for grown ups, or at least it is for me.

Holiday reading is a funny thing is it not? A number of people I know save up all their trashiest books to savour by the pool or swim-up bar. Why is that I wonder? Surely, at a time in the year when one’s mind should be freer and less preyed upon by the day to day pressures of life, a holiday is the very time one should be tackling challenging and exciting reading?

I have a new plan in place. I always tend to read one ‘serious’ book followed by one (or I dip in to both at once) guilty pleasure. Of course I pride myself on reading well written ‘guilties’ like a cracking yarn by Ian Rankin. Now, because I love books on CD so much, I have committed to non fiction in the car and fiction on my MP3 player. Now I can have at least four books going on in my head at one time.

Jesus, no wonder I’ll never get ‘round to writing my own.

The book club is a happening thing

2008-11-18T19:28:00.001-08:00

Hi there handful of book club members.

Our first book is BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh.

We will give ourselves two months to get hold of this book and read it. Obviously we are inspired by the re-make of the movie but, on alll accounts, it sounds like it pales in comparison to the 1980s mini series. Perhaps we can have a marathon viewing session of this when the book is finished.

Time Magazine included Brideshead Revisited in its list of 'All-time 100 Novels' which is good enough for me.

We will be ready for online chat about the book week commencing 19 January.

Happy reading!

The spirit in things

2008-11-04T19:46:00.000-08:00

In my experience, often when people lose very close loved ones they turn to religion or spirituality for succour. A mad dash to the pulpit is not for me but, amidst the platitudes and pleasantries that I have found myself doling out over recent weeks, some weird powers have been at sway, dumping religion, God even, into my lap.

During the wake for Mrs U one of the delectable catering staff we hired turned out to be a book editor for a major publishing house (in the children and young adult arena I believe). Using the W.C at the rear of the house – the one that I only arghhh today remembered has a big poster of a girl having beer splashed all over her breasts (a gift to Mr U from one of his pals during their more boisterous days) – the editor found herself reading a piece I wrote a thousand years ago called Stealing Jesus. It’s about a boy who secreted a host (the piece of unleavened bread that represents the body of Christ for the heathens out there) whilst serving as an alter boy. Man I had not thought about that story, about that period or about that church for a long, long time and yet she really liked the story and seemed struck by it.

On Monday I interviewed a wonderful young NZ woman who has been working in Cambodia teaching girls whose families had sold them into prostitution (for reasons too complicated and tragic to enter into here) to make jewellery as part of their recovery and rehabilitation period. This 29-year-old is about to throw in her life as a teacher in NZ and return to that country and volunteer her services for two whole years. At that age I shudder to think what I was doing. I believe it was throwing back Moet and complaining about my workload on the Melbourne Fashion Festival account and trying desperately to sneak a weekend away in or dinner with the girls. Hmmmm.

The really interesting thing about my interviewee though was how she came to even find out about the group in Cambodia she is now working so diligently for. She qualified me very carefully before she told me and asked a few times, “This won’t freak you out too much will it?” before going on to explain:“I said to God, if you give me a contact in Cambodia and at least around $800 worth of jewellery supplies to get things started I will do the rest.” The next day her sister called, said she’d met a woman running an NGO in Cambodia who’d just had a whole heap of jewellery supplies donated to her, didn’t know how to use them and was desperate for someone to come and teach her girls skills in this area that they could then trade on. Spooky no?

Finally, last night, while tossing and turning at 2.30am as per usual a fabulous idea for a story came into my head involving a haunting by a recently deceased family member. Of course I am reading Hilary Mantel’s fabulous book, Beyond Black, which deals with spirit mediums but I did think, imagine if – amongst all the other gifts and kindness my mother in law has given us – she gives me the elusive idea I’ve been looking for for a book. Drawing a long bow I know and jumping the gun and imagining I can write the bloody thing but, hey, if I did, the press release would write itself.

Say a little prayer hey?

Bon Voyage

2008-10-27T22:20:00.000-07:00

Today someone emailed me and asked about the trip. What a different a week makes. That trip seems like it took place in another galaxy compared to the journey Mr U and I have undergone since then. Sadly Mrs U senior has passed away. Life, as we know, has momentarily come to a stop. She was the life of many parties, I know because I have found the photos. The phone won't stop ringing with people who wish to join us and celebrate the astounding, jet setting, adventure packed, courageous and outrageous life she lived. "You go girl" is what I say!

Hang on a DANG minute!

2008-10-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

Okay so here are just a couple more shots from the trip ... these are all from RUBY's - Mr P's favourite BBQ haunt and just a few steps from Antone's record shop. The pie featured is called DANG pic - coconut and tinned pineapple ... straight out of 1972 Womens Weekly cookbook I am sure.

Back to reality soon. Visited the good people at The Smith Family today. They do some amazing work helping disadvantaged kids to stay in the school system. I hope to do some volunteer work with them using my old PR powers for good instead of evil so be warned. My nagging tones will probably be coming to a phone or IN box near you soon (:

AND MORE PHOTOS (scroll down for travel notes)

2008-10-14T23:00:00.001-07:00

The 'Undies' at The Alamo in San Antonio
The Bindies in San Antonio - a beautiful city
A friend we met at the Texas State Capital building in Austin

MORE PHOTOS

2008-10-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

Miss Gigi in the 'western room' of her new abode
The gang at historical town, Gruen (at Gruen Hall, oldest dance hall in TX)
Eating SCARY bbq at Kreuz

Hello y’all, here’s too much information

2008-10-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

Our hotel in New Orleans

The Garden District - NO - view from trolley car

beignets (donuts covered in mountains of white icing sugar) at Café Du Monde

Mr U at the Hank Williams exhibition at Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame

The Bindies in Austin

Yes we’re back from the States and I have to say it’s nice to return to some glorious sunny weather in Melbourne. The trip was a complete blast. We had a ball. I’m posting some notes on Mr and Mrs Peters in Austin so everyone can see how they’re going. They’re known as The Bindies over there (Ben and Cindy for the slow-to-catch-up) and are in fine form. I’m shite at getting the photos in the right spots when it comes to this blogging thing but hopefully it will be easy enough to follow.

NIGHT ONE saw us arrive in New Orleans where it was hot, hot, hot and steamy. Thirty hours awake did not stop us from hitting the town (and all the bars) til about 2am in the morning. I tried a Sazerac, (a rye whiskey concoction invented by a New Orleans pharmacist in the 1830s) an unofficial cocktail of the city, which we sipped at The Old Absinthe Bar, one of the only civilised places to visit in Bourbon Street.

The next day we hit the trolley car to visit the garden district. This is not to be missed if you go to New O. The houses are sublime. We didn’t get great shots but I’ll pop one on to give you an idea. An old guy on the tram wore rolled up jeans and kept his ciggies in their cuff. Cool.

We ate a Po-Boy at Mother’s Restaurant at 401 Poydras at Tchoupitoulas (basically meat, more meat, a bit more meat on top, juices and a white bun), beignets (donuts covered in mountains of white icing sugar) at Café Du Monde at 1039 Decatur Street and had a terribly upmarket dinner at the famous Arnauds. This place is all 19th century grandeur with mosaic floors and bevelled glass windows in the dining room. I had this: Quail, partially deboned and filled with Foie Gras Mousse and Mushroom Duxelle. Served on a bed of Truffle-infused Bordelaise Sauce. I kid you not! Plus we shared the side dish the place is famous for - SOUFFLE POTATOES – don’t ask! Suffice to say Jenny Craig was not consulted when the menu was drawn up.

New Orleans was recently voted the fattest town in America. I am moving there to become a petite sized model.

SECOND STOP was Nashville and the flight in, over the Tennessee wilderness, has left me wanting to go back and really explore this State. We went to the Grand Ole Opry on the night we arrived and were treated to a fantastic night of bluegrass. The next day we took a tour of the city which only had us and three other people on it. Highly recommended as a quick way to see a city when you only have 24 hours there. A highlight of the tour was a visit to United Record Pressing where the business of producing vinyl records is on the increase. This is the place where famous black performers of the 50s and 60s would stay in Nashville when black folk weren’t welcome in hotels there. We got some shots of the party room, located just steps from the Motown Suite. This large room was once used as an event room and hosted record label signing parties for folks including Wayne Newton, The Cowsills and a then 16 year old Hank Williams Jr.

OUR SECOND NIGHT in Nashville was spent honky tonking and, yes, shock and horror, drinking again. We hit all the ‘name’ bars like Tootsies Orchard Lounge where we met a wine distributor from Australia, Jason ‘signed’ a guitarist to his imaginary HELL YES RECORD company (ok, we were flying by this stage) and we managed to sneak in yet another dinner, this time at Merchants (referred to as a ‘fine dining’ restaurant in local parlance). The room is gorgeous. We didn’t have our camera with us but it’s worth looking at www.merchantsrestaurant.com if you’re planning a trip to Nash in the future.

THIRD LOCATION was, of course Austin where The Peters picked us up at the airport in the v e r y long ancient Pontiac that Mr Peters is restoring. It was SO GOOD to see them. Mrs Peters is the colour of coffee and her husband has taken to dressing in striped tees (a la Leave it to Beaver). Divine!

After initial confusion because they thought we were staying at the hotel the first few nights and THEN going to their place (nope, it was the other way around) we got to the wonderful house where they’re staying (email me if you want new postal address) and Gigi wet herself saying hello (yes, literally!).

Of course we hit two venues that first night – The Broken Spoke – where Mr U and I had chicken fried steak (arggghhh!) and then Trophy’s where a great Cajun guy was playing. The Spoke is a revelation … a real honest to goodness dance hall with people Texas Two Stepping from the ages of 21 to 80. Pitchers of beer were consumed and much gushing was done.

DAY TWO IN AUSTIN was spent at Walmart where Mr U bought 1000 Hanes t-shirts and singlets and I bought THREE pairs of jeans for $60 all up. Ha! We then went and dropped more than USA$200 on groceries at HEB supermarket where an old bloke told Mrs Peters she was “r e a l perty” and then headed home to cook up a Texas Melbourne style BBQ. We drank Californian reds. Never again. I thought Mr U was going to cry.

Other activities in Austin included two lots of parmesan coated French fries BEFORE an Italian lunch and the discovery of a wonderful Italian white wine called Tenuta (thank God). We saw a few bands at the famous Continental in South Congress (including the very chubby handed, amazing playing, charmingly witty Red Volkart), sat outside and drank margaritas at Guero’s Oak Garden and drove out to Kreuz Market for the German-style barbecue restaurant in Lockhart, the barbecue capital of Texas! Here the food is ordered by the pound and served on brown paper, accompanied by white bread and crackers. Vegetarian Mrs Peters ordered potato salad and beans, both of which had meat in them. Hilarious. I think the Coke had meat in it.

We went to Ginny's Little Longhorn and saw Roger Wallace play, we took Mr P out for early birthday dinner to the very swank Mexican restaurant, Fonda San Miguel, where I had a half chicken baked in traditional mole of Puebla, we had MORE bbq, this time at Mr P’s favourite place – Ruby’s – and shopped for records at the famous Antones. We had drinks at The Belmont, saw Nick Curran play at Antones … you name it!

The Bindies are in fine form. Mr Peters is playing again and was working on a big all day, six band extravaganza while we were leaving. Mrs P is the belle of the ball as ever, has the town wired and has officially proved to be the head of the social club, no matter what hemisphere she has her sling backs dug into. Hooray!

