Category Archives: Books

Tales of a Dog Walker

You never know who you are going to meet when you’re out dog walking. I once read, for example, that actor Bill Nighy is a dog lover. He was quoted in the Age as saying: “I’m one of those people who stop in the street if they see an attractive dog.” I used to be like that before I got my own dog.

Since Bertie came along, dog walking is part of my daily routine. I haven’t met any actors let alone Bill Nighy (shame) but I have had fun people-watching in the various parks and dog-walking areas.

Dendy Park is a large off-leash area and seems to attract gaggles of gossiping dog owners who stand around while their dogs amuse themselves. There’s a lot of talking and very little walking. I like to stride out and get a bit of exercise (especially as I’m not a gym-going, pilates-practising, yoga-loving, marathon-running woman) but I find that I get pulled into conversations and can’t extricate myself.

Walking up to my local dog oval is the easiest and most convenient option, but one I only choose in extremis. There’s quite an eclectic mix here: still a few stand-arounders – either chatting, on the phone or occasionally throwing a ball for Fido; then there’s the old dears with little dogs in coats; a couple of prancing poodles with bows in their hair; a few boisterous Labradors and a few men in suits in deep communion with their phones – perhaps checking the share price – while the rest of us do laps. It never ceases to amaze me that this heavily peed and pooed upon patch of earth doubles up as a football pitch in winter and a cricket pitch in summer; an unholy alliance, I say. You see, this park is full of dog poo. And that’s because people are too busy chatting, texting or phoning to keep an eye on their dogs. That’s why I hardly ever go there. I did once fantasize about putting up a sign: Life is karmic: what goes around comes around. Shit happens to those who don’t pick up after their dog. But I thought better of it.

Just one suburb away is Elsternwick Park, a large open area with a couple of lakes, a children’s playground and, on Sundays, a strange phenomenon in the form of Pug Wood. This is where a group of pug lovers and owners plant a flag and gather round to talk all things pug. Unfortunately, I was a bit too far away to get a good picture, but you get the idea.

A Pug Wood Gathering

A Pug Wood Gathering


Elsternwick Park attracts more arty types than my own suburb which is full of dyed blondes with 4-wheel drives. Here the men wear bandanas and John Lennon glasses, a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. The park has a distinctly grungy feel with a higher quota of rescue dogs.

My favourite place to walk Bertie is along the beach. Just a five-minute drive from my house is Melbourne’s iconic (and much photographed) beach hut beach. The world feels much less cluttered down by the sea; there’s plenty of sky and space, but it’s also a great place to meet people from all walks of life, whether it’s tourists snapping away at the huts, a bride and groom having their wedding photos taken, joggers decked out in matching lycra and the latest Nike running shoes or ordinary folk like me in jeans, fleecy jacket and much-worn lesser-brand runners.

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The social networking opportunities are second to none. Most mornings I meet Harley Davidson Man (HDM)walking his dogs sparky and chispa (like HDM I speak Spanish and so know that his dogs share the same name; chispa meaning spark in Spanish), a local builder who is busy buying and selling properties, a fellow writer whose first book has been published to great critical acclaim, fellow ex-pats, ladies who lunch and ladies who work or strive to change the world, retirees and lots of Asian tourists taking selfies and group shots in front of the beach huts.

I’ve found a wonderful new hairdresser through my beach friends, been invited to Bridge lessons, drinks, lunch and dinner, swapped recipes, publishing contacts and dog trainers. In fact, tomorrow Bertie and I are having our first one on one dog training session. I’m keen to stop him jumping up when people come to the door but, more than that, I want to get him to the required standard of obedience for us to take part in Story Dogs. Suzanne, the writer, helps to run the local Story Dogs scheme and told me about it. Story Dogs started in the USA and is a volunteer-run literacy program that helps children to read by teaming them up with a volunteer and a dog. The idea is that the children feel relaxed reading to a dog in a non-judgemental environment. A scheme that involves dogs and literacy gets my vote. It may be a little while before Bertie and I become accredited but we’re working towards it. All sorts of new worlds open for me at the beach.
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The lure of the past

When the going gets tough there’s no better distraction than escaping back into a rose-tinted version of the past via a soak in my aforementioned claw-foot bath.

