Goodbye 2006

New Year's Eve used to be the night of the year. It wasn't necessarily a party night, but something had to happen and it needed to be big and interesting and special, well planned and preferably involvoing glow sticks. The year I was pregnant with Fred we went to bed before midnight and thus marked the end of big with glow sticks. Last year we were in bed by 10.30 but we did have a fabulous night, with drinkings and many children still running around a friend's backyard at 10pm - will go into the records as one of our best ever. Perhaps because we were feeling so optimistic about this year - we'd sold our millstone-round-our-necks house in the burbs and were heading back to the inner city and the joy of renting, having got the 'must own a house in order to live a happy and fulfilling life' monkey off our backs. Fred had fallen head over heels in love with her sister (happened when Una was 3 months, around Christmas time) and we'd gotten into the rhythm of two kids, I was no longer pregnant and starting to feel normalish again. Martin had given notice and was waiting for first round offers. Fred had been offered a place at creche. Breathe was out in the world. Life was looking rosy.

And it has been an excellent year. It's been good for writing, for study for both of us (HDs all round, only mine are called H1s now that I'm post-grad, which doesn't have the same ring to it), and for creche for Fred. Una learned where her brain is. Fred learned to sleep through the night; so did Una for that matter. We've reclaimed our evenings and from about 7 onwards the night belongs to us. Una and Fred grow daily and are both interesting and spirited little girls, different from each other but increasingly comaptible, not only learning how to play together but learning how to adapt their games to accommodate their different abilities. Both our families are in good health and as Fred gets older her relationships with her grandparents and other people outside the home are blooming.

Next year promises to be interesting too and I'm looking forward to it. I'm writing a thesis for my Masters - the first thesis I've written as it happens. Drift comes out in April. Another novel is due to be finished soon and I'm really looking forward to writing it, to exploring the intimate interior of another imaginative world. I'm switching over to Allen & Unwin for this novel and as much as I've love being with Random House and value the relationships I've forged over there, I am excited about being with A&U where I know everyone (in the Melbourne office), having more contact. No more conference calls! And it's not really goodbye to Random House, because of course they'll still have the Undine books so we'll still be in contact. I also wrote a short reader (a kind of middle years chapter book) which was heaps of fun and quick; it would be great to do some more of that stuff because then I won't have to ever get a grown up job and I might actually have some super when I retire (not that I can imagine ever wanting to retire from writing). I really want to play around with my writing this year and try some new things. I think finishing the Undine trilogy will be very freeing for that.

I'd love to travel a bit more. There's whisperings of a trip to India for a conference (with a friend and without Martin and the kids, which is a huge deal for me). Plans to go somewhere lovely for a week or two in winter (Palm Cove in July this year was such a boost mentally, physically and emotionally).

Martin will be doing his second year of his B Ed. Maths this year. Eep. But the geeky part of me is looking forward to him bringing maths home. Una is starting creche in January when we get back from Tassie and I'm excited and nervous for her. I think she will love it, but I think it will take her a while to settle in. Frederique is going back into the Octopus's Garden room (we made the decision not to send her to four year old kinder next year because we wanted to score her an extra year of childhood and wildness) hopefully with her beloved Sarah Jane (unless Sarah Jane changes rooms). We also plan to enrol her in a class this year to make up for the fact that she couldn't get a place in 3yo kinder because there's not enough places in our council. So we're thinking a singing or dancing class.

My New Year's Resolution is to ride my bike to uni. Also to write more, read more, dance more and s-t-r-e-t-c-h more (stretching is highly under-rated).

Harry Potter and the Deathly (S)Hallows

For what it's worth, I'm betting Harry won't die. Instead Snape will sacrifice himself at the 11th hour in order to save Harry's life. And not only that I would put money on the fact that J.K. Rowling had initially envisaged that this final sacrifice would have been Draco's but she never managed to steer Draco towards maturity and adulthood in the same way that she managed with Harry; Draco has never been a fully formed character; he's never been a true threat. I think for dramatic value and in order to live up to the Harry-Will-Die hype, she'll probably have to kill off Hermione or Ron, but I hope she doesn't do this - I don't think it would be true to the story. Nor would killing Harry in my opinion. I think she's tempted to kill Harry off more because she doesn't want the franchise to continue - she's got control issues - than because the story demands it. I sympathise, but as a reader I think Harry's death would actually be an anticlimax. For him to have survived as a baby only to die as an adolescent, for us to have read seven books (some of them overlong and overdone) to follow Harry's fortunes only to have his future negated (especially considering that Voldemort has risen from the dead already, so what's to stop him from doing it again even if Harry sacrifices himself in order to defeat him a second time?), well what would be the point of that? An ending like that would ricochet back through all the books and, well, flatten the mood, trivialise and render temporary every gain, every small win at the climax of each book.
Nah, Harry won't die. And if he does, it won't be for the sake of the story, it would be for the sake of the franchise. And that would be criminal.

Happy Birthday Me

This is the first photograph of me and Frederique. We bought the digital camera for Fred's impending birth so there are no pre-mother photos of me on the computer and we can't work out the scanner.


This is one of my favourite photos of me and Fred. Even though you can't see my face, it's very distinctively me (my tattoo and my wedding ring give me away).


This is a photo of me pregnant with Una (scarily enough, considering the size of my belly I was only 12 weeks - though she did end up being over 10lbs so maybe that was an early clue). I love being pregnant. I think I'll have to do it again sometime.


This is one of the the first - and one of the few - photos of me and Una, taken the day we came home a few days after her birth by Dusty Jo. I love this photo because it's also one of the first quiet moments I had with Una at home. It's actually astoundingly serene because Fred was screaming in the other room at the time.


Oh okay, I lied, I do have one premotherhood photo of me. It's a photo of a photo so not especially brilliant in quality but you get the general idea. Yes that is the laundromat on Brunswick St (daggy end) behind me. No I'm not doing laundry.

Happy birthday ME! We've got babysitters lined up this afternoon and we're off to see a movie - probably The Queen. Hooray.

Memorable moments this Christmas

* Rain on Christmas morning. Real, ground soaking, green making, consequential rain.
* Mt Buller's white Christmas, amid bushfires. Enough to make you believe in Christmas.
* James Taylor singing Our Town on the Cars soundtrack (surprisingly, one of Pixar's best films...in my opinion anyway, for some reason my expectations had been low. But it's just the right kind of nostalgic, even poignant, and lots of laugh out loud funny moments. I love a road movie/small town narrative and this one really struck a chord with me).
* The look on Frederique's face after she opened her first present and said, with real joy, 'Is it for me?' (This did diminish and towards the end she had a glazed consumerist acquisitive expression, but you know...there was that moment...)
* The sight of Una unwrapping her presents, very studiously discarding each present and having a ball with the paper (ah, it's such a baby cliche but it's a cute cliche).
* Una holding her new tiny baby doll and stroking its forehead and saying 'shh'.
* Making the decision not to photograph the present opening but enjoy the moment for what it was.
* Fred running riot with her cousin, Nina.
* Opening my presents from Martin - beautiful things from Luft, my favourite shop.
* Crispy duck skin in the salad. Homemade raspberry icecream. Simple good food.
* Driving home on Christmas night in the rain across the Westgate Bridge and through the city. We don't drive at night much these days (the girls are in bed well before dark) and it's quite a magical thing to do.

It's Martin's birthday today. Happy Birthday my One. Thanks for being.