MRS UNDERHILL BOOKCLUB REGISTER ...

2008-09-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

In love with a monk

2008-09-26T15:18:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard only the voice of someone and fallen instantly and sweetly in love? Voices can have an amazing effect on us humans. You just have to look at the scope of the phone sex industry throughout the world now to get the idea. I mean, really, what other animal could fall prey to this concept? Can you imagine a tom cat getting a little furry hard-on by just listening to a lady cat purring in another room? Well … maybe

Anyway, I digress. Listening to a Canadian Broadcast Commission program, I believe it’s called Tapestry, I heard the voice of the Benedictine, Father Laurence Freeman, and within one lap of the oval I was walking at the time I was deeply besotted.

As someone brought up in the Catholic faith who has ended up deeply suspicious of its modern form (let the poor African folk pop a condom on for God’s sake!) I am always, frankly, surprised when I hear someone from the Christian tradition speaking sense. It’s so easy these days to feel more sympathetic to Buddhism or other Eastern traditions. They tend to seem so much more gentle and wise … and I suppose fashionable.

I’ve written before about my meditation gum tree. I like pursuing a little stillness but I had no idea there was a thing called the World Community for Christian Meditation. Christianity does, in fact, have a history of meditation stretching back thousands of years. Who knew?

Father Laurence, he of the calming, wise and soothing voice, runs the John Main Centre for meditation and inter-religious dialogue at Georgetown University, USA. John Main was a Benedictine monk and priest who presented a way of Christian meditation which utilised the practice of a prayer-phrase or mantra. He only died in the 1980s. Father Laurence continues his work.

“Every day at 12.30pm and 6pm …in the centre of a highly competitive modern university, the students come pouring in,” said Father Laurence on the podcast. “They come with all kinds of experiences of faith or a lack of faith … and what meditation can do in this simple way is bring them to their own centre … to self knowledge …unity … to their own truth.”

I don’t know. He talked about how he teaches classes on love, using Jane Austin and other texts as source material. He talked about modern life, he talked about everything which such remarkable common sense, compassion and wisdom. I just really dug him.

Asked why humanity has, throughout its history, sought out this stillness and silence (in Australia Father Laurence said he met an Aborigine who explained his people’s term for this mediation was something that sounded like ‘digiri’ and they’d been doing it for 40,000 years) the monk said, “I think it is our true nature … that stillness is not static … building meditation into your daily life is simply respecting the law of nature (like accepting you must stop to rest before you can work again).”

In the end, he believes, we are programmed to search for transcendence. So modern marketing – the ads for fast cars or deep blue pools, even the otherworldly buzz of the AFL Grand Final – is just another kind of attempt by marketers and so forth to achieve that transcendence. Hmmmm!

“In a normal health society we need to pass on a way to open the heart,” said Father Laurence. “The mind and the heart need to be in balance … our culture/education system really neglects this heart dimension.”

He told the story of how, whilst travelling in India, a local guide told him that we, in the West, lack heart. “Meditation offers us a way to let go of thoughts and allows the heart to open like a flower … to experience silence … these days we are suspicious of silence but silence is revealing and purifying and nurturing,” he said.

Both Main and Freeman recommend using the prayer-phrase Maranatha, which is Aramaic for "Come, Lord". They say Jesus spoke Aramaic. Regardless, it’s a nice word, a nice thought hey?

* If you're interested in listening to the cast go to: http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry/archives/2007/121607.html

** The Georgetown Uni site is http://www8.georgetown.edu/centers/meditation//

The view from my perch...

2008-09-23T22:46:00.000-07:00

Is it possible that, because so many words are running from one’s fingertips and brain, there are none left to invest in flights of imagination?
I have beamed into my blog regularly over the last week or so and have simply not been able to find anything to say. Thank God says Mr Underhill! I have also NOT been working on my book project. In the weeks leading up to and following the Melbourne Writers Festival I was incredibly hyped. I’m disappointed now to find that I have fallen off my perch. Instead I am sitting on the old newspapers lining the bottom of my cage, surrounded by shredded paper and bits of crud, and looking up forlornly.

Of course a lot has been happening that has absorbed my creative juices but shouldn’t I be able to keep on writing creatively? All the bloody experts seem to think so but perhaps one has to follow one’s own light. Or perhaps one’s own light is a particularly dim and lazy one and needs a couple of new double-A batteries inserted up its jacksy?

Yes the double issue of the magazine took an inhuman amount of effort to get out the door. It even has a couple of good stories in it, especially the one about a 70-year-old woman in Queensland who teaches craft classes to troubled school girls for absolutely nothing. They all call this gorgeous old cancer survivor ‘Nana’ and she bakes them cakes once a semester because some of them have never seen home made baked goods before. Ha! They could be my kids.

And I have been to some wonderful social events where people have passed on their books about Nashville for the trip which is four sleeps away, where I have completed two laps of The Tan (Botanical Gardens) and discussed everything from childlessness to ideal 40th birthday parties and where I have discussed sex over Hong Kong style roast duck at Pacific House in Toorak Road (thanks for that one Mr H!).

And – ding ding - I have devised my 40th and sent out early invites. It’s been keeping me up at night – sad but true – but I think a weekend in a drug lord’s palace sounds like a pretty good idea.

And I have heard reports on my divine goddaughter’s 5th birthday party which I couldn’t attend in the flesh.

And I have finished a couple of books, one being ‘Harry, Revised’ by the chap whose class I attended at MWF. Did I say he linked to my blog from his? (See http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2008/09/travels-recap.html for proof.)

Plus I have been having loads of fun working on a travel piece on Melbourne for a new UK website (thanks to many helping hands giving me tips) and, of course, I have been working on my Austin wardrobe. Okay, and trying to tee up a few interviews along the way.

Yes, when I think of it, it’s all pretty engrossing and creative. It’s even kept me away from my newly arrived October issue of Architectural Digest which, may I say, is the ‘inside the homes of the world’s top architects’ issue … one of my faves.

If I can miss that I must have been busy.

So perhaps I will have to take the writing thing at my own pace, fully aware that, when I return, I need to start being disciplined, perhaps even callously mean about the whole thing. Author Pat Barker tells her family not to knock on her office door when she’s writing unless an “ambulance is involved”. And she’s got at least 12 books to her name since 1982 and one of them won a Booker.

Of course, did I mention I might be going to Zambia two weeks after I get back from Nashville, New Orleans, Austin? Don’t ask.

Cicciolina gets international coverage in TIME

2008-09-21T17:38:00.000-07:00

Southern Accents
By MARION HUME

Go to Time.com this week to see Marion Hume's story on dining in Melbourne. She includes the best restaurant in our town - Cicciolina - in her run down. Mrs U even gets quoted hee hee.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1717144_1841688,00.html

Where the magic happens

2008-09-15T19:54:00.000-07:00

This week Ms F, author of Spiritual Business, declared her unending interest in other people's workspaces. Apparently people send her photos to feed the appetite.

Funnily enough, only last week, completely out of the blue, a couple of gal pals mentioned how much they like my office. Coincidence of topics hey?

This week, as I struggle to file 18 stories for the double issue of the magazine (Dec/Jan combo), my office ain't so pretty. As I look around it I see a couple of cardboard boxes laden with some beads one reader is meant to be winning along with eight copies of a jigsaw puzzle based on an award winning Australian quilt design.

Of course there is STILL my orange HUNTER $200 wellington boots that I am meant to be putting on eBay, paperwork from the weekend's yoga workshop, a stack of books I'm using for a give-away, not to mention a growing collection of bills, (a speeding fine! argh, don't tell Mr Underhill), notes from The Bank Job that I have now completed and (sigh) invoiced for, random business cards and event invitations and you name it.

It's bedlam.

It doesn't help that I am completely distracted by plans for the USA trip. I've been checking the weather in Austin every day ... it's still 30 to 35 degrees. Yikes. I've just been to buy leg tan. I know, very callisthenics concert circa 1979 but it must be done. I am not ready for hot weather. My efforts to cut down on alcohol intake have gone swimmingly but, for three weeks during the acclimatisation process, comfort eating was the replacement hobby. Comfort now lies around my stomach like an ever expanding safety vest. I am changing the blog name to MrsMichelindotcom.

Alas I am waffling. I do this when I should be writing about the wonderful girls at The Thread Den in North Melbourne. Check them out ... www.thethreadden.com.au. It's a retail store and sewing lounge with a thoroughly retro twist. Adorable!

I've been up since 4.30am and had three stories filed by 9am. Now I should REALLY be knuckling down to capitalise on such a commendable work ethic. Instead I am looking at photos of a recreation of (the Showgirl) Kylie's dressing room. So let's pretend it's my work space ... a spot where leg tan fits right in.

Getting your news online

2008-09-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

In recent days Prime Minister Kevin Rudd came out and said his wife and children haven’t read the ink and paper version of a newspaper in a few years now. They do all their news reading online. This intrigued me as I have not taken to online news dissemination, possibly because I still need to get a sense of how ‘big’ a story is physically … how much space it actually took up … and where it appeared within the paper. That’s very old school of me, I know.

Anyhow, I jumped online this week at theage.com.au and was bloody well rewarded for the effort. Two headlines jumped out at me. One was ‘Mouth to meow’ about a firefighter reviving a house cat (a a tiger angora if you’re interested) with the ‘kiss of life’. Come on! I am still laughing about this now. Can it be true? The best of this story was the closing line about how the fireman-to-felines responded when asked what resuscitating pussy tasted like. His answer: “fur!”

The other headline was simply this:

‘Man gets stuck in window - suffocates.'

I mean, that was it. How depressing. Someone’s hideous end, the snuffing out of a life, distilled into five words. The story proves, though, that truth is stranger than fiction. Some bloke in Ohio was found dead, his legs sticking out of one of his apartment windows. He’d locked himself out, tried to break in and, somehow, had his diaphragm crushed in the process and couldn’t breathe. Saddest was that someone had seen him and not reported it because they thought he was a burglar. Someone else finally reported him, a neighbour I believe, when they realised how long it’d been since he moved. Please nominate a more embarrassing, useless way to die than this.

Gotta go … am hooked on online news now!

Photo: A video screen grab of firefighter Al Machado giving a cat mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

CHECK OUT THIS BOOK

2008-09-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

My friend, sometimes known as Dreamweaver, also known as Ms F, has a new book out. It's called SPIRITUAL BUSINESS and it is remarkable. See it at her new website http://www.spiritualbusiness.com.au/ and be enthralled. What an achievement!

Goodbye Melbourne Writers Festival, hello cowboy!

2008-09-04T16:15:00.000-07:00

Gruel, Fay Weldon and Mark Sarvas

Some good information was picked up during my recent foray into the world of the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Tutor and first time novelist, Mark Sarvas, was particularly good value. This author of Harry, Revised ran a workshop about getting started for would-be writers. It was a very practical class which I think is crucial when you’ve shelled out $200 and are not just there to hear someone’s life story. If you want that you go to a panel discussion or a reading but sometimes people don’t really seem to ‘get’ that.

Mr Sarvas has a website – www.marksarvas.com - and is the man behind a respected literary blog called ELEGANT VARIATION. I’m going to beam in and give him some feedback as he requested during class. Although he did work in LA as a scriptwriter in the past I think novels were his real passion and he’s attended a lot of workshops and classes himself, making it easier for him to distil what’s required to actually make them useful.

