Talking Heads by Alan Bennett

This is number five in my 100 + Reading Challenge. I adore these monologues by Alan Bennett. I picked up this book at a jumble sale in the Peak District about six years ago and it is a cherished bookshelf fixture.

Bennett’s monologues – performed for the BBC series by great British actors including Thora Hird, Julie Walters and Patricia Routledge – are funny, disturbing, sad and ovewhelmingly poignant.

My favourte is “Cream Cracker Under the Settee” where Doris’s obsessive cleaning leads to her demise – she is cleaning when she shouldn’t be and slips and falls on the floor. She is one of these prideful old women. The “stiff upper lip” generation of Brits who don’t want to make a fuss. Behind the stubborness is real sadness too. The comment about the stillbirth of her baby son are words that have stayed somewhere in my mind ever since I read them: “…the midwife said he wasn’t fit to be called anything and had we any newspaper?…I wanted to see him. Wrapping him in newspaper as if he was dirty…”

February 8, 2010   Posted in: 100+ reading challenge 2010  No Comments

Magazines: A love story

I am watching a show I recorded called Inside the Great Magazines as I write this. It is a Canadian series that take viewers inside the most influential magazines of our times – Cosmo, Rolling Stone, Ebony, Time – and for magazine addicts like me, a fascinating social history and insight into the publishing world. I am in viewing heaven.

I love magazines. My first journalism job was on a magazine – my cadetship at Disney Adventures and then a year-and-a-half on New Idea (an Australian weekly women’s magazine) before I moved to London.  As a child I would go straight for my mum’s friends’ magazine racks or coffee tables to read Woman’s Day, New Idea or Australian Women’s Weekly.  As a teen my friends and I would read Dolly (the columns Dolly Doctor and What Should I do? were always faves) and I had the local newsagent put away a copy of Smash Hits each week.

I am a rabid mag reader…though less so these days since I moved back to Australia because they are so expensive! I subscribe to Vanity Fair and Australian Harper’s Bazaar (it was a gift from my brother and his partner and I love to look at stuff I can’t afford!). When I lived in the UK  I bought about 10 magazines a month (OK!, Heat, Red, Marie Claire, Radio Times, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Eve, Newsweek) and more if I was going away on holiday.

I anxiously await my copy of VF every month and look forward to poring over the stories. I love the knowledge that a magazine is in my bag or at home waiting for me to read.

So, the talk of the last few years (especially with the Global Financial Crisis) that the newspaper and magazine publishing industry is dying is a horrifying thought. A lot of my horror is based in fear because I work as a journalist. I love my career. I don’t want to do anything else.

And I love magazines. I’ll read anything, seriously. I’ll pick up my dad’s copies of Feathers and Fur and have a read. Ditto my husband’s Australian Nursing Journal.

I like to touch magazines and keep them, then I re-read them. I love what Magazine expert Samir Husni says:  ”…Playing tennis on Wii is not the same as playing tennis at the tennis court.”.

There’s a great post by Husni on his blog Mr Magazine about his 10 reasons to be hopeful for magazines going into this next decade of the 21st century.

I’d love to know your magazine reading habits or thoughts.

January 31, 2010   Posted in: Media  4 Comments

Reasons why I was a bad person this past week

Five reasons why I was a bad person last week.

1. I found the news that Brangelina is allegedly breaking up to be a mood-lifter. Nothing like a celeb break-up to lift the spirits!

2. We were at the playground and a little girl and my daughter (similar ages) were climbing on the equipment. Little girl looked down to her mum, pointed at my daughter and said, “I can climb up this but THAT girl can’t”. I smiled and ignored the comment in the way parents do but in my head I thought “Yeah, but you look like a sour-faced little whiner, kid!”.

3. I ate the lollies from the party bags my kids received from a 4th birthday party.

4. My husband was accepted into a Bachelor of Nursing course starting in five weeks. I am proud but my immediate (selfish) reaction was:

“My life will be hell for the next two years, what with him working and studying! Why couldn’t he be like most people and do a job he hates, or even doesn’t really like and put up with it until retirement? Then he can take up golf or something.”.

5. I deleted my husband and daughter’s tv shows from the Foxtel iQ box to make more room for my stuff (that I never find time to watch!) and said, “the three-year-old must have switched off the power point and the recordings failed”.