Christmas Cooking

We will be spending the day at home on Monday, before joining Martin's extended family on Christmas night for celebrations. We were considering an outing (the zoo is open on Christmas day) but decided against it since we're celebrating Christmas eve with Martin's immediate family and we thought we'd get more mileage out of the girls if we had a quiet day at home.
So I am cooking and I think this is actually the first time I've really cooked any kind of meal for Christmas day (I've contributed a plate but not done the whole shebang). I've decided on cold roast duck salad so I can do all the preparation ahead. For dessert, homemade raspberry icecream. I am also going to make a chocolate desert-y thing to take on Monday night - the main ingredients are dark chocolate and cream - how can you go wrong? Because what chocolate needs is cream, I've always said so. It also has pistacios in it. Classy. From the Donna Hay magazine, and I always have to say Donna Hay with a Kath and Kim twang.
The duck salad will be some kind of invention, but it will include a dressing with pomegranate molasses - a recent purchase because bill grainger's (he doesn't like capital B) tabbouleh was frankly boring without it and, it turns out, is inspiring with it. It has become my ingredient of choice for all salads, tart and sweet - it's great for kids. I was thinking a fruit too, to undercut the gaminess and fattiness of the duck - figs perhaps, or oranges.
When I am going to do this cooking I am not quite sure - I like to cook meals and I have a good instinct for food but I've never been big on cooking fancy. My energy levels are low - I don't know if it's the time of year or if I'm coming down with something (we went to a play centre the other day - for those of you without children a play centre is an indoor park type thing with lattes that you take your children to if you want them to get sick - and I said to Martin 'where's Una?' and he said 'over there, playing with the child with the spots' - eek). Anyway, as much as I love food and presents I am looking forward to Christmas being over and done with. I wish I didn't feel this way, I wish Christmas retained more magic than that, but there you go.
And then Boxing day is Martin's 35th birthday and the next day is my 32nd birthday. Talk about the season that is silly.

poem - John Stammers

The Day Flies Off Without Me

The planes bound for all points everywhere
etch lines on my office window. From the top floor
London recedes in all directions, and beyond:
the world with its teeming hearts.

I am still, you move, I am a point of reference on a map;
I am at zero meridian as you consume the longitudes.
The pact we made to read our farewells exactly
at two in the afternoon with you in the air
holds me like a heavy winter coat.

Your unopened letter is in my pocket, beating.

-- John Stammers

Another one from the minstrels. This is a very poignant poem. I like poems like this that offer you a single moment of a much larger implied narrative and this particular poem resonates with love and loss. I also am very interested in the symbolic value of a plane (especially as someone who grew up on an island) - traversing the air: a separating, yet mediating space - in airspace there are no islands, everything is joined but everything is also apart. I'm not familiar with John Stammers but I think he is just my kind of poet and I will have to get to know him better. If you click the link above, there are some more of his poems online that you can read.

Wilson's Prom

A confession: we only lasted two nights. We've been back since Saturday. It was great and hard and tiring and not at all relaxing but it did have moments of being fun. The biggest difficulty with camping was actually the fact that Fred found it difficult to always be with us. She's used to having quite a bit of safe space on her own and if necessary she used the television to 'switch off' from family life for a little while (she no longer sleeps during the day as a matter of course though occasionally she will drop off in the car). We really found with camping there wasn't the opportunity for her to do this. We all slept badly on the first night (Fred woke at 11 and spent nearly two hours whispering 'goodnight mummy' and 'i love you mummy' in my ear - she was scared of the shadows) and as a result Frederique was restless and moody - well we all were a bit. It wasn't a problem we antipicated because Fred is quite social and considering she invades my personal space all the time it's easy to forget she can be protective of her own.
One thing we did have that was tremendously successful for Fred was a little book called More Please: the hungry animal book. I picked it up recently for about $3 at our local newsagent and Fred loved it. It's a thick cardboard book that comes in a box with a collection of tiny cardboard food (little bones for the dog, sugar cubes for the horse, carrots for the rabbit etc) that you poke in the animal's mouths. Fred spent literally hours with this book, she came back to it over and over.
Another saviour was Bedda - Fred's imaginary friend (at first we thought Bedda was a girl called Bella but this was simple thick-headedness on our part - Fred has maintained a consistent picture of Bedda, including his black eyes and spiky hair, his little brother, though his age varies between 1 and 4 - we acquired Bedda in Palm Cove in July and he has visited us almost daily since.) Fred and Bedda and all their babies played in the car for nearly an hour while Martin packed up the tent and I took Una for a walk. Often when we go somewhere we can see Frederique earnestly explaing to Bedda where we are and what we're doing there.
We have lots of ideas for the next camping trip, including sketchbooks for all of us, music for Fred (on Martin's pda initially but we're thinking about buying her an mp3 player for her birthday in April), and a big dose of zen for Martin and I - we plan to follow Fred more, let her set the pace and eat what she wants when she wants (within reason - lots of tinned fruit and cheese and ham and yoghurt) rather than sticking to mealtimes - apart from breakfast, she didn't seem at all interested in meals while we were away.
One of the things about any kind of travel with childrent is that it's easy to get a picture in your head of what kind of experience you want them to have. You think you know what they'll love most, what they'll get out of the experience. But of course their experience is theirs, uniquely. We wanted to take Fred to the beach and fly the kite, she wanted to sit in the damp sandy mud of the river bank and dig holes. Letting this picture go of the experience you want them to have (Fred loved the kite, but she would have been just as happy without it and by then we'd hurried her along the river to the beach and she was on the verge of sulkiness) is part of the journey as a parent - it's surprisingly not as easy as you'd think to let them just do what they want to do. We didn't really relax until we stopped thinking about what we wanted camping to be like and just tried to inhabit the moment - but by then we had already made the decision to drive home on Saturday and it was hard to unmake this decision. Besides, Fred was ready to go. Una would have happily stayed forever. She, bless her, doesn't care where we are as long as we're all together.
I am sure Frederique will grow to love camping - she enjoyed playing in the next door's tent with a seven year old boy called Justin and being visited by cheeky parrots. She loved the early morning walks and the fact that as soon as she was up the day began instead of waiting for Martin and I to do all our boring morning stuff. Once she got over her fear of the shadows, she loved the cubby too, and she especially loved sleeping again between Martin and I (we co-slept with Fred until she was 2). As she gets older and can climb a tree and read a book (simultaneously) the hardest part about camping, the relentlessness of family life, will be over for Fred.
Tidal river was a great place for us - somehow I've never been to the Prom before. There was a gentle river for Fred to stomp in, a wild beach (complete with night time background ambient sound), lots of great campsites and a well-stocked, not too expensive shop. A fire went through Wilson's Prom on 1 April 2005 and it was quite eerie considering the fires this summer to see all the burnt trees. But also it was a lesson in resilience and the redemption as underneath the ghostly trees the rejuvenating undergrowth was lush and green.

Going bush

We're off camping for some relaxation (insert weak laughter here) to the Prom until Tuesday.
No it'll be fun.
Really.
It will.
Really.
F.U.N.
And not at all stressful with a 15 month old who's into scoping other families at the park for a potential upgrade and a 3.5 year old who is the reason the 15 month old is looking into adoption.
No, really. Relaxing. I can feel the tension melting away right now.
That is all.
Bye me.

Review (or gratuitous self-promotion post)

A very nice review of Breathe.

Warning, it has MAJOR SPOILERS in it if you haven't read Undine which, you know you could buy at Amazon if you want the exciting hardback or at Dymocks if you want the beautiful Australian paperback. And guess what? It makes a GREAT Christmas present. But you better buy Breathe too (sorry US edition is not out till February...but I am sure that Dymocks ships world wide).

Here are some non-spoiling excerpts from nice review:

This is a genuinely lovely novel. The writing style is elegant and evocative; it has a sort of dreamy remoteness that casts a patina of other-worldliness over the novel. At the same time, it is strongly rooted in reality; if the magical elements had been abstracted from this novel, it would still have been a powerful and effective story of a young girl struggling with the challenges of adolescence.

From asif.com

Postcards and Poetry

The Dove
I saw the dove come down, the dove with the
green twig, the childish dove out of the storm and
flood. It came towards me in the style of the Holy Spirit
descending. I had been sitting in a cafe for twenty-five
years waiting for this vision. It hovered over the great
quarrel. I surrendered to the iron laws of the moral universe which
make a boredom out of everything desired. Do not surrender,
said the dove. I have come to make a nest in your shoe. I
want your step to be light.

