Counting down

In just under three weeks time my wife, daughter and I will be heading to France for four weeks. After our visit nearly three years ago we are keen to get back.

We must be keen: the weather looks like being absolutely arctic. On the plus side, the dollar is more than pulling its weight against the euro. And January-February is not exactly peak tourist season. So museum and gallery queues are unlikely to have us standing out in the sleet for an hour or two. But accommodation is cheap - especially compared to what you pay in Australia. We've booked apartments through the excellent Homelidays website. We've stocked up on thermal clothing, gloves, scarves, hats and boots. For coats we are hoping to pick up something in the soldes. And I am hoping to do a little of this.
What else should we do? Is there anything on the *avoid* list?


Ca glisse à l'Hôtel de Ville
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Say it with pictures

The New York Times recently ran a story about the sharp decline of picture book sales in the United States. There are many reasons why this could be so, not least is the nearly 10% unemployment and declines in library services through years of tax cuts. What the situation is in Australia sales-wise I couldn't say. 

But there are many reasons what sales might decline. Children of course are introduced to what is called (somewhat euphemistically I think) screen culture at an early age. So they become very dexterous with their thumbs, less so perhaps with their vocabulary.

I also wonder to what extent parents are keen to demonstrate their child's reading skills. What better way than to kick away the ladder that pictures provide.  Since reading has become one of those fought over issues, does this also feed our anxiety? And why are we so concerned with measurement and less troubled by questions about the transmission of cultures, the sharing and propagation of stories?

In regard to the prospect of children being rushed onto chapter books, I wonder to what extent parents are anxious to show how well their children are reading? Do they know what they are missing? And being able to decode a word should not be confused with understanding or even enjoying a story. Many books have gone back on to the shelf that simply have not arrived at the right time. The Tale of Despereaux is one that waited on the shelf perhaps twelve months before going on to become a firm, enduring favourite. Some schools impose the policy that students in free-reading time must read 'to their literacy level'. I often wonder how they measure a child's imagination. 

Of course, reading independently also absolves parents of reading aloud at bedtime and at other times. Last week a picture book exhibition opened, which I had the privilege to curate. Reading with my daughter was an immense influence on the stories and pictures selected. Put it this way: I would not have understood these books in the way that I do, as stories and images connected to a real child's life, her imagination, her growing and changing, without seeing the stories through my daughter's eyes. 

Picture books give such immense pleasure. Lauren Child's early books were powerful shapers of her worldview: the word play, the sideways view of the people close to us, the sense of quiet mischief and seriousness in the pursuit of the things we hold dear. These are powerful and important values, yet strange how the resonate in that humble medium. 

Today as we came up the path I remarked on how beautiful our neighbour's trees are. Our neighbour is old and frail and may not have another summer left in her in that hot, little house. And then what of her trees? "I'll being chaining myself to them", said my daughter. Said it in a way that reminded me of the Lauren Child book, What Planet Are You From, Clarice Bean? about eco-warriors who camped in a tree, turned the family upside down and got themselves on the television news. 

All of this was long ago, before she really took notice of the news or wondered about global warming or the floods in Pakistan. And yet somewhere in their the imprint was made. A way of looking at the world. Whether we chain ourselves to the trees is another matter entirely. But in a book, we learned about what was important in the world.

Everything old

At Moonee Valley racetrack last Saturday, Daryl Braithwaite was whipping the crowd up with his 1991 hit Horses. No finer music critic than Drew Morphett observed that ’20 years ago Darryl seemed gone for all money, and yet here he is, the crowd in the palm of his hand’.

Later that night Ricki Lee Jones, the writer of Horses, was doing similar at the Myer Music Bowl, lacking only Darryl’s equine anthem. Ms Jones joined Sinead O’Connor and John Cale, others whom we might say did their best work in another generation, or two, or three. An appearance from Archie Roach was cancelled due to his suffering a stroke a week prior. Only the indigenous quartet - Dan Sultan, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, Ursula Yovich and Leah Flanagan - could be said to be of more recent or current times. The occasion was the closing night of the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

(Dan Sultan, delivering the goods.)

The theme of this geezer jamboree was transcendence. A topic those of us greying at the temples, thin of pate and/or thick of waist, might easily turn to. The artists’ brief was simple: select and perform seven songs ‘to leave behind’. Which is, I guess, an elaborate version of the parlour game: ‘what song would you have played at your funeral?’ Each performer also chose a Leonard Cohen song. (Had Leonard been in attendance the average performer age would have risen by at least a decade.)