I’ve had some tricky work on of late; the kind of work that turns into an all consuming worry, so much so that it’s almost impossible to do your best work. A bit like the housemistress at boarding school who shone a torch in my eyes to check I was asleep, the manager of one particular job made me feel a bit like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights.

And so I’ve been climbing into a Time Machine most evenings and reading favourite books from my childhood (what could be more soothing?) such as Sheila Burnford’s The Incredible Journey, Kipling’s Just So Stories and The Adventure of Hadrian Hedgehog by Candida Lycett Green (John Betjeman’s daughter):

And that, said Lady Hedge-Hog
Pointing at a shrivelled shrew,
Is the Minister of birds-nests
Who likes a drink or two.
And over there, behind the flowers,
Lord Tortoise of that Ilk
Is making wild advances
At a shrimp in watered silk.

Don’t you just love it?

Then I went back to Vienna as there was more to explore. This time I found sachets of sugar brought back from a trip to Hungary along with some pretty stamps and a map of Lake Balaton, a flyer from Cafe Schwarzenberg in central Vienna where a friend and I once forgot to pay for our hot chocolates and never went back to correct the error (tut, tut), tickets from the opera (it seems I upgraded from a Stehplatz (standing place) to a 50 Schilling seat with a restricted view on one occasion, a beer mat from a restaurant in the shape of a fish, and a brochure of the beautiful Gmundner Keramik range (http://www.gmundner.at/en) – I gave my mother a jug in their Streublumen pattern back in 1982. Only last year I found two matching pieces in the trash and treasure market in Bentleigh – a napkin holder and a candle holder. How small the world can seem.

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Then there were more letters – from a boy who had met me in a plane on the way to a French exchange in Paris and wrote to me a year later because he was bored, from Jerry with whom I had my first kiss. He was mad about me and maddening with it. Everything in his world was either goofy or neat and he would score things out of ten on a goof-o-meter or a neat-o-meter. Needless to say, a P.S. on his letter dated 18th August 1978 ran: You’re very neat – 10 out of 10 on the neat-o-meter.

I think I would have been very happy as a museum curator poring over historical documents, objects, letters and eye-witness accounts of lives and events. I think I may have found it more fulfilling than working as a freelance writer where every assignment involves writing to order and strict word counts and deadlines; it’s all so very straight-jacketing and left brain.

And it’s a shame I’m not famous because I have enough letters, diaries and journals to write a memoir or series of memoirs. I had such fun last reading snippets of travel diaries: “For lunch we had very French prawns as their uncle had caught them and they were boiled alive.” (I was 14); “V.brash people on the plane – as soon as we were in the air they got out their booze and got rather pissed and smoked in the non-smoking areas. One man came and plonked himself on Dad’s knee.” (This on a trip to Southern Spain with Mum and Dad in the 1979/80). On that same trip the oven blew up singeing the front of Mum’s hair and we were offered the ubiquitous flan, as in crème caramel, for dessert every night!

Then in 1995 on an organised tour of “Middle Eastern Highlights” I got a bit stuck with Pete from Sarfend (Southend) – “Pete danced just like a hippy, holding onto his belt and diving forwards or playing an imaginary guitar.” I also mention a character called David, a teacher from a smart boys’ school who wore his jacket and tie teamed with a woolly hat even when we went on rugged walks. But most annoying of all was Bob who, swot-like, had read up on all the Dead Sea Scroll literature, barged into every conversation, demanded ketchup on his eggs every morning and insisted on ordering beef at every restaurant as he couldn’t eat it back home due to the BSE scandal.

But the thing I enjoyed most in my home-made museum was my autograph book from the 70s. We all used to write poems and witty verses in each other’s books. I suppose that today we would be uploading pictures to Facebook and madly liking each other’s posts. How much more treasured is a little book with orange-coloured pages filled with signatures of my erstwhile classmates and people around me than a here-today-gone-tomorrow online post? Most of the rhymes concerned lavatories, lovers and garden gates (love may be blind but the neighbours ain’t), boys, the physics teacher or worse, but they were all harmless and affectionate fun. One of my favourites is from an elderly man who lived in our village – Norman Spence.