-- Leonard Cohen
From "Death of a Lady's Man" (1978)

Another poem from the wondering minstrels. I like this because it kind of reminds me of being a parent - those days where all these miracles happen in front of you and you're blissfully happy but there's a part of you that's a little bit bored...you can give in to the boredom or you can choose bliss.

More poems (kind of). Martin brought these postcard secrets to my attention. Some of them are funny, some beautiful and some almost made me cry. There's an article about it in the Age here. The site's heartbreaking, and don't go in there if you can't cope with feeling a wide range of human emotions in one minute. But I think it's a beautiful thing, anonymity can open the heart and sharing secrets can show how profound and sometimes how profoundly unprofound the most closed centre of the human heart is.

Frank Warren's description of his role as caretaker (from the Age article) is similar to how I feel reading through the unsolicited manuscripts which represent an enormous investment on the part of the writer, often very raw and personal.

Warren says his role is to be "the caretaker ... it's my responsibility to choose secrets others want to see." So the ones he posts on the website "are secrets that surprise me, that I haven't seen before, speaking in a voice I recognise. I select secrets that show the full breadth of our humanity ... secrets that are humorous, sexual, joyful, remorseful."

So why do I call them a poem? Here's another extract from the Age article. To me it describes exactly what a good poem should do:

But the space constraints of the postcard, he now realises, are integral to the concept's success. It forces "revealers" to be brief, witty and clear in their message. Yet it also means that those of us reading the book or viewing the website have to bring our own experiences into play so we can imagine what the other person is going through.

"These are conversations which reveal our humanity in a new way," Warren insists. "They allow us to discover truth and beauty and poetry in places we don't normally look for it."

Smoke Haze

Rye Beach

The Nylex Clock in Richmond.

Reader's picures from The Age

We are sequestered indoors today because of soaring temperatures (39ºC/102ºF) and smoke haze. We escaped the house early yesterday before the temperatures rose and went down to the Yarra for a play and a drink at the beautiful Fairfield Boathouse. The smoke hung over the Yarra like a mist, reminding us that in less citybound bush, people were fighting for their homes or waiting anxiously to see if the fire would spread their way. It makes me realise how lucky we are to live where we do. We dream of living in the bush but it's a naive dream. I honestly don't know if I could cope with the threat of fire, if I could stay and fight.

Even here, shut up inside our relatively cool Victorian terrace, far away from the fire's path we can smell smoke. We haven't seen blue sky for two days. The bush, usually a romantic, distant, quiet, empty presence surrounding the hub of the city, is suddenly intensely populated and we fear for the people who live there. The bush isn't over there, it's here, it's coming by air, converted by flame into smoke. Smoke signals fill the sky, but here in the city we barely understand the message. We know enough though to know it isn't good news.

A Southerly change is forecast for today, bringing with it the promise of a cool change and a clear sky in Melbourne. But the change in wind direction might not spell such good fortune in the bush. They say the fires might burn all summer. That's a lot of homes, a lot of human hours, a lot of fear, a lot of trees and animals (native and otherwise), a lot of loss, a lot of long nights in unfamiliar bush.

I am eager for the cool change and for the smoke to clear. But I can't help feeling that while Melbourne gets its reprieve things are still going to be challenging in the rest of the state for a long hot dry summer.

Eep: Edited to say that it actually got up to 42.1ºC today. But the cool change is here, and it came in time for dinner which was decent of it.

Christmas Craft

Here is a list of all the Christmas crafts we have engaged in with Frederique so far this year:
1.





Yes well.
Sometimes I read Kiddley and I am struck by a strange blend of admiration, jealousy and exhaustion at the endless descriptions of craft type things people do with their children. Claire of Loobylu fame (the first blog I ever read) is the main author and is always whipping up something impressive with her seemingly inexhaustable supply of time, energy and enthusiasm. I also suspect she has a not unreasonable supply of money (why does it seem insulting to say that?) because many of Kiddley's activities assume that you have on hand expensive resources. There seems to be a big online craft community of nice middle class people who have a fair bit of expendable income and more power to them but I reserve the right to experience occasional moments of bitterness. Plus who are these three year olds that sit around making just-so things? Fred is far too chaotic to make her own snowglobe or a pinecone hedgehog. Nothing ruins her fun more than instructions. I choose to stubbornly believe this is one of her best qualities. Plus with some of these things I suspect more than a little adult involvement. When I worked at the creche we were told vehemently that process was more important than product and gave the kids materials to do with what they wished rather than set up goal oriented activities, and for the most part I've followed this approach as a parent. At three I think she's too young to do anything more than explore different materials textures, characteristics and results.
And that's what I'll keep telling myself as I scroll through Kiddley and see that i should have made my own advent calendar, christmas cards and cute yet seasonally inappropriate mantel village.

Having said all that, I did make the girls some lion noses the other day. Frederique and Una have developed a game called Daddy Lion and Baby Lion that involve them making mountains out of pillows and doonas and then clambering around. The beauty of this game is that Una doesn't need to know she's a baby lion and Frederique gets to play with Una and Martin and I have nothing to do with it. Una has even learned to growl. Una loves dressing up so I made each girl an egg carton nose. Fred wore hers for less than five minutes. Una LOVED hers and was most upset half an hour later that I took it off her to put her to bed.

Writing as your J.O.B.

When you want to be a writer full time, which is a difficult thing to be considering it might take a couple of years to write one novel and Australia is a small market, you have to find other ways to fund your career. I am also a part time freelance editor, reading and reporting on manuscripts. It's quite complementary, because it gives me the opportunity to think about and articulate ideas about story and structure and character development. But it's sometimes quite time consuming and it can be hard to switch between reading and thinking about someone else's work and reading, writing and thinking about your own. And it's a bit like doing an undergraduate degree, it can get repetitive and you start feeling like you're trotting out the same old hackneyed phrases or that you've been reading the same novel over and over again. It also uses up some of my precious reading time that I would like to spend reading for the love of it.

The other thing many writers do are public appearances, usually through schools, conducting workshops or giving talks. This isn't an avenue I've pursued because it requires a certain degree of flexibility, and in terms of childcare it's been tricky in the past for me. Also I don't personally know any schools. There are speaker's agencies in Melbourne which I will probably contact in the New Year because I quite like the idea of it, mostly in terms of hanging out with some interesting teenagers and nicking their ideas. I'm all for teenagers. They've got this kind of in extremis thing happening - no one's beaten their spirit out of them yet. They are connected to childhood and adulthood and teach you lots of great stuff about both. For me doing the Masters is also an avenue to teaching, I would quite like to teach people serious about writing, because I like being an Expert and yap yap yapping. But I'm a bit scared of tertiary level teaching because what if they all know more than me? Eek. Plus I think there is a fine line that you can cross where you stop being a writer and become a teacher (or worse, an academic). And there are definitely writers who are better at doing schools and the festival circuit than they are at writing books, probably at least in part because they don't have time to write books, they're too busy yap yap yapping.

Another thing writers do in order to keep being writers is contribute to series fiction, ghost-write, write articles, write copy for weetbix boxes etc. I've recently had two series of books brought to my attention and I am trying to work up ideas for both. But ideas are hard when you're trying to think of one, and I must admit I am afraid to use up the really good, award winning type ideas (because all writers have plenty of those) that I already have filed away on series fiction (which is completely valid and great and marvellous but it's not about standing out, it's about fitting in, which is totally cool but it makes me want to hoard away my stand-out ideas for another time, which is entirely appropriate of me). And getting the idea is one thing, finding a voice - sustainable, entertaining, distinctive - is even tougher. Still, I feel quite energised by the idea of writing something purely to be enjoyed. I loved chick lit as a kid, I used to read three Sweet Valley Highs a night and then swap with Zoe the next day (we borrowed them from Lisa Donahoe who lived across the road from school and was our brief foray into popularity in grade six). So I want to write something like that, a bit more believable and less sensational and Valley Girl, but fun and playful and words to dream to...romance, drama...young love.