A newcomer to the festival scene, I think he also enjoyed meeting other authors and slipping into that world. I took it as a sign of how social and engaging he is that he was able to tempt a few other authors to drop by our 10am to 4pm session to share a few pearls of their wisdom with us also. Or he could have bribed them ...

Nam Le (www.namleonline.com), from Melbourne, sat in for a brief while. His is a name on a lot of lips currently. The hosts were raving about him and his short story collection – The Boat – on 3RRR’s Aural Text programme (Wednesdays 12pm - 2pm) this week. By the sounds of things this Vietnam born Australian chap has an international career ahead of him. Funny to hear the 3RRR gals mention that he was good looking too. I am thinking launching a new magazine – don’t tell anyone – called Literary Hotties.

Hannah Tinti from the USA also visited us. Her new (first) novel is called The Good Thief. She was interviewed on 'The Book Show 'on Radio National this week. I purchased her book at the Festival bookstore at Fed Square (I also picked up Harry, Revised which is burning a hole next to the bed but, unfortunately, the library emailed to say Fay Weldon’s Spa Decameron had arrived so I just HAD to swoop on that first. Eeeek and I still haven’t finished Salman’s Enchantress of Florence. Ah the reading joy of it all!).

Hannah's particularly interesting because she’s one of the founders of the US literary magazine called One-Story. Every three weeks one short story is published in this tiny, lovely publication. I won’t go into details. Check out www.one-story.com if you’re interested. Suffice to say a) I think they have around 8000 submissions a year and can publish only 18 stories and b) the mag is getting some serious attention from editors around the world looking for new writers.

As you can see I’ve been enveloped in bookish thinking. I’m surprised I’m not dreaming of reams of words, scribbled on blue-lined paper, swirling around me at night. Instead I’m dreaming of creatures like those hideous monstrosities from M. Night Shyamalan’s film, 'The Village'. Go figure!

Anyway, I digress in a monumental way … great advice picked up from Mr Sarvas included reading like a writer. This involves being aware, as one reads novels day in day out, of the mechanics being employed by the author … the construction of the book and the way the story is being moved along and so forth. Part of me always thinks such examination or analysis takes the fun out of activities such as this but, committed to a home made 'Mrs Underhill Masters of Creative Writing in the sunroom' for the remainder of this year, I am going to knuckle down and give this a bash. Mr Sarvas also gave EVERT student a copy of his favourite novel, The Great Gatsby. Bless!

In the spirit of “thinking like a writer” as was also discussed in class, I am going to buy a specific tiny notebook to record all manner of intriguing dialogue I hear between airports and luggage carousels between here and Nashville, New Orleans and Austin in October. I will probably end up using it to write lists of perfumes and booze that I want to purchase but, hell, it’ll come in handy either way. Maybe when Mr Underhill’s not looking I can get down a few cowboy’s phone numbers too.

Of course I am also going to put the finishing touches on my big bank job, write the double issue of the magazine that is hovering before me and pull off a terribly chic and amusing Melbourne travel piece for one of the editors of Tatler or some UK website. I’ve been commissioned, accepted the price, floated a deadline and still am not sure who I am writing for. Crazy!

But, as everyone who has shared insights into writing with me in the past months has said, life just cannot get in the way of the writing. There are, apparently, no excuses – save death – which can be accepted. And, if I am going to us Ms Weldon as even a token role model – she has four bloody sons and I think step-kids as well – she probably had a spot of ironing and plenty of gruel cooking to distract her. Didn’t stop her from pushing out something like 30 novels. Bitch!

The killers amongst us ... have feathers

2008-08-26T00:59:00.000-07:00

Most days my walking route takes me through a small neighbourhood of Mc Mansions in a little settlement named after a school … something Mews. A primary school used to stand in the site where the houses are now. I like this part of the walk because there seems something so safe and controlled about the area; like it’s from that film with Jim Carrey – The Truman Show. I couldn’t live there – way too boring – but, for a walkway, it’s like being in a dull yet comforting department store of houses.

The other reason I like that route is because of the black and white cat I catch up with. He’s what some people call a tuxedo cat – black and white but the white is just a patch on his chest and his paws – like a white shirt poking out of a dinner suit. He wears a yellow collar and has loads of personality. I think he must be one of the luckiest cats in the western world. After all, he lives in the centre of this safe neighbourhood where no dogs have ever been sighted and, across the road from his house, is a park that’s been completely designed using native plants … meaning plenty of native birds come to visit.

Walking past there today my feline pal was nowhere to be seen. I was a little disappointed. Still, I was soon at my favourite meditation gum tree and all thoughts of puss were banished. The sun was beaming for a moment just before it set for the day and its intensity through the leaves of the tree made me feel like I was in one of those 70s sci-fi films – Omega Man or Soylent Green.

I switched off my MP3 player (David Sedaris on Radio National’s Book Show www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2008/2336694.htm) and got to thinking about the characters in a story I am writing. I need to figure out how to move them along and I felt a little stuck today. As I looked at the tree, though, I realised for the first time that there is a nest in it.

It’s a strange nest, it looks more like a giant grenade than an ant’s nest but I’m pretty sure it’s a bird’s nest. I walked round and round the tree trying to get a better view. A little magpie lark was the sole occupant of the tree at the time and he/she seemed to become aware of my loitering. It flew to the nest and hovered near it, then started picking and pecking around it. It was too high up for me to see what was really going on. At first I thought, ‘How sweet, it’s probably feeding its little ones in there’ but then my thoughts turned dark. I’ve always had a thing about birds, about things that flutter really. When Mr U and I were at London Zoo in the butterfly enclosure I completely freaked out when rare creatures started landing on my fire engine dyed red hair of the time. Little kids gathered around, amazed and envious. Only Mr U realised the immense will it was taking for me to not swipe those little fuckers – the butterflies not the kids – and take out something probably worth thousands of pounds, shipped directly from the Congo.

Anyhow, I have tried to fight my wing-flapping paranoia and make friends with birdies in recent years. They are all God’s creatures and very special in their way. Well that’s over with now once and for all. Last week I saw a raven killing a pigeon in the driveway of a house round the corner. It had two accomplices with it, Indian Mynahs I think. I pulled up in Mr U’s ute and honked to break up the violence. The raven flew off but not far, it’s two vampiric little mates sitting on powerlines nearby, just watching. The pigeon was ruffled up and dazed. It looked in a bad way. It made it over a neighbour’s fence but, even as I was standing there, I could see the attackers swooping down behind the posts to continue their evil deed.

So when I saw this magpie lark in the nest I went from delight to unease. Was it friend or foe to whatever dwelled inside? Was it attending to its young or eating someone else’s precious eggs?

Perspective’s a funny thing isn’t it? I’ll never know what was really happening all those many metres in the sky but, as I’ve nurtured a dislike of our ornithological friends, I choose to assume the worse.

Go Mr Tuxedo!

DOG OF A LIFE

2008-08-25T18:04:00.000-07:00

One junkie to the other one in the middle of the street in St. Kilda recently:

"They wouldn't give me an effing bandaid in that effing shop and now I have to wear these effing dogs all day."

She was wearing slippers with dogs' heads on them.

STOP IT!

Farts on planes, festivals and facial hair

2008-08-24T19:01:00.001-07:00

So Saturday was spent at a Melb Writers Festival workshop with Kate Rowland, the BBC’s Creative Director of New Writing. Is it bad that the most fascinating elements of some of these activities are the kind of people who attend them? Like the guy who somehow managed to ask a question of Kate but also slip in that he is on the ethics committee at one of the universities … I mean, who cares? What did it have to do with story structure? Plus there was the ex-arts editor of one of the major daily newspapers here who shoved her CV down my throat too. Okay, okay, I get it. You're very, very clever and, in fact, could be teaching this class rather than attending it.

You know what my theory is? (I’m going to give it to you anyway.) My theory is that these middle aged people are often VERY proficient in their original fields of work but are now dabbling in the area that every second person thinks they can excel in – writing books or movie scripts – and they can’t really cope with being back at the starter’s block professionally speaking.

Because of this, and because they are once again being spoken to as students or newbies, they feel practically violently obliged to ensure everyone knows that they are, in fact, incredibly respected in another field. I say “Fantastic! Now stick to that field and let the rest of us try and learn something here from this tutor.”

It goes to the core of the growing phenomenon that so many people, regardless of how worthy or interesting their professional field is, just don’t seem to think it compares to success … making a name for oneself … in the media. I mean, is this the 50-year-old’s version of ‘Australian Idol’?

Suffice to say these classrooms are great gathering points for mankind’s archetypes so, if nothing else is gained, characters for stories could be.

There is always the over-the-top IT genius who has consumed every episode of every obscure British and US television show in the past 20 years and is now ready to shop his 1"13 ep" - he always uses jargon - idea to unsuspecting network staff.

Then there is the girl with the nerve rash. There is ALWAYS one of these.

There is also, often, the incredibly careworn 60-something woman who looks like she’s struggled out from underneath a library desk somewhere to pop on her orthopaedics and make it to this class … where she will say NOT A WORD from 10am to 4pm.

And then there is the me … too much liquid eyeliner, aviator glasses and a penchant for the Kingston bickies that are supposed to be shared but just keep calling their Siren call.

Probably more genuinely intriguing was the crew at the memoir writing class. I’ve never been interested in this genre but went for a sticky beak and it was magic. Elderly Indian brother and sister, a man who clearly used to be a woman (‘he’ told me he ran his own self publishing business and then proceeded to talk about Snap Printing ... um puhlease), the guy who’d grown up in an Italian community in regional Victoria and wanted to capture the spirit of those times for posterity, the philosophy student who wanted to apply mythical archetypes to a family history (okay, I vagued out during her 10 minute description) but you get the picture.

The weekend finale for me was David Sedaris' reading at the Capitol Theatre last night. As well as his most recent book, he read excerpts from his diary. Now that was a treat. It’s amazing how people confide in him about everything from farting on aeroplanes to eating monkey’s brains.

I’m trying to keep my eyes and ears open now to see how day-to-day life can be transformed into witty anecdotes. Sadly, though, since last night I’ve only dealt with the guy that brought my car up from the hotel’s valet parking, the girl who made my coffee on the way home, my ginger cat and my Mum on the phone. Of course Mum did tell me about the most recent visit she had from my brother.

He came to her house to pay her back some money he’d borrowed. He’d been to the doctor for migraine medication which seems kind of redundant when he then proceeded to pour two cans of no name vodka and orange into the bottle that Mum calls “the baby bottle” which he carries everywhere in his back pack. Surely if he eased up on the voddie the headaches might take a backseat. But, hey, I’m no doctor. In the end the poor lamb handed over $50 to Mum, took $10 back ‘cause he had “no money now” and also walked away with a loaf of bread and a nice serve of smoked ham the pensioner had just bought on special from the supermarket.

See that’s just not as funny as farts on a plane.

THIS JOURNEY CONTINUES

2008-08-21T23:09:00.000-07:00

God I have really fallen off the perch haven’t I? I haven’t even been near my mythical meditation gum tree for over a week. I just re-read that post. God I’m a wanker sometimes.

