Three Favourite Books of 2006

1.  Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson.
2.  Case Histories, Kate Atkinson.
3.  Human Croquet, Kate Atkinson.

'MON THE KATE!

If I was Scottish I might say that in 2006 I went pure dead MENTAL for the works of Kate Atkinson.

Born in York, the author now resides in Edinburgh but I shan't be stalking her; I prefer to admire a la distance.

Monday night I went to the Edinburgh Book Festival for a session called 'Tips On Getting Published', my attempt to seek inspiration beyond self-publishing avec photocopier.

A lot of people turned up for the Tips. They filled the hall and sat up straight in their chairs. They opened their notebooks, clicked their pens and waited to be filled with information. I just had some tissues and a box of mints. Amateur!

On the panel was a literary agent, three publishers and a lawyer. They expelled much wisdom about queries and manuscripts and money (or lack thereof) and agents and enthusiasm, and the crowd dutifully scribbled it down.

Then it was time for audience questions.

"Please keep your questions nice and general," requested the host.

"You were talkin' about libel," growled a large man with shaved head, "Well, say you just got out of prison and you've done a memoir about bein' in prison and in the memoir you talk about people who're still in prison... can they sue you from there?"

Then someone else piped up, "How much would it cost me to send you my manuscript? Is it going to be expensive?"

"You mean like... postage?" asked a baffled publisher.

"Yes!"

The stereotype of the tightarsed Scot won't be dying out any time soon.

We went back last night see David Sedaris. I'd never been to an author reading before so this was a brilliant place to start. SJ got me hooked on his stuff many years ago, so I admit to getting the dopey Fan Girl grin as he read his stories. And he was extremely charming and hilarious during the audience questions too. It's one thing to be a brilliant writer, but to be brilliant out loud, without cigarettes or weeks of editing too? Bonus.

Afterwards, I joined the typically lengthy but civilised queue to get my book signed. I was anxious and wanted to spew, because a girl in the audience had asked Sedaris about the most stupid or irritating thing fans have said to him. He said book signings can be nervewracking for all involved, because you have just a few seconds of contact and you feel some sort of pressure to say something interesting. Apparently some smartarse will always say to him, "Do you talk pretty yet?" and it drives him demented. So what was I going to say? Love your work? I didn't have delusions of being funny or engaging, I just didn't want to be a starry-eyed dickhead.

I was distracted from my angst by an evil triumvirate of journalism students behind me. They made me shiver with their retro shoes and carefully careless hairdos. I pegged them as second years, because they were still in that Holier Than Thou phase of a journalism student's career in which all you can do is MOCK STUFF, or tell the world of your disdain for The Media with its unethical chequebook-weilding practices and how you will Never Be Like That, because you are a real journalist with Integrity!

(This phase ends when you graduate and soon realise there's nae jobs and perhaps you shouldn't have been so hasty in turning down that cadetship at the Hicksville Herald.)

Once they had argued which university had the superior student newspaper, they discussed what they were going to say to David. Should they approach as a trio, or go separately?

"If we go up together and say something collectively brilliant, maybe we'll appear in his next story!"

"Yeah! Although he might blend us into one character. With boobs, two penises and six legs."

"Brilliant!"

More interesting was the veterinary student waiting in front of me. She was making efficient use of her queuing time to study. First it was something about cells with intruiging blobby diagrams, and then she moved on to a page of case studies.

Female intact dog presents with dullness, lethargy and vaginal discharge. She was on heat eight weeks prior.

What the hell was an intact dog? You'd presume it would have to be intact if it had managed to present itself, especially if lethargic. But what about the discharge? Is that terminal?

I scribbled down the case as I peered over her shoulder, word for word; because I had come prepared with a notebook this time and I had make use of it somehow.

I was so busy pondering the plight of the intact dog that I forgot to think of anything interesting to say to David Sedaris, and before you could say "dullness and lethargy" it was my turn.

"Hello!" I said.

"Hello!" said David Sedaris.

He asked my name and I said Shauna and he asked how to spell it so I said S-H-A-U-N-A and he said M-A? Shauma? And I said, No it's N-A you know like Shaun with an A attached. He said Oh I see then asked where was I from. I said Australia and he asked whereabouts in Australia and I said, Oh just a country town that nobody's heard of.