Autograph book

A Stay of Execution

I was due to go back to my newly renovated house in Melbourne today and had been gearing up for a while, bracing myself even for the rigours of city life. But when I learnt that the painting was way behind schedule and that one of the shower screen panels and a pedestal basin had to be replaced, I was only too happy to postpone my return for another week. Well, what could I do? How would I manage the increasingly bumptious Bertie (all the beach romps and sea air are making him super fit and harder to tire out) around paint pots and wet surfaces? I was envisaging white paint on his paws and nose and chocolate brown hairs trapped in newly painted walls.

So, I’m still here with the pounding of the ocean my bedtime lullaby, the chatter of birds my morning wake-up call and starlit skies unblemished by light pollution my night-time vista. And this week’s full moon sunsets have coloured the sky magnificent shades of purple and pink. Gaining an extra week here feels like precious time I have stolen back. You see, I’ve rather fallen in love with life on the Surf Coast and haven’t really missed city life at all. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Life is gentler here, quieter, slower and calmer and it feels GOOD. I’m not missing the traffic, the cacophony of caffeinated chatter and clattering of coffee cups in Melbourne’s many ‘go-to’ cafes, nor the one-upmanship and competitiveness about who is busiest or the most tired, the running around from thing to thing, the tail chasing and endless pursuit of the latest thing in retail, culture, sport, fashion or food. It’s easy to get trapped in wanting to keep up with it all and follow the crowd.

Here my phone rings less, I write fewer lists, am less wakeful in the night and am more focused in my work. Some of the concrete-like tension in my neck and shoulders has softened, and I’ve become fitter, even running (well more or less) up the steep beach steps and doing mini jogs with Bertie. I’ve had moments of feeling like I did when I was a child; more carefree and in the moment without one eye constantly on tomorrow.
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There’s a more laidback vibe here what with all the surfer dudes, coastal dwellers and retirees, and things are less of a drama without the intensity of urban living. The other day, for example, I lost my internet connection and didn’t know why. I was working on a big project with a tight deadline but took it all in my stride. I drove up the hill to see if it was a signal problem (it wasn’t), so then rang my ISP provider and finally Telstra – whose 4G WI-FI device I am using here – only to find out I had run out of credit! It turns out that video calls on Skype gobble up lots of data. Lesson learned. Anyway, I lost about half a day but remained unperturbed, instead of going into a spin and wasting time and energy.

Yes, I know, I’m being escapist and can’t run away from my other life forever. If I had moved here permanently, I would no doubt have regretted it by now, and felt I was missing out on the many advantages of city living. I’m talking as someone who has had a brief taste of country/coastal life and enjoyed it knowing my other life and everyone in it would still be there when I got back.

But I think it goes deeper. I grew up in small rural villages in England or on the edge of small towns. Rolling green fields, country walks, dogs, tuning in to the seasons, peace and quiet were all part of my landscape – all low key stuff rather than the high-jinx and high-life. I think perhaps I’m a sociable loner who needs regular periods of solitude, preferably in nature, in between interacting with others.

That’s why I so enjoyed reading Ailsa Piper’s account of walking the Camino (Sinning Across Spain) and her quest for solitude. Many fellow walkers wanted to be her friend and to barge in on her space. Ailsa was one of the writers at the recent Lighthouse Literary Fest in Fairhaven. She talked about the city as having no gaps and compared it to music in elevators; one of the many ways we block out silence.

I’m going to luxuriate in the space, silence and serenity of my coastal surrounds this weekend. But, and here’s the social loner in action, there are a few excitements planned as well. A trip to Torquay tonight to see the local acting troupe in Twelve Angry Jurors, dinner with a writer and wine-maker tomorrow night and an opportunity to get up close and personal with a bee hive on Sunday.

Embracing Community and the Kindness of Strangers

As I approach the final furlong of my Sea Change in Anglesea (for new readers, my Melbourne house is having a bit of a makeover), I’m really getting into life down here. As a not-for-profit grant-writer, I often talk about promoting or creating community connectedness and a sense of belonging. Well, recently, I’ve had the good fortune to experience both.

Last Friday, I joined in a monthly ‘Big Sing’ in a local township – well more like a hamlet actually. I was welcomed with open arms and felt instantly at ease to join in the warm-ups which, a bit like at my Melbourne-based choir, require a total absence of inhibition – blowing out your lips like a horse, wailing like a siren and generally waving your arms around. We then sang in canon using the words of a GPS navigator to the tune of London Bridge. After a few gospel numbers, a Maori song to mark Anzac Day and an Aboriginal Stolen Generations song, it was time for supper. With candles dotted around and gum tree leaves decking the walls of the community hall, we tucked into home-made soup and crusty bread. This was definitely choir Country Style.

