Mr Salary

I've been aware of Sally Rooney for some time, but naturally haven't got to reading either of her two very famous novels, Conversations with Friends or Normal People, even though I've been meaning to. So I was very excited to see Mr Salary in the very cute (but overpriced) Faber Stories series. It would be the first Faber Stories edition that I would buy, and the first I read. 

Mr Salary is the story of Sukie Doherty returning to Dublin from Boston to see her father, Frank, who is in hospital and is dying. They've had a difficult relationship

Frank had problems with prescription drugs. During childhood I had frequently been left in the care of his friends, who gave me either no affection or else so much that I recoiled and scrunched up like a porcupine. 

This is despite the fact that Frank has been a single father, or perhaps it is because Sukie's mother had died soon after her birth. Sukie (which seems a rather un-Irish name to me, is it really an Irish name?) will be staying with Nathan, an older family friend who she had lived with when she was a student. 

In my second year of college we ran out of savings and I could no longer pay rent, so my mother's family cast around for someone I could live with until my exams were over. 

There has always been more the possibility of something more to their relationship though. The cover blurb summarises it nicely

With her minute attention to the power dynamics in every day speech, she builds up sexual tension and throws a deceptively low-key glance at love and death. 

Mr Salary is such a small morsel, 33 (tiny) pages. Easily read in one session, although in my usual form I managed to fall asleep just before the end... Mr Salary was like an amuse-bouche for my planned Sally Rooney degustation. It has certainly whetted my appetite. 

Sally Rooney's first published story was actually nonfiction - an essay about her time as a competitive debater, Even If You Beat Me in The Dublin Review. Mr Salary was shortlisted for the 2017 Sunday Times/EFG Short Story Award. She has been dubbed the First Great Millenial Novelist so it's great to finally get started on reading her work.  

Mr Salary was originally published by Granta in Granta 135 New Irish Writing in 2016.  It is actually freely available online. 

Faber Stories is a collection of short stories to celebrate Faber's 90th anniversary by publishing "masters of the short story form". These are delightful little treats, but I think overpriced in Australia at $8. 

George and the Great Bum Stampede

I've been reading and listening to quite a lot of fairly heavy duty nonfiction lately. The Power of Hope. Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race. All great, and interesting, and important books. But it's a somewhat unusual phase for me. So when I saw Cal Wilson's first kids book on the shelves I knew it was for me. Cal Wilson is a comedian, and she is very funny. I've enjoyed her on the tele, and seen her as part of the Sydney Comedy Festival Roadshow at some stage. 

George and the Great Bum Stampede is the first of what seems to be a series about the Pepperton family. They Peppertons are a zany and fun family. Mum is Professor Pippa Pepperton, a crazy scientist type who is always making wacky inventions. She has already shrunk George's brother Poco to the size of a lemon. His sisters are Pumpernickel, Paprika and Pilates. Pepperton Perfection. 

This book tells the tale of The Worst Week Ever. This involves ghastly new neighbours - the rich and super snobby Finleys - including their son Princely Farnsley Finley and an incident with one of Professor Pipperton's best inventions The Pepperton Replicator.  

Picture source

The whole book is chock full of bums, and when there are this many bums then the fart jokes can't be too far behind! I especially love the notion of the startle fart, or fartle, and every 8 year old in existence will too. I laughed out loud and chortled more than is seemly for the middle-aged.

There are great illustrations by Sarah Davis that really add to the humour. The layout is fabulous with interesting fonts and use of space. I thought I didn't know Sarah Davis's name, but she illustrated the delightful Violet Mackerel books by Anna Branford (see my review). 

I'm going to donate my copy to my favourite local Primary School to share the fun with the intended audience. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of George and the Great Brain Swappery in July. 

Cal Wilson is of course a Kiwi, but has lived in Australia for a long time, so I'm going to claim her for AWW2019. I hope she doesn't mind. 

http://australianwomenwriters.com

Newcastle Writers Festival 2019

I so enjoy going to Newcastle Writers Festival each year in early April. It's one of my very favourite festivals for so many reasons. I get to catch up with lots of family and friends. NWF always puts on such a great line up - lots of free sessions that you can actually get in to. The compactness makes it fabulous to attend - you can actually attend back to back sessions easily.