And then he said, "I like those flat whites you have in Australia."

"Oh yeah! Flat whites. You don't really get those over here do you."

"Actually I think there's a cafe in Soho that does flat whites, it's called -"

"Flat White! I heard about that!"

"Yeah!"

"It's all those Aussies in London," I mumbled helpfully, "They really need their flat whites."

And then followed what I perceived to be a pained silence. We were all out of words, so he handed my book back.

They always say you should never meet your heroes. Whenever I read a David Sedaris book from now on, I will remember that vaguely uncomfortable expression and my complete... flat whiteness.

I slinked away and the three Journalists of Tomorrow stepped forward. I should have told him about the dog with the vaginal discharge. That could have been interesting.

Hey comrades, it's confession time!

I've been wanting to write this entry for over five years but have chickened out, time and time again. But now it's got to the point where I'm so anxious and exhausted from keeping this dumb little secret that I need to come clean and get it over with.

It's a long story, so go make a cuppa if you need to.

I am really bloody sick of not enjoying this. All sorts of stupid stuff has been getting on my tits for months and months leading to this blog becoming a steaming pit of neglect. Examples:

• All the nasty weirdoes who came out of the woodwork post-Bloggie
• The server being pounded so hard by comment spammers that no real people could leave comments
• Templates and design that were slick and sweet in 2002 now bloated and buggy behind the scenes
• The discovery that a whole bunch of people read this site that I didn't realise read this site (hello Mothership and 5 billion of your friends!)
• My virtual life being totally outed at work via a large national newspaper and some unfortunate Googling
• Just being sick of the sound of my own typing, really.

My policy has always been never to blog about blogging and to only write if I have something to say, thus hopefully avoiding sounding like a wanker. But this has backfired on me, because now I worry so much about who and how many are reading and that what I want to say is too rubbish/unfunny/personal/Boring Married Person that I've reached the point where I am not writing anything at all.

And since I didn't want anyone to know I was worried about this, I've been sulking and skulking and letting the discontent grow. This blog is like that really messy spare room in your house, crammed with old magazines and boardgames and boxes of funny-smelling clothes that don't quite fit; the room you know you should do something about but you just shut the door and go watch telly instead.

At this point folk may be wondering, who cares? This is just a blog, you indulgent little twat, and there are people floating around in New Orleans who have real worries. But please just allow me this one moment of contemplation, I haven't done it much in the past five years.

Blogging for me has never been about Blogging in the traditional sense. Some people fuss over site stats and blogroll politics and inter-blog fights and Technorati rankings and awards. For me the blog just happens to be the medium that came along that let me write the stupid stories. Ever since I was a horrible ginger child I've been compelled to write down stuff that happens and share it with people. I grew up and decided the best way to pursue that was with a journalism degree, but of course got a rude shock when I discovered you had to use facts and talk to people and not make shit up when you're a journalist. So after three miserable years of that, the only writing I did was to invent jobs for my dole form. Then one day in 2000 I found Heather Champ's site, and wondered what that little Blogger logo was at the bottom of the page. So I signed up and discovered I could write something, press a button then POW, it was out there for the world to see! It was much easier publishing process than the old days, where I would have to write words on bits of paper and ask mum to borrow the stapler so I could staple it all into a book then harrass her, "Read my book! Read my book! Please please please!". So the whole blogging thing gave me such a rush I actually shivered.

That's what blogging is about for me, the rush. Yes I have been lucky to gather some readers and that bloody Bloggie and whatnot, but very selfishly I just did it because writing gives me the horn. I love being mid-entry, when there's just bunches of random sentences all over the page and I have to figure out how to string them all together. Sometimes it's all formed perfectly in my head and I'm purely transcribing; sometimes I wrestle with it for days, even weeks. Either way, once I hit publish and the little blob of text appears, I just grin to myself and go hee hee hee hee and feel like I've smoked something really good.

By now you're thinking I'm a complete wanker, or you may be disturbed knowing that some silly little story that takes you ten seconds to read is something that leaves me wildly excited like I just saw sexy Ed from Radiohead wearing nowt but a figleaf. But I just wanted to let you know why this blog is important to me so you can understand why I am so bummed that I feel bummed about it lately.