Then on the weekend I went to the Lighthouse Literary Fest at nearby Fairhaven. I had booked back in February (just as well as it sold out fast) and knew I would need to find childcare for Bertie; I couldn’t leave him in solitary confinement in the laundry for two days running. Nearer the time, something or somebody would turn up I told myself. But the dog-sitter I left him with on a return trip to Melbourne was booked up, my neighbours were going off to Hawaii and I couldn’t really ask 89-year-old Dolly over the road. As it was, Bertie had already barked imperiously at her when she put her bins out.

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Early on in the piece, a lovely woman, Pauline, came up and admired Bertie when we were sitting outside a cafe. We got chatting and she told me her daughter had a cocker spaniel called Theodore aka Teddy. So when I bumped into her again several weeks later (she runs one of the thrift shops here), I mentioned that I was looking for a dog-sitter over Anzac weekend and wondered if one of her children might be able to help. It turned out that her kids were busy but, sure enough, Pauline and her husband Andrew volunteered. What’s more they refused to take any payment.

What I find so wonderful and generous about their gesture is that they hardly know me and yet they were happy to spend their weekend minding Bertie. Needless to say they fell in love with my boy who had – excuse the terrible pun – a ball. They took him to church, out to lunch, lavished him with cuddles, treated him to few choice snacks and several walk, and on the Saturday, invited Teddy down from Melbourne to keep him company.

All the while I was free to immerse myself in two days of cultural nourishment and stimulation. Much as I have loved all the beach and river walks, prolific bird life, friendly cafes and charity shop fossicking, I was ready for a bit of bookiness and bookish company. From the venue – a newly built Surf Life Saving Club with big ship-like timber beams overlooking the ocean to yummy paper bag lunches and a program of talks and panel discussions with actors, ABC radio presenters, journalists, film directors, emerging and established authors –it was a treat from beginning to end.

One of the discussions look at health and what makes us sick. Much of the discussion revolved around the corporatisation of food and the inability of those who are socially and economically disadvantaged to make healthy choices. We learnt about fast food producers and doctors being in cahoots on corporate boards and that wherever Coca Cola features on the world map, there’s obesity.

Other sessions explored memoir writing: how do we write about friends and people we know – do we disguise them (change their hair colour, sex and geography), do we write about them as they are and get their permission, or do we ultimately betray them? And how do we tackle writing about parents, whether dead or alive? Then there’s the dilemma of self-exposure for those that have written memoirs. Are we introverts (shrinking violets), extroverts (show-offs) or what American writer Susan Cain refers to as ambiverts, a mix of both?!

At the end of each session a musical double act, Nice Work, performed a song with a ukulele accompaniment. A bit like a sorbet cleanses the palate during a rich meal, the two young men (pretty much boys really) provided the ideal inter session refreshment.

The festival ended with a fascinating and humorous presentation by screenwriter David Roach in conversation with Graeme Simsion (of The Rosie Project fame). A chance meeting with a Master of Wine on a plane was the genesis of the documentary, Red Obsession, about China’s voracious appetite for wines produced by the great chateaux in Bordeaux. We saw clips of the film, one of my favourites featuring the owner of one of the big name chateaux (I forget which) in Bordeaux. He said it all came down to love (or lurv in his French accent) – loving the wine, loving drinking it and loving the cultivation of it grape by grape. He should know; he’d drunk something like a couple of bottles with lunch day.

Coming back to the kindness of strangers, I gave Pauline and Andrew a bottle of local Shiraz as a thank-you for looking after Bertie. Not quite in the same league as the top notch Bordeaux wines the Chinese are buying for up to $250,000 a bottle, but a token of appreciation nevertheless. I’m going to miss my new coastal community.

Nourishing the inner self

I was away last week and, for the first time in probably ten years, didn’t check my emails or even sit at a computer for seven WHOLE days! And did it matter? Not one little bit. There were nearly 200 emails in my in-box when I got home, but only about 20 of them needed a reply. The others were all newsletters, special offers and circulars. So the first thing I did on my return was to unsubscribe from all the email clutter than I never get around to reading.

Before Out of Office Autoreply was invented...