January 25, 2010   Posted in: Lifestyle, Parenting, celebrity  18 Comments

Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail

This is the third book in my 2010 100+ Reading Challenge. Gen Buy by Kit Yarrow and Jayne O’Donnell was fascinating and disturbing in that I felt like a complete Gen X dork compared to the pampered, confident and style-aware Generation Y.

This book is geared at informing retailers how to tap into the powerful Gen Y market and what sales methods with resonate with them but it is also a really interesting social commentary.

I am at the tail-end of Gen X and for my generation (growing up in Australia, at least) the only fashion labels we owned were Country Road or Esprit and we wore Blundstone boots with floral dresses and flannelette shirts. In fact, the first time I had a real glimpse of labels that Gen Y covet (and own today!) was when I was first in Paris in 1999 and had my picture taken outside the boutiques like Chanel and Nina Ricci.

I am grateful that there was less pressure about fashion when I was going through my teen years (as well as less access to technology!) and I am a little fearful of what it will be like for my girls when they are tweens (I hate that term) and teens.

I will make damn sure that I own a Chanel purse before my daughters do!

January 18, 2010   Posted in: 100+ reading challenge 2010  3 Comments

Lambs to the Slaughter by Debi Marshall

This is the second book in my 2010 100+ Reading Challenge. I have chosen grim reading so far – I do have a preference for true crime books – and Lambs to the Slaughter by Australian author Debi Marshall is very disturbing but compelling.

It is about Derek Ernest Percy, a child killer who has been locked up for over 40 years and is also a person of interest in several other unsolved child murders and disappearances, including the most famous case in Australian history – the Beaumont Children who went missing in 1966 in Adelaide.

It is hard reading and Debi Marshall has done an excellent job, especially with the sources, including Percy’s mother and the relatives of the murdered and missing children.

Late last year (after book was published) an inquest was held into the disappearance and probable murder of seven-year-old Linda Stilwell in St Kilda in 1968. Percy’s lawyer objected to him giving evidence on the grounds of self incrimination and the coroner ruled it would not be in the public interest to grant a certificate for Percy to to give evidence without fear of prosecution.

January 8, 2010   Posted in: 100+ reading challenge 2010, Crime  One Comment

The kids’ bookshelf cannot be tamed

This great article on Australian news site The Punch mentioned something I have long thought but never heard anyone articulate before – children’s books are impossible to stack neatly.

See our bookshelf below (Note the Go Duster. It has become more of a toy for our daughter than used by us as a cleaning aid!):

Children's Books

Children's books are impossible to stack neatly, no matter how many times you rearrange them.

Several times a day my husband and I find ourselves re-stacking the shelves and trying to work out new ways to make it look neat. (Since having kids I have discovered that I like neatness and order. Sorry, Mum for all those years where you could not see my bedroom floor for all the clothes and books and stuff!)

The bookshelf actually looks relatively neat in the photo because the kids are at daycare today.

(The Jack-O-Lanterns were a fantastic op shop find yesterday for 99c each. Our three-year-old is very interested in witches and Halloween and ghosts at the moment. I hope this is not a sign she will become a Goth or an Emo?!)

January 5, 2010   Posted in: Parenting, Society  7 Comments

Soham: A Story of our Times by Nicci Gerrard

This is officially the first book read for my 2010 challenge of reading 100+ books.

Soham: A Story of Our Times by Nicci Gerrard uses the 2002 murder of British girls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells as a narrative for the how and why society seems to have an over-emotional reaction to the deaths of people we do not even know, yet seem to be so out of touch with our own selves.

Nicci Gerrard is a former newspaper feature writer and with her husband Sean French, writes best-selling thrillers under the name Nicci French.

This book is not long – 126 pages – and is a gripping read in the sense that it gives an overview of the Soham case and also looks at the grief reactions from the public to events like these and the role of the media in encouraging it.

I arrived back in the UK to live in the August of 2002, when the girls had been missing for a few days (unbeknownst to everybody except their killer Ian Huntley, the girls were already dead) and it did seem like the whole country was gripped by the case. It was Summer and I can remember waking every morning, until they were found, immediately wanting news of what was happening to the girls known now to everyone by their first names.

I then followed, as did millions of others, the trial and media creation of Huntley’s girlfriend Maxine Carr (she had nothing to do with the murders but lied for him) as one of Britain’s “Most Evil” women.

The chapter I found most stirring in the book was when Gerrard details a crime and trial that happened the same year as Soham but barely made a ripple in Britain’s national newspapers. It was about the murder of a woman Lynn Burgess who was a close friend of Gerrard’s sister-in-law and the author’s personal knowledge and subsequent detailing of the case is gripping.

