A rarity of late, it’s a nice Brisbane day – temperate conditions and mostly sunny skies – and from where I’m sitting, in the now dry suburb of Stafford, you’d really have no idea that a grand scale natural disaster was unfolding only 10km away. Except for the non-stop television coverage, that is. After two days of continuous Karl, Leila, Anna, Julia, Campbell and all those perky-faced young women reporting from various scenes of the wet or the newsroom, cabin fever did take hold and I jumped at the chance to get out and tag along with my partner who, as a press photographer for Fairfax, was on flood paparazzi duties.

A flood paparazzo for the Financial Review

We headed first to the safe vantage of Kangaroo Point. The rising torrent of the Brisbane River was certainly a spectacle, but what intrigued me more was the sheer number of people, with cameras in hand, who were out to witness it wreck havoc on the city. This is not a judgement, merely an observation, and while Anna Bligh may be on the record as saying, “This incident is not a tourist attraction – this is a deeply serious natural disaster”, I think these pictures prove that the first half of that statement is patently false.

Flood tourism flourishes at Kangaroo Point. The media has set up camp overlooking the Brisbane River beside Lick Café (below), which was swamped with customers, not water.

There’s a great view of the Brisbane River from Kangaroo Point.

Of course, Kangaroo Point wasn’t the only place people – or rubber-neckers as they’re known to crowd control professionals – were gathering to witness this once-in-a-generation natural disaster. Closer to the action, down by the base of the Story Bridge, you could get up close and personal with the swollen river as it lapped onto the grass of a popular outdoor park.

Police tape is not an effective barrier to stop the serious flood spectator.

Yes, you see correctly. They’ve brought along an Esky full of beer and an iPod dock.

In the CBD, it was a similar story. Cafés, restaurants, shops, banks and offices were all closed for business, but the city was far from being a ghost town. People gathered down by the Eagle Street Pier, or as close to it as police would let them, to take in the novelty of water creeping towards the doorstep of big business (see below).

This was Alice Street the day before the river was set to peak. Turning 180 degrees from where this photo was taken, you could be greeted by this welcoming sign, below.

Natural disaster watching, when you are not personally affected (and I don’t think a one carton limit on milk/customer at the local IGA really counts as ‘affected’) is very closely related to that other voyeuristic past time – slowing down to a snail’s pace at the site of car accident. I always like to pretend that I’m not the one deliberately holding up the traffic so I can have a gawk, but as we all know it’s very difficult to look away, even if you do zoom off after you can’t strain your neck anymore from looking over your shoulder.

Whether you sat glued to your box or ventured out for a front row/in-the-flesh experience, the reason is the same – you did it because natural disasters are fascinating, especially when they’re in your own backyard. Yes, they are devastating, destructive and heart-breaking – that goes without saying, really. But who among us, even if loved ones and friends were in the flood’s sites, can say they weren’t just a little bit fascinated, flabbergasted and, dare I say it, entertained by the spectacle? I’m not suggesting this is a case Schadenfreude on the part of the high and dry populace of Brisbane, not for a moment – and I think any decent person would be appalled by the idea that anyone would take delight in terrible misfortune this flood has wrecked – but it’s difficult to deny that we – the rest of Brisbane and Australia – haven’t been willing spectators to the theatre of this event. It doesn’t make us less human and, hopefully, all this voyeurism will stir enough compassion within us to compel us to donate money or volunteer our time to help the people who have been affected and, in some cases, literally gutted by this flood (and probably haven’t found it quite as entertaining to watch).

Personally, I’m very grateful my 16-year-old daughter, who was stuck out at Ipswich at her father’s place, is safe and their house made it through with nothing more trying than having the power cut off. I am now waiting patiently until the Centenary Highway and Ipswich Motorway are open again so I can go and get her and give her a very, very long hug.

Roller Derby

If you haven't heard about RD then I probably can't help you and we're orbiting on different planets. Or maybe it's just taking up a lot of space in my world right now. Anyway, I have no intention of telling you what it is, who plays it and why - there are plenty of other sites you can go to for that. No, I just intend to link you to a story on our league that the Sunshine Coast Weekender did this weekend (27.11.2010 -yes, funny how the Weekender comes out on the weekend) that I featured in - albeit, I am the marketing officer for the Coastal Assassins Roller Derby league (CARD) here on the ambient Sunshine Coast and I organised to do the feature with the Weekender, so it's no coincidence my face (which seems to be unnecessarily hideous in this shot, not to mention the chicken neck going on) is on the cover. For an article I did actually write on roller derby, but did not feature in (my prefered position on the matter) may I direct you here.