Before Out of Office Autoreply was invented…

How often do we give ourselves the space and peace to switch off both mind and body? Not often. There’s always something or someone making demands on our time and attention. I was incredibly fortunate to have time out with my friends Sue and Bruce in the Mid North Coast area of NSW. They live up a bumpy track just outside Grassy Heads surrounded by the cacophony of nature – cicadas (in particular the bladder cicada, so called because of its large and hollow abdomen which acts as an echo chamber for its call), tree and other frogs, birds, wind rustling in the tree tops and occasional clashes and flashes of thunder and lightning.
Here is a short clip of how a bladder cicada sounds:

I savoured the time and spaciousness of having nothing on the to-do list – no goals, no must-sees or must-dos. And not having to rush around to fit everything in. Early to bed at night and up early each morning, I enjoyed beautiful food with veggies from the garden – kale, silver beet, rocket, lettuce, squash and zucchini – and felt nourished from the inside out. As well as reading, I did Laughter Yoga in the ocean with Sue, a bit of Chinese tapping therapy, a few walks, a bit of yoga and had a massage and Reiki treatment. I met new friends over cups of tea or something stronger, and spent a lovely afternoon in Port Macquarie where I considered becoming a supporter of the wonderful Koala Hospital.

Regular readers might remember I alluded in a previous post to Botox being used to mitigate jaw clenching (bruxism). Well, before I went away I followed up on a lead and exchanged emails with an “Aesthetic Business Coach and Cosmetic Injector.” He offered me a free treatment in exchange for writing an article, but somehow it felt like a slippery and potentially costly slope. I knew that it wouldn’t stop at my jaw; he would recommend other areas of my face in need of rejuvenation or his specially formulated skin care range.

Then flying back from Coffs Harbour I noticed an advert in the in-flight magazine for a plastic surgeon, who was quoted as saying: “I am a big believer in really listening to my patients to determine what will make them happy.” Really?! Can nips, tucks, lifts, prolongers and enhancers make us happy? What about the woman or man who has a sculpted face, dyed hair, plumped up lips, gym-toned body and whitened teeth but is professionally or personally unfulfilled? The ad listed an intriguing menu including all sorts of lifts – from breast to brows and the mind-boggling Brazilian Butt Lift.

One of the books I read while I was away was Daniel Klein’s Travels with Epicurus. In his 70s and faced with spending vast amounts of time and money on dental implants, Klein instead decides to spend a year on the Greek Island of Hydra. Armed with the works of some of his favourite philosophers, he muses on how to live an authentic and fulfilled old age. Distinguishing himself from some of his contemporaries, the ‘forever young crowd’, who are doing everything medically, physically and cosmetically possible to halt the inevitable pull of time and gravity, Klein writes amusingly of the pleasures of old age and quotes Epicurus: “It is not the young man who should be considered fortunate, but the old man who has lived well. The young man in his prime wanders much by chance, vacillating in his beliefs, while the old man is docked in the harbour, having safeguarded his true happiness.”

For me, part of living well is nourishing our inner – rather than our outer – selves, whether it’s through nature, exercise, friendships, good diet, holidays, reading, meditating, doing yoga or planting out veggies. You could say that inner peace and contentedness reach the parts that Botox never will.

A few of my favourite things… and people

There’s nothing like shifting up a decade to make you reflect on the past and think ahead to the future. Although getting older has its downsides, in other ways life gets easier: most of us wise up a bit, are less preoccupied with how we come across and whether people like us. We’re not so worried about how many exams we’ve passed and how high up the career ladder we’ve climbed. We know what we stand for, what we value most in life and whom we want to spend time with.

I made a fuss of my recent big birthday and celebrated being alive, well and still on planet earth. But most of all, I celebrated family and friends, from ‘old’ friends in the UK to ‘new’ friends here in Australia. They are all part of who I am and who I have become, and I am so grateful for all the ways in which they have enriched my life.

I received some wonderful birthday gifts, messages and cards with a few key themes emerging: tea, tea drinking and Britishness (Keep Calm and Have a Cuppa); jewellery, beautiful pottery, glass and ceramics; books, travelling and writing (a kindle, an oversize visual feast Lonely Planet book and a plaque of Charlotte Bronte, a great talisman (or should I say taliswoman?) to inspire my writing), and all things dog related (from a cocker spaniel mug to a book on dog behaviour).

