A meme with a difference

Even if it were a meme without a difference, I haven't seen or done one of these for ages and right at this very moment am grateful for the displacement activity. So:

'Ten Things I've Done That You Probably Haven't'

1. Sat next to Hilary Mantel and opposite Dorothy Dunnett at dinner.

2. Rolled and wrecked a brand-new car and came within micro-metres of breaking my neck.

3. Lost my wallet at Santa Maria Novella railway station in Florence and then didn't realise at first that someone had picked it up and handed it in because the announcement on the PA was of course in Italian and the pronunciation rendered my name unrecognisable, though much improved.

4. Collected eggs laid by semi-feral chooks in and under stacks of hay bales, leaky sheds full of shed stuff, old farm machinery and new farm machinery in 40+ degree heat.

5. Negotiated the tram-infested Royal Parade / Flemington Road / Elizabeth Street roundabout at 5 pm on a Friday afternoon in the middle of a thunderstorm, including lightning and downpour, with Elizabeth Jolley in the passenger seat.

6. Fell off a cantering horse onto some rocks. It hurt.

7. Sang in opera.

8. Got a divorce and an Honours degree in the same week.

9. Found the long-lost grave of my great-grandparents and great-aunt Jessie inside a ruined church in Aberfoyle, Scotland, though strictly speaking it was the intrepid Dan Smith who found it, not me.

10. Gave a talk about Australia to a classroom full of terrifyingly sophisticated multilingual Austrian 15-year-olds.

Googlememe: needs

It always bemuses me a bit when people start talking about their needs, as though the mere act of declaring them were some kind of claim to entitlement. (Two real examples, that I have heard with my own ears from people who were not joking, to make the point: 'But I need to have four or five women in my life.' 'But I need to be adored.' Look on the bright side though, at least they didn't come from the same person.)

Needs are relative to situation. If you are bleeding to death, you could probably say with justification that you need a blood transfusion, sharpish. But otherwise, shelter, water and food are needs, and not much else. Maybe a bit of love, of some kind or another. But pretty much everything else isn't a need, it's just a want.

I have pinched this 'needs' meme straight from Deborah Strange Land. I've seen it before, but I was quite taken with Deborah's little annotations, which spark it up no end. The rules are that you google your name followed by the word 'needs' and then list the first ten that have come up, but my results have been skewed by the presence in some "reality" TV show or other of a Kerryn about whom many brainless opinions have been passed online, some of them very unkind, so I have substituted the ten I like best, thus:

1) Kerryn needs a housekeeper for her room.
No, she needs a housekeeper for her house.

2) Kerryn needs to be remembered.
Depends. With regard to certain people, situations and events, what Kerryn needs is to be forgotten.

3) Kerryn needs a holiday.
You have no idea.

4) Kerryn needs a thought bubble above her head.
Au contraire; her mother always said she was far too open a book.

5) Kerryn needs to start shooting.
Well, not quite, not yet. But give her time.

6) Kerryn needs to replace the one she sold by mistake.
Nah, she needs to replace the one she bought by mistake. White streaks of undissolved washing powder on the "clean" black clothes, pffft.

7) Kerryn needs an understudy.
She certainly thinks it would be very reassuring to know there was someone who could come on and take over if she had swine flu or something, yes.

8) Kerryn needs makeup like 24/7, honestly.
This is doubtless true, but luckily she is too old to care.

9) Kerryn needs work.
She already has more work than can be managed, unless this was meant in the sense of 'This proposal needs work', in which case, quite.

10) Kerryn needs to bite some chumps.
Now that is what I call a need.

A meme!

Haven't done one of these for ages. This one is nicked from the lovely Suse of Pea Soup, who nicked it from Knitters-Knitters.


THE 99 THINGS MEME

Things you've already done: bold
Things you want to do: italicize
Things you haven't done and don't want to - leave in plain font

[For myself and everyone else over about 45 I am going to add a deeply poignant extra category: Things You Wish You'd Done but You Know in Your Heart That it's Too Late Now. These things will be underlined.]