If you do happen to be in the general vicinity of the Sunshine Coast on Dec 4th, 2010, then please, do come to our inaugural bout ' - 'Deck the Halls with Blood & Glory' - at the Caloundra Indoor Stadium that we are co-hosting with the lovely lasses from the Brisbane City Rollers. It's my first bout. Isn't that exciting? That's me below scrimmaging with the girls from CARD & BCR a few weeks ago. The picture is designed to give you the impression that I'm a shit hot jammer. At this stage, I'd just say I'm working towards that.

Roller Derby - it's either pain or glory, depending on how good your escape route is.

Pin-up Girl? Who Moi?

For anyone who knows me or has read my blog from the early days, that is, the days when I actually used to post stuff here, then you'd know I have a bit of an obsession with pin-up girls - particulary Gil Elvgren ones - from the '30s, '40s & '50s. Anyway, as chance would have it, I won my very own pin-up girl shoot a few months back with Miss Sherbet Birdie by entering a competition she was running to find a girl at short notice to do shoot for MX Magazine. You simply had to write 'why you like Miss Sherbet Birdie' and I penned a lovely, little acrostic poem as my entry. The winning entry as it turns out, and as a result, I ended up with four not-too-shabby pin-up pics of my very own. A more deserving winner? Well, that's not for me to judge.









For any remaining semi-loyal readers out there, if you still find yourself hankering for a word or two from the Blakkat, I'd like to redirect your attention to my other blog - This Poison Apple. I'm working hard on building it up into a place where I can display my wares as a writer (so the quality of what I permit myself to post there is a notch up from my humble Blakkat Ruminations) and while it has a same, same but different look to BR, the posts are not rambles on my private life (a relief for some, no doubt) but a collection of book reviews, essays, published features and the odd opinion piece. Any rambling on my private life will remain at BR, as it always has - should the need arise.

First female PM

Kevin's departure was devastating to watch. Politics is a vicious game, in case the obvious tends to escape you.

HOWEVER, Julia... well, I'm just chuffed. Really, really happy that this intelligent, funny, passionate woman is currently our PM and I just hope with every beat of my little heart that the Australian public see fit to vote her in on her own right. Even if you're not as enamoured as I am with our first female PM, surely, anyone with the working remants of a human brain could not vote for a creature that emerged fully-formed from 1950s - Phoney Tony, that is, in case the obvious tends to escape you.

Isn't politics exciting?

Starting Again

I can't give one definitive answer as to why I have failed to maintain even a semblance of interest in maintaining this blog, but there are some contributing factors, such as:

1. My life, generally, has been in a state of transition and flux as I struggle with that weary cliche of 'finding out who I am'.

2. The notion of 'to say something you must first have somthing to say' strikes me as being particularly sage in this opinion-saturated culture we drown in daily (I will NOT twitter), or more to the point, what I do have to say is usually readily said by someone else.

3. This little blakkat has been wrestling with the big black dog, and depression - as anyone who has locked horns with its all-pervasive aura will know - is a rain-soaked towel for motivation.

4. Any motivation I do rustle up must be directed towards my study - the study that I'm not sure will get me anywhere in the long term anyway.

5. All my writing and creative energy has been channelled into essays and other assignments that relate to the study I'm doing, that is, a Master of Communications*, which may or may not lead to better qualifications and a job in a field that I may actually enjoy extracting a living from (as opposed to primary teaching which was like pouring battery acid on my soul).

6. In the mean time, while I press on with forging out a new career and a rejuvenated identity for myself, I am technically unemployed and unemployable (if my inability to even a get a basic-monkey-can-be-trained-to-do-this-administration job is anything to go by). Hence I am, in the most literal sense, penniless and dependent of the charity and goodwill of family members for my general up-keep. Depressing. Add to this being patronised by the well-meaning girls* at my 'job network' centre who review 'my situation' every two weeks in order to justify my Newstart allowance, and the picture becomes quite dispiriting.

