je me souviens

O, friends,

I have truly seen the best Sydney has to offer. The quality of awful souvenirage is high. The term 'Authentic' is employed both widely and inaccurately. The best of the best? You decide:

1. Kookaburras-in-a-can
2. 'Convict soap' (no, I don't know either)
3. Ned Kelly action figures
4. Authentic dot art oven mitts
5. Anything with the word "g'day" followed by the word "mate" embroidered on it

(Writers' Festival by the numbers, for those who are interested? Number of times I have moved my own weight in books in the last four days: fifty-nine million. Also, Morris Gleitzman? happily bears out the rule about the loveliness of bald men.)

Dear Harry Manx

Dear Harry Manx,

My sock and I are quite overwhelmed by your beautiful, musical hands. The sock hasn't got over its encounter yet, honestly.

We appreciate your indulgence.

Love, A.xx

today's post is brought to you by the word 'disposed' (and some prefixes)

I read a book. It was an advance copy from a publisher, and it didn’t look like my kinda book. But the pub said it wasn’t her kinda book either, but she read it and was delighted and laughed like a drain. And, you know, sometimes it’s good to read not your kinda books.

Tell you the truth, I didn’t find it the best I’ve ever read. But it wasn’t at all bad. The pub was right; I laughed. The protag is an old guy who is smart and funny, and I am totally pre-disposed to get behind smart, funny old guys. But. Oh, but.

The protag is always talking about how he has a full head of hair.

Wow. Did I ever not like that. First, as we all know, old boys should be bald. There are very few exceptions to this rule. If they are unlucky enough not to be bald, they can slink away until they are grown-up enough to become bald, or maybe even get out the razor. Full-head-of-hair-as-important-characteristic is not likeable. There I was, reading along, laughing, and suddenly, he'd make a point of the hair thing again, and I would feel all cross and ill-disposed. (Also, this is a protag we are supposed to like. He’s no anti-hero. The hair thing isn’t an authorial conceit to show the protag’s, well, conceit. We’re meant to approve of the hair).

Then I checked out the author bio. He has, says his blurb, a multi-million-dollar business. Like that. Multi-million dollar.

I liked the book less.

Lots of people have talked about separating author from work – can you like the book if you know the author is a raging homophobe, that kind of thing (I made a typo there initially, and wrote ‘homophone’. Man, how eye hate their two bee homophones. Ewe?) But those are often things you learn about authors by really looking, not things they put in their bio on the back cover. But here is an author a) whose protag goes on about what a tremendously fetching and important thing his hair is, and b) who wants it noted in his bio that he has a multi-million dollar business.

So, the truth. I would’ve liked this book better if its author had not been someone who wanted me to know about his multi-million dollar business. It’s not the fact of having the multi-millions, but the wanting it to be part of the selected information people know about you, that turns me off it.

And the other truth. I would have been better-disposed to like it if I knew it had been written by, say, Carl Nixon. Nick Earls. Tim Winton. And maybe that’s the thing of it. I don’t know if Carl Nixon and Nick Earls and Tim Winton have multi-million-dollar businesses. Why? Because they don’t go on about it in their bios.


I don’t mean I would have done an about-face on a book I wasn’t all that keen on if the author had been a granola-munching pinko whale-saving do-gooder in Birkenstocks. It still wouldn’t be my kinda book. I would emphatically not have suddenly seen the light and realized it was in fact the greatest novel ever written, and the hair thing would still have got right on my wick. It doesn’t even mean I automatically like anything and everything Carl Nixon or Nick Earls or Tim Winton comes out with.

But I am pre-disposed to like it - yes, mostly because a)I know I have liked their other novels, but also because b)I am not put off by what they want readers to know about them.