1. Started your own blog.
Four, in fact, and was in on the birth of a fifth.

2. Slept under the stars.

3. Played in a band.
Keyboards, vocals.

4. Visited Hawaii.

5. Watched a meteor shower.

6. Given more than you can afford to charity.
Once, and for very specific reasons, much more. Weirdly, it did not make me feel good.

7. Been to Disneyland/world.

8. Climbed a mountain.
Well, I called it a mountain. My Austrian hosts said it was a gentle slope.

9. Held a praying mantis.
EEEWWWWW I HATE BUGS

10. Sang a solo.
I'm assuming this implies 'in public'. I still remember the summer of 1976 when I got paid three times as much to sing in the University Union Bar, which I would have paid them to let me do, as I did to wash the dishes in the Iliad Restaurant, for which nobody could possibly be paid enough. Union rates in both cases.

11. Bungee jumped.

12. Visited Paris.
Ten days in 1983.

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch.
If playing the guitar counts.

15. Adopted a child.

16. Had food poisoning.

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty.

18. Grown your own vegetables.

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France.
As Suse said, where else would one see her, pray tell?

20. Slept on an overnight train.
Adelaide-Melbourne, Paris-Florence.

21. Had a pillow fight.

22. Hitch hiked.
In your dreams, oh naive meme writer. Don't the words 'Ivan Milat' or 'Christopher Worrall' mean anything to you?

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill.
Depends what you mean by 'ill'.

24. Built a snow fort.
With what, pray?

25. Held a lamb.

26. Gone skinny dipping.

27. Run a marathon.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ... Mind you, I have the endurance for it. Just not the physique. But I would like to do it in another life.

28. Ridden a gondola in Venice.

29. Seen a total eclipse.

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset.

31. Hit a home run.

32. Been on a cruise.
See #22, inserting the relevant names.

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person.

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors.
The birthplace of some of my ancestors is my own birthplace, but I also found the graves of Great-Aunt Jessie and her parents, my Scottish great-grandparents, inside/under a ruined church in the middle of the Aberfoyle cemetery near Stirling. Correction, they were found by the intrepid Dan Smith, who climbed over the barbed wire and bashed the bushes to get inside to look.

35. Seen an Amish community.

36. Taught yourself a new language.

I wonder whether high school French and German count. There's also a certain amount of Italian more or less by osmosis.

37.Had enough money to be truly satisfied.
Does the expression 'begging the question' mean anything to you? I have experienced true satisfaction on a number of occasions associated with various activities, but none of them had anything to do with money.

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person.

39. Gone rock climbing.

40. Seen Michelangelo's David in person.

41. Sung Karaoke.
Given how much I know I'd enjoy this particular flavour of cheese, I can't quite believe I never have. But we live in hope.

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt.

43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant.

44. Visited Africa.

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.

46. Been transported in an ambulance.

47. Had your portrait painted.
Well, drawn.

48. Gone deep sea fishing.

49. Seen the Sistene chapel in person.
It's 'Sistine'. No.

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
No, and no desire to, but I could see it from the window of my hotel.

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkelling.

52. Kissed in the rain.

53. Played in the mud.

54. Gone to a drive-in theatre.

55. Been in a movie.
No, but my long-ex-husband has. That probably doesn't count, does it.

56. Visited the Great Wall of China.

57. Started a business.
Sort of.

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia.

60. Served at a soup kitchen.

61. Sold Girl Scout cookies.

62. Gone whale watching.
I assume we're allowed to count this one even if we didn't actually see any. I have particularly vivid memories of Stephanie on the beach at Middleton, chanting invocations to the whales to show themselves. 'Oh, vast beast ...'

63. Gotten flowers for no reason.
From my female friends. Somehow I just never clicked with the sorts of men who spontaneously give flowers. It's like that American academic who used to give conference papers dressed in a skirt made from the ties of her lovers. If that'd been me, I would have been at the mic in my knickers. Very few of the men in my past have even owned a tie.

64. Donated blood.
On and off for nearly 40 30 years [let's not pretend we're even older than we are, eh, typing fingers?]; who knows how many megalitres of vintage O Pos have flowed into those little plastic packs over the years? In abeyance at the moment though, not so much because of the actual process as the four pages of questionnaire you have to fill in every time you go, and the dim and snarky cows behind the desk.

