An ANZAC Memory

Tomorrow is ANZAC Day.

Australians and New Zealanders around the world spend the 25th day of April each year commemorating and remembering the sacrifices of their fellow countrymen (and more recently women) who have gone to war for our countries. The date signifies the day in 1915 on which ANZAC troops landed on the beach at the Gallipoli peninsula, Turkey, in what was to be an ill-considered and largely unsuccessful sally during World War I.

18 years ago today, I was in Turkey preparing to attend the ANZAC Day dawn service on the beach at Gallipoli. The same beach those young men landed on, under fire from the clifftops, all those years ago.

We had about a week in Turkey in total. That trip continues to offer me some of the most vivid memories of my life. It wasn’t all history and war. I can still see before my eyes the cold, intricately detailed marble corners of the Blue Mosque. The entrance to the Topkapi Palace, so very Disney and yet so rich in gritty realness. The gloomy romance of the Istanbul catacombs, the voice of the Phantom of the Opera echoing in my ears. The intoxicatingly perfumed air of the Spice Markets, colours so bright they burned themselves into my retinas. The addictive simit, delicious circular bread rolls covered in sesame seeds and sold on every street corner (very frequently to me).

Then there are the memories from the Gallipoli peninsula: row upon row of white headstones, dolphins cavorting lazily in the dark waters beneath the steep cliffs, the eerie presence of the Lone Pine on its hill, the haunting grief in the words of the inscription at the ANZAC Cove Memorial, controversially attributed to Kemal Ataturk.

But the memory that endures the strongest is the one from that dawn service, standing on that beach, sleep-deprived, cold and disoriented in a crowd of pilgrims, when the fear and anticipation of the ANZACs landing on the beach that day reached through time and into my gut. In the early morning silence as the service commenced, as the bugle rang out and then paused, I felt it. That terrifying, blood-freezing inevitability of what awaited, of sheep to slaughter. I’ve never forgotten that feeling.

I haven’t quite made it to every local dawn service since, but I haven’t missed many. Largely that dedication comes down to the desire to have that feeling in my core once more. It is always strongest in that early morning quiet amidst a sea of people seemingly holding their breaths as the last notes of the Last Post fade away. Our local service is held on the seafront, with pine trees looming above the memorial, and that is the closest I’ve come to matching the atmosphere of Gallipoli beach. I won’t be there this year, heavily pregnant and battling illness as I am, but I’ll be up before dawn anyway.

Lest we forget.  

Not all downtime is wasted

A quick post this week: despite having 5 days off work over Easter, the destruction of my routine caused by family, cooking and chocolate has disrupted my writing efforts. 

Spending some time in front of the television over the past few days has left me feeling guilty for not using my time more wisely. But I am also reminded that sometimes inspiration can come from the most unlikely of places. 

Here are some of the shows that regularly send me scrambling for my notebook:

1. Coast Australia (BBC – on History Channel in Australia): part travelogue, part history documentary, part cultural investigation, this television series comes up with so many story ideas it could sustain a career. There are also UK and New Zealand versions. 

2. You Can’t Ask That (ABC Australia): poses a series of awkward questions to a handful of representatives of a different minority group each episode: blind people, polyamorous people, sex workers… brilliant for research as well as inspiration for different angles on characters or scenarios. 

3. Freaknomics Radio: this podcast spins normal ways of thinking about (typically mundane) topics on their head. There is also a series of books by the same name but they are still sitting patiently on my to read pile. 

Newborn worries, take two

Preparing for the arrival of my first baby, I worried about, well, everything. I’ve always been slightly terrified of babies, and to this day, prefer not to have too much to do with babies that aren’t my own. I’m the one standing at a safe distance when someone brings their latest progeny into the office for display. I’m also an only child who grew up free of exposure to many babies. As a result, I entered parenthood with absolutely no idea what I was doing, and I don’t do well with that level of uncertainty. So I worried. Is she feeding properly? Can she breathe properly? Is she too cold? Too hot? When should we start solids? Is this fever worthy of a trip to the hospital or will they laugh me out of the triage line? And so on and on.

