Gillian Polack's Blog, page 202

gillpolack @ 2012-03-14T14:26:00

No spiders today. A friend has advised me (from experience) taht the first few weeks with this can be surprisingly tiring. I do not understand this - after all - it's just an eye that's a bit detached and funky. It seems he's right, though. I'm so tired!

I did teach this morning, but I'll have a mostly-quiet rest-of-day. There will be a WHM guest blogger later. And now I ought to eat lunch - I was too tired before - I came home and pulled the bedspread across and slept for an hour and a half.

gillpolack @ 2012-03-13T22:19:00

I have two updates, one serious and one very funny. The serious one is that there's a rather warm and friendly and nice-feeling ETA on Deborah Kalin's post. I was evil and got her to write it so that I would have enough energy left for this. Then bed it is, for it's a tiring week. (Did I say I got to teach my new writing class tonight and that they're lovely and attentive and want to learn everything at once?)

The amusement is the right eye, of course. Until class finished my streaks and swirls were that. Some of the blood was dissipating, so I even had a speckled dome to look though for about an hour. Then one streak became spider like. Not just any spider. Huntsman. My big phobia. So all evening I have had a huntsman jumping and leaping across my eye. Fortunately, it's a chemically induced phobia (sensitivity) not fear of the creature itself. Otherwise this would not be nearly as funny. Still, I like it when my eye's shut or the room is dark and my vision is not full of webs and that web has no deep-brown inhabitant sprawling as if it owns my vision.

What the ophthalmologist didn't tell me yesterday was that my right eye would start telling different stories to the rest of me.

Women's History Month - guest post from Sue Bursztynski

KERRY GREENWOOD

It was a tough choice to make. There are so many wonderful Aussie women writers around. Only recently, I've been enchanted by books by Melina Marchetta and Margo Lanagan.

In the end, I decided to go for one whose books I have read over and over, not for "beautiful (literary) writing" but for the kind of writing that brings me back time after time, even though most of it is crime fiction and after the first read I know exactly "whodunnit".

What I love about this writer's books is the sense of place and history they create.

Let me divert a little bit to give you some idea what I mean.

Some years ago, they knocked down a building on my local shopping strip. They were going to put up a fancy set of flats where the old building had been. It had been next door to an even older building. When it was knocked down, as if by magic a piece of history appeared on the side of the place still standing. It was a billboard, painted on the side, advertising some product made in the 1920s or 1930s. It had been hidden for a very long time and now it was revealed. We got to see this piece of history every time we passed for some months, before the constructors got to work and it was covered once more. If it had been recently, I would have made sure I used my phone to record the old piece of advertising. Alas, that wasn't possible at the time.

The thing is, history came to life for me. It was real. I could imagine the 1930s cars going past and people in their 1930s clothes thinking about whether they might buy what was on that billboard.

History comes to life for me when I read one of Kerry's Phryne Fisher novels. Melbourne in 1928 and 1929 appears by magic, just as that small part of 1930s Melbourne was revealed once more on my local shopping strip. I can hear the jazz, see the old-fashioned cars rumbling along among the horses and carts that were still on the streets. The series has now appeared on the ABC as a TV show, but I don't need that to see it in my head.

The sense of place is there, even in her Corinna Chapman novels, which are set in the present day. Corinna walks or goes by tram all over Melbourne's CBD and inner suburbs and describes them with great relish.

And if she fantasises a little, making Phryne Fisher rich, beautiful and smart, able to do lots of physical stuff, giving both her and Corinna gorgeous lovers – who can blame her? Wouldn't we all love to be able to do what Phryne does and have a lover like Lin Chung or Daniel? Not in real life, of course – few would trade in their delightful real-world partner for a fictional one. But just for a short time, while we're between the covers of one of Kerry Greenwood's books, we can pretend.

Sue Bursztynski is a children's and YA writer who also writes speculative fiction. Her short fiction has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Worlds Next Door (Fablecroft), Trust Me! (Ford Street), Spinouts (Pearson), Inter Alia, Family Circle, Mythic Resonance (Specusphere) and will soon be in Trust Me Too! (Ford Street). She won the Mary Grant Bruce Award for children's fiction twice and her YA werewolf novel Wolfborn was a CBCA Notable Book in 2011. There will be a story set in the Wolfborn universe in Andromeda Spaceways #54 in 2012.

If you're curious, there are sample chapters from this and Sue's Ford Street children's non-fiction book Crime Time: Australians behaving badly on her blog, links below.

http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.au/p/wolfborn-sample-chapter.html

http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.au/p/crime-time-sample-chapter.html

Women's History Month - Deborah Kalin

Given the majority of my professional colleagues are Australian women authors, the brief for this blog post seemed impossible. How could I possibly pick just one?

So I decided to be a little unfair, and pick the woman who first taught me about writing, at least formally: Margo Lanagan.

I really don't think I need to sing the praises of Margo's writing: if you know of her work at all, you'll know it is fearless and flawless. But it isn't just her writing that's lovely: Margo herself, it won't surprise anyone to hear, is a wonder to know.