65. Gone sky diving.

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp.
Uh, no thanks; pain and fear stay in the earth where they were generated and then rise like a miasma to engulf and choke you. I almost passed out on the site of the boarded-up well in my home town where a little kid fell to his death in 1937.

Besides, I've been to the Holocaust exhibition that was on at the Jewish Museum in Vienna in May 1999 and that will never leave me. Nor will the sight of the smoke-smeared walls of the synagogue torched in a medieval pogrom, discovered by accident when they were digging up the middle of the Judenplatz for the foundations of Rachel Whiteread's memorial.

67. Bounced a cheque.
No, but only because the bank honoured it and then fined me.

68. Flown in a helicopter.
But I would need enough warning to buy a packet of Kwells and take half of them first.

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy.
Toy, no. Book, yes.

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial.

71. Eaten Caviar.
Oh yes.

72. Pieced a quilt.
I started it in 1980 and still haven't finished it, but yes. All by hand, too.

73. Stood in Times Square.
But New York is below Louisiana, Nashville, Boston, Montreal and the Tex-Mex border on my list of must-visit North American places.

74. Toured the Everglades.
See #73.

75. Been fired from a job.
Don't ask.

76. Seen the Changing of the Guard in London.
No, but I've spent a number of happy hours in the Liberty shop. There's also lots of other London stuff I have yet to see.

77. Broken a bone.

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.
Been on, and come off.

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person.

80. Published a book.
Six if you count the anthologies, only two if you don't.

81. Visited the Vatican.

82. Bought a brand new car.
Two. Trust no-one.

83. Walked in Jerusalem.

84. Had your picture in the newspaper.

85. Read the entire Bible.

86. Visited the White House.

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating.

88. Had chickenpox.

89. Saved someone’s life.

90. Sat on a jury.

91. Met someone famous.
A number of famous literary types. But no movie stars or anything. I was also very rude to John Cain once about a speech I'd just heard him give, but I'm not sure that counts as 'met'. (Or 'famous'.)

92. Joined a book club.

93. Lost a loved one.

94. Had a baby.

95. Seen the Alamo in person.

96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake.

97. Been involved in a law suit.
I may be stretching a point here, calling an uncontested divorce a law suit.

98. Owned a cell phone.

99. Been stung by a bee.


If you're doing this meme it's interesting to read back over it when you're finished and see what you've italicised. I see nearly all of mine relate to travel. A chance would be a fine, fine thing.

Book meme!

From Laura of Sills Bend.


What was the last book you bought?

A stack:

Val McDermid, A Darker Domain
Kathy Reichs, Devil Bones
Robert Drewe, The Rip
Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Française
Susan Wyndham, Life In His Hands: the true story of a neurosurgeon and a pianist
Robert Dessaix, Arabesques
Lauren Smith and Derek Fagerstrom, eds, Show Me How: 500 Things You Should Know


Name a book you have read MORE than once.

[LAURA:]Let's make that 'name a book you have read MORE than ten times'

The Once and Future King, My Brother Jack, King Lear, Persuasion, Middlemarch, The Tempest, Sense and Sensibility, A Passage to India, Howards End, Our Mutual Friend, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Villette, Little Women, Seven Little Australians, Gaudy Night, Voss, The Eye of the Storm, The Virgin in the Garden, Possession and all six volumes of The Lymond Chronicles.


Has a book ever fundamentally changed the way you see life? If yes, what was it?

Yes, several.

* The Once and Future King, as recommended by my first-year high school English teacher.

I knew less than nothing about the medieval period till I read that book. By the time I got to the end of it I understood that there was this great shadowy set of medieval narratives that was a cornerstone of contemporary Western culture -- and probably a whole lot of other equally significant stuff that I didn't know either. It was my first glimpse of how much I didn't know.

It also made me aware that there existed adults -- T.H. White being the first such adult I had encountered; they are very rare -- who could address children without either talking down to them or being incomprehensible, and doing that with no added sugar. This changed my life in the sense that I was determined to be one of those when I grew up.

* The Female Eunuch, which I read in 1971 when I was 18.

When I finished reading that book I was a fundamentally different person from the one I'd been three days earlier when I began it. Almost every single thing that has ever happened to me since (at least in the realm of the Important Three: love, money and work) has reinforced the change.

