Hey Birmo - one of your bunnies is loose

Life imitates art imitates delusional reality.

It appears that ex Swans honcho and star crossed lover Jeffery Edelston has popped the question to twenty six year old, totally-sincerely-in-love-with-the guy and almost certainly natural blonde, Brynne (OMG, look at those funbags!) somethingorother. The wedding invite is a 15 mintue video.

Bwahahahahahah

Oops,

Aw, what a lovely old fashioned couple.

Rememberance day

Ah, what a beautiful day:

First no parallel importation on books

Then no Traveston Dam

AND A TAX RETURN too boot!

Thankyou umpire, thankyou ball boys.

All up hill to Christmas

Man, I think my brain is going to break.

Just got through the weekend; three open access sessions on Saturday for the Regional Rights project in which I make myself available for hour long personal consultations with budding writers. Then on Sunday, a full day writers' workshop on the nuts and bolts of creative writing and another four open access sessions on Monday. In the meantime I've been writing a report for the mentorship winner which involves a close read of his manuscript plus editorial notes, and also reading this monumental, vast family saga 350,000 words, written by one of the short listees -- an amazing thing that left me gasping by the end of it, an emotional rollercoaster.

But prior to that was a full week working with our Iranian mate Mohsen on his manuscript of collected poetry which is a delight and pleasure, if a little emotionally gruelling.

The work is collected from material he wrote when incarcerated in Villawood a four years. Dark as.

Somewhere in there I had to find time to practice cello, do the regular householdy things, and work on my book. Consequently I haven't had a lot of time to be reading through your blogs or writing mine. Not to mention the garden, which has fallen into ruin this season.

I figured it was time to let it go to weed anyway and give the beds a rest. Besides, there's been so little rain the past few months that I'd have drained the tank trying to water and keep it alive. We've just had the first decent rain of the season and can finally put in green manure crops to get a little bit more organic material into the soil.

And the pace it doesn't look like it will slacken off until mid-December.

Into the music

Here it is - my lovely cello.

Rehearsal for the choir yesterday. I've nailed the bass part for Vivaldi, Mozart and the Dvorak. They aren't difficult by any means, what is difficult is learning to play in ensemble and get the dynamics of the music happening. My sheet music is covered in marks and little 'notes to self' about how loudly or softly to play, up bows, down bows, attack on the string and little pairs of glasses drawn to indicate that I should look up from the music to look at the conductor.

Getting the bowing right is the most difficult. We have to sit so close together that if you get your bowing out of sync, you could end up with your neighbor's bow up your nose.

I'm one of those annoying people that can pick up most things and do a fairly slap up job of mastering it fairly quicky, but this! Arghh! It is the first time in my life I've come up against something that I can't do. It will take me the rest of the life I have left to master this sucker.

Still, beacause I can't play the bass part by ear I've been forced to finally learn to read music. I am now able to instantaneously recognise C,G,D and A on the bass cleff and match them to the open stings of my instrument! The other notes still are a bit of a mystery though. I still have to write the finger numbers above the notes.

I wish I was 6 yrs old and had a parent to nag me to practice.

Perhaps Flinthart or Nat might consider adopting me.

Zinc wire of Angels

Man, this dictation software is pure poetry. That title was supposed to be 'sing choirs of Angels'. Zink wire of angels is kind of tangental to what I'm talking about though, so I'm letting it ride. It conjures the sound that is happening just behind me, the squeaking of my cello's strings de-tensioning in the dry heat. I'm in rehearsal for a Christmas concert and so breathless with excitement it's ridiculous.

I am in a cello choir. For the next couple of Saturdays, about 15 middle-aged women (and one bloke) will drive to a tiny country Hall in Eudlo, just south of Nambour, to play together. It is just about the most adorable thing I've ever been involved in. We sit in a circle, in our part groups, in the midst of a large wooden speaker box, and fill it with the honey notes our instruments. Our teacher is a world-class player and has just moved to Eudlo. There is almost no opportunity at all for adults like us to play in ensemble, so when the opportunity comes up you grab it with both hands.