I'm not saying I am some brilliant precious writer type, just simply I like doing it and I feel lost when I'm not. I get frustrated and cranky and hump cushions. This blog is my treasured little place to store funny stuff that happens, so I can remember it or maybe use it for something later on. Yet for the reasons described earlier, I've just let it slide and it is making me batty.

Last week I read Rebecca's Blood interview with the most excellent Dooce. This here bit (my italics) was real a smack in the chops:

"Some days I feel my website writing itself, and those days are so much easier than the days when I sit there grasping for one word or one sentence that will not come out, and I'm like, BOTH ENDS ARE STOPPED UP. I find that the more I write the easier it is to write the next time, and the longer I wait in between posts the more stopped up I become.

Thanks Doctor Heather. The solution is clear, just bloody write. I'm tired of feeling self-conscious and apathetic. I'm tired of pretending I don't care, and most of all I'm tired of editing the life out of stories or being too afraid to write them in the first place.

To start with, this blog needs a spring clean. I might find it more inviting if the house is in order. I can't keep waiting for the Fairy Blogmother to come along so I'm getting off my arse and do the geeky crap I've been putting off for years. I am tidying up the archives. I am sorting five years of images into folders instead one giant puddle. I am moving to a new server. I am upgrading my Movable Type thingy. I hope to get this all done before we leave for Oz in two weeks time, though that may be a little optismistic.

But when I get back up from Down Under, I am going to try and forget about all the people watching and just learn to enjoy this shit again.

So here I am, still writing on a website (four years today) and making it easy for old acquaintances to Google and quickly realise that I'm still an idiot so there's no need to get back in touch.

Writing on the internet is easy. Compare the life of an internet writer-type to that of an actor. The actor must go to auditions or to Blockbuster in order to check out the competition, feel inadequate and wonder if they should try and be someone else -- internet writers just have to look at their blogroll. And they can do it without having to put on makeup or underpants.

Also consider the internet reader versus the movie-goer. Internet readers don't have to pay money and sit through what could be a rubbish film -- they can scan the first few lines of a webpage and click away if it stinks.

It's also beautifully easy for everyone to interact. Readers can leave comments or zap emails and their words will wash over the writer, all sweet and warm like a strawberry being lowered into a pot of chocolate fondue. But if you want to communicate with an actor, you have to send a self-addressed envelope to a fan club, and who knows how long it will take for the form letter/head shot to get back to you? It's much harder to give feedback, unless you're really determined like that guy who tried to assassinate Reagan.

Blogging's been a struggle this past year without a job that supports the habit. But the urge to write never wavers; I think in paragraphs while sitting on the bus, lips moving slowly like a psychopath while testing lines of dialogue. This is followed by weeks of mental editing, so by the time I actually write anything down it is no longer relevant, timely or of any interest to anyone at all. When I actually manage to produce something, I feel an enormous, shuddering relief, like an old man on a toilet after a mighty Vindaloo.

I still treat like this blog like an embarrassing secret. I panic when friends discover it. For four years I've been "forgetting" to email mum the address. When I see it on my sister's screen my face burns with shame like a 13-year-old boy caught with a Playboy. Part of me still thinks it's insane that millions of people are all typing words into little boxes and sending them out into ether.

Still, you can't deny the good a blog can bring over the years. They open doors, they inspire and frustrate. They show you how big and small the world is. They lead you to friends you now couldn't be without, even someone to fall in love with. They improve your typing speed.

I always thought the Australian edition of Cosmopolitan was gloriously rubbish, but the UK edition has been a revelation.

Exhibit A: The Penis Reader!

Agnes Freeman is the UK's only penis reader. And Cosmo comes but once a month, so only twelve women per year get to unlock the secrets of their partner's privates. For every Verity from Gloucester, there's a million Melissa's from Manchester or Confuseds from Glasgow who are left confuzzled, staring at those strange dangling creatures and wondering what's it all mean?

Clearly there's a labour shortage here. This could be my ticket to a work permit. I'm going to phone the British Home Office and get them to post me a few staff polaroids. Brian is very clean and enjoys photocopying and filling out forms. Left-wing tendencies. He also likes to be spanked. Once I've dazzled them with my skillz, they're bound to let me stay!

