Journal: 116
That ‘Again!’ is a bit unfair, this should be the last one. Our daughter has come up with a really great opportunity for Milly to buy and build on an empty block in (WA seaside resort town) Denmark, just a couple of hundred yards from the shops, with trees on three sides and its own tree lined stream. We went down last week to check it out, and now it’s all systems go.
Gee lives 15 kms out, so I can see Milly doing after school grandmother duty more often than not, for years into the future. And yes we checked – she’s 15m above sea level, in fact there’s a little waterfall between her and the town centre – so she’s safe from that aspect of global warming, anyway, and in one of the coolest spots in WA.
And the bonus is, Milly has a free hand to design herself a house, which might be her favourite thing in the world, so we might get our family back verandah back.
The ocean beach makes for spectacular photos, but the town is actually set back a few kms, on the inland side of the inlet that the river runs into.
When I told mum, her first reaction was ‘you’re going to be lonely’, probably a reflection of how she feels as the last of the family still living in Melbourne. Will I? I’m not sure. The problem is that neither Milly nor Gee likes my flat, too many stairs, so they’re unlikely to stay with me. I could get somewhere easier, but I like my flat and I like living on the river, close to the city. I’ll think about it over the next couple of years as I edge closer to retirement.
Onto other matters. I have been trying to catch up on the work I didn’t do, revenue I didn’t earn while my gearbox was rebuilt, so not much home time; well not until I got Easter off, which gave me time to write up We Need New Names; read for and prepare a couple of upcoming posts on CH Spence for AustralianWomenWriters dot com; catch up on blog reading; and do last year’s tax and all my filing. My desk looks a lot neater!
Last night I finished Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction. I have no idea what to say about it. Salinger seems to have invented a family, brothers and sisters and parents, just in order to write about himself as a writer. It’s brilliant, but beyond my ability to explain.
Driving down to Denmark and back, five hours each way, I played Jack Heath, Kill Your Husbands, an Australian murder mystery set in the mountains near Wagga. Milly was really into it, so when we got home I had to set up her computer so she could hear the end (which I still haven’t).
On one of my trips, and I did six, each around 3,000 km, in five weeks, I listened to a US crime thriller written by American Ghanaian woman, Yasmin Angoe. The thing is, it was so plain vanilla American compared with, say, We Need New Names, but with a Ghana backstory which felt tacked on, as though Angoe was exploring her roots – which of course she should, but so many other authors do it better. And why is it that assassins are so often romanticized? Her protagonist is female, wealthy, good looking and a murderer. I much prefer Stephanie Plum who is broke and can never find her gun when she needs it.
I just spoke to Milly and she’s feeling nervous about all the selling and buying ahead of her; the packing and moving; the one year gap where she’ll have to rent while she builds. She said she’s tried drawing house plans, but it’s not working.
This month’s Black Africa novel will be The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste (Ethiopia)
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Recent audiobooks
Dolly Alderton (F, Eng), Good Material (2023) “Comedy”
Lin Anderson (F, Scot), Easy Kill (2008) Crime
Yasmin Angoe (F, USA/Ghana), Her Name is Knight (2021) Crime
NoViolet Bulawayo (F, Zimbabwe), We Need New Names (2013)
Jack Heath (M, Aust/ACT), Kill Your Husbands (2023) Crime
Greig Beck (M, Aust/NSW), Mysterious Island: Here be Dragons (2023) SF Fantasy
Currently Reading
JD Salinger (M, USA), Franny and Zooey (1961)
JD Salinger (M, USA), Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction (1963)
Catherine Helen Spence & Jeanne Young (F, Aust/SA), An Autobiography (1937)
AWWC Mar 2024
| Date | Contributor | Title |
| Wed 6 | Elizabeth Lhuede | Minnie L Brackenreg and “Tess”, a poet’s champion |
| Wed 13 | Bill Holloway | Caroline Chisholm, Married and Independent |
| Wed 20 | Bill Holloway | Caroline Chisholm, Radical |
| Wed 27 | Whispering Gums | Alice C. Tomholt, and “The uses of adversity” |
The Australian Legend 