I always line up too many sessions at NWF, so much temptation.... but I managed to limit that a bit this year, and went to a sensible number of sessions so I didn't feel too brain dead at the end of the day.

Kon Karapanagiotidis

This year I saw:

Fr Rod Bower
Mark Brandi
Jane Caro
Trent Dalton
Clementine Ford
Chris Hammer
Kon Karapanagiotidis (twice!)
Anisa Nandaula
Emily O'Grady
Holly Throsby
Gillian Triggs

A predominantly nonfiction experience! Very unusual for me. But writers festivals are definitely places to push the boundaries. 

Chris Hammer and Holly Throsby

I was sad to miss out on so many others, but especially:

Claire G Coleman
Ginger Gorman
Chloe Hooper
Ben Quilty

I do so love a festival bookshop. So much potential, and all those lovely stacks waiting to be touched and poured over. Provided here by Macleans Booksellers

All set up and ready to go

So pretty. So tempting. I fell. Naturally.

Nowhere near enough copies,
these were quickly sold out

I already had a copy of By Sea & Stars
I wanted to buy Boy Swallows Universe
but they only had nasty mass market paperbacks.
Book snob? Youbetcha

My NWF2019 book stack:

I took three with me to get signed
and bought three there

Naturally I bought another (rather large) stack of (new and second-hand) books whilst travelling to and from Newcastle. At some old favourites: Better Read Than Dead in Newtown. Megalong Books in Leura. And a visit to a new favourite: The rather huge Salvos store at Tempe.

The Top 10 NWF2019 Bestsellers:

1. Speaking Up by Gillian Triggs
2. Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton
3. Kerry O’Brien: A Memoir by Kerry O’Brien
4. Boys Will Be Boys by Clementine Ford
5. Accidental Feminists by Jane Caro
6. The Power of Hope by Kon Karapanagiotidis
7. One Hundred Years of Dirt by Rick Morton
8. Scrublands by Chris Hammer
9. Outspoken by Rod Bower
10. Up to Something by Katrina McKelvey and Kirrili Lonergan

Newcastle Writers Festival do a great job of providing entertainment between sessions too. This year there were beach chairs set up in Wheeler Place with headphones to listen to short stories. 

Yes, guitarpwriter needs to be
seen, and heard, to be believed

Another great feature of NWF (well serendipitously at least) is that on Saturday the Olive Tree Market is across the road in Civic Park. I picked up some fab Charcoal & Mint Botanical Toothpaste from Lovebyt. A refillable deodorant from Asuvi! And I might have splurged on a fabulous lariat necklace from Olivia Raymond. My second of hers. 

I snacked on Halouminati Fries from
The Haloumi Hut

having already filled up on particularly incredible Crispy Skinned Chicken at Dumpling Flavour on Darby Street when I had an early lunch with friends. 

Due to travel commitments I think Newcastle will be the only writers festival that I can fit into my busy schedule this year - which is rather 😢 obviously. At least it was a good one. I'll have to try to attend a new festival next year to help me along my quest to go to all the book festivals in Australia. Adelaide,  Byron and Brisbane all sound so promising. 

NWF 2015
NWF 2016
NWF 2017
I couldn't make it for NWF 2018

Forage 2019

Forage is always one of my favourite events of the year. A highlight of Foodweek in Orange, it sells out every year- and usually in minutes.Today was the 9th Forage. I think it was my 8th. I was there at the first one in 2011, and was so happy to be back there again today. Back in 2011 there were a mere 350 Foragers, now there are 1500 keen participants each and every year ready to eat a 9 course degustation menu and drink the  matching wines over a 4.1km course. 

Greek Salad of Lamb and Feta
Highland Heritage Estate

We've just gone to level 4 water restrictions locally. It's pretty dry.

It's still lovely to walk through the vines though. 