I read somewhere about someone who used to write down every nice thing that anyone ever said about them. For future reference. To soothe their soul on a Nobody Loves Me day.

It could have been a skanky spiral notebook or maybe it was a sexy little Moleskine, coz if they wrote it down on something sexy, well that would just make the sentiment all that sweeter when they re-read it later on. And they wrote it with a really good pen. Not necessarily expensive but just one that felt so right in your hand, made your handwriting look carefree and light. They didn't hear good things all that often so they'd had the notebook for years and years, and each compliment took up a whole page.

12.03.2001
Checkout chick at supermarket said Hey did you get your hair done today coz it looks real good!!!

29.10.1993
"That was the best cup of coffee EVER" -- my boss

13.09.1997
Random stranger with pink hair gave me their car parking voucher because they were leaving and it still had an hour left on it.

08.07.2002
Mum said, "I like what you've done with the garden".

It's a good idea really. I might try that for the new year. That way if someone tells me I look like shite or I'm fired or Let's Be Friends, I Don't Want To Shag You, I could flip open my notebook and clear my throat and say, "Well I don't CARE! On the Fifteenth of March a tall guy in red shirt pinched my arse at the pub! I don't need you!"

Woohoo! Is there anything the internet can't do? In just 60 seconds, my Ready-To-Go Eulogy For A Grandfather From A Young Grandchild™ will be emailled to me for the low cost of US $29.00!

If you were ever a curious teen, you may recall Forever by Judy Blume. There was a young lass, a young lad and a whole lot of shaggery.

And a penis named Ralph.

It is only referred to as Ralph for the entire story. You can imagine the millions of naive young pups across the globe, relying on Judy Blume as their sole means of sex education, growing up thinking that Ralph was the official anatomical term for this wonderful contraption.

But really, what an unappealing name for a penis. Ralph. Was the young lad in the novel inspired the collected works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the overpriced elegance of Ralph Lauren, or the antics of Ralph Malph on Happy Days?

Or perhaps he really liked the Karate Kid movies and thought Ralph (Macchio) was a more memorable moniker for his member than The Old Dude Who Plays Mr Miyagi.

I.
What's that you're reading? Oh. That Geisha book. No I haven't, it's become too mainstream for my liking. Yeah I'm a bit of a wanker like that. I don't know how you can read on the bus, doesn't it make you nauseous? Once I tried reading the Herald on a car trip to Sydney, but it's a broadsheet and with the newsprint stink, I spewed all over the business pages.

II.
I just don't have time to read anymore. I wish I could pinpoint when I stopped. When I was six years old I used to curl up in bed with an encyclopedia. They were the Grolier Book of Knowledge, 1967 edition. So I started with the A volume and worked my way through the alphabet over the years and filled my brain with a lot of outdated information. Made me pretty handy at trivia nights, except for that time I argued black and blue with my Uncle Stanley that Germany was still split in two. Well I was nine, I never watched the news! I didn't know jack about that whole reunification thing. Why would an encyclopedia lie? Anyway. Broke my fucking heart when Dad sold them in a garage sale.

III.
So you had the Virginia Andrews phase too? My mum wouldn't let me either! I had to sneak it off the shelf and read it under the covers! Man, I read Flowers In The Attic so many times I started to think that maybe it really was okay to fuck your brother.

IV.
Peter Rabbit was a pansy! Give me Jemima Puddleduck any day.

V.
You think that's traumatic? My folks had the original edition of The Joy of Sex, with the 70s illustrations, sprawling pubic hair and the men looked like seedy folk singers. No mention of AIDS and safe sex, back then it was pages of revolting hairy orgies. But still a good read, mind you.

VI.
No, no, I haven't read To Kill A Mockingbird, but I did see the movie. Gregory Peck used to have really sexy eyebrows, one of them arched in this really sexy way. But then as he got older they just got old man wild and fuzzy.

VII.
Actually, you know I can pinpoint when I stopped reading. It was after Joy Of Sex and I discovered what was what, then I found better things to do while laying in bed at night.

VIII.
So does the geisha die?

I'm on the phone with Shauna right now...yes, right as I speak I'm here blogging on HER blog (the sacrilege!) while I sit here in Seattle, Washington, she's in Canberra, the capitol of Australia, lying in bed.