I feel smaller and more confused as I go along. Help me out. Has reading what the author wanted you to know about him/her ever put you off reading the book? Are you brave enough to admit when you don’t like your favourite author’s latest? And, most importantly, what is up with these men and their hair? It’s that important? Really?

the Hat redux

Janet has kindly set me straight on the multitude of reasons why my Harry Manx Hat version 1.0 isn’t working. I mean, she didn’t do it in a setting-me-straight way, because Janet is obviously quite nice. But her comment and website have helped me understand everything that's Wrong with my Hat.

The first and foremost reason is, I am not Janet. Dude, those are some extraordinary hats right there. The extraordinariness of those hats is something Peter Mansbridge should probably bring up on the National.

But they’re _woven_? You’re kidding me. I guess my nine-foot musician radius isn’t close enough to determine that pretty freaking vital fact.

One thing that became immediately apparent after my Hat was worn, oh, twice, was that it hasn’t got enough substance – it’s flopped and gone head-shaped. (I was at least right about the ‘tube with a round top’ thing though.) The flopping would happen with this quite loosely put-together knitted thing, over a more substantial woven thing. I was going for version 2.0 in some sort of much more tightly-knitted sock yarn, though now I may still have to rethink things. (local yarn shop sale tomorrow, as a matter of fact. Thank you, universe).

There appears now also to be the magic scratchiness element, that is to say, musician's preference for only scratchy wool. I tried really hard to avoid scratchy wool for the sake of the lovely and the bald. My Hat is 100% pure merino. (and it’s still itchy. I’ve looked for something softer but apparently they don’t make yarn out of pixie wings).

Now I hear scratchy wool is the Harry Manx thang. Shpff. Musos, eh?

While you wait for the exciting next chapter of the saga, go and check out Janet’s hats and straw bales and suchlike. They will delight you. They will do things for your soul. I suspect, in fact, they may be instrumental in the restructuring of modern Canada. These are some powerful hats.

universal truths

Let it be agreed: the loveliest men are the bald men. It is a great pity for the men that are not bald, to always know they are not the loveliest. But it is the way of things, and they will simply have to get over it.

If you are unlucky enough not to have one of these lovely specimens in your life, you may not know the following fact: every bald man secretly, deep deep down, wishes this were him:

This is Harry Manx, and if he is not the coolest cat that ever existed in the history of the entire planet, then he is at the very least in the top, say, three.

Note the Hat.

The reason the bald men want to be Harry Manx is because this Hat is the way to rock bald like nobody ever rocked bald before.

If, as a bald man, you were to wear the Harry Manx Hat, you would be at least 25% cooler. It would confer upon you the aura of one who feels, thinks and kisses more deeply than other men; one who is sexier, more skilful and more imaginative; and one who might be about to hunker down with any one of about fourteen different instruments and oh-so-casually do something way cooler than anyone in a four hundred mile radius could hope to do even if he were trying really, really, hard and had a head start and the wind in his favour.

You can imagine, then, the combination of bald man plus Harry Manx Hat, would be a pretty freaking magnificent fortress of lovelitude. Beautiful ladies would almost certainly do things for that fortress. (The rest of us would, too, but the fortress would not need to look any farther than the beautiful ones).

So, if you are a person who does have a lovely bald man around somewhere in the recesses of your life, you should probably do him a solid and start looking into providing him with The Hat.

The first step to bringing the Hat into being, is observing the Actual Original Hat. It looks quite like it is made of felt, which is a problem in itself, because felting a hat – never mind The Hat – is a serious business that involves one of those head-shaped busts and is very, very easy to bugger up spectacularly. Felting slippers is one thing; you wear them on your feet and nobody really looks and it doesn’t much matter if they are a bit creative, but a hat is out there before everyone and it would be deeply unfair to make a man wear a crap hat, especially if he is supposed to be wearing The Hat and getting all its attendant benefits, viz., the fortress, the beautiful ladies etc.

But on closer inspection – that is, at a discreet distance of about eight or nine feet, because even I draw the line at approaching Harry Manx post-gig and saying “nice music, dude, but I really came to check out your Hat” – it’s definitely sorta stretchier than felt (a relief) but also has a bit of structure to it. Like it’s got a top and sides, rather than being more of a stocking cap affair.