Beetroot in Filo
Village Bakehouse

I really appreciated the focus on biosecurity and that Forage has become a certified Sustainable Event. All the plates and bowls were compostable which is fantastic. 

Leek and Potato Soup
Groundstone Cafe

It was a beautiful afternoon, quite temperate, just beautiful.

Station 4 was looking magnificent. 

As was the Beef and Kasundi Fatteh from Franklin Road Preserves

It seems I forgot to take any photos at Station 5, I must have been feeling too relaxed by this stage... everyone else was making the best of the local wines- I don't even have that as an excuse. 

The sunset put on a spectacular show. 

Rum and raisin ice cream with Anjou pear
Agrestic Grocer

It's fascinating to watch the evolution of Forage as an event. And also to see the profound difference that the weather has made to the conditions each year. 

Forage 2011
Forage 2012
Forage 2013
Forage 2014
Forage 2015
Forage 2016

I think I didn't go to Forage 2017 as it clashed with Newcastle Writers Festival - my other go to April event, and it appears that I was too slack to blog about Forage 2018. Oops.

(all) The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village

I was immediately drawn to this book as soon as I saw the cover. It's a great cover. So pretty. It's a great title. I was keen. Then I found out that Joanna Nell is a Sydney GP. I was very keen (I do love a doctor/author). And then happily a good friend gave me a copy for Christmas. Even better, I was about to spend a week by the beach in Thailand. I figured that the single ladies of the Jacaranda Retirement Village would make excellent holiday companions- and they certainly did.

Peggy Smart is 79, she's widowed and now moved into a unit at the Jacaranda Retirement Village with her dog Basil. Peggy had a quiet kind of life and marriage. Married to the faithful Ted, Peggy has raised two children Jenny and David, she is a doting grandmother. She wears a bit too much beige, needs a toilet nearby, bakes a mean slice, and has her eye on Brian, the widower next door. 

Peggy did have her own identity, even if she didn't like it. Overweight, self-doubting. She was a nondescript person, an elasticated waistband of a human being. 

Then along comes Angie Valentine, an old friend that Peggy hasn't really seen in 50 years. Friends at school Angie and Peggy lost touch in their twenties and have lead very, very different lives. Angie has been married four times, she is flamboyant, a risk-taker, and hasn't outgrown all her wild girl days. Angie sets her sights on making Peggy over. Together Angie and Peggy make a kind of Patsy and Eddie of the Retirement Village set. 

"You have to stop thinking like an old person. If you behave like an old biddy, people are going to treat you like one. "

Angie starts doing her best to bring Peggy out of her widowed, beige life. 

"You have to accept that Ted's gone now. But you're still here, and there's a lot of life left to live. Start living it."

This overall theme is set before the book even starts with Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night as the epigraph. This is then echoed a few times within the text. 

In a Welsh accent.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

It's also a meditation on motherhood at times.

What was strange was that Peggy had so few memories of day-to-day motherhood with David and Jenny. It was as though she'd lived those days under a light anaesthetic. But the years were there, plain to see, in a series of grainy photographs. Peggy, Ted and the children, all smiles. Christmas trees and birthday cakes. Tight-skinned summer days with buckets and spades. Memories strung together like bunting with nothing in between. 

Also marriage and friendship, health, and everything else that's important in our lives. I'm at a time of life where I've been making lots of changes in my life, some of which I've wanted, some of which I haven't.  (All) The Single Ladies (sorry but I think of the song every time I think of the title) is a great reminder to take risks, to make changes. To be brave. 

'A ship is safe in harbour,' he would say, 'but that's not what ships are for.'

Peggy has a fall, and her well meaning children hover wanting to help her, to make sure that's she's safe in her harbour at the retirement village. Although Peggy comes to realise that that may not be exactly what she wants. 

It was a game of geriatric bingo. Take it easy. Elevate your legs. Drink more water. At your age.  