I had the honour of being one of her students at Clarion South 2005. She took us for the fourth week -- so anyone who's heard anything of Clarion should know what I mean when I say we were all decidedly loopy from sleep deprivation by this point. I was also completely without any story ideas, and tied up in knots by that. First thing Monday morning, Margo gave us each a card with an image on it, and asked us to write one paragraph on that image. Just one paragraph, anywhere our minds and that image took us. I was so paralysed by the fear that we'd have to read out prompt paragraph aloud to the class that I couldn't write a single thing until the third and last card, which had the words "The children knew better." (I still have the paragraph that line prompted; one day it will turn into something.)

My fears turned out to be unfounded, of course. When we'd all finished our paragraphs, Margo smiled and said, "You have 3 weeks of Clarion left. Now you have three stories started, ready to write. So you don't need to worry about having no ideas."

I was utterly blown away: that she'd come to us with an attitude not of what she could teach us, but of what she could give us. She understood where we were in the grinding mill that is the Clarion process (i.e. starting to fall apart), and in asking us to write those three paragraphs she gave us the light at the end of the tunnel. It was such a quiet, thoughtful, enabling gift.

I remember her "rules": never to use amongst, amidst, or whilst; never to employ the scent of jasmine; never be afraid of inventing a word if the perfect meaning you need lies only in a word having an imperfect fit in the rest of the sentence. They were all delivered whimsically, but all touched on a firm truth: that a writer can never be lazy, can never settle for "near enough" when searching for the perfect word or scansion. That a writer must not flinch from their subject matter. I wrote Shadow Queen -- with its difficult tale of a young girl trapped and twisted by a captivating personality who has more power than she -- with Margo's voice in my head telling me I could never back away from what I'd put on the page.

Margo taught me that precision matters. One day I hope to do justice to that lesson.

Deborah Kalin is not entirely sure who she is. The author of The Binding books, she cannot help but hope one Christmas will bring her a pet quetzalcoatlus. In the meantime, she'll settle for a book.

Website link: http://deborahkalin.com

All's well

I don't know if it's been as noticeable to other people as it has been to me, but the last few days I have had a new sort of funky vision. I was trying to get to my normal person about it, but the long weekend got in the way. Eventually I phoned the 24 hour health advice line and they sent me to my doctor. "Tell them it's urgent," the lady said.

I did, and so a nurse looked at me and consulted with the doctor. "It's nothing to worry about." So I waited nearly 2 hours to see the doctor, in queue with everyone else. The doctor took it more seriously. She rang the hospital and told them I was coming and she wrote me a referral and she told me, "NO, don't go via home. Ring your friends from here and see if they can help." For it is a long weekend and bus services are fuzzy and taxi fares exceptionally dear. And I was urgent, but not ambulance material, which was reassuring.

A friend took care of me and waited for me the whole afternoon and her husband fed me dinner tonight.

Anyhow, at the hospital the staff member triaging didn't say "wait ten hours" but "Wait til I've handled this ambulance." Then he took all my details and called up my case history and looked at my letter and said "We'll bring in an ophthalmologist. They may be a little while - it depends where they live." I went to sit with my friend.

Five minutes later, a nurse came. "The doctor wants to see you first," she said. For a doctor to see me ahead of vast queues of people means they actually *had* looked at my case record. Last time my right eye went funky was when my heart also went funky. Also, later it appeared that there are other causes of funky vision than the one I had and that they're rather foul - I'm glad I was cleared of them!

The only bed was the isolation ward, so I got a private room, with very pretty walls and my very own toilet. Also a very comfy bed. I rested on the nice bed and admired the walls and waited. Before I got used to the idea of waiting (first time I went to the hospital, for something that proved more serious than my eye, I had to wait eight hours to be seen) a young doctor came and checked me. He particularly liked making me stick out my tongue. "It's only the eye," he reassured me. "I'll just write up my case notes."

Before he could return, the opthamologist had appeared and had to chase him and my case notes. He did some initial tests and then gave my eyes their first set of drops. I was offered my very fine isolation ward if I wanted to rest, or I could use a chair in the normal corridor waiting area. I chose the chair: someone else needed that ward, I suspected. After the twenty minutes the drops needed to work, the specialist took me and two others with him to the eye clinic, which had been opened specially for us. Actually, more for the guy from Bega who needed an operation. Laser, he said - they have a good hospital in Bega, but not the right equipment for this operation. Three and a half hours they drove 9for roads were closed) for his urgent operation. I shamefully admitted that It had taken me five minutes to get there. I didn't admit to the hours waiting at the doctor's, earlier.

Lots of bright lights and more drops and careful examinations later and I was fine. I have vitreous detachment. It normally happens with older people, but I do have extreme eyes and so it was no big surprise it had happened now. Apparently I will become accustomed to my new, even-more-funky vision (the level of funk depends on the state of the blood swirling - the blood always looks black, but sometimes it looks like streaks and sometimes tendrils and sometimes critters racing out of sight). I go back to hospital for a check-up next week.

And that was my holiday Monday.