Launched

www.lightningbug.com.au

It's a writing companion for kids who want to (or have to) write a story. This is Martin's other child. It went live today, though he's still doing the odd last minute tweak.

Martin lives for feedback, so comment here or drop him an email mnjorgensen@gmail.com

Christmas Meme

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot chocolate though of course in summer it's not really a Christmas staple. I don't think I've ever had egg nog. I like the idea of it but does it actually have egg in it? I'm not really into drinking raw egg. Just read a recipe. Yeah, nuh.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree? Good lord. There are Santas out there that don't wrap? Where's the fun in that? Everything is wrapped.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Anything as long as they're twinkly. Usually low key both inside and out and we often haven't had a tree as such, but there will always be at least one string of lights somewhere, around a bookshelf or matlepiece inside or somewhere outside (we move a lot so we don't really get to develop Christmas traditions when it comes to decorating)

4. Do you hang mistletoe? Nup.

5. When do you put your decorations up? Um...whenever. Sometime after 1 December and sometime before Christmas day.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Well cold veggie lasagne is a bit of a family tradition. Fresh berries. I love cold chicken at Christmas too.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child: Well it's a big lump of memories but just hanging with my cousins - Claire, Steph, Ella and Charles. We'd eat and drink all day and then lie around groaning. I remember one year my uncle Nic made a toasted cheese sandwich for someone in the evening and then ended up making rounds and rounds of them. When i was younger we'd go to my nana and grandad's in the evening.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I honestly don't remember ever really believing in him. Or thinking he was real. But I also remember believing that Santa as a construct existed for so many people that he was real in a way and what's real anyway? How very post-structurally philosophical of me.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Yeah, we sometimes celebrate with Martin's family on Christmas Eve. I quite like the idea of present opening being an evening thing...it sounds very magical.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? Well, like I said we often don't have one. As a kid it was pell-mell. Not arty at all, just hang all the jumble of ornaments acquired at different times from different places and then string the lights around. We'll do the same this year when we put up our tree.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? Well, it would be a very peculiar happenstance in Melbourne (at any time of year), though in the realm of possibility in Hobart at Christmas time, on Mt Wellington anyway. But I love the idea of it. At least once in my life I'd like to experience a white Christmas. It used to snow in winter where I was growing up and it was very special and amazing, like an unexpected holiday.

12. Can you ice skate? Yes, badly. In fact so badly and so long ago, i think I might have to change my answer to no.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Potbelly, a large toy mouse, was a favourite for a long time. I loved then and love now getting books (oh yes I know, what a predictable answer). One year, when I was about 15 my parents bought me the boxed set of the Narnia books and I read them that summer on holidays at Cradle Mountain and many times since, though the later ones get a bit strange for my taste, poor old Susan doomed to a lonely life severed from her family because she wears make up).

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Christmas was always about seeing my cousins and aunt and uncle and that was important, even though they lived close by it was good to know there was a day I would see them and really catch up. Now they're scattered all over the world and I don't always get down to Tassie for christmas, and I have to admit most of the Christmases I spend in Melbourne don't feel right - I miss them (boohoo). But now it's all about my kids, making a magical day for them.
The story of Christmas isn't part of my belief system, I'm not Christian. But I do believe that babies are magical and amazing and change the world, every new baby offeres the promise of peace and redemption for the human race. A star shines over every baby when they're born. So I enjoy telling Frederique the Christmas story for that reason. She's pretty into Baby Jesus and angels too. Last year we were staying in a little apartment in Hobart for Christmas and she gathered together stones from the driveway every day and lined them up - they were her angels.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? A big bowl of fresh berries or fresh cherries. I made Nigella Lawson's Raspberry and Lemongrass trifle one year and I wish I could be bothered every year because it was truly amazing.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Cracking out our Frank Sinatra Christmas CD in December and listening to it daily. I love carols, i love communal singing. I love carols by candlelight too - we've got one at the park near us and I can't wait to take the girls - will be their first time.

17. What tops your tree? As a kid we had a big star and an angel, I loved the angel best even though she was little and wispy and unimpressive for tree-toppage. I love the aesthetics of angels, they're a lot more impressive than fairies and there's a kind of melancholy associated with them (I guess cos they're dead people) that makes them seem interesting and mysterious.

18. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? We giveth so that we mighteth receiveth. Both. But I love shopping for kids.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? 'I'll be home for Christmas' and 'The Christmas Waltz' both on said Frank Sinatra CD. Christmas carol would have to be Silent Night. There's nothing more stirring than a large group of people singing it. But I love them all. And I don't mind singing about god at Christmas. Christmas is when the idea of god and jesus seems very nice and I kind of miss having a spiritual belief system in my life.
OH SCRATCH ALL THAT! I had to come back and say it's Kermit's A Christmas Wish on A Christmas Together with John Denver and the Muppets. "I don’t know if you believe in Christmas./ Or if you have presents underneath the Christmas Tree./ But if you believe in love/ that will be more than enough/ for you to come and celebrate with me.”

20. Candy Canes? I like the aesthetic of them. I like the idea of them. The fact of them I tire of quickly. I'd love to try making my own. But I am a confectionery spaz, as I have already admitted on this site.

Pinched from Diana Peterfreund

Australian Summery Picture Book Recommendation

At the Beach
Roland Harvey
Paperback $14.95

It seems like only a heart's blink ago that I was writing about the first day of spring and now look. It's summer and it has been for days and I quite forgot to think of it because it feels like it's been summer for months.

I love Australia's summery Christmas (though I've never experienced a wintry one). I love that we give board shorts and beach towels for presents and that we eat outside and have prawns and chilled sparkling wines (preferably red for me). I love the long lead up, with barbecues and picnics, even though it's kid of exhausting. As a kid it marked the beginning of a long summer holiday, and that was part of its magic...school broke up a few days before Christmas and then was out till late February in Tasmania. I associate that hot dusty gum tree smell with Christmas.

I also think of a loved kid's book, Roland Harvey's Book of Christmas which I used to pore over every year, with it's songs, recipes and best of all, descriptions of how kids all over the world celebrated Christmas. Experiencing a northern hemisphere Christmas somewhere where they take Christmas very seriously is on my list of things to do, perhaps in a few years when the girls are old enough to appreciate the differences. Every year Roland Harvey used to put out a calendar with stickers and funny comments and his unique style of illustration. We'd buy it through school from the Ashton Scholastic book clubs and it would come towards the end of the school year, I remember afternoons studying it when it arrived and it was that sort of late term vibe, with the summer drifting in through the open classroom windows and even the teacher wants to skive off and blow dandelions.

Now Fred loves one of his books too, At the Beach: Postcards from Crabby Spit. Crabby Spit comes to life in this Australian story about a family caravanning holiday.

The endpages show a detailed map of Crabby Spit in blue ink and this image alone is one to spend hours over. Fred is particularly fond of maps so this is an effective entry into the story for her. On the title page we meet the family as they say their goodbyes to Grandma. 'Don't forget to write,' she says and write they do, the story is told as a series of lively and distinctive postcards to Grandma. The story takes place in a beachside caravan park and its surrounds, very Australian in feel. It's a lovely narrative about family and this particular type of chaotic holiday, culminating in a frenzied party on the beach attended by young and old, complete with campfire.

'It was so cool with the sea sloshing and the music jumping. I made up a dance and my head stayed still and my body danced around. My dad was being funny and he's done his back. Love from Henry Dear Grandma I stayed up late and there was a very big fire. I found a crab. And there were dolphins swimming in the sea. love. Frankie'

These are kids to love: busy, exploratory, active, playful, funny, serious, creative and interested in the world around them. There's cricket on the beach and bmx riding, canoeing, a big treasure filled market, snorkelling, sailing, surfing...and sunken treasure, pirates, caves, wierd lights and ufos, leafy seadragons, mosquitos, fish and chips for tea and scrabble in the annexe.