A very special friend from the UK, Monica, who I have known since we were both 14 – and I am singling her out because she is dealing with extremely confronting challenges in her family life – found time to send me a parcel containing a few of my favourite things. Bit by bit I unwrapped a packet of Earl Grey Darjeeling containing ’15 biodegradable tea temples’ from a company with a dachshund logo called teapigs, some Earl Grey lip balm (organic and vegan), a long striped scarf in vibrant colours, some Tuscan blood orange body balm (free of nasties and animal testing), a designer linen towel, some wild (English) rose shower cream, a gorgeous enamel necklace, photos from our younger days (yikes, what was I doing with permed hair?) and a card full of special messages and in-jokes featuring a chocolate Lab listening to his iPod. I was so touched and yet so sad she was not with me that I couldn’t help but shed a tear.

A heartfelt present from a very special friend

A heartfelt present from a very special friend

And then I had a little soiree courtesy of my brother and his wife who generously opened up their house so I could mark my milestone with a few friends. And what an evening it was! It was not only a celebration of my half century but also the culmination of nearly ten years in Australia. The whole evening was characterised by the warmest and most affectionate of vibes with my mother, sister and niece tuned in via Skype from their kitchen in London. And I needn’t have worried what my brother would say about his little sister; he made a wonderful speech full of childhood memories such as smashing our mother’s best tea set, rolling down bracken-covered hills and driving up icy hills in Derbyshire. He went on to acknowledge my academic and professional successes at the same time lamenting my disasters with men and dating. Thank God for Bertie dog, he concluded.

I am most amused by my brother's speech

I am most amused by my brother’s speech

And then, as a complete surprise, my friend Rosi, whom I met in choir, bravely took centre stage (well, I could hardly hog it ALL evening) and sang to me her specially written version of These Are a Few of My Favourite Things. Cleverly, with all the verses rhyming, she wove in references to my being a striving self-helper and writer with a stiff neck habit, a fan of the Feldenkrais method and Ayurvedic practice, a not-for-profit grant-writer, a Bayside-dwelling, literature and dog-loving Brit with a fatal attraction for the wrong kind of men. It was the most affectionate warts ‘n’ all tribute one would wish for.

Never have I felt so loved and appreciated. For once I was not the singleton at the wedding, the wallflower at the dance, the outsider at the new school or the new kid in town. It was my party and I could float around like a Queen if I felt like it (my friend Tim from Hepburn Springs actually alluded to me and Her Maj in the same sentence, although I doubt Liz would wear fake flowers from Sportsgirl in her hair…). Surrounded by loving friends and family, I realised like never before that it really was OK to be me – imperfections, hang ups, trials, tribulations, triumphs, the whole shebang – and still be loved and lovable. And as for the men, well I’ve still got up to 50 years to change the pattern (we are, of course, living longer and longer). Meanwhile, as American singer and song writer Carrie Underwood is reputed to have said: “The more boys I meet, the more I love my dog.” Thank God, indeed, for beautiful Bertie. Ladies and Gentlemen please raise a toast to my devoted hound.

Mad About the Boy

Many of us – men and women alike – enjoyed the humour and frivolity of Bridget Jones Diary when it came out in 1996. So I was disappointed to read a thumbs-down review of Fielding’s follow-up title, Mad About the Boy. Especially as we’ve waited 14 years for it! UK Telegraph reviewer Sarah Crompton reports that she didn’t laugh until she reached page 34 and had this to say about the book: “Reading the first two thirds of Mad About the Boy is like listening to someone who once had perfect pitch, but now can’t sing a note. It lies as flat on the page as its heroine’s overcooked spaghetti. Every line feels full of effort.”

Like Sarah Crompton, I regarded the love-seeking BJ as a soul sister and adopted – more by osmosis than by design – some of her vocabulary. In fact, I had forgotten that we have Fielding to thank for ‘smug marrieds’ and ‘singletons’. She did all of us single women such a favour by finding a replacement word for spinster with its dreaded on-the-shelf connotations.

