Hot news in nearly-November

Almost Hallowe’en, 1999

Hi, all you patient people hanging out for recent news! As usual I have been very naughty about my Hot News. I see it’s high time I warmed up the current offering. . .

Next week Nov.4th, I set off for the USA again. This will be my fiftieth visit over all and my fifth this year so the States is now feeling like a very comfortable second home. I did say second home, not first home, however. I’m Australian from my two bare feet to the tips of my dyed red hair and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world but here: Adelaide, a sweet city with a gorgeous climate, great bookshops, divine restaurants, a million cinemas and heavenly beaches, and best of all, lots of friends and family.

Nothing much has altered since my last entry, although I am thinner. I’m still tired. I’m tense. I’m tearful. I’m happy. I’m fortunate. I’m fulfilled. I’m content. I’m driven. I’m overworked. And I’m probably overpaid as well. The more things change the more they stay the same.

I’ve been very heavily involved in the YES campaign for the Australian Republican Movement. If Australia votes against becoming a republic on November 6th I feel we will start the new millennium looking backwards to the past instead of forward to the future. It will give us all cricked necks until the next referendum on the republic in about twenty years time. I can’t wait that long to say goodbye to the queen. I’ll be dead or 73 by then.

My involvement in the campaign has been exciting but very draining and at times really dispiriting. I’ve always been a very left-wing-political animal but the last few weeks have seen me at my most politically active and it’s certainly taught me that I could never be a politician. It’s too upsetting for words.

I’m half-way through the third draft of my book about the importance of reading aloud to children before school. It’s rather daunting to draft a 50,000 word book for the third time and to know that there will probably be two more drafts after this one. I’m hanging to my maxim that ‘good writing is re-writing’ in order to keep myself up-beat. Sometimes when I lie in bed thinking about this book my heart beats a little faster. I’m excited about it. The topic means a lot to me. I’m trying to write as if I were a really laid back and intimate friend of my reader rather than an off-putting finger-wagging zealot. I want the world to read this book. Did I ever give the date of publication? March/April 2001.

I gave the graduation speech last week at my daughter’s old high school: Blackwood High, in Adelaide. The young people who ran the huge event were so competent, so terrifyingly articulate and funny and warm and clever that I feel sure the future of this country is in excellent hands. The students at Blackwood are allowed to be very individual, and are so bright, so free from unnecessary restraint, so un-trammelled and divergent in their thinking, so full of vitality and so downright interesting that I missed Chloë dreadfully that night. She’s had a glittering career so far, thanks to Blackwood. Thank heaven we didn’t throw money away on a school that might have had fewer resources, less subject choice, more restrictions and a more limited social outlook.

In between all the YES campaigning and graduation speeches I’ve been writing what feels like a thousand presentations for my time in America. The work seems unending and I’m supposed to have retired to write fulltime. Boo hoo. I never write children’s books. At least that’s how it seems at the moment. But please don’t feel sorry for me. If a woman of my age who is her own boss can’t control her workload, no one in the WORLD should feel sorry for her. She is just pathetic.

Of course the deep down, ever-present sadness which colours every one of days is my mum and dad and their fragile health. I see them both every day except Tuesday (my exercise class). It’s almost unbearable except that both parents still give me such focussed love and attention. I know I’ll be totally bereft when they’re no longer here listening to me rabbiting on about nothing and pretending they’re interested. They seem to be hanging on by threads rather than ropes these days, so my going away is a cause of great anxiety. I hope I’m allowed to cry a little over all this because I do.

Malcolm and Chloë and my friends continue to be happy high points in my life. There are many more high points than low ones in spite of all my moaning. I hope the same is true of your lives.

Much love

Mem xxx