There’s a pattern developing here though. As I head towards deadline for the mag … or other jobs … my drive to keep on tapping via the blog seems to suffer. Certainly this week with a bank job (a legal, brochure writing one, not a crime) plus the November issue of the mag I have been weighed down by words. Sad too because I have begun working on a personal project that really had me revved up – and still will – but I have had to drop the bundle for a moment.

There are only so many hours I can sit in front of this lap top, especially when the central heating is broken. No big deal. That’s the road and that’s how I’m rolling.

Pedal is to the metal now as the trip to Austin countdown commences. I have been liaising with the media/tourism unit over there for help locking down stories and have been making contact with potential targets directly. All good!

I have just made contact with Marcel the Journeyman today in the hope of interviewing him for The Age. A friend’s husband told me about this chap. He is living and working in Abbotsford for a few months and is part of a rare breed of craftsmen (think this one is cabinet maker of some description) whose roots go back to medieval Germany. You can google the phenomenon but I’ll have more to tell when I’ve interviewed the chap. Suffice to say he wears a special outfit … touch of the leather lederhosen … cannot wait! Actually I believe the look entails a black wide-corduroy suit with enormous bell-bottom pants, large black floppy hat, golden earring, collarless shirt and heavy pocket-watch. Lederhosen is a funnier word though.

This weekend is Melbourne Writers Festival time. I have a 10am to 4pm workshop on Satruday, a three-hour workshop on Sunday, a break in-between and then the Sedaris reading Sunday night with the girlies. Can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to this. Especially as I am staying at the sponsoring hotel on the Sunday so can sneak in a bit of shopping Sunday arvo … while absorbing all the lessons I have learned of course.

Lesson number one for successful writers? Dress sharp, of course. Lederhosen anyone?

Pool or tree, we all need a place of stillness and inspiration

2008-08-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

I recently finished reading Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story which features a novelist character who talks about the “pool” we all go to, as humans, for inspiration and language, for our shared stories I suppose. King says he got this term from his College English teacher and mentor, Burton Hatlen

"Burt was the greatest English teacher I ever had,” writes King in the book’s postscript. “It was he who first showed me the way to the pool, which he called ‘the language-pool, the myth-pool, where we all go down to drink.’ That was in 1968. I have trod the path that leads there often in the years since, and I can think of no better place to spend one's days; the water is still sweet, and the fish still swim."

I thought about this today because it is joyously sunny, clean like someone’s been out overnight with the Enjo cloth and really given the sky and surrounds a good scrub. I threw on my runners and headed out for a walk and to do a few flights of stairs at the local running track but a primary school was having school sports day there – little bastards – so I had to take an alternative route.

This brought me to my favourite local spot – a huge ghostly gum tree in a local park, set amidst a ‘natural bush setting’ that has – naturally – been planted and cultivated near a football oval here in suburban land. The spot is divine though. It smells like gum and lemon myrtle and this tree, with a bench placed in a perfect viewing spot, has become my new focus of meditation. Even when I am far from the tree I conjure it up and use it as my focus. It’s got lots of visitors through its branches and the leaves are always moving. It is NEVER still. Today I hugged the tree. So now I am officially a tree hugger.

As I sat in the sun and stared at said tree I began to think about a story I am working on - a fictional, non work-related piece. Ideas started to bubble and I realised that this tree may start to become my pool; the place I go for ideas and inspiration and the place that is sweet and still. I hope my path there becomes well trod.

Peter Temple and my religious achievements

2008-08-03T18:28:00.000-07:00

Saint Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists and writers

A lass who I once did a short course with let me know that Peter Temple was interviewed on The Book Show in connection with the Crime and Justice Festival. She was unaware of my blogging misstep so didn't pick up on the significance ... to me ... of this comment in the interview.

Temple: "So you learn to cut stuff very savagely and I was brutalised by these people (newspaper sub editors), there's no question about it. I'm thinking of demanding an apology. Many of my ex-students are demanding apologies from me, too. So...Mrs Underhill, I'm sorry."
God I feel bad now. I mean ... Mr Temple was the winner of the 2007 Duncan Lawrie Dagger award in the UK for his novel The Broken Shore. Mrs Underhill once received Dux of Year 8 for religion. And look where that has gotten her!

Podcast or listen to the show at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2008/2313086.htm

MEET YOUR EDITOR

2008-07-29T17:06:00.001-07:00

A fair bit has been happening since last I beamed in. I miss my little blog when I’m away. I see so many of these damn things in my day-to-day work and I often wonder over their amazing popularity, with the writers if no one else. The crafty community bloody loves them. You can’t stitch a new apron without photographing it and posting it and discussing it. Who am I to criticise though? At least with their blogs they’re actually making something. I find myself banging on about some duck dish I ate somewhere or an Austrian white wine I recently sipped. Weighty stuff, for sure.

Nonetheless I think the charm of ‘blogland’ is that it’s ultimately just for us. And, for me, someone who has devised and divined so many communication tools for so many other people over the years, it’s like I get to take 30 minutes and build my own little mini magazine, complete with photos and a too-personal letter from the editor. I just need access to designer fashions, a town car and someone to deliver coffee and I am the Miranda Priestly of my own tiny domain. True, in this Miranda’s domain I can hear that the washing machine – best known as Mr Simpson – has just finished his cycle but, for a moment, it all washes away. Ha! Get it? Washes …

Anyhoo there’s been the October magazine deadline, the Crime and Justice Festival, the visit of the mother-in-law (sadly stereotypically disappointing) my three day strike (where I tried to do as little work as possible, not enter a supermarket, write only for creative purposes and see the Get Smart movie), dinner and a Maeve Binchy inspired movie with Mum and a beautiful, very Melbourne, night on the town for Miss R’s birthday that involved drinks at the Carlton Hotel in Bourke Street followed by dinner at Punch Lane and more drinks, hiccup, at the bar at Florentino. Heaven.

Oh and did I mention I finally pressed SEND on version three of the 45,200 word corporate history I have been writing? Praise the lord! Let it be over.

The Crime and Justice Festival was an interesting foray. Definitely those grounds are a wonderful place to meet and discuss ideas. Melbourne’s winter does give them a slightly bleak aspect but it was fun to walk around pretending to be one of the young women “in moral danger” that the Good Shepherd Sisters cared for a hundred years ago. Hopefully their rooms were slightly better heated than the one that housed the Peter Temple lecture,

So … he had read my blog. How ghastly. I think I know how it happened … unless he is an obsessed googler about himself. Let’s just say lessons have been learned. He was terribly gracious about the whole thing however. And, I have to say, his talk was very witty and his readers love him. In fact, there was so much obvious respect for him amongst the audience and other writers who spoke at the event that it was quite touching. Like he was a cricketer I’d hit a few balls with in the playground and now he was batting for Australia and on the telly every other day in summer.

Both Peter Temple and Michael Robotham (another Australian born ex-journo and now successful crime author) couldn’t express more clearly and energetically how bad they thought journalism was for the soul and the skills of the would be novelist. Thanks guys! Nevertheless, Temple had some great advice which I have been trying to act on rather than mull over; a turn up for the books in itself.

I am now terribly excited at the thought of the upcoming Melbourne Writers Festival for which I have bought an embarrassing array of tickets. I think, however, that immersing oneself in workshops and all day classes on any topic is absolute bliss when you’re someone who does not have the time/money/inclination to be in full time study. It feels so decadent and it takes you worlds away from Mr Simpson’s cycles and supermarket foraging.

I really could go on for ages … don’t you know … but I have to prepare for my tax meeting today. Could life be more thrilling?

I’ve had some very nice feedback about this blog in recent weeks. I am touched by one and all because I know everyone has better things to do than read the rants of a woman in a sunroom sporting striped pyjama pants and un-brushed teeth at 10.25am in the morning but … there you go!

SAFETY IN THE VELODROME

2008-07-22T00:24:00.000-07:00

Bicycle tyres on the hot green surface
You're wearing a safety vest in the middle of the day
You're riding in a velodrome for fuck's sake
What do you need with a safety vest?

The grass is all I can smell
It's been cut recently and bits stick to me
There's an absence of loud noise this afternoon
Just the machine-like sounds of crickets and some Dad calling to his child
And you, of course, on that bloody bike, passing me again and again

You've started doing a few tricks now
Weaving up and down the side of the velodrome
You've also started making eye contact when you pass
You must be in your late 30s, early 40s
That's got to be your daughter pedalling behind you
For God's sake! It's time I go home

- by Me - 25/1/08

Justice for crap writers

2008-07-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

So it's deadline for the magazine again .... and I go to ground to get the little treasure written. One day I will have to count the total amount of words I write in one issue; one day when I have been sacked and have the time to do that kind of thing.

So, just to keep my blogging hand in, may I say that I am COMPLETELY looking forward to attending the Crime and Justice Festival at the Convent in Abbotsford this weekend. What a reward at the end of a slogging week.

One of the sessions I am sitting in on is with crime writer, Peter Temple. He is South African born but has lived in Australia for a long time. I know this not because I have to google him but because he was one of our principal lecturers at RMIT when I was studying journalism. Even now, as I write about him, I feel ill. After all, is that the correct spelling of 'principal' in this instance?

He was the only lecturer who ever genuinely tested me, who I ever really tried for. He humiliated and terrified us and the red pen marks that covered essays after he'd marked them looked like he'd cut his wrists during the session. Often he probably wanted to.

It was not just me either. He wrote sarcastic and downright mean comments on many people's work. For me, once, he gave me 10 per cent and wrote 'charity mark' next to it. Bless him.

Unfortunately he is one helluva writer. If you see his novels - The Broken Shore for example - pick it up. It's got nothing to do with whether you like crime genre. You just have to like good writing. It makes me sick. Why can't he be lousy? It would make it simple then to hate him.

Instead I look back on my studies with him and am very grateful. I envy his talent but know a large part of his success lies in his commitment to perfection and attention to detail. This commitment can be tough to live with when you're 19 years old and just discovering the joys of beer in various sticky pubs around Swanston Street but, in the long run (yawn yawn), apparently it is essential. At least, in later years, I discovered a little weakness the great man did have. It gives me relief to know he is indeed human. We all end up with a little red pen on some aspect of our lives.

the other side of the story

2008-07-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

You know one of the reasons the eulogy topic pops into my head in terms of my father is because there are always a number of ways to see and describe a person or thing. It just depends on where you are standing.

One of the things that has always bothered me about Dad's funeral is that the young, hip, modern priest took our honest account of the old fella and really honed in on the, admittedly numerous, negatives. If he used the term "flawed" human being once he used it a thousand times. Said priest has since left the business, so I hear.

Still, my recent scribblings about an alternative eulogy in no way paint the entire picture of the man who raised me. And, to be honest, I would never write the other side of the Dorian Gray portrait here. But someone who has done that - in a form so wonderful I could never achieve - is writer, George Bilgere.

Listening to Writer's Alamanac (www.writersalmanac.publicradio.org) on podcast over the weekend, this poem was read. Go with it for the beginning, really feel it then watch as George presents a subtle knife and quietly gives you a slice. He brings it back to the positive but, for my money, this is one helluva great presentation of the two faces of a family, the two faces of a story. In George's case the positive light seems like it might have been fictional. For me, thank God, it was anything but ...