* Reading Patrick White, to whose work I was introduced by a precocious schoolmate in 1968 when she loaned me her copy of Riders in the Chariot, showed me that it was possible to write about life in Australia -- and to live in Australia -- at a level of intensity and complexity I would not have imagined possible.

* A.S. Byatt's The Virgin in the Garden showed me the same thing, except on an international scale, as did the three sequels.

The Byatt tetralogy, which I read from 1985 onwards, also showed me (a) what it meant to live an intense intellectual life without feeling self-conscious and limited about it, and (b) why I and every other woman I knew who was still studying had floundered so badly in trying to manage our personal and intellectual/pre-professional lives between the ages of 17 and 25: for women, the question of managing love, sex, marriage, babies, studying, work and ambition was and, it seems, still is an almost intractable problem to be solved. But I hadn't formulated it like that or realised the reason for the floundering (in spite of The Female Eunuch) until I read Byatt, and carried on much better equipped for the life I was living.

* Persuasion, Middlemarch and Anna Karenina, all of which I read in the same year and all of which reinforced the effects of The Female Eunuch.


How do you choose a book? e.g. by cover design and summary, recommendations or reviews?

Sometimes by review but not in the way you might expect. I tend to ignore the reviewer's evaluation but will go looking for a book that sounds interesting, even if the reviewer thought it was bad. In my own practice as a reviewer I try to concentrate on giving the reader as clear a picture of possible of what kind of book it is, rather than giving it points out of ten.

I'm more likely to buy a book by a writer whose work I already know and like than to invest in a new writer unless I've read a lot about the book beforehand, and more likely to buy a novel on the strength of a profile of the writer than on the judgement of a reviewer. I've never read any David Foster Wallace but will shortly go in quest of some on the strength of this fantastic article about him in Rolling Stone.


Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?

Fiction. But some nonfiction is wonderful, like certain writers' journals and letters, or my favourite Australian biographies: Nadia Wheatley's of Charmian Clift, Brian Matthews's of Louisa Lawson, David Marr's of Patrick White and Barry Hill's of T.E.H. Strehlow. I love the writing of M.F.K. Fisher, and some of the more imaginative and adventurous historians who can also really write, like Theodore Zeldin and Simon Schama. I loved Christopher Hitchens' writing so much that I went on reading it even after he went a bit mad. (He appears to be on the way back.)


What's more important in a novel - beautiful writing or a gripping plot?

I understand what this question is getting at, but I don't accept either its assumptions or its terms.

'Beautiful' in particular is not an adjective I would choose in thinking about the plot/style question. There's a wonderful moment in one of Alice Munro's short stories where the young heroine, desperate for sexual knowledge and experience, is being flashed at by an unsavoury older man; she is looking at his exposed penis, which is the first specimen she's seen, and observes that its cheerful ugliness seems to be 'some sort of guarantee of goodwill, the opposite of what beauty usually is.'


Most loved/memorable character?

Daniel Orton in Byatt's Potter tetralogy, because it's been my life's misfortune to acquire a profound understanding of chronically angry men -- I get Daniel. Philippa Somerville in Dorothy Dunnett's peerless Lymond Chronicles, plus Phelim O'LiamRoe from the second volume of same. Inman in Cold Mountain, the book not the film. Pierre Bezuhov in War and Peace, though that may have something to do with seeing Anthony Hopkins play him on TV at the age of 34 (Hopkins not Bezuhov). And Precious Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.


Which book or books can be found on your nightstand at the moment?

Val McDermid's latest, A Darker Domain, for pleasure, and for work an unpolished but weirdly gripping and vivid debut novel called The Reinvention of Ivy Brown by Roberta Taylor, the actor who plays Inspector Gina Gold in The Bill. The bedroom is eerily tidy.


What was the last book you read?

Alexander McCall Smith's latest Isabel Dalhousie novel, The Comfort of Saturdays. My God that man is prolific.


Have you ever given up on a book halfway in?

Yes, and I do so more often as I age and the time left to me in this life gets shorter and more uncertain and precious. I can't tell you what they were; if they had been memorable, I would have finished them.