I learned – and continue to learn – so very much from my first baby. So many of the things I was worried about have been put solidly in perspective. Nevertheless, two months away from the arrival of baby number two, there are other concerns on my mind. How will my toddler, so excited right now about the baby in Mummy’s tummy, actually react to the reality of a baby sucking up her parents’ attention? What on earth will happen with my toddler in the middle of the night when the baby wakes for a feed or is screaming for no reason? How will I keep my cool when my toddler wakes the baby I’ve finally, finally got down for a nap by squealing madly around the house, as she is wont to do?

So yes, there are concerns circling around my mind. And yet the worrying is different. Less, both in volume and intensity. I put that down to the most valuable lesson I learned with my first baby: whatever challenge we face, we will be able to find a way through it.

There is always a solution, even if that solution is nothing more than time and patience. The realisation that no one tiny decision is likely to change the face of my child’s life, lifts an incredible amount of pressure. The trite consolation “this too shall pass”, so difficult to buy when you’re in the trenches early on with your first baby, with experience and hindsight becomes an aphorism that sinks deep into your soul.

I daresay some worries are unavoidable in the lead up to the seismic shock the arrival of a new baby causes in a family’s life. But, unlike last time, those worries are not what is keeping me up at night (that would be the aches, pains and enforced changes to sleeping position). They are much more mellow, softened by a quiet confidence.

Yes, I know we will be pushed to breaking. I also know we will get through it. Individually and as a family. Because that’s just what you do, because there is no other option, and that makes it all fine, whatever it is you have to do to muddle through.

Barring a disaster that is (hopefully) extremely unlikely, we will surmount whatever challenges the arrival of our second child throws at us. We will find a way.

Princess Anna for President

Until recently, all I knew of the film Frozen was what I had overheard in the media and from friends with kids in the relevant age group. In fact, I assiduously avoided it, in anticipation of over-exposure once my daughter was old enough to get into it.

The impressions I nevertheless gained were consistent: ice blue dress, blonde bombshell lead, “Let It Go”, the name Elsa.

A few weeks ago, I finally watched it. And I was floored. Even as I listened to my daughter repeatedly asking “Where’s Elsa?”, I realised that Elsa isn’t actually the main character. Media darling and fan favourite she may be, but in terms of narrative impact and characterisation, she’s an also-ran.

It is abundantly clear that Anna is the real star of the show: it is her journey, her belief, her realisations on which the film turns; she is the one with true power, even if she doesn’t have the showy magic.

From the song “For the First Time in Forever”, Frozen

Anna is the one with verve, attitude and fight; she’s not the boss, but she acts as if she should be. Why is she so underrated?

I mentioned this to a friend, who suggested it is as simple as Elsa being the blonde, “pretty” one, and she was probably right, as nauseating as that is.

Elsa has “the look”. But Anna has the substance, and I hope, with time, to teach my daughter to appreciate Anna’s character over Elsa’s star power – and to become a true Anna fan.

(And I’m sorry, Frozen fans, but The Lion King is still the best.)

 

Creating secret doors

We know these characters aren’t real, but we have real feelings about them... We know these characters aren’t real, and yet we also know that they are. – Mac Barnett

TED is a wonderful place, especially when you hit “surprise me”. A little while ago, I asked TED for something funny. What it served up was indeed a surprise, not only in how appropriate it was for me at that particular time but also how it continues to stay with me.

In 2014, children’s book author Mac Barnett gave a TED talk called “Why a good book is a secret door”. The talk spans wonder, the realness of fictional characters, and creating worlds hiding through secret doors; sometimes in wonderfully ingenious ways, often incredibly enduring.

This is, surely, what all of us trying to write a children’s book – or any book, for that matter – hope to achieve: an impact that lasts in the reader’s mind and heart for years to come. It came as a timely reminder, as I was reaching the end of a course on picture book writing, not to get so caught up in the technique as to forget that opening that door for the reader’s imagination is the ultimate goal.

Barnett has just released Triangle, illustrated by Jon Klassen. (Klassen is the author and illustrator of This Is Not My Hat, which I’ve talked about before.) I can’t wait to get my hands on it and release my daughter’s imagination through this new secret door.

Carrying the World

I did a course on picture book writing recently (as I’ve mentioned before), and one of the suggestions was to read poetry, even if you have no intention of writing it. Apparently studying poetry enhances understanding of rhythm.