Like Riding a Bicycle
by George Bilgere

I would like to write a poem
About how my father taught me
To ride a bicycle one soft twilight,
A poem in which he was tired
And I was scared, unable to disbelieve
In gravity and believe in him,
As the fireflies were coming out
And only enough light remained
For one more run, his big hand at the small
Of my back, pulling away like the gantry
At a missile launch, and this time, this time
I wobbled into flight, caught a balance
I would never lose, and pulled away
From him as he eased, laughing, to a stop,
A poem in which I said that even today
As I make some perilous adult launch,
Like pulling away from my wife
Into the fragile new balance of our life
Apart, I can still feel that steadying hand,
Still hear that strong voice telling me
To embrace the sweet fall forward
Into the future's blue
Equilibrium. But,

Of course, he was drunk that night,
Still wearing his white shirt
And tie from the office, the air around us
Sick with scotch, and the challenge
Was keeping his own balance
As he coaxed his bulk into a trot
Beside me in the hot night, sweat
Soaking his armpits, the eternal flame
Of his cigarette flaring as he gasped
And I fell, again and again, entangled
In my gleaming Schwinn, until
He swore and stomped off
Into the house to continue
Working with my mother
On their own divorce, their balance
Long gone and the hard ground already
Rising up to smite them
While I stayed outside in the dark,
Still falling, until at last I wobbled
Into the frail, upright delight
Of feeling sorry for myself, riding
Alone down the neighborhood's
Black street like the lonely western hero
I still catch myself in the act
Of performing.

And yet, having said all this,
I must also say that this summer evening
Is very beautiful, and I am older
Than my father ever was
As I coast the Pacific shoreline
On my old bike, the gears clicking
Like years, the wind
Touching me for the first time, it seems,
In a very long time,
With soft urgency all over.

"Like Riding a Bicycle" by George Bilgere, from The Good Kiss. © University of Akron Press, 2002. Reprinted with permission. – I stole from http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2008/07/05

Families remind me of fathers

2008-07-03T22:28:00.000-07:00

I spent four days in Byron Bay recently (well Bangalow to be precise - AKA God's country). The main reason was to be there for Mrs R’s birthday but I also had a meeting about a website I am writing the text for. Nice work if you can get it.

Mrs and Mrs R have possession of my goddaughter, my best (small) boyfriend and, now, my new favourite poochy friend called Louis Vuitton. I am proud to say that, while Louis was named by his four-year-old owner, it was Mrs R and I who came up with his surname while we were in New York. We felt that, because he was a tad plain at the time, he needed a little help in the élan department.

I am now proud to report he cuts a fine and gorgeous figure although he did smell remarkably similar to a jar of duck fat I picked up from the Essentail Ingredient not so long ago. Don’t ask me why. Regardless I am in love and, while I will respect everyone’s privacy in terms of photos, a few ones the witness protection programme would allow are shown here.

Spending some time within a little family unit got me thinking about my own family. One night recently when sleep wouldn’t come I got to thinking about how much I regretted not eulogising my father at his funeral. I could never have done it; too much of a blithering mess. As I get older, however, he begins to loom larger than life as quite a pisser of a bloke and someone who, though very traditional in so much of his attitudes, was quite odd in his own day-to-day ways.

So here, for my own benefit, are a few of the best things I remember about him, 10 years too late perhaps:

1. He was the man who had the common sense to drive off on me one day when, aged around 15 or 16, I came out of the hairdressers with a style that involved a flat top on top, shaved sides and a bob at the back. Help!

2. He grew up in Ireland on a farm. Farm people are not meant to hold animal life too dearly. Dad put a notice in the paper when our rabbit died. He was the one who killed it. (Admittedly it had myxomatosis.)

3. He had gout but he didn’t say much about it. He just cut pieces out of his shoes where they pressed on the sore areas.

4. He brought us home a sheep for a while. We lived in a suburban housing estate. The sheep was black; we called it Teddy (as in Teddy Bear). He used to walk it. On a lead. Around the block. I was in my early teens. No I was not embarrassed!

5. Dad loved grooming. Born in more recent times I think he might have been a good stylist or hairdresser. He was a big bloke and, in my day, he always wore overalls (ironed sharply by Mum, of course) but he’d stand in the doorway of the bathroom and talk to my sister and I as we did our makeup. He often commented on what we wore, how our makeup was done, even what perfume we chose (“smells like a brothel in here” was his most common observance there). My favourite photo of him involves him sitting in the backyard in the afternoon sun quietly plaiting the hair on one of my dolls.

6. Dad wasn’t much of a reader. He left school at age nine and used to sit in a tree, smoking, and watching the others kids walk to class. The only thing I ever saw him read were those old school cowboy books in paperback. Yet he supported and encouraged me in any of my pursuits. Once, when some mad woman got me involved in a Sylvia Plath poetry reading, Dad drove himself and Mum into Greville Street to a tiny airless bookshop to listen while I stood, like a wanker, in front of a buch of poor sods, to read from The Bell Jar. My God! What a man.

And people ask me why I don’t have kids.

When writers write back

2008-07-03T22:18:00.000-07:00

An amazing thing happened after writing about Jack Kerley’s book, The Death Collectors. I went onto his website out of interest (I am of course always fascinated by people who have successfully thrown off corporate life to become novelists) and left a comment and the lovely man sent me a really detailed response. Bet bloody Stephen King doesn’t do that!

Here’s a little of what he said … “Although I never sold ice to Eskimos, I did write lyrics for singing hot dogs. I think that's in the same basic category. I've also freelanced … Years ago a fellow was a thousand bucks or so in debt to me (back when that was real money). I went to his office to hear his latest sob story, then glanced through the window at his fleet of snow-white service vehicles and mused how someone with a can of spray paint could find creative release in his parking lot. Got a check two days later. Never underestimate the power of malevolent musings.”

Now you see that’s not advice they dole out at journalism school! Naturally I am now reading his first novel, The Hundredth Man, alongside Peony in Love (about love, death and ghosts in 17th century China). I like to mix it up a bit.

Sticks and stones can break them bones

2008-06-26T20:09:00.000-07:00

I think one of the best things about my current working life is its flexibility. Take today for example. While I rushed into the office this morning – the real one, where there are other staff besides cats and I have to wear my bra – and got cracking by 9.15am it wasn’t long before I realised that things on the current issue of the mag weren’t quite where they needed to be so I couldn't do much of the on-screen editing work. I decided I’d be better off coming home and getting on with some website text that is now due and head back to the office on Monday.

Of course I stopped in at South Melbourne Market on the way through and picked up some fabbo ingredients to cook up home made pizza tonight and, of course, I dropped into the Prince Wine Store in South Melbourne and picked up something as similar to the Austrian drop that I discovered in Byron Bay on the weekend as I could find. Now I am blogging but you see … I will get to the website work.

Big problem now though is that, when I opened the letter box, the paperwork for the Crime and Justic Writing Festival – organised by Reader’s Feast http://www.crimeandjusticefestival.com/ - has just arrived and now I feel COMPELLED to have a big smooch through it and see what there is to attend.

I’m in full crime mode because, after finishing The People of the Book, I have turned to a a paperback I picked up in a three-for-$15 deal. Gotta love it! I don’t really read investigate/crime stuff too much anymore. I, like many, was an obsessive reader of Patricia Cornwell and the like in the 90s but I have tried to reduce the dose of crime fiction in recent years and broaden the old mind.

Anyhoo, I picked up Jack Kerley’s Death Collectors which I thought would be good for the airport. Within moments I was hooked and I remembered what made good crime writing so hard to put down. Kerley’s got a great turn of phrase, gives his male characters some fresh and honest feelings, emotions and reactions to things and he comes up with some fairly outrageous plot ideas. Love it. He’s as smooth as butter as a writer and this was only his second book (two more have followed I believe) but he has spent 20 years in advertising selling ice to eskimos should be bloody well able to see a story to me.

The People of the Book was a surprise. I guess I thought it would be a bit more of a challenge. I forgot that I had already read Geraldine Brook’s Year of Wonders which is about a young woman’s battle to save her family and her soul when the plague strikes her Derbyshire village in the 1600s. I didn’t mind that book but I remember it being very accessible. This skill of Ms Brooks is probably required when she tackles the huge job of tracing the journey of a rare illuminated Hebrew manuscript from (stealing from her website) “convivencia Spain to the ruins of Sarajevo, from the Silver Age of Venice to the sunburned rock faces of northern Australia”.

It can be tricky when an author introduces a number of different stories within a story because, if you end up getting entrenched in one set of characters and their lives, you can feel kind of disappointed when you're dragged out of that world and into another one. I’ve got to say though that I did learn a bit about theological writings, the fate of religious documents during times of war, the ever expanding catalogue of sins committed by the Nazis (was there ANY area they left untouched?) and, amazingly, the fate of family during war. I think the most important thing the book gave to me was time to pause to think about how one minute people can be living normal, very urban, very modern lives and the next moment bombs and bullets can be tearing through the streets and everything becomes surreal.

I want to find out more about Sarajevo now. I am shamefully unclear about the things that have happened there in the past two decades but any region where Islam, Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Judaism peacefully coexisted throughout centuries is surely worth some attention.

I mean, did you know that, in 1914, Sarajevo was the site of the assassination that sparked World War I? I bloody well did not. God I am a dunce. Apparently the city is now recovering after the hideous Bosnian siege. Somewhere worth visiting I am thinking.

* * NEWSFLASH * *

Talking about visiting … Mr & Mrs P in Austin have undergone a major trauma. Mr P fell off a truck while helping friends move house. The result? Broken leg – he’s got a rod in it – and a broken arm with FIVE!!! pins in it AND a fake elbow. Joisus!

We’ll see how things proceed but my thoughts are with them. Luckily they grow love like weeds wherever they go and, within two days of the accident, a benefit gig was held (it was to be Mr P’s first stand alone Benny & the Fly By Nighters gig) and money was raised to go towards medical costs. Impressive huh? The venue was the Continental Club
1315 S. Congress Austin TX . I am writing that here to remind me to visit just in the office chance the injured lovebirds fly the coup before October.

Don’t forget to send cheerios: myspace.com/bennyandtheflybyniters56

The Horton Bros in Austin continue to be legendary friends to the Ps and I believe a chap by the name of 'Bear' was also one of the performers. THANK YOU.

See Bobby Horton's blog at http://forthorton.blogspot.com/ and see a review of a Bear album here: http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/review?oid=oid%3A290809

Because I really should be concentrating on work today

2008-06-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

I must point out that we have paid for our tickets to Austin. YAY YAY YAY

I am already working on my wardrobe. My inspiration is the following quote from Dolly Parton:" I look just like the girls next door... if you happen to live next door to an amusement park." I repeat, YAY YAY YAY

My new chair - I have already fallen asleep reading in it

2008-06-18T00:20:00.001-07:00

I confess I have converging deadlines this week - the magazine I edit plus a corporate book project plus some website text work. And I have a head cold. Ohhh boo hoo! So I dream of sitting in my new chair, bought from the most camp furniture dealer in Melbourne, sipping something tasty and, of course, writing my blog. None of the above will be happening.

I will say that, inspired by listening to him speak on a podcast I downloaded recently, I put down People of the Book and picked up Lisey's Story by Stephen King. Bad move. I have made yet another dire discovery about getting older. I cannot read creepy books before bed.

Let's just say, an hour after falling asleep I was dealing with a train station where, on a cold bleak night, trains kept coming and going but none of them were going to my destination and no one could tell me where to find mine. Then, in grassland near the tracks, I discovered a man's body, face down in the grass - looking pretty dead. Nearby stood a child wearing a hooded top. So small and isolated in the cold night. The child had its back turned from me.