She says she's contemplating blogicide if she can't think of anything to post. So, she's soliciting ideas. She the promises to consolidate all of your suggestions into a singly, wacky (I'm quite sure it will be wacky) post.

Examples:

"Shauny we haven't heard about Mr. Shakey II recently, write about him!"

or,

"I like it when you use a bunch of weird Australian terms, like 'root rat' and 'stunned mullet'... use some of those in your wacky post."

And don't forget to visit Shauna over at my blog, the tinyblog from the 14th to the 24th, where she will be guest curating whilst I go on retreat.

Commence with your suggestions.

That is all.

Oh yes, I tried to put on my intellectual pants and read some quality novels during my Christmas break. I was doing quite well for awhile, relishing the big words and the subtle themes. Then the heat kicked in and the air conditioning died, consquently my brain turned to mush. I found myself in front of the flatmate's bookshelf, determined to lower my standards. Top shelf was her fantasy novels, which are no good to me because I tune out as soon as there's misty forests and pointy ears. Middle shelf was bodice ripping historical romances which I skipped, as I don't fancy his turgid steel entering her hot lava cave of lurve. So on to the bottom shelf, where chick lit reigns supreme. These books are a standard two inches thick and souffle light to read. The entire plot is revealed on the back cover blurb and there's always a Wacky Best Friend and the search for the perfect lipstick shade. Just made for a mindless summer read.

The flatmate is a fan of Marian Keyes, the undisputed chick lit queen, huge years before Bridget Jones arrived on the scene. I started with her first book Watermelon, a wonderful romp in which five minutes after giving birth, the chick's husband leaves her. So she whinges and bitches about her plight for 400 pages before finding new love. Page 363 stood out for some reason:

"I'll just tell you very quickly that I think cunnilingus is the most boring thing God ever created. I'd rather spend a day filing than endure a minute of it."

Hmm, I said to myself. Hmm.

But I thought nothing further of it until I was skimming my way through the second novel, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married. The premise here is that Lucy Sullivan visits a psychic who predicts she will be married by the end of the year. So she spends the next 300 pages throwing herself at anything with a penis thinking he must be The One. Suddenly an apparently raunchy scene caught my eye, in which she described receiving downstairs attention as "about exciting as watching paint dry".

Hmm! I said to myself. The Hmm had an exclamation now! That's two books in a row in which she makes a point of giving her characters a distinct disliking for this particular activity. It didn't take a Masters in literature to see there was a theme developing in these fine, fine works of art! Oh yes! Scholars of the world! Put away your Dostoevskys, analyse this!

Of course, after that I had to go on and read her next novel, Last Chance Saloon, to see if this trend continued! I stomped my way through another 400 pages and discovered that it did not. I even scanned back through the whole thing to see if I'd missed it! But I hadn't. I felt strangely cheated.

Then the flatmate came home with Sushi For Beginners, Ms Keyes' latest. It sat on the shelf for a few days untouched before I could finally blurted, "Are you going to read that?"

Ms Keye's writing has got better and better over the years, and she is brilliant at what she does, and deserves her success. I don't want to sound bitchy. Sushi was a good holiday read. I lounged on the lounge with my bowl of ice cream, reading away quite nicely when suddenly my spoon clattered to the floor.

"HMMM!" I said. Capital letters AND exclamation mark this time.

I burst into my flatmates room and announced to her and the boyfriend snoozing on the bed, "Well! I have the evidence!"

"What?"

"Page 262! She's at it again! For the third time!"

"Who?"

"Marian bloody Keyes!" I cleared my throat and read. "This was the point at which Dylan usually like to shimmy down her body and administer cunnil-"

"Oh, not again?"

"It was so boring and simply added several wasted minutes to the whole procedure." I snapped the book shut and planted hands on hips triumphantly. "HA! See?"

"Indeed."

"Well that's all I had to say. Carry on!"

Writing a novel is good opportunity to tell the world what you really think about things via your characters, but this is getting ridiculous. Perhaps I will churn out a bunch of blockbusters and at some point every character will say, Last night I dreamed of running over the members of Creed with a very large truck or Hairy backs - why god why?, and I'll owe it all to the Marian Keyes School of Subtlety.