I’ve never been a poetry person. I don’t think in abstract very well, which is why (despite loving reading and writing) I opted out of studying English in my final year of high school. I also don’t have a musical bone in my body, and I think that contributes to my difficulties in formally identifying rhythm, although I like to think I have a decent ear for it anyway. Nevertheless, conscientious student that I am, I took on board the lesson from my course and trotted off to the library to get a book of poetry.

I started with a recent book by a poet I’d come across on twitter: Carrying the World by Maxine Beneba Clarke. She nabbed my attention by live-tweeting the Williams’ sisters Australian Open final in verse. As you do. In what probably betrays my ignorance of the higher end of the Australian literary scene, her name didn’t mean anything to me at the time.

Since then, I seem to see her name everywhere. She has appeared on several literary shortlists for various works and won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for poetry for the book I already had in my hot little hands.

I’m not remotely qualified enough to pretend to be a poetry critic, but I can tell you the poems that really struck me in the feels:

An evocative personification of black history that is a real eye-opener for those of us without a personal experience of race minority.

“Demerara sugar”

This transported me: viewing this stark history of race through the lens of someone who holds tight to her ancestry but also ties it back to a familiar contemporary experience.

“In karikatur australisch deutsch”

This one is written in a sort of “Ganglish” which can be a bit hard going but is worth persisting with for the brilliant punch line. After the poem’s depiction of a girl’s series of negative childhood experiences connected with race, the last line shows how she overcame them all – and calls for a virtual high five.

“Nothing here needs fixing”

While I love my family and my home, no one will be bestowing domestic goddess status on me anytime soon. As such, I rely heavily on my amazing husband, one of those few who actually does at least (if not more than) his share of household work and child rearing. So I’ve always wondered how on earth single mothers manage – and having read this poem, I have even more admiration for them.

The Introvert’s Bill of Rights

I just had to share this Introvert’s Bill of Rights.

I’d also add: introverts have the right to work from home. There’s nothing worse for an introvert than having to front up to an office, especially one with an open plan design, each and every day. Being completely exposed to people throughout a long workday, five days a week, just builds stress and anxiety, reduces productivity, and makes introverts much less pleasant to be around both at the office and everywhere else. There’s no wonder a career in writing is such an appealing prospect to introverts everywhere.

My List of Lists of Note

I can’t stand the word “journey” used in a figurative sense. Yes, I journeyed to England a couple of years ago to visit the in-laws. No, the last 3 years of my life have not been my “parenting journey”, they’ve just been the years in which I’ve averaged the least sleep of my life.

But reading Lists of Note by Shaun Usher (Canongate, 2014) genuinely did feel like a journey of sorts – through time, space and so many random thoughts. Turning each new page is like reaching into a lucky dip or clicking “random” on TED.

Many of those pages offer incredible inspiration for life and writing. I can see the potential for almost any page to unfold into a story or essay or feature article. A few will go towards ideas I have rattling around.

The ones that tickle your fancy are unlikely to be the same ones that appealed to me, and that’s the joy of it. Nevertheless, here is my list of Lists (which coincidentally came to the satisfyingly round number of 10).

1. The makings of a timeless reference

List No. 015 is the first entry in Peter Roget’s first draft of his now legendary Roget’s Thesaurus. It was quite the revelation to think about someone manually drafting such an epic work.

2. Sins of genius

19-year-old Isaac Newton documents (in code) the sins of which he considers himself guilty in List No. 044. Amongst numerous sins against God, he includes “peevishness” to his mother and sister, petty theft and brawling. Nice to know even the greatest among us are human.

3. Advice to young ladies

I’ve picked this list from 1830 (List No. 047) since I expect it may be useful for the novel I’m toying with. It ranges from the petty – “If you have pretty feet, there is no occasion to wear short petticoats.” – to the profound – “If you would live happily, endeavour to promote the happiness of others.”

4. The Great American Novel(s)

List No. 048 is Norman Mailer’s 10 favourite American novels. ‘Nuff said.

5. For grammar nerds

List No. 068 is the delightfully named “Fumblerules of Grammar” published by William Safire in his NYT Magazine language column in 1979. The statement of each rule breaks that rule, lending humour to what could otherwise be just another grammarian’s list.

6. “Turn off that **** cell phone…”

… is one of Christopher Hitchen’s commandments in List No. 069.

7. Thomas Jefferson on getting stuff done

“How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!” Story of my life. (List No. 089.)

8. Books you ought to read

According to Ernest Hemingway (List No. 101) – see number 4 above.