Joanna Nell strikes just the right balance of tone, lighthearted and funny at times, serious when it needs to be. Set in the Northern Beaches of Sydney not too far from Big Little Lies- Note to Self- I must rewatch Season 1 in preparation for Season 2 later this year-

A cloud of white birds erupted from a Norfolk Pine near the beach. A young family sat eating sandwiches on the sand across the road from the café. Everywhere, people moved at a Saturday pace, eating their smashed avocado on toast and smiling in the knowledge that the working week was still far in the future. In some ways, Peggy missed weekends. Retirement afforded the luxury of crowd-less weekdays but there was something about the respite from the nine-to-five that had always made Saturday and Sunday special. 

I'm not so sure about that. I'm ready to make the most of uncrowded weekdays. I already enjoy them now due to rotating rosters. Perhaps decades of shift work takes away the thrill of regular weekends?

I expected to do lots of poolside reading, but Thailand in February is pretty hot and after burning my lily white face on the first day (accidentally in the pool) I took to spending the heat of the day in our air-conditioned villa, and read in comfort. I always expect to read way more than I do on holidays. But there are always too many other distractions - naps, walks on the beach, trips to local markets and the delights of two hour breakfasts, and rather long dinners every day. The Single Ladies of the Jacaranda Retirement Village was the perfect length, they kept me company for my whole stay. 

Jean Whittle is a real life Peggy Smart. Retirement villages, and even  nursing homes are going to have to change the way they do things with the coming flood of Baby Boomers, and just the arrival of the twenty first century. 

Joanna Nell has her second book due out later this year. The Last Voyage of Mrs Henry Parker is due for release in September. I'll be there. 

http://australianwomenwriters.com

Quitting Plastic

It seems that I'm having a bit of a nonfiction moment recently, but here's been such a lot of fascinating Aussie nonfiction lately. Like many people I've been really interested in trying to decrease my plastic footprint, particularly since I watched War on Waste in 2017, and there's acutally quite a bit to learn when you're going about that. More recently I read Zero Waste Life and made quite a few changes on the back of it. So I knew as soon as I saw Quitting Plastic that it was for me. 

Quitting Plastic is written by a mother daughter team from Sydney. Clara Williams Roldan is a policy and legislative advisor for the NSW parliament ( a fact which makes me very happy), while her mother Louise Williams is an award winning journalist. They're clearly a talented family as another daughter Elowyn Williams Roldan did the illustrations. 

While Quitting Plastic is full of practical tips and solutions for reducing plastic in our lives and our homes it also takes a broader historical view to look at how we got into this mess in the first place. How one third of all the plastic wrappers, packaging and bags that we use end up in our oceans. How we took "such a strong, high-performance material" and used it "to make disposable items that we toss away, often within minutes and without a second thought."

Plastics really boomed in the post (second world) war period. All that wartime deprivation, hardship and rationing was suddenly replaced by convenience, and we grabbed it with both hands. 

In a flash, humanity went from the relative scarcity of natural materials and the deprivation of wartime to a utopia of plenty. We had a new, cheap material that appeared to last forever.... Cleaning up after ourselves was just another antiquated waste of time, while throwing out more and more disposable items symbolised modernity and efficiency. It represented a triumph over the drudgery of the past. why wash up if you could just throw the dishes and cutlery away? And plastic was at the forefront of this modern, new world. 

"We had a new, cheap material that appeared to last forever. " Unfortunately it does, and that is exactly the problem we face now. We (and our oceans and marine life) are now literally drowning in single use plastic (the oxymoron of our times it seems).

They are lightweight, so they 'leak' easily into the environment. They are free, so we don't value them, and they are used only briefly before being tossed.

Even so we had to learn to 'shop and toss'. Quitting Plastic tells us that when coffee vending machines were first introduced office workers would carefully wash the plastic cups for reuse. I remember my grandad washing every bread bag for reuse, there was always one drying on his clothes line.

In Australia 88% of metal waste is recovered for recycling or reuse, and nearly all our aluminium. Of course metal is heavy to transport and using lots of energy to produce and recycle. But just a fraction of our plastic is recycled. And there is a big difference between recyclable and recycled. 