7. All of the above would be tolerable if I were still able to write something, anything. Or if I believed I still could actually write. I feel dwarfed by the enormity of creative energy required to accomplish such a task. I can no longer say, I did it once, so I can do it again. I simply feel, at this point in time, that I can't do it again. Recognising mediocrity in yourself is never easy, especially when you always hoped, in fact,depended on the idea, for better.

8. Every day I feel more and more strongly about injustice, poverty, violence against women, environmental degradation, racism, human rights violations, disgust at the grossness of unchecked consumerism, etc, etc., but I am in no way responding to this in a way that truly expresses how strongly I FEEL. I simply don't know where or how to channel any action. I can't donate to causes because I simply do not have the cash, so I MUST find another avenue that allows me to actually DO something.

So now that I've got all that down and am about to hit the 'publish post' button, that thing they call 'catharsis' may strike and perhaps spurn me to some kind of action. Maybe or maybe not, but at least it got me posting again and that's a start.

Loss, Grief & Faith

You may have heard about the horrific car accident on the Sunshine Coast motorway that happened on Wednesday, certainly if you live on the Coast you couldn't have missed it. It's been a consistent headline act for the Sunshine Coast Daily* over the last few days, not only for how horrendous the circumstances of the accident were, but also because the couple who were killed - Kari and Allan Taylor – were well known and much loved amongst the substantial Christian community on the Coast. As the many tributes and comments testify, they were abundantly generous, life-affirming people and they will leave a 'massive hole'. One woman described Kari 'as pure sunshine' and anyone who knew her would readily agree to this description.

In Australia, a country free of violent political conflict, war atrocities and acts of terrorism, it doesn't get much worse than seeing your parents slammed between the front of a four-wheel drive and the back of another vehicle. This is the stuff of night-terrors and post-traumatic stress, yet that's what Kari and Allan's 22 year old daughter, Ashleah, witnessed. The Sunshine Coast Daily (a petri-dish for hacks if ever there was one) ran this interview Ashleah yesterday.

Since a good girlfriend of mine that I went to school with first rang and told me of the accident Wednesday night, I have been unable to think of much else except the Taylors. In particular, how Ashleah and her younger brother, Kallan, have been coping. I only knew Ashleah as toddler, around the time that Kari was my ballet teacher and Allan was the school pastor, when I was a senior at Sunshine Coast Christian College. Allan was our Christian Living teacher. I had enough attitude to service three teenagers at that time, but Allan – being the good hearted, reasonably tolerant man that he was – always took me in his stride. Once, just to goad him and not because I was actually interested in the answer, I asked him, in one of our many abstinence themed Christian Living lessons (one that I didn't wag, as was my habit) whether 'oral sex counted as sex?', within the whole 'don't have sex before you're married' scheme of things. I related to Kari better. 'Our group' – myself and three best friends – all did ballet and modern dance classes with Kari. In fact, we were amongst her original pupils when she first started up her own dance school. Kari had that lovely way of being an adult but also being a young girl at heart. She could talk openly about things like her own body acceptance issues, which, when you're at an age when that kind of thing takes up a lot of thinking space, was reassuring in an adult. She was a gifted dancer and teacher and an altogether lovely, lovely person. I know for a fact I gave her the shits big time on a few occasions, but like Allan she was always bigger than that. Kari' son, Kallan, is the same age as my daughter and being pregnant at the same time as her was something I took pleasure in, even though she was considerably older than me. As Christians of the Holy Spirit anointed, true believer kind they practiced what they preached - which finally brings me around to the point of this post.

In spite of my upbringing and education at an Evangelical, Pentecostal Christian School - or maybe because of it – I am an atheist. I don't go all Richard Dawkins on people about it, especially as I still have friends and close family who are committed Christians, and I believe they are entitled to their faith in the same way as I am entitled to reject it. If I were to suffer the kind of loss that Ashleah and Kallan are now facing – losing my daughter, for example - I'm not sure where I would find anything (bar an oil tanker of alcohol) that could take the serated edges off my grief. Ashleah & Kallan, along with Kari and Allan's family, and their many friends and acquaintances, however, have found comfort in their faith. Wrongly or rightly – meaning whether or not Christianity is the greatest hoax of the last two millennia or not – the absolute, non-negotiable belief these people have in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour has given them a rainbow's end to deal with the tragic, tragic loss of these two people – who, if there was a God, would surely not have been on his hit list in the first place. And I can't say I'm sorry they have that comfort. If Ashleah believes 'her parents will be having an absolute blast up there' and if that's the thing that makes her pain bearable and gets her through this, then who would want to take that away from her? Not that anyone would have any chance of shaking her belief system in the first place. These people are not token, name only Christians. They live and breathe Jesus Christ as a way of life.