9. Edith Wharton’s favourite books

List No. 106 – as per numbers 4 and 7 above (yes, that sound you hear is my “to read” list stretching at the seams).

10. Organising a bookshop the honest way

Including “Books You Haven’t Read”, “the Books You Needn’t Read” and “the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered” from Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (1979), which will now go on onto my list of “the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First”.

This Is Not My Book (But I Wish It Was)

This is a tale of bookshop serendipity and love at first read. The type that an online bookstore can never hope to replicate. While browsing in a bookshop a couple of weeks ago, I discovered the picture book that has since become one of my family’s favourites. But more than that, I am intensely jealous of the author/illustrator. It is one of those books any author would wish they had written.

This isn’t the first time I’ve stumbled on something fantastic by browsing in a bookshop, and I hope it won’t be the last. Brick-and-mortar bookshops are getting ever thinner on the ground, but we need to hang on to them to retain the opportunity for these magic moments.

This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen.

This Is Not My Hat on the reading chair

A little fish steals a hat from a big fish. It thinks it can get away with it. But can it?

The text gives us the first person, present tense thoughts of the little fish, as it admits to stealing the hat, acknowledges that it is wrong to do so, but decides to keep it and evade the big fish by hiding in (what appears to be) a kelp forest. The little fish is confident it won’t be found. The pictures show the big fish pursuing the little fish, eventually following it into the kelp forest.

SPOILER ALERT!

Only the big fish emerges, wearing its hat.

The book has a wonderfully dry sense of humour, and the impact of that final surprise of the big fish emerging victorious is priceless. Suffice to say, I laughed out loud in the bookshop when I read it the first time, and still have a grin on my face after multiple readings.

The text is tight but varies; most spreads have only a line or two, but these are punctuated by longer paragraphs which work to convey the little fish’s guilty conscience and anxiety. The illustrations are bold with simple shapes and unusually monochromatic sepia tones. The approach perfectly matches the narrative.

Books like this make me wish I had any drawing ability. This Is Not My Hat is so effective primarily as a result of the dissonance between the text and the illustrations, and it’s hard to imagine anyone other than an author-illustrator conceiving and executing the concept so well.

The big question – what happened to the little fish? – is a gripping mystery lingering at the close. It allows for conjecture by the child audience, and the ambiguity means the ending amuses all generations.

This is not my book. But I really wish it was.

My edition of This Is Not My Hat was published by Walker Books Ltd in 2012. 

Baking truths

Toddlers force us to face uncomfortable truths in life and in baking

My husband’s birthday was this weekend just past. It wasn’t a major milestone, we didn’t do anything much to celebrate, but I thought I’d bake for him. And when I say bake, I mean cake.

The “About” page on this site mentions bread baking specifically, and there’s a reason for that. I’m pretty good with bread, most of the time. I’m comfortable with it, and I enjoy experimenting.

Cake – and other sweet baked goodies – not so much.

During the week, I baked a polenta, almond and lemon cake. My toddler, having been promised cake after dinner, whined for her cake the whole way through the meal. So we gave her some cake. She tasted it, said “yuk”, and turned it into a fine crumb, before going back to her broccolini and corn on the cob. I’d achieved something remarkable: the cake that makes toddlers eat broccoli. (In fairness to myself, the cake was delicious, just a bit adult.)

On Saturday, having a few overripe bananas hanging around, I decided banana bread should more widely acceptable to the household. All kids love banana bread, right? Well, after struggling with a recipe that included a critical typographical error, wrestling the cake batter back from the brink by sheer force of will and KitchenAid, I finally presented my banana bread to my toddler.

She ate all the walnut pieces and left the cake.

If there is any certified truth in life, it would seem to be a toddler’s reaction to sweet baked goods (as opposed to unillustrated picture book texts). My husband seemed happy enough with what I’d produced, but my baking confidence, already delicate, has taken a bruising.

Nonetheless, I got back on the horse on Sunday and tackled an apple and raspberry strudel. Again, I had a stressful time with the dough, which was unmanageably wet until I poured a third again more flour into it. Then the thing split wide open along its side while baking.

It was slightly overbaked (apparently the splitting is a sign of that) but we enjoyed it. That’s my husband and I, by the way. My toddler won’t be getting any.

I can’t handle that much truth.