John Cale, who could make a case for popularising Cohen’s anthem Hallelujah, evaded time's tidemark with a bent version of Heartbreak Hotel. This stratagem seemed like the novelist dabbling in historical fiction, a neat sidestep around more current concerns.

Like Moonee Valley, the Myer Music Bowl was packed, even if those on the lawn could be forgiven if they huddled for warmth. But given the audience paid around $110 each to be here, this gig was as much about their involvement with transcendence. What songs you would leave behind; what songs you would take with you? Perhaps such questions are the luxury and privilege of middle-age. Surely twenty-somethings are too busy living, than to sit on a freezing hillside contemplating their eternal soundtrack.

A slightly different version of this post appeared on the Wheeler Centre website.
(Thanks to George Dunford.)

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Yep, time for a change. Recently I resigned from my job after nearly nine years. I have been unemployed in the past - and I don't much like it. So volunteering for the cause wasn't something that I was planning for.



The State Library of Victoria and the Centre for Youth Literature are wonderful places to work, but last month I reached a point when I filed notice. I am working up until Christmas, will have a holiday, and re-load in the new year. Nine years is personal best by some margin, so on that score I'm satisfied, but also know that I need new challenges.

Youth literature is a fantastic field to work in. There are a lot of smart, passionate, creative people: writers, editors, publishing people, booksellers... YA fiction remains wide open to innovation and change, the boundaries are ever being tested. (Just like it is with teenagers.) And I liked the sense that we were working for teenagers, to support and to challenge them.

More recently I have been working on exhibition of recent Australian picture book illustration, which opens on 3 December, my wife's birthday. I am enjoying working with the exhibition team at the State Library of Victoria; they are like watchmakers, every fine tooth of every cog in its perfect place. There is some wonderful artwork in the show and I hope that people young and once young will get a lot out of the show.

When I was offered the job at the Centre for Youth Literature I remember being a bit speechless. I honestly did not expect to be offered it. All things considered it has been a wonderful experience for me. But I don't believe in hanging on for the sake of it.

Whatever comes next I hope that it won't be far from the world of books and young people.

But, who knows?

Superhero guide to New York

Earlier this year my wife went to New York with her mother. Mother was keen to take in the nightlife of the city that never sleeps. And since their apartment was next door to nightclub things pretty well lived up to billing.

But in the daylight hours she was on the trail of New York's superheroes and comic book culture.

You can read the account of her New York experience here, published today in The Age.

This time last week

We were hovering around the television awaiting details of booth counts in outer-western Sydney electorates...and whether Green preferences would be enough to carry the day in Boothby, an electorate in South Australia. Melbourne had already fallen to the Greens as predicted and, also as predicted, the Liberals were carving their way through marginal seats in south-east Queensland.

Oh, it was a night of thrills and spills. Spills for the red team mostly. Damn.

Now, well, we are none the wiser. Indeed we await the calling of three wise men of the north as to which side - red or blue - they are prepared to shack up with to form stable government. That being the key phrase of the year. One of the three who holds the balance of power is Bob Katter (above), who I think of as like the mad uncle at Christmas time. For ten minutes he is hilariously inappropriate but then the afternoon sets in. And sets in. And sets in.


So a week later and we still don't have a government. Stable or otherwise. The only person happy in all of this is the ABC's election analyst Antony Green, a genius with a spreadsheet and savant of psephology. Normally his appearances are limited to one night every three years, when he can strut his numerical stuff. Now it seems we can't get enough of him.


We can, but it will take some delicate arm-twisting in Canberra to get Antony Green back in his box.

It must be winter

It must be winter. People are saying this is the first real winter we have had since 1996. Which was the year that I moved to Melbourne.



It's true that the thermometer has stayed consisting low, rarely rising past 14C for the past six or eight weeks. Last night I succeeded in scalding my leg on a hot water bottle. Ouch! Of course 14C is not particularly cold, a fact I remind myself of whenever I think about going to France next January.

The weather has been cold and even a little bit wet. The rainfall is nearer the long term average - but still way, way down over the past decade. The past couple of winters have been disturbingly erratic, one recently saw spring arrive sometime around June as trees kept their leaves and around June flowers burst into bud.

This week I have moved to part-time work, due to a combination of fatigue and demands at home. Today was the first day of office-free, guilt-free living. It's about giving more to the family and a little about more time for myself.

On the way back from the city I stopped in and put a deposit on a bicycle for my wife. The bicycle is a long overdue birthday present that became a long overdue Christmas present. As she not a terribly sporty lass, and one who moved house/town/country pretty frequently as a child she didn't do a lot of biking. So we will see if riding a bike is something you never forget. We pick it up on Saturday. Look out for us all on a pavement near you.