Martin and I both find his illustrations utterly compelling. My favourite in this book is the underwater scene, where the surface view is crowded up into the top of the page and the rest is the vast depths of the sea, complete with sharks, which thrill Frederique. There's a strong sense of a fragile yet resilient seascape and a sense of a respectful relationship between the natural environment and the joyful human world, noted if nothing else in the clean environs of the beach. There's a finding game to play with the book too, the artist at the beginning of the book loses all his belongings in the story and at the end you're invited to go back and find them (look for the cheeky dog). The game makes this book the perfect travel companion, since there's different ways to 'read' it. It also means you really immerse yourself in the world of the illustrations and seriously it's the kind of book where you feel that if you lean in close enough you might just fall in...it's such a fully realised and evocative world. I want to go to Crabby Spit for MY next holiday!
At the Beach is published by Allen & Unwin and is being released in paperback for Christmas. There's also a companion scheduled for publication in March 2007
called In the Bush NOTE: I misread the Pub details for In the Bush, it is out now in hardback, where the same family go camping in Wombat Flat.

I'd recommend At the Beach for ages 3-8...I know this is a very broad range but I think it works for different ages because you can read it in so many different ways and the older you are the deeper you can dig in to it. Frederique began really enjoying it at 3 though she's only just getting into the postcard format now, though we did sit and flick through the pages and explore Crabby Spit when she was 2.

Other Australian Beach Holiday Picture Books We Love:
Grandpa and Thomas by Pamela Allen (In our experience Pamela Allen can be hit and miss - I don't enjoy her Mr Magee books at all and I often thinks she wins CBC Awards over other deserving books - but this comes close to being a perfect picture book in terms of rhythm and structure.)
Greetings from Sandy Beach by Bob Graham (Much much loved, Bob Graham is my hero.)
Magic Beach by Alison Lester (beautiful, see below for Fred's opinion of Alison Lester.)
Where the Forest Meets the Sea by Jeannie Baker (Her collages are sensational and Fred doesn't mind the worthiness of her themes, though sometimes I wish she'd let her pictures speak for themselves which is why I love the textless Window and Belonging so much. I would also buy her books for artistic teenagers.)
Are We There Yet Alison Lester (we haven't read this yet but it's on the list and Fred so far loves every Alison Lester book she's met. And me too.)

Love a Quiz - What kind of reader?

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Literate Good Citizen
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Book Snob
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

Thanks Lili for the diversion.

Poem

Every now and then I get a poem dropped into my inbox by The Wondering Minstrels. It's a lovely distraction and it reminds me to read poetry. Anyway, I thought this one was particularly good and pertinent to this household since Martin and I are both studying, and Martin wants to be a teacher when he grows up (which apparently doesn't happen till he's about 37).

Did I Miss Anything

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren't here

-- Tom Wayman

I lost all the formatting when I pasted this in and Blogger (bad bad blogger) won't ler me put it back in - oh my god, how antipoetry. My apologies to Tom Wayman who I am sure is an avid reader of Eglantines Cake. The title is a link to how the poem appears on Tom's website. There are some more of his poems there if you are feeling poem-y. I have to go and wrap Christmas presents - Fred is having a close encounter with Claus tomorrow.

Wild Play

I'm very interested in the issue of wild play blogged about recently here and here. It's hard being a children's writer in this day and age where kids are so heavily supervised. People don't go to the country to convalesce with a well-meaning but abstract and vague aunt. Kids don't go camping by themselves or sail off for a summer or get abandoned in the woods. It's hard getting your child characters away from those interfering, prescriptive, restrictive grown ups and into adventures.

With my cousins, or Zoe, or other childhood friends, I wandered wild and free, not just over the bush suburb I grew up in, but also the inner suburban streets of North Hobart or Dynnyrne. Did we take risks? Yes. Did we ever get badly hurt? No (though both Zoe and I broke our arms, we both did it when at school or on a school excursion). The suburb I lived in had urban worries ('stranger danger', busy roads, bullies, roaming dogs) and bush worries (lack of footpaths, snakes, spiders, ponds, large tracts of bush, bushfires). We made up stories about people we saw or ourselves. We doorknocked for charity, for walkathons or looking for our escaped invisible pet mice. We roamed around the local university grounds as they were then (when the art school and conservatorium were down the road. We walked the 3 or so kilometres up to the signal station where we could see all over Hobart. Zoe and I often got up before anyone else was awake and took ourselves off to the park. We dug possum traps and bee traps, rode our bikes around the new subdivision, befriended ducks and all the time we were playing - a wild, unstructured kind of play, where every sentence began with 'Let's Say' or Let's Pretend'.

I loved my freedom more than anything. It was my most valued possession, my most precious gift. No barbie, no playstation, no toy, no equipment, could ever come close to that treasure - freedom.

I just wish I knew how, in the climate of fear and protectiveness we live in now I can pass this gift on. Is it a matter of moving out of the tightly held restrictions of the inner city? Is it a geographical problem? Perhaps it's partly a matter of teaching myself to reclaim my own wildness, of negating at times my adult status - can I make myself disappear for the girls, can I be a kid again? Can I take them places they can run wild and then let them run? Let them really run, without warnings or reprimand? I don't think it works like that. I wish it did. In a dream world we would have the money to buy the kind of big, unruly and dangerous house that could lend itself to wild play in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne. In real life...I take heart that there are enough parents around me thinking about the same issues that maybe my kids will be able to roam free after all...without anyone ringing children's services. One of the other things we'll do to help encourage this kind of play is take them camping. We recently bought a tent. It makes me uneasy (more becuase I want my holidays to be relaxing!) but I think it will be great for all of us.

Because one day they will be free. They need to learn to trust themselves and we need to learn to trust them. They need to learn the world is a place in which to play, not to fear. They need to learn to love the trees and forests and birds and creeks of the world. Or they will continue to subdivide, to inhabit, they will become insular and disconnected. We can't supervise them forever. For me, Fred and Una own their bodies, own their childhood. I can guide them. I can offer them boundaries, support structures and a safe place to call home. But they need to find the girls, the women, they want to be, and I wish for each of them wildness, in their hearts and minds.

Working from home

Yesterday I dropped Frederique off at creche. I walked through the backstreets of Fitzroy in the early morning sun and into East Melbourne to spend a day reading manuscripts in The Office and I felt like a proper grown up working mother. It was quite a nice feeling. I have actually always been a working mother, doing freelance editing and writing novels. But somehow when you work from home it doesn't feel the same - it's hard to make any real distinction between the working part and the mother part. I know it's the dream for many parents, especially with new babies - a reasonable paying gig from home that fits in around naps and keeps a finger in the career pie. But in practice it doesn't quite work like that.

In the simplest terms: when you're with the kids you feel guilty about not working; when you're working you feel guilty about not being with the children. And if you have a cup of tea or call a friend you feel guilty about everything. Then there's the business calls where you're simulataneously chasing your nude, pooing, crying toilet-untraining two year old around the lounge room (yes that really happened). And they say, 'should I ring back at a better time?' and you're dangerously close to tears because there IS no better time. Yep. The dream.

So here is my contribution to the work from home dilemma if anyone is going through it at the moment. This is how we've managed it and I've retained a small part of my sanity. I totally get that working and homelife is a struggle for everyone and there are lots of problems associated with working in an office, so it's not a boohoo my life is hard thing, because this is the choice I made and I do feel lucky to have the life I have. But this is what I have to say on the matter:

1. I don't care about housework. In my dreamlife I live in a lovely house that's always clean with shiny surfaces and all the crumbly messy bits are artfully messy, filled with interesting found objects. In reality, my house is messy most of the time and I have this special blind patch that allows me to live with it.