The big four of single-use plastic (straws, disposable coffee cups, plastic water bottles, plastic bags) are actually pretty easy to tackle. I recently made my own zero waste kit for my handbag, and it's been so easy, and such a delight to use. I don't drink coffee so I don't need a reusable coffee cup on hand at all times- I do have one for winter when I do quite like a chai latte from time to time. Reading Quitting Plastic made me wonder how men, who traditionally don't carry handbags, quit plastic. It's not going to be nearly so easy for them to carry about their zero waste kit. 

I really like that Quitting Plastic reminds us that we can't be perfect, that it's a journey for all of us. Clara is more than ten years into her quitting plastic journey and still hasn't managed to get rid of it entirely. Just yesterday I asked for no straw in my smoothie at a local cafe. I got the straw anyway. When you're taking this issue deeply that can seem like a failing, that the world will self destruct somehow because I didn't manage to avoid that single straw. But it won't, and I've successfully dodged many other straws. 

There is no way to fail quitting plastic, because it's a process.

The  majority of Quitting Plastic is a room by room guide to reducing plastic in our homes, and life. There are also chapters on Plastic-Free Kids (and isn't that a challenge?), Entertaining, and Eating (and Drinking) Out.

The major chapters are Kitchen, Laundry and Cleaning, The Bathroom, and Your Wardrobe. Within each chapter each activity is broken down with many subheadings, - Washing Your Clothes, Stain removers, Hair Care, Toilet Paper, Menstrual Products etc. Each subheading is given a category to indicate the relative ease with which changes can be made - Easy, Medium, Hard, Improving. Toothpaste is rated Hard, Clothes, wipes and brushes Easy. Clara gives a verdict on her experience with the various alternatives. Rather than listing companies or products that may be difficult to find where ever you are she lists relevant Search Terms to find products near you, online recipes and other solutions. 

I was thrilled to see some tips about using Soapberries as I'd just bought my first packet on the very day that I read those words about them. Apparently soapberries work better on a warm/hot cycle to maximise their release of surfactants, which makes sense, but I only wash in cold water. So I currently have my little bag of soap nuts steeping in some boiling water on the stove. I can even wash the dog with that later apparently, so may have made my dog a plastic free beauty too. I will report back. 

Much of our clothing is now synthetic, ie plastic, and the Your Wardrobe chapter was really eye opening. Global textile and footwear production doubled from 2000 to 2014, a period that also saw the arrival of fast fashion. I've been aware of the problems of microfibres entering our water ways from our washing machines for some time. I've been hoping that someone clever would solve this by the time I need a new washing machine, but it's still very alarming to know that a city the "size of Sydney is flushing plastic microfibres equivalent to 7.5 million plastic shopping bags down our drains via our washing machines every single day"!! 7.5 million bags. OMG. 

Although there is some good news here too. Front loaders seem to generate fewer microfibres than top loaders. Yay. I have a front loader. There are interesting products becoming available to help trap microfibres before they enter the environment. Guppyfriend is a bag to put your synthetic clothing in in your washing machine. Cora Balls are a plastic ball designed to trap and collect fibres within your wash. I'm not sure that makes sense to me logistically. Surely the washing machine manufacturers need to sort this out? And governments need to regulate them to make sure they do so.

 I'm not much into fashion, but have have bought quite a lot of clothes in the past few years, I've bought more than I used to, more than I should have. "Oh that isn't too bad, it fits ok, and doesn't look too hideous, I'll buy it." I know I have too many clothes now. I've read Marie Kondo's book, I've watched her Netflix series, but I haven't gone the full Kondo yet. But I have tried to stop buying new things. Last year I put myself on an official Black Pant Buying Ban. It hasn't been totally successful, but has made me more conscious of the problem. Quitting Plastic suggests taking the Spark Joy method back to the source - put your hand on potential purchases while they are still in the shops, before they get into your house, into your wardrobe where one in five garments will be left unworn or barely used. I have to say that I think my ratio may even be worse than that....