Oh ho, it's one of that sad little entires in which I make crappy excuses for not writing. But to be honest, ever since Nanowrimo finished I have felt completely burned out (burnt out? help me, grammar nazis) and drained of all creativity. I haven't felt like writing. But I have felt like socialising, compulsive exercise, drinking too much, and laying on my bed moaning like a harpooned whale whilst panicking about the future.

The NaNoNovel was finished at 4pm today. After thirty days of spelling out every word (we party like it is nineteen hundred and ninety nine, not like it's 1999), it all died in the arse in the last thousand words. The final sentence went something like, "So she quit her job and nicked off to Russia. The End."

Clocking in at 50,101 words and 145 pages, I couldn't resist clogging up the printer at work to print the whole thing out. And of course, there had to be a paper jam around the steamy scene on page 98. Could have been embarassing. So here it is in all its twelve point Century Schoolbook glory.

The question is, what to do with it now? Does one plug on, rounding out characters, filling in the yawning chasms in the plot? Does one tinker away for another 30,000 words to make it novellish then try to fulfil the lifelong dream of getting published?

Ha! Here are some better ideas:

Put under the christmas tree and give to some poor sucker who you don't really like.

Place on your bookshelf beside the other fine works of literature and hope noone notices the difference.

Stick it in the loo to prevent those agonising moments when you realise it was your turn to buy more loo paper but you just gosh darn forgot.

Give to your dog as part of his daily requirement of complex carbohydrates.

More NaNoWriMo out of context crap. There are huge errors and things that DO NOT MAKE ANY SENSE but it's a draft so please pretend they are not there otherwise I will cry.

The waiting room was deserted except for a young mother and her two sons. One looked about four and was lying limply in his mothers' arms, all feverish and cranky. The other kid was about seven and flitted around the room, bouncing on the chairs.

"Adam! Sit down and be quiet!"

"But Muuuu-um. When do we get to home?"

"As soon as we get Patrick's x-ray back from the doctor."

"What's an x-ray?"

"It where the doctor takes a special picture of Patrick's bones to see if there's an infection in his chest, making him sick."

"Will we get to see his guts?"

"No, Adam."

"Bor-ring."

He hopped around from one foot to the other, then spied a big wallchart with a picture of a skeleton on it. It had been there for years, I remember the doctor pointing out the relevant bone on the very same chart when I fell out of the cubbyhouse and broke my arm all those years ago.

"Loooook, Patrick!" The kid made his voice all low and spooky. "It's your bones! Ya bonnnnnnnes!"

The little one could barely lift his head but watched his brother intently with glassy brown eyes.

"And here's ya arms. And here's ya legs," Adam went on in a chirpier tone, pointing to each spot like a weatherman. "And ya knees and ya elbows!"

Then his voice dropped, as deep and Vincent Price-ish as a seven-year-old can muster. "And here... is... your skuuuuull."

His mother rolled her eyes and looked up at the clock, "When's that bloody doctor coming?"

Adam had discovered a cupboard full of crutches. He selected a tiny one and hobbled across the floor. "Mum, mum, look at me! I've got a bad leg!"

He pulled out a larger crutch about twice his height and tried to hoist himself up on it. After crashing to the floor three times, he slung it across his body like a gun, making those sound effects that only little boys seem to be able to do, like psssssssshowwwwwwwwww!, and the one that sounds like an explosion and requires a lot of spit in the mouth to pull off.

"Adam. Put. The crutch. Away." His mother's ponytail was fraying around her hairline in damp tendrils.

The boy sighed heavily then looked around for something new to do. I smiled sympathetically at the mother and she lifted the corners of her mouth very faintly in reply.

"Mum, mum, look at me!"

He had climbed up onto a trolley bed in the corner. He lay on his back with his arms at his sides.

"What are you doing Adam?"

"I'm Claire!"

"Who?"

He lay very still then suddenly shouted, "CLAIRE!"

He jerked his body up and down like he was having a fit, then collapsed back onto the bed. He rubbed his hands together vigorously then slammed them down onto his chest.

"CLAIRE!" he shouted again, jolting his little body into the air.