2. I do care about housework really. Because when you have kids they spend a lot of time lying around on the floor and messing stuff up, so someone needs to do it. So you need a really helpful partner who will do at least 50% of the housework, a mother who will visit once a week and mop your floors, or you need a cleaner. Or at a pinch you need to be okay with doing housework early in the morning or late at night (but wouldn't this drive anyone insane? Still, I hear there are some stay at home parents who are okay with this, bless their pearly white, beautifully laundered cotton socks.)

3. You need childcare. Whether it's your partner, your mother, a neighbour, you need regular reliable childcare. Six month olds who sleep six hours a day and spend the rest of the time gurgling delightfully at the ceiling turn into 2 year old wrecking balls. There is no exception to this. Few two year olds will spend more than 10 minutes at a time engaged in an activity. They need to roam from one thing to another and most activities require some input from you (setting up, packing away, supervising etc). Regular is important, you need to be able to rely on it and plan around it.

4. Your children will watch television. They probably won't dine exclusively on homemade organic branseed muffins. Every other mother I've ever met seems ninety times more organised than me. I have to remind myself that I effectively hold down two jobs plus parenting Frederique and Una, plus doing my Masters part time in order to have some kind of life outside the home and develop myself professionally, and I was one of those people who lost their locker key on the first day of school every year (after I locked all my text books and stationery in my locker - I got through high school with pens and paper torn out of other people's notebooks). I try not to be all superperfectionist about food and tv and stuff, my kids eat well but it's not all natural homemade stuff because in the time it takes me to make muffins I can write and then delete half a chapter.

5. Their social life will suffer. Your social life will suffer.

6. Be flexible and opportunistic. If your child unexpectedly falls asleep face down in their rice cereal then use the time to your advantage. Get as much stuff done in the morning because most kids are needier in the afternoon, especially when they drop their daysleep (see point 3, once the daysleep goes some kind of childcare is essential for your sanity and your workload). You should probably try and extricate them from the rice cereal first though.

7. You will probably feel isolated workwise. Even if you are keeping a toe in, it won't feel like it. Work will feel a million miles away. You'll go into the office occasionally to drop something off and feel like a strange alien lady, or more likely, like a mum pretending to be someone else. You'll tell people cute stories about your kids. You'll have banana on your shoulder or baby spew in your hair. Every one else will look and sound worlds more professional than you, even the homeless guy who wandered in off the street to wee in the car parking space (it's not your car parking space because you don't warrant one because you live the dream and work at home. It's probably a good thing because your car is piled high with baby crap and covered in princess stickers and has really uber daggy thomas the tank engine sunshades on the back windows.) You'll feel out of touch with the industry. Every time you go into the office it will seem like everyone there is new. People will say, wow, how are you? and you won't have anything interesting to say. (If you are a man, replace father and he for mum and she for all of the above. But heck. Feel free to call yourself a strange alien lady).

8. In the middle of a business call your three year old will shout out from the toilet 'Come and have a look at the poo!'. Your 9 month old will vomit down your cleavage. The reverse of this is that you have to sit and do work when you'd rather take the kids to the zoo or meet friends for coffee and play. Other mothers will seem to have all this time and energy for their kids that you feel like you don't have.

9. You need to know at least one person in the same boat as you so you can whinge meaningfully about the lows and cheer each other's happies and skive off together by email.

10. Take every professional development opportunity you get, even if it means serious kid juggling. I had the opportunity to do a day-long course and Martin brought Fred (then 11 months) in at the break for her breastfeed. This was where I met Kate (see 9) so it was sooooo worth it, even if it did send us into a spin because it was the longest time I spent away from her.

You know, that all sounds like a bit of a whinge and it is good really, it is a dream, just sometimes it's a dream with a talking spider eating buffalo cake in it*. At least I'm here and I'm with them. I get to be a part of their lives, their everyday. Because in a few years they'll both be at school and I know I'll miss them. I feel especially lucky that we've managed our lives in such a way that Martin is home more than he's not so we're all here a lot of the time, and Martin stops the dirty clothes from taking over the world and makes muffins and takes the girls to the zoo so they're not missing out. But I'm glad I love my job, because I think if I was doing something I didn't feel passionate about then the trade-offs might not be worth it.

Going into the office, sitting on a couch in East Melbourne reading manuscripts without children climbing my leg and with the added bonus of intelligent funny interesting people to talk to in between manuscripts...well, I see the appeal of the day job (I know, most day jobs don't come with couches). Sometimes I feel like my whole life takes place in my lounge room, sometimes the walls feel like they're closing in. Being a writer is lonely enough, it can be hard to access a community - sometimes it feels like you're talking into a vast, empty darkness. So being tied to home by two relentlessly gorgeous but needy children can make that loneliness manifold. But in the end, I love my job and I love my kids. Although they don't always combine well, I feel more comfortable with chaos than I do with structure so it's the right life for me and as hard as it feels sometimes, as much as I sometimes feel I have my feet in two different worlds which have an alarming tendency to accelerate away from each other, this is the life I love.

*Actually Fred's dream last night. It talked to her. Sounds scary but she assures me it wasn't.

extraordinary window to an unseen world

An elephant in the womb. Read more here:
The Age
National Geographic

Poem

by Simon Armitage

Hand Washing Technique – Government Guidelines
i.m. Dr David Kelly

1. Palm to palm.
2. Right palm over left dorsum and left palm over right dorsum.
3. Palm to palm fingers interlaced.
4. Backs of fingers to opposing palms with fingers interlocked.
5. Rotational rubbing of right thumb clasped in left palm and vice versa.
6. Rotational rubbing, backwards and forwards with clasped fingers of right hand left palm and vice versa.

From Tyrannosaurus Rexversus the Corduroy Kid

Still in a rewriting haze

I wanted to have it finished today but it's being slippery. I hate slippery. Things are falling into place though, that's the great thing about this stage, connecting everything up, you suddenly realise there IS method to your madness and you're a lot smarter than you thought you were. Or you discover there's more madness than method which was me at about 3 o'clock this afternoon. I might have done something interesting like gibber in the hallway but a very nice man came to buy our television and I didn't want to scare him away.

Anyway, for those of you who haven't got round to looking at the new site (or my shadowy yet carefree face) here's a little tempter. Martin and I thought it might be nice to put a few bookplates on there. We'll be adding some more later, hopefully. The black and white one is from an actual set of bookplates made for moi truly by Zoe a few years ago for Christmas. I am glad it's got a new lease of life. It's also the image on my long ago, ne'er pursued book-crossing page (it felt sordid leaving books in public, like littering - and these days, I'm more a library girl, but I love the idea of it.)

tiny

and when I am very tiny
i can jump over things
anyway
i can jump over things
rusty things
special things
circle things.

Frederique, aged 3

all new

www.pennirusson.com

with secret special surprises.

Go! Go play.

And come back and tell Martin what a marvellous job he's done.

Not Funny Me

I rode up a hill today which makes me not funny (have you ever noticed how people who exercise a lot have no sense of humour?). Anyway, in lieu of me being funny here's someone else who is. You'll learn something too (I'm not sure what) about being a better writer.
Now I have to go away and write my noggle (haha, 3 year olds are funny because they can't speak proper).

Quote

"I love people. I love my family, my children . . . but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up."
Pearl S. Buck

Beautiful Things

Esthex

Urgle

Well this time yesterday I was considering giving myself a stomachectomy having caught gastro from Fred who got it at the Germ Factory (creche). We all got it - there's been a lot of vomiting in this house over the last two weeks - this is the second bout the girls have got in a fortnight. Let's hope we're all super-immune for a while. Fred is a champion vomiter - she's neat and contained and as soon as she's finished she says brightly 'I'm better now!' and then expresses a great deal of concern for us because we look worried or sad ('Are you all right, Mama?'). She'd be a good Pollyanna, with one of those mysterious injuries that makes you lie around being windswept and interesting for a while until you discover that being glad is the only medicine. Una is pretty good too, but of course sick one year olds are just heartbreaking.