I went over to it, realising it must have been the child of the dead man. I touched its shoulder. It turned around but its face was a wizened thing - white, chalky, somehow featureless. Arghhhh. I woke up with my hear thumping like it was going to burst through my PJs and, I tell you, it took an hour of reading Architectural Digest to calm me enough to sleep. Nigh night Stephen!

It was all very Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in 'Don't Look Now'. Haven't seen the film? Take a peep at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpOL_tLvi7w

My new secret weapon when people are late paying invoices to me!

2008-06-16T16:49:00.000-07:00

Giving good quote

2008-06-12T16:18:00.001-07:00

Last night, whilst making Dreamweaver’s Tuna casserole with fresh tuna, I had the USA TV show, The NEWSHOUR with Jim Lehrer (www.pbs.org/newshour), on in the background. Good old Kofi Annan was being interviewed. I don’t know about those corruption stories surrounding his son etc from a while back but that man has grace; he should be the Captain on the Enterprise or the guy Obe One Kenobi turned to when he needed a mentor.

Anyhoo, he was discussing Robert Mugabe and the situation in Zimbabwe and, while everything was very grim and sombre he did pipe up with: “Zimbabwe used to be described as the bread basket of Africa, now it’s just a basket case.” Kofi made a funny!

And, as for a good quote about writing that I heard Stephen King give (yes I am broad in my tastes, not just my arse) his was something like (good, accurate reportage here): “Fiction is what you get when you bounce imagination against reality.” Anyway if I listen to the podcast again I’ll try and get it straight. Geesh.

Sex and Southland

2008-06-11T17:53:00.000-07:00

I confess I did it. I went and saw Sex and the City. I snuck out on Tuesday night to the 9.30pm session at Southland. I went all alone and God was I glad I did. It meant I didn’t have to sit amidst the throngs but got the lovely solo back-of-the-room seat (okay, it’s for people accompanying those in wheelchairs but was completely unneeded on the night!) so I could ooh and ahh in private. Oh the shame.

Darren Starr and Michael Patrick King really have created a chick phenomenon here. I actually almost welled up when the four besties appeared on the screen in the opening shot. As she who goes by the name ‘Dreamweaver’ when on the web (http://www.spiritualbiz.blogspot.com/) described it, it was like seeing old friends arrive at the airport.

While Carrie sniffed her library book (I am an obsessive book sniffer) and decided New York Public Library was her dream wedding venue (I hulk my fat behind around the local track in my NYPC t-shirt and took about 800 photos of the light fittings when I was there last year) I realised what a Sex in the City tragic I was. Ah, to be part of the masses. I guess you have to think about it positively … concentrate on that sense of belonging.

Of course one does like to delve a little deeper to try and work out what makes this movie and series so popular. Besides all the obvious blah blah about the fact that 8 million women wish they looked/dressed/ate/drank/shopped/bonked etc like various characters in the show, there has always been the snappy dialogue to applaud and the regular insights into the pecadillos that make us, while still part of the masses, still our own individual little psychotic selves. (Hence, the book sniffing.)

Of course, because of early onset chronic memory loss syndrome (AKA too much booze as a teenager, young woman and verging on middle aged woman), I am not going to be able to wow you now with examples from the film but I cannot tell you how many times the following line from the series comes to my mind. It is linked to the period where Miranda - post baby - is going to weight watchers. She dates and sleeps with a fellow 'watcher' who has the disturbing habit of going down on her, coming up for air covered in (cover your ears) juices, and then wants to give her a nice big kiss on the lips. She is horrified. Carrie says, "She's going out with an overeater ... and he over ate her." Laugh! I nearly started.

And, further and last confession, I am going to see the film again when up in Byron Bay in a fortnight so Mrs R and I can moon over the Buddakan rehearsal dinner scene because, yes, we dined there. OK! Enough already.

PS: Fun website/blog to visit if you're into film and TV insider topics: www.defamer.com.au - they're bitchy, be warned.

Reports of my death have been exaggerated

2008-06-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

Okay it probably seems like I have lost interest in this blog. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact I have been caught between keeping the wolf from the door with plenty of commercial writing tasks as well as catching up – a lot – with long lost writing pals who I’ve met over recent years.

In a way I am looking for some inspiration – a bright light in these foggy Melbourne mornings – that will guide me to the best possible path for the second half of 2008.

I believe – Good lord willing and the creek don’t rise – that hay has been made in the warmer, earlier months of this year and soon some quieter times can be had where I can play around with words for my own amusement more than for invoice generation. We’ll see.

Even today I actually have ONE MILLION things I would like to blog about – a fabulous one hour conversation with the author of The Northern Lights (AKA the movie called The Golden Compass) that had me riveted not to mention numerous book purchases, interesting conversations overheard, topics on the telly and goodness knows what. Alas, they’ll have to wait for the long weekend. My creative juices are currently being siphoned into unravelling information about a custom made blind business in New Zealand and, more interestingly, an eight girl dinner party I am throwing on Friday night.

Thank God it will be me destroying someone else’s home by Sunday when Mr C throws what I know will be a divine house warming/new housemate warming party with, I hope, plenty of camp abandon.

So I look forward to Monday, the Queen’s Birthday after all (how appropriate Mr C), when I can put hungover fingers to keyboard to blog blog blog. And, at least, I have finally finished Anne Rice's The Feast of All Saints which was bloody long. I enjoyed it though. Not a vampire or anything vaguely supernatural in sight. And now I can get cracking with Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book which I started last night and am already enchanted by. YAY!

Salman and George Clooney

2008-05-18T16:47:00.001-07:00

God, it’s been a fortnight since I hit the blog but I have been writing words in other places of course. Sometimes amusing jobs come up on the radar that allow me to dip into other worlds and have a play. Most recently this involved putting together a Q&A with a singer for a magazine belonging to the beauty industry. I got to ask girlie questions and mine the fertile topic of hair care. It was a pleasant distraction.

The most serious people still need their pleasant distractions … as I realised whilst listening to Salman Rushdie be interviewed by Ramona Koval on The Book Show (www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow) . I deliberately downloaded this podcast but, as I walked through the wintry streets last night and began listening to it, I was initially a bit cautious. Admittedly I’d had a weekend full of family obligations including five hours serving drinks and grinning maniacally so let’s say my tolerance levels were low. I occasionally get a little browned off though with high-falutin’ writers and intellects banging on from their ivory towers. Sometimes they seem so far from the day-to-day woes of normal Joes that it’s almost obscene. I put Rushdie squarely in the domain of someone who could enter that territory.

Nonetheless, whether he is mellowing with age or whether Ramona is just a gun of an interviewer, she really had him curling around like a kitten and being completely human and amusing. He was discussing his newest book, The Enchantress of Florence, and both of them agreed he was writing a lot more about sex than politics and that this was a GOOD thing. (I have Amazon winging the book to me as we speak naturally.) It would be completely understandable that the journey he’s been on would lead Salman to hanker for the sweeter side of life. And hanker he surely does. Seeking out some photos for this post I discovered he’s had a string (four at last count I think) of hottie wives. I don’t follow authors’ lives like a groupie so had no idea what a goddess lover he was. Good to know that when all hell was breaking loose around him (the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses was murdered for God’s sake) Salman had somewhere sweet to lay his head.

Talking about sweet places to lay one’s head, I had to read the George Clooney article in Good Weekend last week. Tragic, I know! It led me to think of an idea for a script. What do we think? A 45-year-old film publicist gets the job of handling the itinerary of an aging Clooney type character (let’s say he’s a very well preserved 50-something-year-old) while he’s in Melbourne promoting a project. They have to spend a fair bit of time together, she proves to be a wise cracking, highly competent, unflustered gal who’s seen his type come and go before and has actually only been pulled in at the last minute to do this job because, Michael Corleone style, she’s been trying to get out (“Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in”) of the biz but she’s too good and people throw cash at her.

Circumstances throw the two together working late into the evening and they end up unwinding over a few drinks in the hotel. One thing leads to another in best schmalzy movie way and they get romantic. She has to travel to other States with him for the rest of the promotional tour and along the way a romantic friendship grows. He ends up asking her to hook up with him in Japan in a fortnight’s time where, after further promo work, he’s organised to have a week off exploring the culture/countryside. She goes.

Obviously there is much subterfuge required for anyone involved in this man’s life initially so that leads to things like chauffer driven limo picking her up at the airport where the Clooney type is hiding behind its tinted windows etc. I think we should throw in that the woman is recently divorced but has an 18-year-old daughter. When the relationship progresses this should make things interesting.

The progression towards the couple tooling around Japan in a luxury car and getting to really talk allows us to go further than normal famous person-unknown person love stories. Working around celebs for so long she understands some of the pitfalls and sometimes expresses sadness for him that, while she might pour out her heart willy-nilly or tell him true tales from her life he will find it hard to do the same with 99 per cent of the population because he can’t trust how they’ll use the info. I haven’t worked out how the rest of the story progresses but CLEARLY I am fleshing out a sad old fantasy that should be kept for those hours in bed when sleep evades me but, let’s face it, I could think of ten thousand middle aged women who would probably see the film. Hee hee!

No country like this country

2008-05-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

For Christmas this year I was given Cormac McCarthy’s book, No Country for Old Men. It came with a handwritten note from Mr M saying, “Read the book THEN see the film”. Hence it is May and, while the DVD sits in a tray in my office, it remains unscreened because I had to toe the line.

It was good that I received this book because McCarthy is one of those authors who I knew I had to read but I had, lazily, put it off. Before tackling No Country then, I decided to start off with the universally famous All the Pretty Horses. I decided I might as well tackle it and the entire Border Trilogy by this author. I read the first two in the trilogy (All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing) and then called it quits. It was a library book and I was getting emails from the good librarians saying other people had reserved this tome. By then I’d had enough McCarthy’s style for a while anyway – his men of few words and the harsh countryside that acts as a major character throughout.

Right from the get go with No Country I was hooked. How does a writer quietly take you by the throat from the first page and not lose his grip for 300 pages more? If I knew that I’d probably be farting through silk right now. McCarthy’s characters never say more than what is required. In his world chatterboxes or nervous space filler personalities don’t seem to exist. The character of Sheriff Bell is so seductive. He carries innate wisdom and seemingly no ego. Never before do I think I’ve seen the love between a husband and wife better expressed than in this novel. It is not done in any cotton candy, Mills & Boon way either. Predictably, it is done in few words but it is done through the simple reflections on the things that really make a long term relationship tick; a deep steadfast understanding and acceptance of another person’s flaws and the knowledge that they make you a better person just by loving you. I tell you, I unequivocally LOVED this book. I’d pop an exclamation mark in there but it would feel like I was insulting everything McCarthy stands for.

At one stage Bell is standing by a guardrail on a bridge looking down below. Someone who knows him drives past and, as a joke, yells out, “Don’t jump Sheriff. She ain’t worth it.” Bell says to himself, “Truth of the matter is, she is.”

There is nowhere near that amount of punctuation provided by McCarthy though. He doesn’t use quotation marks in this book when people speak and a word such as don’t will appear as dont.

And he loves tiny, bullet-like sentences … such as this:

A darkened room. Faint smell of rot. He stook until his eyes were accustomed to the dimness. A parlour.