I would have assumed that, like me, a lot of people who were educated in the same manner as I and whose parents were regular church goers, would have assimilated themselves into the secular world, gone to uni, read lots, met different, non-believing people and eventually moved away from – what I now believe – are the dubious teachings of the Bible. To put this in perspective – and I am getting a little of track here – my senior Biology text book was essentially a 'how to guide' for arguing creationism over evolution. This was back in the days where they didn't even have the nous to call it 'intelligent design'. There was no middle ground and in case you're wondering how the fossil record came about, well that was the doing of the flood of Noah and his ark fame. This is black and white stuff and my parents paid for this 'education'. In point of fact, for January 2010, I have booked an 8 day cruise of the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador – the birth place of Darwin's Theory of Evolution - hardly a hallmark destination for the average creationist. Facebook has revealed a different story where many of my old classmates are concerned. The majority are still Christians and actively practicing ones. I'm the exception, not the rule, and to be honest I'm both puzzled by it and a little disdainful at the same time.

But back to the point, this from 'SomeOneSmarter in Buderim (whose grammar would suggest anything but)…

I know of a person who has been a God-hating atheist** all their life (a dichotomy I know), and told me yesterday is a brief conversation: that seeing how these people lived; the love that others had for them; the depth of their understanding and peace that you display and know, has cut them deep and for the first time in their life they have thought that there may just be something more to life and faith because this reaction is not 'humanly possible' and it has really shaken them.

Excruciating syntax aside, I think the point is an interesting one. Personally, no, happy as I am that Ashleah and Kallan's faith has given them something to pull themselves through the deep dark depths of grieving that are ahead, I am not about to renounce my hard earned atheism because I'm impressed by their faith – or forgiveness. Atheistic humanists are just as capable of forgiveness and acts of altruism***. If you have been brought up in an environment where every second word is 'Jesus' then of course you believe your dearly departed will be waiting for you in heaven. And if it's not true, well you'll be dead anyway and won't know any different. You could add at this juncture 'so no harm done', but we all know the harm organised religion has inflicted on the human race, so it's not really as pat as all that either.

I don't really know how I want to sum all this up. Perhaps, it's just a way of working through my own grief over the deaths of two people who had a substantial impact on me at an impressionable time of my life, but whose religious beliefs I ultimately rejected as I grew away from the church and school that I grew up in. Although that's not the whole of it either, most the tears I have shed since Wednesday have been because I've been dwelling on Ashleah & Kallan's pain and loss. It was the same when Morgan Innes – the 14 year old ice skater – drowned after a terrible boat accident on Sydney Harbour. My daughter used to train at the same rink as Morgan and they were on the same synchronised skating team. Naturally, I knew Morgan's parents and I cried buckets in the days after Morgan's death as I felt overwhelming grief for her parents and what they must be going through. They, too, were lovely, lovely people and another example of karma getting its wires crossed.

Our 30^th school reunion is in October and I've been tossing up whether to go for months, especially now I'm living back in the stomping ground, as it were. Only the other week I had the thought that 'Kari & Allan will definitely be there and it would be nice to see them'. I imagine the overpriced ($55, alcohol not included) school reunion will have a very different tone now. The funeral will be standing room only, but I will go to that, even though there will be more 'amens' than in the New Testament itself. I may be a non-believer, but I still want the chance to grieve and pay my respects to these two wonderful people who gave so much of themselves to others - even lippy, 'tude filled teenagers.

** I think perhaps 'someonesmarter' meant an oxymoron not a dichotomy. Hmmmm, I'll buy a religion-hating atheist, but it's difficult to hate something you don't believe in.

Dark Places by Kate Grenville

I don't intend to write a review of Kate Grenville's well known and much praised follow up to 'Lillian Story', but as one of my resolutions, now I'm not working full-time, is to get a little more 'literary' and scribble down a few thoughts about the books I read, I want to put to something on the page.