He caught me staring at him, and rolled his eyes impatiently. "You know, like on the telly. On the doctor show! When the people have heart attacks someone always yells for Claire."

"Oh yes, Claire! Of course!"

He lay back down again and performed his defibrillating routine a few more times.

The little one was starting to cry. The mother looked like she was about to cry too.

"Adam, sit still and be quiet!"

He slumped down on the bed, arms and legs out rigid. He gave a slow, wheezy gasp. It looked like we'd lost the patient. His eyes went wide and blank, his mouth opened and tongue flopped out. Not even mouth to mouth from Claire could save this one.

I thought his mother would weep with relief when the doctor finally appeared with Patrick's x-rays. They were herded off to another room to view them. Adam trailed along, firing his crutch/lethal weapon at pot plants and random hospital staff.

Moments later the nurse appeared and announced that Jeanne and her brand new baby were ready for their photo. I rummaged through my bag for the soft-focus filter as I walked past the x-ray room.

"Patrick! Look at ya bones! Ya look like a chicken! Little chicken bones! Ahahaha!"

Well! Nanowrimo-ing during work hours when there's a 48 page newspaper about wheat crops to convert to HTML, how shameful!

So you know in a catholic church when you go inside and there's that sink thingy with holy water in it, and you splash a bit on your forehead? What do you call that? It has a name, I think. Microsoft Word had 0 results when "holy water sink" was entered into the thesaurus. If anyone knows please pipe up! If the guy and the girl are going to break into the church and shag in the confessional, they may as well bless themselves first.

I was in a book buying mood yesterday but short stories was all I could do, due to my limited concentration skills. I got "Speaking With Angels", a name-droppers wet dream, edited by Nick Hornby with stories by the likes of Irvine Welsh, Zadie "Tosh" Smith, Colin "Mr Darcy" Firth and Roddy Doyle.

I couldn't even start at the start and just bloody read, I had to dip into each one briefly, stick a toe in, see if any lines grabbed me. Finally I was dragged in with After I Was Thrown In The River And Before I Drowned, by Dave Eggers. I wasn't all hot and bothered about Staggering Genius as everyone else seemed to be so I was pleasantly surprised here.

It's written from a dog's point of view. And not in that cheesy way you write A Day In The Life Of The Toaster stories when you're seven ("Oh I wish they wouldn't stick multigrain in me. That chafes!"). This story so energetic and joyful and slobbery and sweet and I fell in love with it completely.

The dog dies. I was in tears, not because it was sad but just because of how it was written, it was so beautiful. He's dead in the bottom of a river:

"I slept in my broken sack of a body at the bottom of the river and wondered what would happen. It was dark inside, and musty, and the air was hard to draw. I sang to myself."

My sister got home from work and I'd cooked the most amazing pasta but I held it hostage until she read the story.

"Oh." she says when done.

"Don't you love it?"

"The dog died."

"Yeah! But but! Didn't you love how he wrote it?"

"What a depressing story."

"But he was dead and crumpled and he sang to himself. That killed me. So funny and sweet!"

"I spose."

"Well! Eat your pasta then!"

You know those days when you are just desperate for someone to see things they way you do, to feel the things you feel, to cry over a stupid story, you ache to feel a connection with someone, anyone. But they just want to eat their pasta.

It was Literary Legends Week on the History Channel, so I've just about had a gutful of the greats all wrapped up in neat little digestable packages. Too much about their tawdry lives, not enough about the writing. A couple of highlights. Hemingway: wars, hunts, fishes, grows beard, dies. Fitzgerald: drinks, drinks, jazz, crazy wife, drinks, drinks, dies.

What did I learn about writing from this extravaganza? Milk your experiences for all they're worth. Don't despair over that pesky world war, your evil tart of a wife, that cancer rotting in your lungs, your penchant for cross dressing, those annoying debt collectors with the big guns, whatever, it's all choice material. It doesn't matter that your family hate you for so blatantly plundering their lives for your novels, because you're bound to die young, and years later when your family has carked it too, the world will realise how brilliant and original you were.

Anyway.