But my relationship with Bridget goes even deeper. Two of my friends actually call me Bridget. That’s because there’s something about me that reminds them of BJ. Although I consider myself far more savvy and self-aware than BJ and don’t have to worry about counting calories, I’m British-born, middle class, know men who wear jumpers with cringeworthy motifs and did once use a pair of old tights instead of a muslin bag to infuse herbs in a stew. Who could forget Bridget’s blue string soup? And then, the big knickers; well yes, I do have some in my possession, but I don’t actually wear them. Well, not anymore…

So what a shame that Fielding appears to have lost the essence and voice of the original Bridget. According to Crompton some passages in the book waiver between sub-Mills and Boon style and a frolicsome Fifty Shades of Grey sort of voice. That’s enough to tell me that the now 51-year-old Bridget and I have gone our separate ways. Mark Darcy, her dream husband, has died five years before the book starts and Bridget is now a Born Again Virgin obsessing about her weight, appearance and new toy boy Roxster – all this in between managing nits and the school run (she’s also the mother of two small children).

I may share a similar vintage to Bridget but that’s where the comparison ends. I’m a smug singleton (we can be smug too) and mother of one very adorable canine child, Bertie. What’s more I’m absolutely mad about the boy. And I’ve already got him into reading. He loves a good page-turner.

Puppy dog reading My First Puppy

Puppy dog reading My First Puppy

Singing Away the Blues

A couple of weeks ago a literary agent based in the States expressed interest in my book, Slowing Down in the Fast Lane: from Adventure to Zen and Everything in Between, and asked me to send the full manuscript. She seemed to love the concept and I had high hopes that she might want to represent me. On Monday morning, however, my hopes were dashed. Ouch! She emailed to let me know that she didn’t feel that the A-Z format worked “for the necessary emotional journey a reader must take with the author in a work of memoir.” A publisher in Queensland who loved my writing and humour said pretty much the same thing. It wasn’t so much the rejection that left me a bit flat but the thought, that after so much writing, re-writing, perfecting and polishing, I might have to embark on a total re-write.

But, of course, attempting to write a book and get it published is rarely a straightforward process. And it requires a great deal of patience and perseverance. On Monday I was lacking in both and ended up humming that Boomtown Rats song I don’t like Mondays ! That’s the thing about being self-employed, there’s no one to whinge to; you have to jolly yourself along. I’m mostly very good at motivating myself but nothing seemed to be flowing at the start of the week. It didn’t help that work was a bit thin on the ground in typical feast and famine freelance fashion.

Thankfully, however, Monday night is choir night. I decided to leave my hangdog day (and my beloved puppy dog) at home and throw myself into the singing. Our usual repertoire ranges from African harmonies, negro spiritual and chain gang songs to Russian ballads, Celtic folk tunes and sea shanties with a bit of contemporary stuff thrown in. But before we start signing, we loosen up with a workout for mind, body, voice and spirit which involves a series of meditative, breathing and vocal exercises followed by a bit of stretching and dancing around. How good it was this week to do the tongue sticking out routine – blahhhhhh, bluuuhhhh– and let go of the day’s frustration.

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At the end of the evening our Choir Director Richard came up to me and – quite unprompted – said: “Hello Charlotte! Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Was he a mind reader? Did he know that I had spent the day battling book and impending big birthday blues? As in, I am halfway through my life – if not more – and, well, you know, dum de dum. What do I have to show for it? So ran my inner judge and critic on Monday. “Think about your triumphs and don’t listen to the negative chatter that comes up at three in the morning,” suggested Richard. I was about to come up with a great long list of all the non-triumphs (it’s so easy to default to that) but then realised that taking a huge leap of faith and moving to Australia nearly ten years ago has to be my biggest triumph to date.

I returned home with a deep sense of gratitude that I belong to such a wonderful choir full of like-minded, supportive and creative souls – it’s no coincidence we’re called Soul Song. And then I remembered two other huge triumphs. I took part in a solo singing workshop earlier this year and sang a Buena Vista Social Club song in Spanish to the rest of the group (amazing in itself as not so long ago I’d have almost preferred to strip naked than sing a solo), and then at our recent choir retreat, I learnt how to use a microphone and experimented with the same song – giving it my all. It really is never too late to change your life and find your voice.

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway...

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway…

As for the book, I’m going to see if I get any other bites before I change the format. I didn’t really set out to write a memoir, more a humorous anthology of life adventures… and misadventures. Perhaps I’ve been marketing it in the wrong way. I might take a straw poll and get some feedback in a future blog. Who knows, perhaps by the next zero birthday, I will be a published author.

I wannabe published...