 

I had to keep reminding myself that this book was written by a woman. Albion Gidley Singer is so repulsive, so odious in his pompousness - his hatred towards women and their bodies is truly grotesque – yet the book, that is, the voice of AGS is so compelling. I don't often equate literary fiction with 'page turning' as an attribute (For example, I got off to a flying start with Debra Falconer's 'In the Service of Clouds', but ended up putting it down a third of the way through and haven't found the compulsion to pick it up since. When it gets a bit hard yakka and you stop caring what's going to happen, well, why bother? And don't even get me started on 'A.B. Byatt's 'Possession'. ) So anyway, it surprised me that I devoured 'Dark Places' in much the same way as I would a Marian Keyes. That's not to say I didn't savour Grenville's way with a sentence or her brilliant, concise descriptions of people, places and events. I most certainly did, but I was also in hurry to get to the climax. How could a reading experience be any more perfect? I suppose I was drawn to the conclusion already knowing the 'taboo' that the book has staked its reputation on, but I didn't realise that the whole story – Albion's childhood, marriage and family life – led to this one final, despicable act. Perhaps I was expecting a story that dipped in and out of ritual sexual abuse and incest from the get-go, but no, I should have expected more of Grenville as an author. She is truly a master at what she does and she refuses to deal in clichés, too.

 

It's reading a book like 'Dark Places' that really brings home to me the power of fiction and its ability to illuminate lives, past and present, that non-fiction or bare historical facts cannot hope to plummet the depth of. 'Love in the time of Cholera' resonated with me in the same way. The only similarity between the two is that they expose and reflect on male arrogance in the face of rampant (apparently) female desire around the turn of the last century, but it's probably more to do the with brutal honesty of the central character, the attention to detail and the authenticity of characters and setting that support the narrative that brings me to compare the two books in the first place. But that is what brilliant authors do and I don't believe 'literary fiction' should be lauded in the way it is if it fails to meet these simple criteria. I didn't intend to get all soap boxy about it, but some 'literary' novels are a god damn borefest and somehow, if you can't through them, you end up berating yourself for not being 'literary' enough, or even, possibly stupid for 'not getting it'. When Grenville writes, when Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes (even in translation), hell, when Tolstoy writes, 'I get it' – so I don't think I'm a literary slouch – and I therefore fail to see why we can't hold other 'brilliant' writers to the same kind of accountability. That is, do I want to read the next page or has your ponderous, laborious, adjective stew sent me into a coma?

I'd rather be...

I'd rather be an author than anything else in the world, I've worked out, come to the realisation, discovered about myself over the past five rotations of the earth around the sun. A journey that took me to Sydney to break it as an actor after graduating from the NIDA of Queensland (Queensland University of Technology's Acting Program - 3 years where your soul in the custody of the devil) - and found myself very,very - without question or doubt of any kind - unemployed in the profession which I'm still paying good HECS to make a go of. Luckily, as the devil took possession of my soul at QUT, the actual process of discovering that acting is a vocation that chooses you and you not it, particularly for a woman who didn't graduate from acting school until she was 30, wasn't as soul shredding as it might have been. Anyhoo, rather than stand demoralised and scorned upon in the Centrelink queue at Bondi Junction on a fortnightly basis, I found myself back in the profession I was desperately, desperately hoping to get out of - primary school teaching. Casual teaching pays better than most other average drudge jobs - waitressing, bar tending, retail. Perhaps not hooking, which I did seriously consider at one stage - at the higher, well-paying end of the scale - but a small tattoo on my right ankle put paid to taking that idea too seriously.

Instead, with the encouragement of a very, very dear friend who was much older, male and whose job makes him a 'someone', I started to write. Two months later my first novel had an underwhelming beginning, stuff in the middle and an end. It needed an editor who could sift gold from gravel - which my aforementioned friend was - but the upshot was, I could write - and research, part of the story is set during World War II in Sydney and I did my homework - lots and lots of it.

