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Meme time: I have been tagged by the cunning Lucy Fishwife of Life Happens Between Books, and must post Six Random Things About Me.
1. I have had as "pets" dogs, cats, magpies, bats, hairy-nosed wombats, bettongs, rabbits, guinea pigs, ducks and sugar gliders. I also once had a koala die in my arms of kidney failure, which was very sad.
2. I was engaged to be married at the age of six. It did not work out.
3. I once drunkenly stumbled up to David Malouf at a publishing party (to which I had received an inbvitation as a lowly bookseller) to tell him how much I admired his work. I was quite pissed and inarticulate. He thought I was a bouncer come to evict him from the premises. At the same party, one of my co-workers scored a snog from Alistair MacLeod.
4. My father once inadvertently made noted Australian children's-TV fixture Humphrey B. Bear swear on live TV with the aid of a Tesla coil--the first and only time said bear has spoken in over 40 years of broadcasting. The bear danced too close to the coil and was struck by a bolt of electricity, and his slightly muffled cry was "Oh, FUCK!"
5. In my first week of primary school I suffered major concussion after running into someone at full-tilt and bouncing off them to fly head-first into a brick wall, knocking myself out. How brilliant might I have been if this had never happened? We will never know. It also has made me deeply suspicious of any book or film where the protagonist gets knocked out with a blow to the head, and yet remembers everything that happened to him/her up to that moment. Head trauma doesn't work like that!
6. I am currently typing with several tissues stuffed up my right nostril to stem a blood nose. Ah, the glamour of the writing life. I also just did a Google Image search for "bloody tissue" to decorate this entry, and really wish I hadn't--'tissue', of course, having another meaning in this context.
Fantastic! What is a sugar glider? I know I could Google it but I would rather hear it from you. Same goes, obviously, for a bettong. I have never snogged an author but did throw a glass of red wine over myself two seconds before John le Carre turned to speak to me, thus rendering my carefully-planned and intelligent questions the ramblings of an apparent lush...
ReplyDeleteCertainly right about that Bellow cover. Marvelous.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't stop laughing at your six random things. And the fact that you were typing with a bloody nose makes it even more BusterKeatonish. Sure love your blog.
thank you.
Ricky: thanks for that--I know the importance of suffering for my art.
ReplyDeleteLucy: the red wine incident would have been very embarrassing, though at least you didn't accidentally spit it out on the great man himself. A bettong is like a very small, mildly silly kangaroo, while a sugar glider is a small, airborne possum with a real taste for sweet food--their standard dinner was usually white bread soaked in milk and sugar. Re-reading that description it sounds made up, but I assure you it's a real animal.
Thanks for the laughs! As a big fan of Humphrey, I am most impressed that your father made him swear.
ReplyDeleteThe Malouf story is also great. I haven't read any of his work yet - is there anything in particular you would recommend?
Hey, Kylie: I'd go for 'Johnno' or 'Conversations at Curlow Creek' in the novels, or 'Every Breath You Take' for short stories.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'll keep an eye out.
ReplyDelete