I wannabe published…

On Writer’s Block

So much has been written about writer’s block – that gridlocked state of affairs when hand, pen (or keyboard) and the creative brain fail to connect.

It seems to me that the way out of the jam is to create time and space to release the block – it’s literally like unblocking a dam, and the less you’re in your thinking head, the more the imagination flows. Recently, I’d been nose-to-screen and madly writing to deadlines and word counts for too many days in a row. I was so clogged up with ‘work’ writing that when I began to write my blog about Boris Johnson at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, it was like wading in thick treacle. So I surrendered, lay down and listened to a 20-minute Yoga Nidra (a deep relaxation practice) tape and Bob – or should I say Boris – was my uncle. Just twenty minutes away from the screen and out of my busybody head did the trick.

Other blocks to writing can manifest as a lack of self-belief, a fear of failure of getting it wrong or of being judged. About ten years ago I read the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It’s a 12-week course that helps struggling artists to overcome the barriers standing in the way of their creativity. Some may find it a bit self-helpy but I thoroughly recommend it.

Going back to pen and paper...

Going back to pen and paper…

But perhaps it’s the keyboard and the computer and all the stiffness and eye strain that go with screen work that are the real culprits behind writer’s block. Welsh-based Jay Griffiths, author of Wild, spoke eloquently at the Writers’ Festival about writing longhand in pencil and working the words like clay, moulding them, reshaping them, smudging them across the page. The very simplicity of pencil and paper really appeals to me; it’s a much more fluid and visceral approach to writing and you don’t need to plug anything in.

I also keep a quote above my desk by Henry David Thoreau: “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” It’s a reminder that you can’t expect to just sit at the computer and conjure up a best-selling novel. You need to get out there and grasp life with both hands. And always take a pencil and notebook with you!

Boris’s Blockbuster

Many of my blog posts seem to end up being about my puppy dog Bertie – not by design, more by default. It’s amazing how a curly-eared, doe-eyed, mischief-making, feather-legged, smooth-as-silk-coated, chocolate brown cocker spaniel cross can take up so much of my time, not to mention affection.

But today I’m writing about something different. Last week (yes, I’ve been inundated with work and a bit slow to post) I went to hear Mayor of London Boris Johnson present the Keynote Speech at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. Actually, thinking about it, Boris, whose full name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (the Pfeffel bit sounds like a German cookie to me) is rather spaniel-like with his floppy hair and cuddly appearance. Oh dear, I can’t go more than a few sentences without mentioning dogs…

Anyway, back to BJ. Spending an hour listening to him talk was one of the best things I’ve done all year. Boris is a dazzling speaker – witty, engaging, erudite, encyclopaedic in his knowledge and self-deprecating in the way only the English can be; he referred, for example, to a small sporting event that took place in London last year and seemed to go quite well!

Our man in London, Boris

Our man in London, Boris

He was given the theme ‘the power of the written word’ but he also spoke in praise of urbanisation reminding us that 89 per cent of the Australian population live in urban areas, a density which rivals that of Monaco. He wove in all sorts of literary and cultural references from Virgil to Chaucer, Star Wars and Harry Potter never missing a beat or an opportunity to refer to his beloved London, Routemaster buses and the Oyster card (with a little side swipe at our Myki system). And, of course, he mentioned his book Johnson’s Life of London here and there. This was a writers’ festival after all.

He’s clearly fond of Australia and Melbourne – like Prince Charles, he spent some time at Timber Tops – and talked about London as Melbourne’s Antipodean mirror. With so many Aussies in London (are they still all in Earl’s Court?), he declared himself Mayor of Australia’s 12th largest city! It was heartening to hear a politician – and a Conservative at that – talk so passionately about cultural and linguistic diversity. London wouldn’t be London without its rich blend of migrants from different countries and cultures with over 300 different languages spoken. What a pleasant contrast to the inhumane refugee and asylum-seeker policies cooked up by our ‘turn back the boats’ politicians on both sides of the divide.

He wrapped up his talk by coming back to words and writing. Asked what he will do when he retires, Boris owned up to a secret desire to write a rip-roaring blockbuster, the kind of book that you’d find at an airport bookshop complete with pink embossed writing on the cover. He’d write under a pseudonym, something like Rosie M Banks. If his thriller is anything like his speeches, it will be utterly compelling.