HALLOWEEN AND PAGAN JOLLIFICATION October turns my local supermarket black and orange. Ghoulish looking snacks appear and recipes are popular for anything that resembles decapitated hands, lost eyeballs, witches, jack-o-lanterns and skeletons. Currently popular are frozen hands in a bowl of spiced up red wine for the adults or red cordial for les enfants. … [Read more…]
This Charming Man ‘If people turn to look at you in the street, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable.’ Beau Brummell (George Bryan Brummell 1778-1840) 2020 is a year where fashion was sidelined. As the pandemic seized control of the globe, fashion was … [Read more…]
Book Dreaming I’ve often been asked – what are the books that meant a lot to me growing up. This is a difficult question because there are so many books I love. And I often revisit books, usually classics, I already know are going to transport me. In winter there’s pleasure to be had in … [Read more…]
Freud’s Cigar ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.’ Dr Sigmund Freud 1856 -1939. In my novel The Scandalous Life Of Sasha Torte, Sasha is introduced to the famous Austrian neurologist Dr Sigmund Freud, at The Sperl Café in Vienna. Sasha Torte – world famous Tasmanian pastry chef – is very taken with … [Read more…]
My Life as a Nightclub Cocktail Girl When I was a child, my mother used to play vintage movie songs and the lyrics to Gigi were: The night they invented champagne It’s plain as it can be They thought of you and me The night they invented champagne They absolutely knew That all … [Read more…]
The Problem With Henry ‘I swear again, I would not be a queen For all the world.’ Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. Shakespeare, The Life of King Henry the Eighth. King Henry VIII has been receiving bad press for centuries. Shakespeare, along with later writers and playwrights, got in … [Read more…]
There Goes the Neighbourhood Dogs ‘A lover tries to stand in well with the pet dog of the house.’ Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) French playwright, actor & poet. In my bayside suburb dogs are everywhere you go. There may well be a pandemic rampaging across the globe but for our local dogs, it’s … [Read more…]
Shakespeare’s Lascivious Lutes ‘Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front; And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.’ Richard III by William Shakespeare. I went to a girl’s high school in … [Read more…]
La Dolce Vita Italy is easing back on restrictions in line with its COVID-19 emergency plans. Border controls are changing and gyms, swimming pools and sports centres recently reopened. Theatres and cinemas are reopening. In a country dedicated to the fine arts this is important. After all, Italians understand style and the art … [Read more…]
Dorian Gray’s Devilish Desires ‘The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.’ The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde In Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray the characters throw themselves around dramatically and rarely ever sit quietly. They fling themselves at the furniture with … [Read more…]
Hello Sailor As the Water Rat in Wind in the Willows, advises the mole, ‘Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.’ I messed around in boats when I learned to sail on a lake. It was comedic right … [Read more…]
Beach Dogs Bayside Melbourne is dog heaven. During shutdown I’ve been walking the beach promenade every day. It provides a complete brain clean. Many mongrels and pedigree hounds are out there on the beach before first light. I chat to the owners outside the Guilty Moose café, as I pick up my morning takeout … [Read more…]
I Want That Cake ‘Let there be no shame on me tonight!’ Prince Wenzel von Metternich 1832 The narrator of my novel, The Scandalous Life of Sasha Torte, was named in honour of a famous cake. Sasha Torte is a world-class Tasmanian pastry chef and she establishes her magnificent cake emporium in Wolfftown, a fictional … [Read more…]
Forest Bathing My mind keeps wandering to the empty spaces and forests that will still be there when the pandemic retreats. Dreams of whispering trees and rustlings in the grass. When I was living and working near Tokyo a few years ago, I got to know a Japanese bullet train driver. Roshi is … [Read more…]
Strange Days ‘andrà tutto bene – everything will be fine.’ The Italians are living in the European COVID-19 epicentre and Italy is currently under emergency quarantine measures. To date there are more than 24,700 people with the disease and more than 1800 have died. Italy has a world class health system but it … [Read more…]
To Proust or not to Proust ‘One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory’. Rita Mae Brown Memories get a bad wrap from quite a lot of folk, including Rita Mae Brown. Yet so many song lyrics dwell on memories. Love songs frequently combine memories with intense regret, and in turn … [Read more…]
A Dog’s Life ‘Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story’ Scott Fitzgerald from The Crack-Up The modern dog has one hell of a good life. With the proviso that the dog lives in a pet orientated country like Australia and … [Read more…]
Paolo Sorrentino – The Pope Maker ‘Face it, I didn’t become famous until I took my clothes off.’ ‘I always wanted to be an actor and not a beauty pageant winner.’ Jude Law Jude Law plays Lenny Belardo, Pope Pious XIII in The Young Pope & The New Pope. Paolo … [Read more…]
My Friend Nigel Nigel was a street cat. I first met him in a French cafe in inner city Melbourne when he strolled out of the kitchen and slipped up onto my lap. He made me laugh. To hell with health regulations, he’d settled in for the evening. Nigel had no interest in the … [Read more…]
To Nap or Not to Nap Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast.’ William Shakespeare Shakespeare knew a lot about sleep, especially insomnia. I suspect he was … [Read more…]
The Amorous Goldfish The first theatre play that I wrote, involved a character named Alphonse. I’d been fortunate in that I’d been offered a mentorship with a professional director. The Australia Council for the Arts also offered me a rehearsed reading in a city theatre with the director, professional actors and an audience. It was … [Read more…]
Everything is Fucked ‘Look, it may be that you came to this book looking for some sort of hope … I am sorry. I don’t have that kind of answer for you. Nobody does.’ Mark Manson, Everything is F*cked A Book About Hope Mark Manson’s first self-published book in 2011 was … [Read more…]
Jack’s Story Jack Charles – Aboriginal Elder, film and stage actor, potter, indigenous activist and former cat burglar – is a brilliant storyteller. His gift of writing from the heart, provided him with cachet and respect when imprisoned. He would sit down with illiterate inmates, discuss what was required and then pen deeply felt … [Read more…]
She Purred Like a Tiger In 1903 Mrs Elinor Glyn published, Three Weeks. These days the novel is considered a bizarre but fairly tame read, but back then it was the Edwardians version of Fifty Shades of Grey and sold about 2 million copies. In the opening pages of my novel, The Scandalous Life of … [Read more…]
Travelling with Casanova Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was a gambler all his life. He also had numerous other careers and was known as: a soldier, a spy, a preacher, a professional writer, a violinist, a silk manufacturer, a lottery director and an alchemist. Born April 1725 in Venice, he graduated at seventeen with a law … [Read more…]