Saturday afternoon and we were trundling out to Woden for the groceries. I noticed a little crimson rosella hopping around on a crossing, looking quite distressed. He would fly a few feet into the air before crashing back down again, legs askew. Two four-wheeled drives barrelled over the crossing, somehow missing him. Our heartstrings went *plink*. My first thought was to take a photo, I'm ashamed to admit, and my second thought was that it would make a cute little story, but finally the third thought kicked in: must rescue bird.

We didn't have anything to catch him in, so I came up with these genius ideas 1. throw a sweatshirt over him then scoop him up, and 2. the sweatshirt was to be Rhiannon's (I only had my bra on under my top, and I am not quite that desperate for attention).

Up close we could see one of his legs was really quite mangled, so the poor baby wasn't too hard to catch. Before we knew it we were driving around aimlessly with a sqwarking bundle of navy blue Cornell University cotton. It was 6 o'clock, Harry's boutique vet wasn't open. We were parked outside of the Japanese Embassy of all places, on the mobile with a decidedly unhelpful RSPCA person. Finally we went back home, plopped the bird (by now christened Walter, for no apparent reason) in an old printer box and went through the Yellow Pages. Soon we were heading out to the Dark Side (Tuggeranong) with our screeching box and trusty street map.

We pondered all the big questions during the twenty minute drive to the vet. Will he ever walk again? Will they have to amputate his leg? Will he have a little peg leg? Will we take him home and rehabiliate him? Do you think Harry would eat him? Or do you think they'll say ahh it's only a bird and put it down? Or just toss it to some cats to finish it off? Will they be that cruel? Will the bird shit come out of Rhiannon's sweatshirt?

Finally we arrived after a few missed turns. Such a crisp, starry night, it just smelled like adventure, you know? Bird shit, and adventure. I felt sure something amazing and terribly worthy of writing about was about to happen. We rushed into the surgery with our precious cargo.

"Here's the bird! Here's the bird!" (we had called in advance.)

"Sorry?" asked a bored looking nurse-type with scarecrow hair.

"The birrrrrrrrrrd! The ROSELLA! He's hurt! He can't fly properly and he keeps flipping over onto his back."

We pictured emergency surgery, elaborate bandages, a drip, the vet performing CPR with his fingertips, breathing life back into that little beak.

"Oh, no worries. Just leave it on the counter."

"What?"

"Just leave it right there. We'll have a look at it."

"You... you... you mean you don't want us to hang around?"

"No."

"You don't want us to hold his claw and croon tenderly while the vet checks him over?"

"No."

"You don't even want us to sit in the waiting room reading ancient New Ideas and anxiously watching the clock?"

"No."

"You don't want us to pace endlessly up and down the hallway, drinking putrid coffee in paper cups and looking forlorn?"

"No."

"You don't want me to have great anguished sobs rattling in my throat when you tell me There Was Nothing We Could Do?"

"No."

"WELL WHAT KIND OF PISSWEAK ENDING TO THE STORY IS THIS? WHAT THE BLOODY HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO WRITE?"

"Oh dear, I'm sorry." The nurse regarded me gravely. "But there's nothing we can do. You're looking for literary gold here when there just isn't any. It's a parrot with a buggered leg! It's not a story! Have you ever sat astride a freshly slaughtered rhinoceros? Has your wife ever gone bonkers? Have you ever seen the sun rise in Bolivia or sawn off one of your limbs with a butterknife? Now THAT'S a story!

"But you, my dear, you have gentle, harmless little adventures. You run over cats, you lust after Olympic swimmers, you buy amusing dog food. At best, you're a columnist in a Nowheresville newspaper, churning out sentimental fluff pieces that would perhaps elicit a toothy smile of recognition from an old granny over her cup of Bushells, but little more...

"I don't know, perhaps you could even start one of those weblog thingies, I hear you can type up any old shit on those and some boffin is bound to read it. You may even be able to squeeze out a few more wacky anecdotes from that slightly dysfunctional family of yours. But unless you start living a little - having some torrid affairs, binge drinking, harpooning a giraffe - the History Channel won't be calling you any time soon."

"You're a harsh, harsh bitch!" I sobbed. "What about the bird?"

"Never mind the bird. You've done all you can with the bird. This is the way the story ends, not with a bang, not even with a whimper, more like a pathetic little fart from a expired cow. Now, on your way."