Anyhoo I have to dash off to my own writing tasks today which are about as boring this Monday as one could possibly imagine. I will use the thought of viewing No Country for Old Men – the movie – as my reward.

2008-04-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

New York stories

I just ‘SMSd’ a couple of New York food and drink tips to a friend who heads off on a world-wind trip on Tuesday. Phew, it made me envious I have to say. That city had an impact on me and I find my mind jetting back there in the most unlikely moments. I can be washing the dishes and, all of a sudden, be back at the jewellery counter at Lord & Taylor.

I think my dirty Martini at the Blue Bar at the Algonquin will remain one of my best grown up girl memories ever. I went there alone, after a solo visit to the New York Public Library (the smell of that place … all books!), and watched the staff and the people around me and felt like I was inside the pages of the myriad books and magazines I’d read about the big apple over the decades. I was particularly chuffed to explain to a fellow drinker the significance of the Algonquin as a writers’ haunt in the 1920s while, I admit it, I looked down my nose at him for having the cash to stay there but not the wit to know why it was so revered. God I can be a wanker.

Anyway, to check my tips for the fellow traveller this morning I had to go back to my 'Cavallini Papers & Co' New York New York notebook that I’d kept my notes in from October. A gal pal gave me the book and it sits on the window behind my desk in my office as a reminder of what’s possible if you save some dough and book a ticket. You’ll know the Cavallini look if you see it; vintage style travel images, botanical images, great papers. Divine! But then, I am a stationery junkie.

Anyhoo, just to keep the buzz alive, the recommendations were Del Posto restaurant and Buddakan and, of course, The Blue Bar. Buddakan was so hip that even the toilets were black. You could barely see yourself in the smoky mirrors in the bathroom. To me it said, ‘If you have to check your appearance in this mirror then you really shouldn’t be here’. I will jot down my Austin tips in this same book and take it with me when I go to the USA again this October. What a gorgeous little ritual to get happening.

http://www.cavallini.com/

The pics above show - left to right - Blue Bar, Budda, Del Post

No thinking please

It’s been a long weekend by which I mean it’s been a three day affair because of Anzac Day as opposed to a long weekend that drags on because it's taken up with garden weeding and domestic squabbles. My big priority this weekend has been to not think; not such a challenge for me some smartie pants might say but I know what I mean. Hence the Dear Diary element to this post. I can’t be shagged tackling any real ‘writerly’ issues even though a lot of topics have been bubbling in the past week.

One observation I will make is about a cook book I dived into yesterday and from which I made probably two of the most successful dishes in my cooking career. One was called Ginger Chicken and the other a Never Fail Cake. They are both from Mrs Harvey's Sister-in-Law and Other Tasty Dishes. I am going to steal from Amazon to tell you that this book is by Mrs Margaret Dunn, a historian, diplomat's wife and hostess, who “has travelled the world with her handmade recipe journal, and it is brought to life in this beautifully presented recipe book”. That in no way goes to explain what has enthralled me about this book. It was written originally for Dunn’s daughters and granddaughters and is a throw back to a time before white minimalist table settings, the chef as a fashion icon and slavish attempts to recreate a Donna Hay world of kids who never spill anything on their designer clothes and parties that are ‘thrown together’ on a marina where we all wear Collette Dinnigan and eat sardines on sourdough.

Dunn tells stories about who passed on the recipes to her and how she liked to use them in her own home. She throws in a few lines about letting the ingredients of a potato salad "get to know each other" for a while before you serve it and she features no photos. You often have to adjust things to taste and – God forbid – use your own instincts. As an infamous instinctual cook (meaning I look at the photos normally and then just wing it) this book has been a bolt from the blue. And, maybe I’m at the sensitive point in the month, but its genuine tidbits about friendship and family love have had me a bit weepy at times. It has reminded me of a collection of recipes Mrs T has from her late mother … so very very special.

Creative input abounds

While not thinking about things (yeah, right) I have been exposed, as always, to the astounding creativity of so many people in the past few days. First and foremost, of course, were the Foo Fighters at Rod Laver Arena on Friday night. Could Dave Grohl be any hotter? (Sorry, I was channelling my 15-year-old self then.) That band and their young following give a girl hope. And the drummer, Taylor Hawkins, is a one-man powerhouse. When I die I want to come back as a drummer.

I also watched Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium while cooking yesterday. In the tradition of the The Tao of Pooh, I will just list these lines:

“We must face tomorrow, whatever it may bring, with determination, joy and bravery,” says Magorium.

“Your life is an occasion; rise to it.”

I am going to HAVE to find out more about the young director of this film, Zach Helm. In the meantime, I must now “rise to” writing a small article on the history of the photograph and doing the dishes before Mr U gets back from Sydney.

Cracking along

2008-04-21T15:01:00.000-07:00

LIFE - AD

I confess I subscribe to Architectural Digest. I don't know why I term it a confession, I suppose because this magazine is really a tome dedicated to all that is over-the-top, lavish and, in the minds of many, completely unnecessary in the world we live. For instance, the Airbus A380-800 on page 281 of the May 08 issue which includes a 14-person conference-cum-dining table and teak walls in the lounge area. This thing is owned by ONE person.

Still AD, with its fair share of colour riot USA interior styles and ads for properties selling in the Hawaii for US$7.996 million, also provides a fascinating insight into the minds of people who create internal and external physical spaces that even the poorest of us will live around, if never within.

To me it's intriguing to hear the way a designer's mind works, what they're trying to communicate through their work and how they marry a client's vision with their own and with practicalities. AD represents the unique madness of humanity; our belief - perhaps misguided - that we can have some permanency in this world. And the visions of the designers, set loose amidst an array of obstacles, is something I admire. You see it in so many areas of life ... people who set themselves a challenge and then overcome huge obstacles just to meet it. Amazing!

The other thing, of course, about AD is that it is so well written and there is always a crowd of articles celebrating or investigating design of yesteryear. This month you can read about the work couturiers Christian Dior, Paul Poiret and Elsa Schiaparelli did when designing wallpapers in the 1930s. I mean it is astounding. And there are certain witches in my life who will love the witchy inspired fabrics concocted by Cecil Beaton. As is a constant theme with me, stories like this seem to hark back to a time when the world knew how to stop at 5pm for a martini and witty conversation did not centre around 'Dancing with the Stars' but that, of course, is just my imagination. Humans have always been humans. In the 1930s the drink trolleys were just a little more sexy.

ROAD TO AUSTIN

Well the travel agent is hard at it now working out the itinerary for us for October - Nashville, New Orleans and Austin. Is this part of travel almost as much fun as the experience itself? I certainly like to make a career out of it. (Note to self: Never be my travel agent.) I think it's the realm of possibilities that present themself in the planning phase of a trip, plus the fantasy element of the places one might stay ... until the realities of budgets set in.

New Orleans is what I see as the 'glam' part of the trip. Hence I have travel Genie looking at W New Orleans - French Quarter, Royal Sonesta and Hotel Le Cirque. Sonesta is truly, obsenely decadent. Love it! You wouldn't think I went to Internally Displaced Persons Camps in Uganda last year. Clearly the experience has had NO impact on me and I will go to hell in a hand cart!!!!!!

In Austin I like the look of the San Jose (all the musicians stay there apparently - but they'll let me in too) but Mrs P, who is already living over there, said to check out the Austin Motel which also looks good.

The odd link:

http://www.austinmotel.com/

http://www.sanjosehotel.com/

http://www.sonesta.com/RoyalNewOrleans/

You can dance on a chair

2008-04-19T15:46:00.000-07:00

“You can dance on a chair” – I just heard venerable UK actress, Vanessa Redgrave, say that during an interview about her performance in the New York production of ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’. If I was a biography writer I’d contact her and tell her she’s just coined the title of her next memoir.

Of course, she was actually referring to the fact that most of her ninety minute performance is spent seated, with her talking directly to the audience. Despite this, she says she actually moves her body a lot. The week before last I was supposed to get up to Sydney for the day to see the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of this play. I loved Joan Didion’s book, a memoir of the period where her husband died and her daughter, in an unconnected series of events, slipped into a coma that eventually led to her death.

I know it sounds SO depressing but this woman is such a wonderful writer that I found myself enthralled, despite occasional tears. Years ago I remember reading Paula by Isabel Allende, once again a book written by an accomplished author, about the loss of her daughter. Maybe because I was going through a familial loss around the same time I just couldn’t get into that book but I think it’s more because I prefer Didion’s writing. This is the woman of Play It As It Lays, a book that inspired me to to do a few writing exercises to mimic her tone which manages to be both laid back and searing at the same time: difficult to define.

Anyhoo, I didn’t get to Sydney because of work commitments but my mother-in-law (God bless her) stepped into the breach for me so the ticket didn’t go to waste. I regret not seeing it, though I have heard Didion do a live reading just from the book and that was special enough for me for now.

Redgrave, in the same interview, also spoke about a film she made recently, directed by her son, called 'The Fever' (script by Wallace Shawn). Once again this work involved much direct-to-camera acting from Redgrave. Shawn would be familiar to pop culture buffs for roles in films like ‘Clueless’ but he has a hefty theatre and ‘serious’ dramatic background and, interestingly, has written a number of very heavy plays. My ears pricked up when I heard his name because his father was William Shawn one of the New Yorker’s most famous editors for more than 30 years. I once read a book called Remembering Mr Shawn – about the “invisible art of editing” as its subtitle says - which absolutely intrigued me. Shawn was the epitome of the civilised, artistic, visionary man of letters that seem thin of the ground these days. He nurtured the careers of writers like J D Salinger and Truman Capote and was famous for allowing various individuals to keep offices in the New Yorker’s HQ even though they didn’t seem to be producing anything. The book was full of tales of sophisticated cocktail parties in New York apartments and behind-the-scenes remembrances of influential writers and thinkers. Ah, another time, another world!

The odd link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Shawn
http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Mr-Shawns-New-Yorker/dp/0879517077
http://www.pbs.org/now/arts/shawn.html
www.thenewyorker.com/

CHOKE ON IT

She picked up a piece of the chocolate cake and pressed it hard against his closed mouth.

"I hope you fucking choke on it," she said.

"You're a nasty piece of work Hannah. You better get out of here before I fucking belt you. You've gone too far this time."

In another room, the phone rang. He went to it.

"Matt speaking" she heard him say as she grabbed her keys and handbag. Her hands shook as she started the car. The radio and the aircon were blaring from her last drive. Where was she going?

My etsy story in The Age today

2008-04-16T16:16:00.001-07:00

http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/the-netting-circle/2008/04/16/1208025275778.html

The social baton - the OTHER relay race

2008-04-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

Overall it was a great evening but more ‘cause of the company than the place. A table companion who is quite the seamstress herself regaled us with the tale of her visit to Nick Cave’s book signing. She got his tome signed, hung back in the crowd berating herself for harbouring a desire to have a photo taken with the rock poet, until a staff member from the Arts Centre where the scene was playing out, came out and shoved her forward and told her she’d regret it if she didn’t , a very Nike way, “just do it”. Now she has the book, which he signed with ‘love’ and a photo on her phone to boot to remind herself of the adventure.

Seamstress has a great bar up a very UNgreat flight of wooden stars. Is it just me or do cocktails and neckbraces come to your mind too?