This is a really thought-provoking read that manages to cover several topics in a concise and accessible way.

January 1, 2010   Posted in: 100+ reading challenge 2010  4 Comments

100+ reading challenge 2010

This year I am going to read more. I am going to swap the tv viewing with reading and I have set myself an aim of reading 100 books (I won’t include picture books I read to my kids!). I will be charting my progress, including short reviews on this blog.

The challenge is being hosted by J Kaye at her blog and you can still sign up should you feel inspired to read more in 2010.

1. Soham: A Story of Our Times by Nicci Gerrard

2. Lambs to the Slaughter by Debi Marshall

3. Gen Buy by Kit Yarrow and Jayne O’Donnell

4. Dreamgirl by Mary Wilson

5. Talking Heads by Alan Bennett

January 1, 2010   Posted in: 100+ reading challenge 2010  6 Comments

In 2010…

In 2010 I have some resolutions. Oh yes, indeed, I do.

1. Go to bed earlier. I find that I stay up really late because that is when the kids are asleep and I can get some stuff done (mainly watching shows I have taped on my Foxtel iQ). I like to call it “me” time. However, this backfires the next day because I can be crabby and a bad mummy. (I cave in and put on cBeebies or Nick Jr. See resolution number 2.)

2. Watch less television. I love TV. I love watching it, reading about tv shows and circling stuff in my Foxtel guide. The other night my husband said, “If the interest rates go up more we may have to get rid of the Foxtel”. I told him to wash his mouth out and NEVER speak of it again. I will scrimp on other things but don’t mess with my TV! However, I need to be more discerning with my viewing. Quality over quantity. No more news broadcasts in languages I don’t understand or shows about bridezillas, stupidest criminals or anything with “whisperer” in the title.

I let my eldest daughter watch TV (she is nearly four) and I am also going to try to limit her viewing. At the moment she would watch an hour in the morning and an hour (maybe a little more…) in the afternoon. I would like have her watch only one hour a day but seriously, when would I be able to cook dinner, tidy up or surf the internet in peace without my High Definition friend?

3. Remove makeup and wash face before bed. How else am I going to get the benefits of the Dermalogica products I buy and more importantly, justify the money I shell out on them?

4. Stop taking my husband for granted. I have a great husband. I really do. Everything he does is for us. But am I happy? Of course not! I am cursed with  Billy Idolism. I want “more, more, more”. When I complained the other day that we weren’t going out enough and doing fun-filled activities as a family he looked up from the bathroom floor (he was re-grouting) and said, “would you rather a slob who sits on the couch drinking and playing video games?”. No, I wouldn’t. Thank you for the reminder.

5. Watch Ingmar Bergman’s Silence of God Trilogy that has been taped on my iQ for months. (This contradicts resolution No. 2 but it’s art, eh?). You never know when you’ll be at a gathering where Swedish cinema will be discussed?

6. Lose 10 kilos and tone up. As much as I didn’t want to have this as a resolution, the post-baby belly and bingo wings (flabby arms) have to go. Fact.

What are your resolutions?

December 30, 2009   Posted in: Lifestyle, Parenting  10 Comments

My celeb gossip habit

I love to read trash mags while I am at the hairdressers. It is 90 minutes of quiet where I can be by myself and catch up on my celeb goss. I also like to check sites like TMZ, femail.com and other gossip sites a few times a week. I loathe it and love it at the same time. It is like I have a co-dependant relationship with celebrity news and gossip. I am a lot better these days. When I lived in London I was like a junkie with my magazine-buying habit.

Now, I can’t afford the habit and the Australian magazine selection pales in comparison to the offerings in the UK and US, sadly. My one indulgence, however, is a subscription to Vanity Fair (US edition).

I was looking at a “stars without makeup” photo gallery today (pics of stars sans their “done” faces are guaranteed to shift more copies of magazines!) and some of the captions were hilariously bad (I’ll leave out the celeb names).

… looks exhausted while taking a jog in Santa Monica. REALLY? She’s jogging!

… spotted looking exhausted without makeup carrying daughter. SHOCK! She’s a new mum. It is tiring! And who has time for full makeup when you have kids?

… looking less then hot with bags under her eyes and no make up… I could never be a celeb because I would be so sensitive about comments like this.

What will be next? A caption of a pic from a celebrity funeral:

… looking lifeless at her open casket viewing?!

December 28, 2009   Posted in: Media, celebrity  3 Comments




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