Unpublished novels - even published ones sometimes, I've been told - don't pay bills and so the odd casual teaching day turned into a week block here, a three week block there and then, inevitably, a whole year and then another one, etc. Like all wage slaves, I became accustomed - addicted even - to a regular paycheck, especially the holiday ones and some how, even though I didn't want it to be that way, the writing wasn't being made a priority any more. Sure, I managed to get myself a respected Sydney author's agent and put my poor, distressed novel through a few more serious edits at her behest (after the five I'd already subjected it to), but in the end it amounted to the same result: unpublished. Why? Because I refuse to turn it into a novel that will be shelved in the 'romance' section at Borders for that very particular, non-too-discerning, demographic of women who read 'romance novels'. There comes a point, people, where integrity must take a stand. Essentially, I was told, the modern story was 'too grating' against the historical, World War II story (written in diary form). That's kind of the point, but I didn't point that out to my agent. Now, here's the funny thing. Of the 7 or 8 women I gave my manuscript to, to read (including the niece of my agent*) - all of whom are plum in the middle of the very demographic of which my book is pitched too - they loved, related too, really got the main, modern day story and its central character - the just a bit cynical, single, 33 yr old Emily Pridmore. The World War II stuff was nice and the little points of commonality between the two stories were great, but it was the contemporary narrative that rang bells and raised smiles. Not so the publishers. World War II story is great, lovely, just expand it and turn that into a book in its own right, was the latest feedback I got from my agent. My market research says otherwise and so do I. Put simply, after having a professional editor (chosen & paid for my agent) take a nit comb to my novel, and then having taken his rather blunt criticisms on board and having made the adjustments he suggested, I am not prepared, now, to fundamentally change the whole premise of the book and thus alter the genesis upon which I wrote it in the first place. Like I said, integrity. I'm not a person possessed with buckets full of self-belief, but I do believe I got this book right - at least after draft nine - and sometimes publishers don't know best. Cue urban legend of J.K. Rowling's record number of rejections before HP found a publisher and out sold the Bible.

So that's that. I'm not overly hung up about my first novel not making it to a book store near you - plenty of first attempts (the majority, probably) don't end up with a snazzy cover design and a sticker saying it's part of 3 for 2 deal at Borders - I'm OK with that**. But it does mean I have to write another book if I ever want the grail of a publishing deal. That book took root in my head almost 4 years ago. Ten thousand words of it have been resting peacefully in My Documents even since.

And so I have thrown caution - that is, financial security - to the gods and their wind and have upheavalled myself and my life to actually go write the bloody thing, just get it out of my system, if, for nothing else, to prove that the first one wasn't a fluke.

Fate may have thrown me a dismembered hand in the form of getting sacked from my appointment at a posh private boys' school in Sydney (a tedious story for another day - and no, I didn't do anything wrong, just not enough right, apparently - well, no, it was dodgier than that...), but never-the-less, I like a sign (and preferably a bright, colourful neon one) and this one said 'Blakkat, it's time you made some big changes and go after the life you actually want, get a day job you can abide and write that God damn book you only started four years ago and have been threatening to write ever since'. A couple of the bulbs were out, but I got the message.

So here I am, back in the Sunshine State, on the Sunshine Coast and in my mother's spare room. Officially living back at home like the typical Gen Xer I'm touted to be. Or maybe that's Gen Y, which is evidence of even more short-comings and certain amount of immaturity on my behalf. I'm jobless and most of my friends are still in Sydney, including my boyfriend who still doesn't know whether he's coming or going (to Colombia) and where he stands with the Immigration Department and I've had to defer my Masters of Cultural Studies at Sydney University. The upside is, I am much closer to my daughter and will now be in her life on a just about full-time basis and I have all the Queensland time I need - and a brand new second-hand desk - to write that God damn book. As a large majority of the God damn book is set on the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, it's also handy from a research POV, too.

And I won't pretend that it's not torture either. There are days when every tap of the key board feels like the letters are made of lead and when I do finally get something resembling a paragraph, it's either trundled off down cliche avenue or it's so obviously trying to be word smart and clever it just ends up killing the narrative (and are so obviously not clever to anyone who's even semi-literate). They are the moments I hate writing almost as much as I love it, but, I am the kind of person who sticks at something once I say I'm going to do it and the thought of not doing it, that is, not achieving what I've completely rearranged my life to do, is not something I can entertain right now.

I'm off travelling in South America for three months from the beginning of December, so there's a natural deadline in it as well.

* It was the niece, and now a good friend of mine (GF of a good mate that I went to acting school with) who read, loved and praised my book so effusively she passed it onto her aunt in the first place - that's how I got an agent.

** We're not talking a Miles Franklin contender here - what I wrote was a little left of chic lit, but it does have its own charms. The next one is very, very different in style and what may be loosely termed 'literary' ,if it ever makes it that far.