There is a (brief) section at the beginning help us to understand the different types of plastics, and how relatively Good or Bad they may be. I've heard a bit about bioplastics, but don't pretend to fully understand Compostable Bioplastics. Bioplastics can be made from a wide range of renewable resources - sugar cane, corn and agricultural and forestry waste. I get that, and that seems a good thing, rather than using non-renewable fossil fuels. But it's the compostable part I don't understand at this stage. Bioplastics apparently need industrial  composting (and temperatures above 60 degrees) to break down. If put into landfill they will still emit greenhouse gases. But that they break down at all, surely they must not be the same plastic compounds that we are currently using?

It's a coming thing though, massive companies are feeling the zeitgeist and embracing change. Lego has committed to fully sustainable materials by 2030. It has kicked off with making (plastic) plants from Brazilian sugar cane. This plastic is still recyclable but not biodegradable. Lego doesn't want their products to be biodegradable I'm sure. The nomenclature is very confusing to me. European Bioplastics has a graph showing how bioplastics can be bio based, biodegradable or both. And rather confusingly bioplastics can still be made from fossil fuels.

Still I was thrilled to learn that Australia is working towards National Packaging Targets of 100% recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging by 2025 through the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation. Although it's a shame that isn't listed in the reverse order - compostable, reusable, recyclable. So is individual effort still worthwhile? Undoubtedly yes. 

What's driving change is us. 

The Covenant is voluntary. Targets can be missed. Plastic use is predicted to double again over the next twenty years. We need to still be driving that change. We are at the beginning of the end of single-use plastics. 

I was planning to donate my copy of Quitting Plastic to my local library after I'd read it, but there's so much useful, practical advice in here that I'm going to keep it as a resource at home for now. I  learnt a lot of new information from Quitting Plastic, it wasn't just a reiteration of things I already knew. I had no idea that vegan silk was a thing, or Qmilch - a fibre made from milk protein by a young German microbiologist way back in 2011! There's so many interesting things on the horizon. 

http://australianwomenwriters.com

Force of Nature

I had such a good time listening to Jane Harper's debut novel The Dry recently, that I soon found myself back for her second outing, Force of Nature. Truth be told, I was a bit worried as I'd heard lots of people say that it wasn't as good as The Dry. That would be a hard thing though. The Dry was fabulous, and very deservedly well loved by pretty much every one.

Force of Nature takes place about six months after the events of The Dry. Our main protagonist is again Aaron Falk, a rather unlikely hero - a financial detective with the AFP (Australian Federal Police). Aaron becomes involved with the search for a missing woman, Alice Russell, after a company team-building weekend goes awfully, awfully wrong.

Ten people, five men and five women, go on a weekend camping trip in the Victorian bush. They are split into male and female teams. Alice disappears during the walk, and for a long time, at least half the book, we don't what has happened to her. We don't even know if Alice is alive or dead. If she is dead what happened? If she is alive where is she? The area they go to, the fictitious Giralang Ranges, has a dark history, with an Ivan Milat-esque serial killer active in the area in the past. One of his victims has never been found, and the aura of that time lingers in the minds of everyone, inextricably linked to the Giralangs.

Force of Nature has a great structure with two alternating narrative threads twining together like a rope pulling us along, drawing us inevitably towards the end. One, is the current investigation into Alice's disappearance, and the other is a narrative account of the four days the women were together on the hike. Each of the women has their own backstory, with their own history in the relationships between them, and their own secrets that play out when they are thrown together in difficult circumstances. For the first two thirds or so I was just listening in the car whenever I had the chance and partially invested, but towards the end I was swept up and I ended up listening to the last third or quarter binge style in one evening at home. 

I really loved Steve Shannahan's narration of The Dry, but it didn't work quite so well for me here. Much of Force of Nature is dialogue between the five women on the retreat and having a blokey Australian male voice bringing their words to life seemed wrong. His narration of the Aaron Falk chapters worked much better for me. 

I do know that someday soon I'll be listening to Jane Harper's third and most recent book The Lost Man. 

Jane Harper talking about life and Force of Nature at SWF 2018