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Sunday, September 19, 2010

Me being a smart arse

I read the latest article by A L Kennedy in her series of monthly pieces in The Guardian.  My smart arse comment is below.  (I didn't know until I checked that Tennyson gave us "Nature, red in tooth an claw".  It's in his poem In Memoriam A H H)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson has a lot to answer for. In this instance it's his reference to "Nature, red in tooth and claw". That should scare the Bijesus out of any reclusive or patronised worker with imagination such as ALK.

I would encourage you to relax about those nocturnal noises. They are probably indications of possums caught (or catchable if one insists) in flagrante delicto. 

Nature's dangers are real but over-stated. I live in a country with more than 150,000 saltwater crocodiles, the largest of which can grow to 7 metres in length. Visiting a Queensland croc pen once, a croc keeper pointed out that more people in Australia are killed each year by vending machines than crocodiles. So, Ms K, unless there's a cigarette or a coke dispenser in your neck of the woods I think you can sleep safely in your idyllic-sounding bed and, more importantly for us readers, write.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Waiting for Guinness

Caught one of Spike's favourites, Waiting for Guinness, at Herman's Bar in (what I was surprised to see was) an almost deserted University of Sydney campus.  There wasn't a huge crowd, which means there was plenty of room for dancers to express themselves.  They did.

We took buses there and back.  Hassle free, on time (even the 00.26 back home, more or less) and quick.  Hip, hip, hooray for wheelchair accessible public transport.

The Norton Anthology of English Literature

I'm not quite sure why but I've taken to the idea of reading the entire two volume set of the Norton Anthology.  I've had the sixth edition for maybe thirty years (since my first year at Stirling University).  I've dipped into it from time to time, as required by course reading lists.

So I started today with the introductions and the Venerable Bede (of whose work I've had to read before).  The Norton begins with Bede's account of the Caedmon Hymn.  There is something fascinating about the idea of me, sitting in our modern apartment block in Sydney, reading the account written more than 1,300 years ago of the only surviving work one of only 12 Anglo-Saxon poet's identifiable by name, Caedmon.  It's the earliest work of Anglo-Saxon poetry known to us.

Part of what fascinates me is this.  There is an historical figure, Bede.  He was probably 63 when he died.  He may have been Christened Bede because his wealthy, possibly aristocratic, family intended from Bede's birth that he should enter the service of The Church.  This is a real man, speaking to us down through history, of another real man, Caedmon, who started life as a herdsman and ended it as the English language's earliest recorded poet.  Thirteen hundred years ago.
Nu scylun hergan    hefaenricaes uard,
metudæs maecti    end his modgidanc,
uerc uuldurfadur,    sue he uundra gihuaes,
eci dryctin,    or astelidæ.

He aerist scop    aelda barnum
heben til hrofe,    haleg scepen.
Tha middungeard    moncynnæs uard,
eci dryctin,    æfter tiadæ
 firum foldu,    frea allmectig.
Now we must praise     the Protector of the heavenly kingdom,
the might of the Measurer     and His mind's purpose,
the work of the Father of Glory,     as He for each of the wonders,
the eternal Lord,      established a beginning.

He shaped first     for the sons of the Earth
heaven as a roof,     the Holy Maker;
then the Middle-World,     mankind's Guardian
the eternal Lord,      made afterwards,  
solid ground for men,     the almighty Lord.
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Friday, September 17, 2010

We'll see

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to the CAL Scribe Fiction Prize 2011. Your entry is complete: we have processed your $40 entry fee and look forward to reading your work.

Another email will be sent to all entrants when the longlist is announced, which will probably be in December. Please let us know if your contact details change in the meantime.

Best wishes,

Ian See
Editor
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Thursday, September 16, 2010

Breakfast with Lauri and Sharon

It's the day of my Council's monthly meeting so I enjoyed breakfast (as usual) with Lauri Grovenor (Council member) and Sharon Smith (wicked witch and maker of potions ... the most recent of which, to aid my skin allegedly, looks like a worm farm sitting on our kitchen shelf ... and taste's a bit worm-farm too).  Spike wasn't free to join us this month.

Our meeting took place at the offices of Accessible Arts NSW.  We found a decent (dare one say, trendy?) cafe at the Sydney Dance Company.  I failed to notice when ordering that my veggie breakfast was bereft of eggs.  So much for brain the size of a planet but it was a pleasant enough meal.  Shazza is feeling delicate and re-introducing solids to her diet after an unfortunate few days.  Her choice of savoury muffin with spinach and cheese was, how can I put it on the basis of tasting one mouthful ... interesting.  Lauri, wise woman that she is, choose bacon and eggs.  Not much but excellence there.
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Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Kaboom

I submitted my manuscript today to the CAL Scribe Fiction Prize 2010.  The first prize if $15,000 (half of which is an advance on the book deal the publisher signs with the winner).  I spent last night and all of today revising the text yet again.  I've no idea if it's a prize-winning novel.  That's for the judges to decide.  I don't even know if it's a publishable story.  But I read it again as I fine-tuned the draft.  It stands up.  It's a decent first work of 91,300 words.  Here's how it now starts:

To tell you the truth I have no idea where a man in my condition should start.  But I know this much.  It’s no surprise to wake up here; no surprise at all.  In fact it’s something of a consolation.  A long time ago I was warned that I would end up here, in a place like this.  I was told that I would come to no good, which is exactly what I’ve come to.  Mind you, there’s a perverse pleasure in having confirmed through experience something my elders and betters foretold would be mine if I did not mend my wasteful ways.  I hate to disappoint people.  So here I am, as predicted.
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Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Buttock report


Progress.  There's no hole in my right buttock any more.  This evening's visit by a nurse is (I hope) the last one.  I tried to sit on my cushion afterwards but the sweating returned almost immediately.  Progress then but not as fast as I'd like.  I try to look at it this way: no hole is better than the alternative.
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Tuesday, September 07, 2010

It will end in tears ...