We're dropping Fred back to one day a week at creche over summer, just because it seems silly to send her when Martin and I are both at home and we've still got Una anyway who isn't the easy blobby baby she once was. In a lot of ways it's easier to have both rather than just one. And it will reduce our contact time with lergies. And besides all those sensible reasons, we just miss her!

Online Writer's festival

Hi, just a reminder for anyone with nothing to do today that the online writer's festival is on today. The next person on the forum is John Marsden at 1pm (Melbourne time), writer Kate Morton is on at 5 and Matthew Reilly (who is blissfully unaware of the fact that he is Martin's arch-nemesis) is on at 7. Then Rosemary Cantor (a UK agent) is on at 9. See The Australian Writer's Marketplace website for instructions on how to join up so you can attend. Full membership is about $50, quarterly membership is $25. There's discounts if you're a member of one of the state writer's centres. I've been to the morning sessions and will write more later.

Belinda Emmett

I didn't know her. I didn't follow her career. But the death of Belinda Emmett is very sad news and my heart goes out to her family, especially her husband Rove who has to learn to live without her and will have to find a way to grieve in the spotlight.
Love to all on this Sunday.

Linky Mclinks

Very short story competition here. 500 words, theme is 'inner city: anywhere, anytime'. Deadline 1 December.

For kids: storyline, a project by the screen actor's guild. See your favourite celebrities read picture books. Come on. Al Gore! Okay it's not all Al Gore, there's the Mum from Malcolm in the Middle (we love her) and the guy from West Wing who walks like a ballet dancer, um, Bradley Whitford, reading an Australian book Wilfred Gordon Macdoanld Partridge by Mem Fox (digression: see her discuss the book in an unusual way here). Lou Diamond Phillips reads The Polar Express...oh go look for yourself. It's such a nice idea, unfortunately the way its done is a wee bit cheesy with soft "storytelling" voices and plinkly music, and so the texts lack some of the energy and verve you would hope an experienced actor might bring to the reading of them. But Fred will probably quite like it all the same. I'm saving it up for a rainy day.

The Australian Writer's Marketplace

Click here to check out the new website for the Australian Writer's Marketplace, who have been around for years in book form, up to their 8th edition I think of a bumper book of publishers, magazines, competitions and other opportunities for writers in Australia. You can sign up for the free newsletter or get a paid subscription to find out about a wide range of publishing opportunities. They also have a blog called Speakeasy, which is still all new and fresh looking.

A good prod about the site will show that they are hosting an online writing festival. If you're not published and would like to be, or even if you are and have only a writer's understanding of the literary world, it looks like a good line up. I'm particularly intererested in Miss Snark whose blog is immensely useful and interesting. Plus how does someone with a surname like November end up being an editor and not a writer? It's a crying shame. Here's the scoop:

Online Writing Festival
13 November: Australia's biggest Online Writing Festival. Featuring authors John Marsden, Matthew Reilly and Kate Forsyth, as well as NY literary agent Miss Snark, Orbit Editorial Director Darren Nash, UK agent Rosemary Canter, and Penguin US editor Sharyn November.

I love memes

48 things you could care less about
1. First Name? Penelope, but you can call me Penni. Some people call me Nell.
2. Were you named after anyone? Nope, though my dad once had a dog called Penny. And as a child I was deeply fascinated by Penelope, wife of Odysseus/Ulysses and I think it's part of what sparked my interest in myth, Ancient History and stories.
3. When did you last cry? I got teary reading Fred a picture book the other day. The Potato People by Pamel Allen. It's sad - the grandmother is left all alone and you don't know why but you suspect something is amiss.
4. Do you like your handwriting? Yes, now I do. I used to be wildly experimental with it as a teen. I'm glad I dropped the p-h-a-t look and the circles over the 'i's.
5. What is your favourite lunchmeat? King Island smoked beef
6. If you were another person would you be friends with you? Yes, but I'd really give me the shits sometimes. (Am I allowed to swear? Oh yes, it's MY blog.)
7. Do you have a journal? Only inasmuch as I write a blog, which the world is allowed to poke about in.
8. Do you still have your tonsils? Yes.
9. Would you bungee jump? No.
10. What is your favourite cereal? I love a good homemade muesli, with dates and pecans, soaked overnight in organic pear juice (we don't do this very often!).
11. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? Nope.
12. Do you think you are strong? Physically, not really, I'm all soft and noodly. But mentally and emotionally, yes.
13. What is your favourite ice-cream flavour? Passionfruit.
14. Shoe size? 6ish.
15. Red or pink? Pink roses. Red shoes.
16. What is the least favourite thing about yourself? The blobby bits. Actually the fact that I can't just accept and love the blobby bits.
17. Who do you miss most? I'd have loved my nanna to meet my little girls.
18. Do you want everyone to send this back to you? Nah.
19. What colour pants, shirt and shoes are you wearing? I'm wearing two different pyjamas - my purple snowflakes bottoms and Martin's blue chequered top. No shoes. Just toes.
20. Last thing you ate? Vegemite toast. Or Jemmamite, as it is called in this house.
21. What are you listening to right now? Fred's watching Beatrix Potter performed by the London Ballet, so I am listening to the music and to Fred dancing to it and occasionally saying 'look what I can do!'
22. If you were a crayon what colour would you be? I like to think something deep and mysterious like indigo but probably more like a ferny green. Or light brown.
23. Favourite smell? Roses. Mushrooms cooking with garlic. Fred and Una's hair. Easter eggs. My moisturiser (which smells like easter eggs). Their beer soap smells delicious too.
24. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? Um. Una!
25. The first thing you notice about people you are attracted to? Voice.
26. Do you like who you stole this off? Yes.
27. Favourite drink? Coffee.
28. Favourite sport? Um. I don't think I have one. Not that I hate sport, I recognise it's right to exist alongside me. But over there a bit. And round the corner. I always think if I did like sport it would be listening to the cricket on the radio. I like the idea of that, like if I was a painter or something, it would be nice to have on in the background.
29. Eye colour? Brown. Though Fred says my eyes are black.
30. Hat size? I don't know. My head appears to be in reasonable proportion to my body.
31. Do you wear contacts? Nope. Glasses.
32. Favourite food? It's kind of an in the moment thing (sometimes, mustardy green lentil salad, sometimes pannacotta...) but you can never go wrong with crusty bread and good cheese and maybe some olives.
33. Scary movies or happy endings? Happy endings
34. If you could live anywhere in the world where would that be? In a really big sprawling terrace house or Californian Bungalow in North Fitzroy, but I'd have a little stone house in Greece too.
35. Summer or winter? Summer. Though I also love Autumn.
36. Hugs or kisses? From who?
37. Favourite dessert? Pannacotta.
38. Who is most likely to respond? I don't know
39. Least likely to respond? Most of the known universe.
40. What books are you currently reading? The Memory of Running
41. What's on your mouse pad? I have one of those lap top things where you swirl your finger around, no mouse, no pad.
42. What did you watch on TV last night? Old Buffy episodes
43. Favourite sounds? An orchestra tuning up. Una 'talking', Fred's laugh. The postie's motorbike outside our house. The sound of a good friend's voice on the otehr end of the phone.
44. Rolling Stones or Beatles? Actually to be honest neither, though I know more Beatles songs.
45. The furthest you have been from home? Dunkeld, Scotland.
46. What's your special talent? I stared at this a long time and then I thought, oh yeah. I write books. But Einstein said something along the lines of: 'I don't have any special talent, I am just intensely curious.' I'm inclined to agree.
47. Where were you born? Battery Point, Hobart.
48. Who sent this to you? I stole it from Janet.

Making the most of a day's rain

Well, we so needed it, a rainy day, and Frederique was so happy to be able to put her PINK raincoat on and her Bill the Builder (she can't be convinced otherwise) gumboots on and run in the rain.

The orchids have exploded this year - it's the first year we've seen flowers since 2003 - they seem to like the inner north and the dry.

