Romulus, My Father

She was sick and lovely but how much is enough? Is a childhood harrowing if you don't know when you're in it that there's any other kind? I'm thinking I'm fortunate to be born in the seventies when kids were beginning to gain more currency. Perhaps the seventies were the good middle ground, the place between the toast and caviar that Yvie's mum talks about.


The writer sits in front of the audience. It's a warm audience, but an audience all the same. The questions aren't about the film, or even the book, but about his life. What happened to Susan? She was put in a home. We lost touch. I found her again. She came to a screening.

Eric Bana is on the panel. He's the shiniest man alive. Josie says his suit is too tight. I don't think so. Ray says he's a rock until he's asked to speak, and then he's on. He's not got the eloquence or the passion of Gaita or Drake. He doesn't own the story. But he's totally oz.

I go back to check the Andrew O'Hagan line. Say I was longing for disaster. I'm locked onto him. It's not like the red shirt night. I'm listening. I've not digested it yet.

The playwright who looks like Miranda July is in the music shop. She's in a red coat and looking at the sale table. The vibration in my pocket tells me that my laksa is ready next door and I have to leave.

Tom finds a guitar pick on the floor. Then the artist from WA is talking about Johnny Ramone's plectrum flying through the air and - of all those damn people at the gig - landing near him. That pick, though, ended up in Richard's mum's vacuum cleaner. He suspects. Perhaps Richard has it, I say. Then he's asking me about my own luck and I draw a blank and change the subject. Nothing specific, just routine consistently medium luck.

Taming of the Shrew reminds me of the line "we go together like accident victims and blood donors".

Andrew O'Hagan talks about the many ways we choose to betray ourselves. I can't remember the line: "Say I was..." Thom Yorke's equivalent idea: "there's always a sign leading you to shipwreck". For.

Memo to Gina

Adam Hills has been doing a stand-up season at the Enmore. On the poster, and in the advertising, there's a photo of him and he's jumping up so that his shirt has lifted and you can see his tummy and the top of his undies. But you missed it. Sorry. I hope you're having fun in Siberia, though.

And I've been thinking about so many things.

Jonquils stolen from a median strip perfuming a downstairs Bathurst flat, and now this bright kitchen where we open the wine and conduct our lives. Nancy Sinatra and tradtional afternoon tea in a violet box. The soft white afternoon making a church of honey and aubergine.

This week, a Monday morning of submission and resistance. Submission that is, at its heart, resistance. It's the time of year when we begin ideas for the next, and we go to sit together and hear the writers. We cram to read them before they arrive, in a way that doesn't happen at any other time, the motivation to become familiar. Then we sit with the other smug readers, and wait to understand what it is to be a writer. I remember two years ago, a man in a red shirt. I remember wanting to shout to him to move away from the lectern, so powerful was my desire just to see his legs. But back to the tamer. What does he want? The act of taming requiring spirit in the first place. A Shakespeare not revealed to me before, with none of the frustrating misunderstanding, just wit and frisson and stimulating questions of identity. How did this woman take shape? How was she formed, especially then? I tell myself I'm responding to noble issues of female identity, but what of the exciting, attractive arrogance of Petruchio? Touche.

I've been thinking of my visceral rejection of the idea of the female club. Sydney Swans Ladies Lunch. No thank you, Sandra Sully.

I'm standing in a social group, drink in hand. In my mind's eye I am Calista Flockhart ramming the blond elfin next to me to the ground with my shoulder and closing the circle again with a smile.

Spider is a tattoo'ed gazelle. He pays attention to the fundamentals: running, jumping and kicking without using up too much energy. So he's a fundamentalist?

The men sitting behind us certainly are. They've got the fundamentals completely sussed. They talk slowly, so slowly, but definitely of footy and fishing and shooting and the business. They can put their parking ticket on the business, but someone should do something about the rules. They need to address flooding?? Noonie and I sit joined in silent relief that we're not mixed up in this kind of crowd.

Campos

David Marr buys beans and avoids the take out line. Noonie wants to talk to him about stories in the paper. She says he looks twice at her and we think it's about the display of earrings. Two years ago now.

Pickle and I sit in the gutter and watch the take away parade. There's a man next to us with three dogs. What do we know about him? We know his partner is a kiwi. We know he has an accent. Scottish?