That is awkward, because tops of hats are round, and knitting round things is hard.

Cue a yarn shop trip, Harry Manx album covers and bald man story in hand, and three of us figuring out a conglomeration of bits of three patterns, plus my usual hefty dose of making it up.

As with so many things, when you are told what something will measure in inches, you should remain sceptical until the thing you’re told will measure a certain number of inches is actually in your hands. The yarn lied and lied and lied to me, and the upshot was one false start that was too big, one that was too small, and finally, a baby bear one that was just on the small side of right. The Prototype Hat was born:

The Hat was not earmarked for the Aged Parent, but look: even the Aged P looks cool in the Hat. It’s infallible. (Also, hands up who else thinks Harry Manx might look like my dad when he grows up?)

It's not a bad start, but I learnt a lot from the first go and the Hat now requires some modifications. It will be evolving into a more accurate representation over the coming weeks. Bald (or not-bald) men and those who love them, you'd better start emailing me with your Hat requirements (address up there at top left; replace the AT and the DOT with symbols). You don't want to miss out. Your fortress might depend upon it.

Song the Third

And why this especial video, with all the quality of someone’s cameraphone quite literally pointed at their telly?

For God so loved the Mandolin, that She gave it unto the handsomest Boy upon the Earth, and said unto him, play thou upon it, and thou shalt be a Fisher of Women.

How to Make Gravy (Paul Kelly)

(Get this to see it properly. And go here for the legit downloads and stuff.)

a rare thing, fine as a beeswing

I said that we should settle down
And get a few acres dug
A fire burning in the hearth and babies on the rug.
She said, young man, you’re a foolish man
That surely sounds like hell,
You might be lord of half the world but you’ll not own me as well…

Beeswing, Richard Thompson

Seems a group of designers in Denmark, and some engineering whizz at MIT, might’ve come up with the solution for all those who are ‘so fine a breath of wind might blow ’em away’. The Walking House is essentially a 21st-century Romany caravan – grass-powered horse replaced by solar-powered cells, and lo – your house gets up and walks wheresoever the whim might take you.

It’s a hexagonal tube thing of 3.5 metres diameter, on six individually moving, electrically-powered legs. Doesn't it look like a giant version of those walking robots on Robot Wars that always got the crap beaten out of them by the whizzy engine-powered things with spinning blades? For the die-hard romantics - and in a bit of a weird contradiction of the environmental aspect - the walking house even has a wood stove, though, in an even nicer bit of bizarre, it also has a ‘mainframe computer’ to control the legs.

This whole idea is really interesting to me, as someone who can’t be said to have really ‘settled’ anywhere or anyhow. I guess we’re all about ownership in modern society – getting our few acres dug, more or less – which is the whole reason why the 21st century is so hostile to travellers in general. There’s no place for ‘em. What’re you going to do, make your way between Caravan Club Certified Locations?

But really, as the world becomes an ever-smaller place and we all move about a lot more than our parents and grandparents ever did, I reckon the walking house’s time could’ve come. We’re not tied to our people by location any more. Conversely, it’s 21st-century technology that enables that, of course – free internet phoning, webcams and all that keeping us close to our people without physically being near them.

Incidentally, the only place you should listen to the song Beeswing is on this record (if you click on the track, you can hear the teeniest of snippets). Roy Bailey, for my money, is one of only two men on the planet whose voice could do justice to a song this beautiful. (And the other one isn’t Richard Thompson. It is truth absolute that he is one of the most brilliant and inspired and inspiring songwriters there is, but it cannot be only me that wants to reach up into his throat and pull his voice down from up his nose.)

I digress.

And I heard she even married one time,
A man named Romany Brown
But even a gypsy caravan was too much settling down…

Well. There’ll always be some of us who you’ll never get to commit even to the walking house – and we wouldn’t want them any other way. Me? I might start saving…