Our pre-booked table took a year to become vacant so we weren’t ordering til 10pm or so … I was pretty chuffed to be in a restaurant at that point and not in pyjamas in front of the TV and some hideous medical travesty story.

Nearby four young urban professionals were in their squash gear, having clearly had a mid week game and then popped into this new groove-Asian eatery for a bit. Seeing this this week and seeing masses of young ones out for dinner at a St Kilda joint (Banf) last Wednesday reminds me of how the phases of our lives just shift on and on. My girlfriends and I were once the midnight eaters, the drinks after work crowd, the spontaneous ‘let’s go to the Mask of China after the movies’ people and now the baton gets passed on. I love eating out, investigating new bars, people watching etc and Mr Underhill and I regularly have a bar hopping date in the city so we can get trashed (okay, that’s more my part of the evening) and annoy bar staff with 8000 questions and make up stories about fellow diners and drinkers but, even more regularly, we’re at home getting over excited about the bounty we’ve just picked up from a Dan Murphy trip and the rib eye we’re going to experiment with on the new ‘Beefeater’ (seriously, that’s the brand but I think you are allowed to cook other stuff than beef) barbecue. I’m not sad about the baton hand over but I just can’t quite pin point the moment when it happened. Guess because my process didn’t involve pro Tibet protestors or little Chinese men in black tracksuits swarming out of people movers.

Wine update

2008-04-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

I heard from the very kind Julian Castagna from Castagna vineyard at 88 Ressom Lane, Beechworth (Vic). He says their wines are mostly sold in restaurants and (bugger) he doubts the existing stockists would have any of the Castagna 2004 La Chiave left. “Ufortunately we have none left here … you may find the Castagna 2005 Un Segreto is a similar wine.” Believe me, I will find out. Vic stockists are The Prince Stores, City Wine Shop, Boccacio Cellars, King & Godfree, Gertrude St Enoteca, Randalls, Vin Café, Armadale Cellars and Rathdowne Cellars.

World without borders

2008-04-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

So I was listening to Martha Wainwright on the Conversation Hour on 774 ABC radio yesterday and she started talking about an online TV show that Peter Townsend (The Who) has called In the Attic (www.intheattic.btpodshow.com). Apparently it’s just two cameras set up in his lounge room so his girlfriend can have her own show. Love it! I like people who use their obscene amounts of money to do things a little more out of the box. I think if I had Townsend type moula I’d do a Wayne’s World kind of scenario with a TV chat show going on in the basement. ‘Course I’d have to get the basement first.

I think you can get podcasts from Pete and Rachel, his partner. I’ll have to check it out. Always looking for something new to listen to while I’m walking. I know a lot of people like high energy music so it keeps them speeding along but I just love listening to ideas and stories as I trundle. Recently I listened to author Ian Rankin (he of Inspector Rebus fame) lead a journo on a descriptive walking tour through the streets of his Edinburgh. I mean, it was amazing. Here I was doing five laps around the local footy oval whilst, flowing between my ears, were wonderful descriptions of the Scottish Museum and the Café Royal. Rankin is in love with his city and, in fact, on his website you can dip into a map of Rebus’ Edinburgh and find out more about the places written about in the novels. See, to me that sounds like fun. To others … probably sounds sad.
Two other people on the Conversation Hour were Michael Hohnen and Geoffrey Gurrumul. Hohnen was with the Killjoys. Now he’s really into indigenous music and, seriously, the number he did with this guy, Gurrumul, has to be heard to be believed. Gurrumul’s got the voice of an angel and it is incredible to hear Aboriginal language coming out of the radio. It’s not exactly something we hear a lot of. Hope these guys really have some success. Gurrumul is so shy he does not even talk. Hohnen has to speak on his behalf. But when he sings – joisos – am going off to order his CD now!

I am delighted to say I received an email from Howard Sherman from the American Theatre Wing. Tres delightful! He let me know that, beyond the podcasts, they’re also doing video podcasts of the TV show, ‘Working in the Theatre’. He says it’s “more a thematic panel approach than the one-on-one (or two-on-one) format of Downstage Center” which is the program I listen to. I’ll be checking it out with interest. Howard also gave me some theatre leads for Austin when I am there in October; will have to pass on to Mrs P while she’s living there. What a great world we live in!

Talking about this world … how about the Oprah/Eckhart tolle ‘web event’ that’s been going on? Luck would have it that I have been listening to Tolle’s book, A New Earth, in the car. Don’t switch off if you think this is too new age. It’s too early for me to pass judgment but his voice alone, which is kind of whacky, is enough to calm me down in the traffic. I’m just at the point where he’s on about body awareness and the effect that being aware of the life-force flowing through your limbs can have on your consciousness. Anyone who’s studied yoga would be completely au fai with this. Regardless, the amazing thing, media wise, is the fact that Oprah and he are hosting classes based on the book. I saw her on telly on a March episode (b/c we’re way behind) saying 90,000 people had already signed up at that point to be part of the classes. If you dare you can look at - www.oprah.com/obc_classic/webcast/archive/archive_watchnow.jsp - not that Ms Winfrey needs my help in the publicity stakes. I am the kind of freak that will take a peek at one of these ‘airings’ just to see what the hell it’s all about. Anything that can attract this much attention demands my attention. I use the same argument when telling people they should keep across really bad tabloid television, radio and news – even if it is like having teeth pulled out by a blind grizzly bear with pliers. To me it’s simple madness to remain ignorant about what the masses are consuming information wise. The masses are running your world.

Anyway – ranting now. Very unattractive.

Dinner tonight is at Seamstress - www.seamstress.com.au - a newish apparently hip Cantonese place in Lonsdale Street. I happen to know it’s getting written up in Time Magazine, along with my old fave, Cicciolina but that’s not why I’m going. I work for a bloody craft magazine. The restaurant’s called Seamstress. Get it?

Look forward to trying it out.

Photos: Rebus inspired Edinburgh and Howard Sherman (on the right I believe)

2008-04-14T14:41:00.001-07:00

Parpadelle with chicken livers and lardons. Okay, it's not for everyone but it's what I downed last night and man was it delicious. Kicked off proceedings with a glass of Stefano Lubiana Riesling which was pleasant but didn't blow my socks off. The red we went on to was a killer though ... Castagna La Chiave Sangiovese 2004 (from Beechworth, no less. So excited b/c I will be able to go there). Got to get my hands on some more of that.

Out walking and listening to a podcast yesterday, I was intrigued to hear Tom Stoppard talking about his approach to play writing. If you haven't downloaded interviews from the American Theatre Wing it is well worth a visit. The chaps there (and it is two chaps who bring us the interviews) get access to amazing theatre folk and they know the biz inside out so the conversations are fabulously broad ranging. They got some great stuff out of Nathan Lane recently, although that makes it sound like they bled him with leeches.

Anyhoo - see http://www.americantheatrewing.org/downstagecenter/ - Stoppard was asked if his plays hit the rehearsal room fully formed or does that stage just signal the beginning of much refinement? He explained how he sees a play as 100 pages and writes a page a day. When you've never tackled something like this you can easily wonder how the hell it takes you a day to write one page; especially when you're used to churning stuff out daily in the commercial world (not that I do that, of course!!!!!).

Stoppard said there was no way his plays were unfinished by the time they got to the actor read-through sessions. This is because, page one might go through 20 drafts before he considers it done. However, as the story unfolds and the play takes on a life of its own, it gets quicker until, as he put it, "the last page can only go one way". Isn't that interesting? I love listening to people like this who have chipped away at their craft for so long they completely understand what they'll face when they begin a new project. The idea of the play, eventually, writing itself, of there only being one way it can end up, fascinates me.

Hmmm - wonder if that thought can be turned to life too? Hope not. But, consider that, as a youngster, you can take so many different paths, start over with things, change tack half way, but, as you get older, the pages begin to write themselves more and more. Spooky, huh? I am not going further with that thought pattern. I want to believe it is NOT true and we can keep taking off on fresh tangents right until the toes curl up and the door of the wooden box closes down.

Today I am interviewing an artist called Tracey Potts who works in textiles. I’ll attend the photoshoot where her work will be captured and then we’ll head off for a coffee. I have an intern working alongside me at the moment and suggested she come along for the ride. Having someone looking on while you interview and so forth is a weird one but I figure this is as good experience for her as it is for me. It’s interesting to see how newbie’s minds work and what their attitudes are. So far this gal is very competent and, seemingly, confident. I don’t remember having it as together as many of the 19 to 25-year-olds seem to these days. Then again, I don’t have it together now and I am coming up for my 93rd birthday. Just kidding!

NB: The pic is of Tracey Potts work

Day one and 40,000 words down

2008-04-13T23:57:00.000-07:00

Alrighty then, it’s been a long time since I dipped keystrokes into blogland. I had an earlier bash at blogging but was using it for experiments in writing and, frankly, I lost interest. Now, facing the reality that I like to make a buck from my writing as much as I like to take the muse out and give her a good flogging on the local jogging track, I am taking a different tack … looking to hook up with other writers, find inspiration, find work, advertise my wares and basically bang on ….

Today I have just pushed the SEND button on 40,000 words of a corporate history. What a truly mammoth job. There have been days when I thought it was going to be the undoing of me.

This task, agreed to before Christmas and now the swallower of the first third of the year, is what I am calling my GET ME TO AUSTIN (GMTA) fundraiser. Mr Underhill and I will head off there in October to spend time with our besties who have recently, temporarily, moved there.

Ben Peters is our talented mate’s name. He’s playing around Austin, Texas. Check out his myspace at: www.myspace.com/bennyandtheflybyniters56. You will not be disappointed. Try and find his wife in the crowd. She has a ‘B’ tattooed on her wedding finger. Shoosh!

I am looking forward to October when I plan on walking in the door of Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon in Austin and knocking back a vodka with Mrs B and seeing Dale Watson and others in the flesh. Sublime!

I will be looking for story ideas in Austin. If you’re out there and know of Australian folk (especially Melburnians) who might be appropriate for profiling in places like GET CREATIVE magazine (http://www.getcreative.com.au/) or THE AGE newspaper then holler.

Huge writing jobs, like this corporate history/book are like complicated puzzles. Hours of interviews, backgrounders and previous research must be massaged between links, entertaining writing and egos to get to the final product. The wild thing about writing for a living is that, while you may think you’ve completed a job, the client might hate it. I am now officially at the precipice of that adventure. I think I’ve finished it. Do they? Of course there will be much toing and froing now to get it all edited and acceptable to the people behind the scenes with this project but I see that as the final titivating you do to the house before the guests arrived. I mean, the roast is at least in the oven!

Okay, I am off for a walk. Am getting a bad case of mouse arm – meaning the right hand that does all the mouse work is not moving too well after contributing to the 40,000 words. I must respect the mouse arm. I depend on it.

Tonight I have dinner at Cicciolina in Acland Street, St Kilda (Melbourne) with one of the most polished journos around – Marion Hume from the UK. If you’ve never read her stuff, get your hands on it. Her fashion reports are more like witty anthropological studies. Cicciolina is one of Melbourne’s most reliable, fabulous restaurants – and that’s in a town known for its restaurants. Get yourself into the back bar soon for a G&T.

PS Mr Underhill has just announced he’s buying the following flicks: Zulu, The Good Thief, History of Rock n Roll and Fandango - all for Aus$25 from EasyDVD. So you know what I’ll be watching … when not caught up with Will & Grace episodes.