I've been rewriting my short story and an exegesis for university, and then I'm finished for the year. An exegesis must be about the most ridiculous academic exercise I've ever had to do, contextualising my own work in terms of the reading we've done this semester. Such an artificial and unrevealing process, it really says nothing about the story or the writing process and creates a sense that ideas come from one or two concrete sources, that writing is a deliberate act of conveying meaning, of articulating ideas through a fictional construct, when the imagination is actually a lot more freeform and a lot less traceable than that.

On Monday when I hand my essay in I am going to see Ben Highmore talk and then I'll be attending a workshop with him about researching the everyday. He's going to be talking about food. The abstract says:

Because food is often a focus of both racist reaction and cosmopolitan desires I theorise why food has been such a contested and viscerally active agent in the forming of multicultural Britain. Using 'sense studies', psychoanalysis, theories of affect, and cultural history I open-up popular cultural representations on to the histories of migration and the psycho-social dynamics of alimentary culture.

It's the first time I've been able to make use of the opportunities made available to PhD students because these seminars usually happen on days when I need to look after the girls. Geekily, I'm really looking forward to it.

Another reason not to watch television

You love something,
they take it away.

Guiltless maternity

"The arrival of the child, on the other hand, leads the mother into the labyrinths of an experience that, without the child, she would only rarely encounter: love for an other. Not for herself, nor for an identical being, and still less for another person with whom ‘I’ fuse (love or sexual passion). But the slow, difficult apprenticeship in attentiveness, gentleness, forgetting oneself. The ability to succeed in this path without masochism and without annhilating one’s affective, intellectual and professional personality – such would be the stakes to be won through guiltless maternity. It then becomes a creation in the strongest sense of the term. For this moment, utopian?"

Julia Kristeva Women's Time

Make your own lollies!

Just found this intriquing recipe here (one degree of separation - Jackie French and I were both shortlisted for an Aurealis Award a few years ago, neither of us won it). Anyway, I thought I must bookmark that but fearing it would get lost in my ever expanding but extremely disorganised boomark folder, I thought, well, I may as well put it here. I haven't tried it out yet but it's on my list of things to do (along with horseriding and laser eye surgery). Looks like something you need to gobble pretty fast - love the storage directions...it doesn't say what to do if they start out looking odd, which pretty much describes all my forays into the mysterious world of homemade confectionary - sugar mice, toffee, coconut ice, caramel...

By the wya pic is of some kind of Lush bath product but it was the closest I could get.


Blueberry and Lime Fruit Jellies

You need:

1 cup apple juice
1 packet frozen blueberries
half a cup of lime juice
1 cup of sugar (or less – your choice)
2 tsp tartaric acid
half a cup gelatine, pectin or seaweed-based setting agent – gelatine is cheaper but the others taste better

Simmer everything except the gelatine, pectin or seaweed-based setting agent for half an hour.
Strain.
Now add a little of the juice to the gelatine or other setting mix and then mix it into the rest of the juice. Pour it onto a tray covered in baking paper and wait for it to set.
Now cut into little squares, or diamonds, or long jelly snakes – you can give them a pair of eyes with a bit of peanut if you like and use a knife to cut a pattern into the 'snakeskin'. Store between baking paper in a cool dry place for a day or two, but not too long – remember they don't have any preservatives in them. Throw them out if they start growing mould or look odd.
Otherwise, give them to your kids for a treat or, better still, get them into the kitchen making their own, because once they get used to a genuine fruit flavour in their lollies, they won't want to go back to artificial flavours.

Top news

Princess Mary is up the duff again (well, what else is she going to do? Get a job?). I'm sure you'll all be fascinated to know that we went to the same high school. She was in grade ten when I was in grade seven, but I don't remember her and I am sure the amnesia is mutual. Still, I know she's most likely an avid reader of Eglantine's Cake so I'd like to wish her well. You know, it occurs to me that Mary was probably a pretty daggy name at Taroona High School circa 1987. But it's worked out well for her, it's quite a good name for a Danish princess. So that's foresight for you.

The Age's headline tells us Duran Duran have split, but rest assured, if you read the article (and I know you will) you will be reassured that it's only that Andy Taylor became unworkable (if you look at the picture you kind of get a glimpse at what they mean). I wasn't an enormous Duran Duran fan (my sister's wall was plastered with posters of John Taylor from Smash Hits magazine) but I did have many an afternoon of happy angst, listening to Hungry like a Wolf over and over again.

On a far more sombre note, I feel like I should say something about the DVD circulating Melbourne's western suburban high schools but to do so would be to imply that I understand the psychology of such acts and I'm afraid that in this case my usually overactive imagination fails me (or it's a place I choose not to send it). It does make me scared of the whole school experience. I don't know if Princess Mary's memories are rosier than mine (perhaps by contractual obligation) but my high school experience is not something I would wish on my daughters. I know Martin feels the same about his. But what are the options? Even if we could afford private school, I think we're all kidding ourselves if we assume exclusivity is a guarantee of warm happy memories and golden afternoons of happy learning and lovely skipping happy kids who are only kind to each other. And is it insane to want Frederique and Una's whole life to be a long golden afternoon? But it is what I want for them, I can't help it. I don't want to send them to the school of hard knocks. I don't think you need to be hit by a car in order to see it makes sense to take care crossing the road. All I want for them is to feel safe at school. I don't expect it to be full of constant joy. But I do expect it to be a relatively protected environment.

And then there are girls like Alexandra Adornetto, 14 years old with a two book deal under her belt. So you can find another, happier way of being 14, it would seem. I can't wait to read her novels and I wish her the best of luck.

Sexing the text

It would seem I write like a boy, according to the gender genie, a neat little gimmicky programme based on a pay per view article which I am too cheap to pay for so I have no idea what it says, except apparently some words are boy words (around, what, more, are, as, who, below, is, these, the, a, at, it, many, said, above, to) and some words are girl words (with, if, not, where, be whe, your, her, we, should, she, and, me, myself, hers, was). I'm not sure what to make of this having nor read the article, though incidently (before being shown this by my clever Masters friend Nadia) I read Neil Gaimon's article, Books Have Sexes, where he describes that part of discovering the novel you're writing is finding out if it's a boy or a girl book (not for girls or boys, but just whether the book itself is more of a boy story or a girl story).
When I played with the gender genie, it was interesting to me that the prologue of Breathe is 'boy' writing (it's written from Trout's close perspective) and yet the scene where Undine uses her magic to make a stone girl with butterfly skin is 'girl' writing. Perhaps I'm doing something right! Glancing through the words, the male words seem very much about situating the reader, about imperative and fact, where as the female words seem more questioning, reflective. It's interesting too that 'she' and 'her' are chick words but 'he' and 'him' aren't boy words...is it an assumption that girls write more about people? 'It' is a boy word, do they write more about objects? 'Said' is a boy word too - do boys write more dialogue, or do they simply report dialogue in a more direct fashion (I love said. I am not a fan of shouted. In fact I loathe it. I don't mind a bit of whispering, hissing, replying action, but more often that not, I like said. Mostly because I like to imply the tone of the dialogue through the dialogue itself.)
To me, Breathe is Trout's story, it's a boy's story and Undine is Undine's story. So in that sense the gender genie is spot on (though I'd like to point out that I am and was always a woman whilst writing both pieces - so instead of gendering the author perhaps the program, like Gaimon's article, should be more concerned with gendering the text). Rise/Drift/Stay/Sandwiches (title still to be confirmed, but probably not Sandwiches) is a dual story, it belongs to a few different characters, including Jasper, Undine's spooky baby brother. It's interesting to me that Jasper as a small child in a single mother household with mostly female adults in his life, belongs to a predominantly female culture of language - this seems to have affected the voice that Jasper speaks with, even as an adult (ooooh...don't want to give too much away).
So even though the gender genie is to me really a kind of parlour game (sans parlour, unfortunately - I think a parlour would be quite nice, and don't parlours always have cucumber sandwiches?), it's still made me think about my writing in an interesting way. Thanks for another juicy link Nadia! (I know she pops in from time to time).