... and in less than eighteen months.  It would be hard to imagine a less inspiring or trustworthy politician than Wayne Swan, the antithesis of everything the Left is supposed to be about.  Seldom has so much principle been trashed for such little gain.

They 'triangulate' as if it were clever and seem incapable of learning the lessons of the British Labour Party's decline.  It's ghastly to witness; entirely without hope or promise.  What is the point of being in power if you have no idea of why you want to use it?

Monday, September 06, 2010

A statement of the obvious

Floods in Victoria.  The "worst", they say in fifteen years.




















(Picture: ABC News)

Saturday, September 04, 2010

Late Night Lounge at the Sydney Opera House

After the cinema we took a train down to Circular Quay for a late night cabaret at the Studio of the Opera House.  I had been invited by the management to attend the ‘opening’ of its newly installed lift, which is part of a $38 Million refurbishment.  (That’s small beer, surprisingly.  The Opera House wants $800 Million to fully re-fit the building.  If they get the money the Opera House will be shut for two years while its insides are ripped out, altered then replaced … a bit like the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh.)  But the first phase is more or less finished and I was invited to be there last night.

I’m not quite sure how one opens a lift but we were there, using it to descend to the club-like ground floor where we enjoyed a decent enough mix of acts: a small jazz band, ‘street wise’ Aboriginal lads in a hip-hoppy dance group, purportedly dangerous, politically incorrect American stand up (do midgets freeze to death more quickly than ordinary folk?  They certainly thaw out quicker … you can fit them in a microwave), comic singer, Latin combo and one piece of genuine brilliance … Miss Lark: beehive, large breasts pushing out against her bodice, played a tune on the saw then did sexually ambiguous and provocative bird impressions.  Truly nutty.  Oh yes, and a dancer channelling Thunderbirds puppetry to a mournful aria on tape.  That was quite affecting to be honest.
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Inception

Was he dreaming at the end?  Was it reality?  Dom Cobb didn't look at the spinning top at the end, so if he doesn't care which state he's in why should I?  Cracking movie.  Intelligent.  Possessed of ideas.  Tense.  Exciting.  Brilliant editing. I like it a great deal.

Friday, September 03, 2010

We're definitely watching too much telly on the Internet

With our stir fried vegetables and tofu (scrumptious) on our laps we watched another "Supersizers Go ..." courtesy of whoever uploads the ten-minute sections to Youtube.  This time Giles Coren and Sue Perkins subjected themselves to a week of 1970's eating.  I grew up eating that food.  The show was hilarious in parts: Smash re-hydrated potato mix and boil in the bag fish ... no joke in my teenage home.

Thursday, September 02, 2010

McArthur's Park? They DO NOT make them like this any more

I can't quite recall why I ended up here.  Ah ... yes I do.  Laurence (a Facebook friend from Sydney University) posted some line from T H White's Once And Future King.  I posted a link to Richard Harris singing the words at the end of Camelot, the 1968 movie version of the stage musical in which he also played King Arthur.  That started one of those hypertext link journeys through Youtube.

I came across Richard Harris singing Jimmy Webb's song (except Richard Harris insisted on the possessive form).  It was 1968.  He had an enormous hit with a single more than twice the length of standard hit singles.  I was eleven years old.  I loved it although I had no idea what it was about.  I wasn't alone in that regard.  I remember discussion about drug-related symbolism; maybe it was an acid trip.  That reading seems so quaint now.  Lost love people.  How could anyone have thought otherwise?



Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed,
In love's hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

I recall the yellow cotton dress
foaming like a wave
on the ground around your knees
The birds, like tender babies in your hands
and the old men playing checkers by the trees

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

(BRIDGE)
There will be another song for me
For I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warm
and never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
after all the loves of my life
You'll still be the one.

I will take my life into my hands
and I will use it
I will win the worship in their eyes
and I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
and my passion flow like rivers through the sky.
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
I'll be thinking of you
and wondering why.

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!
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Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Completely Bonkers


I watched a bit of Andrew Marr’s interview with Tony Blair (broadcast on the BBC).  And there he was, flashing that Tony Blair smile, looking like a decent bloke who means well but saying this:

“How can you not feel sorry about people who have died?  You would be inhuman if you didn’t think that.  But when I’m asked whether I regret the decision … you know, I have to say I take responsibility for it but I can’t regret the decision.   And that’s because if I were to say that to you, I mean, I wouldn’t be saying what I think.  And .. you see … the thing about this issue is it’s still going on today.  There is not a single part of the Middle East that is not touched by exactly the same problem we have in Iraq and in Afghanistan today.  And my view is that the West has got to understand that this is a generation-long struggle.  And we’ve got to be in it!”

As he talks, smiling Tony disappears.  His features distort, a glint of something appears in his eyes.  As the tempo of his speech quickens and he pulls himself upright in his chair while his finger starts stabbing the air you think … fuck me, Tony Blair really was abducted by aliens and his body really has been taken over by whatever the fuck it was took possession of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
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