Even though I'm still not much more advanced than beginner (because I never practice, and I don't have a parent nagging me to do it, and it makes my shoulders ache and my neck stiffen up, the lure of that sound has got me hooked. Oh, and the morning tea. And the drive, which is pretty gorgeous. It's a bugger of a climate to play a baroque instrument in, they were never meant for such extremes of humidity and the virginal will be a million times worse to keep in tune.

Apologies for being so off the air lately, I'm flat out with the residency workshops, and for the past two weeks I have revisited planet parenthood which was a shock to the system. I can do kidlets in small doses any day, but two weeks? Woah. By the end of my niece's stay we were both counting sleeps till mummy came home. However, I did get a front row seat to the modelling of the 10-year-old fashion show of loot her mother brought back from Singapore. Beautiful Chinese silk pyjamas - two pairs, a fluffy merangue ballgown covered in ribbons and bows, a fairy floss creation, and a Bollywood outfit to die for in blue sequins, with bangles, junky Indian jewellery - the full catastrophe. At one point she looked like she'd died and gone to girly princess heaven, ecstatic - angelic even!

The trouble with not being a geek.

Well, will you look at that.

I'm sitting here with my arms folded, some considerable way from my computer screen, cuddled up in a comfy chair and not bent over like some kind of weird wicked old which hunched over her cauldron. I just installed and trained that Mac speech software Birmo was on about and am totally amazed by its accuracy.

The hardest thing to get used to is not watching the type as it comes up on screen because there is a delay while it figures out what you are talking about. Rather, you have to force yourself to stare off into the middle distance and let the computer overhear you thinking aloud.

It takes half the effort of actually sitting there typing and I am so impressed I can barely speak!

However, it wasn't easy because sadly, I am not a geek (i.e., even if I do read the fine print on computer software sites, it doesn't actually mean anything). The Mac Speech program propbably did say I needed Macos 10.whatever, but as I have a fairly new machine, I figured I was as up to date as anything. When I get it, it's not until it spits the program out like a bad taste, I realise that I need to upgrade the operating system. I make a few phone calls and, assured that it should be cool to get Snow Leopard because yes, I do have an 'intel core duo' (WETFTI), two days later the disc arrives in a cloud of dust from the TNT truck which was sent out to deliver this precious piece of gadgetry.

All excited, I load it in, only to have it tell me that it can't install because I don't have enough RAM - thanks Mister Jobs. So, what initially only cost me three hundred bucks adds up to more like $500, but hey, its worth it in chiropractic care for my aching typing neck.

Unbelievable accuracy when you consider what the computer is actually doing and in not in any position to make poetic connections or comprehend context.

no net nanny

www.getup.org.au/campaign/AddYourNameToSaveTheNet

ok folks - to the barricades

Get up is running a campaign to keep nanny rudd's mits off the net.

Go there and sign the petition.

End times a comin'

Cough, cough, splutter chough

Need V want

I dunno, I just think I NEED one of these...

SATAN is back!

Satan is back on duty - thank god!

The mice have figured out every single device we could come up with to catch them, so Satan's return is just in time to prevent a plague of the little bastards. They were so thick and blase this year that G-man was able to catch one behind the curtain with his bare hand.

Satan has taken up a top spot under a bench on the verandah, coiled up against the glass. He must have shed recently (they like to do it on the dry wood of the verandah or the rafters under the house) because his exquisite skin is bright, shimmering iridescent green, blue and copper. Being able to get up that close to him on the other side of the glass is amazing - his whole body is one long sinuous jeweled and tooled work of beauty.

We've had the long dry days and cool nights, jasmine, wattle and citrus blossom, but it's not really spring until Satan is back, curled up like a cat in the sunny patch on the verandah.