Women's History Month - Elizabeth Chadwick

THE SILVER BRUMBY by Elyne Mitchell

Wednesday nights were always library nights when I was a child growing up in Scotland. I lived in a village that didn't have a library. Our nearest one was in Paisley 8 miles away, so there was also the special treat of a ride in the car to add to the experience.

Once every three weeks I would find myself growing impatient, anticipating what I might discover on the shelves this time. The library was like a sweetshop, but instead of jars of brightly coloured toffees, gobstoppers and rosy apples, there were shelves of books bursting with stories to excite my insatiable literary taste buds.

Like many children, ( particularly little girls), I had a thing about horses. I invented stories about them all the time. I wasn't into all the pony club stuff and riding stories unless there was some high drama costume adventure involved. What I really loved was to read about horses under their own control and with minds of their own! I spent many happy hours galloping round the garden pretending to be Champion the Wonder Horse, Trigger and the Lone Ranger's Silver. I made obstacle courses and made believe I was a magnificent showjumper (the horse not the rider). I was a huge fan of Mr Ed. This is all preliminary information for you to understand that I spent a great deal of time in what I fondly imagined was a horse's mindset.

I suppose I must have been about six years old when Elyne Mitchell's The Silver Brumby book first caught my attention. I wasn't sure that I would be able to read the book because it was aimed at older children, but anything with a riderless horse on the front was grist to my mill. I borrowed The Silver Brumby a couple of times and made up of all sorts of stories around the cover and the illustrations without actually getting round to reading it, so even before I read it, I was being rewarded with extra imaginative value.

It was perhaps a year later that I borrowed it for a third time with more confidence to tackle all those pages of words and I was immediately hooked. All that I knew about Australia at the time came from watching Rolf Harris on the TV, ('twas the 1960's) but I quickly learned all about the flora and fauna of the bush and got a feel for another land, another culture.

The descriptions of Thowra, the wild Brumby hero of the novel and his journey from newborn foal to fully fledged stallion fighting for his herd and his mate, absolutely entranced me and took me away to new vistas.

The opening of the novel has to be one of the best 'dark and stormy night' openings I have ever read. Evocative, dramatic, immediately setting the scene and the tone of the story.

Once there was a dark, stormy night in spring, when deep down in their holes, the wombats knew not to come out, when the possums stayed quiet in the hollow limbs, when the great black flying phallengers that live in the mountain forests never stirred. On this night, Bel Bel, the cream brumby mare, gave birth to a colt foal, pale like herself, or paler in that wild, black storm.

I never wrote my stories down in childhood. I talked them to myself, changing scenes and episodes to reflect my imagination of the moment. I became an avid narrator of Thowra fan fiction. I loved the descriptions of the magnificent horses and couldn't get enough of the descriptions of Thowra rearing in rays of sunlight with his silver mane and tail like a foaming waterfall, or vanishing like a ghost in the snow with his thick silver winter coat. His cleverness at avoiding capture by learning the ways of man and how to leave no trail to follow, built my hero worship.

I loved the horsey relationships, which felt on the right side of equine so that I could imagine a horse thinking them - such as where the best grazing was and protecting one's mares from another stallion - but were also enough of a crossover for me to to be able to relate totally in my childhood world. To me Thowra was real, perhaps even super real. A true majestic hero. It is perhaps inevitable that having turned my interest to human males, I should write about William Marshal. He and Thowra have a lot in common!

Elyne Mitchell has the true storyteller's gift. Here was I a child growing up in Scotland on the outskirts of Glasgow, knowing nothing about Australia or its culture and wildlife, but I was totally sucked into the natural world of another continent. Her writing was as magical as the wonderful silver horses she had created. I went on to read and buy the rest of the Silver Brumby books, and still have them even now.

I owe a great debt to Elyne Mitchell for the hours of marvellous escapist reading, for the general knowledge about Australia that she so seamlessly imparted, and for nurturing and filling my imagination, with pictures of glorious galloping wild horses. That I am a writer now is in part because of Elyne Mitchell's gift to my imagination.

(I forgot to ask EC for a bio and she's out of email contact because she's moving house. Sorry! Her home page is here)

Women's History Month - RJ Astruc

I was kinda worried when I read the topic of this bloggy celebration because 1. I don't read and 2. When I do read, I rarely read women. I'd blame the patriarchy but the fault probably lies with Virginia Woolf, whose writing inspired my epic Year 11 essay: Why women should give up literature and stay in the kitchen because Woolf is a pile of bollocks and frankly if she's an example of what a woman can do in a room with a view, we need to board that window up and install a Kenwood, for SRS.
True story.
I got an A for that essay, because I think literature teachers secretly hate boring books by depressed women as much as their students do.
Anyway. I wasn't sure what to write or, more importantly, who to write about. I've read fiction by exactly two Australian women I'd pay to read again: Thea Astley (who's about as consistent as Stephen King) and Patty Jansen (who is great but writes in all the genres I hate).
Then there's the handful of non-Australian women I admit I do like and am inspired by. Unfortunately the list paints an unflattering picture of me and my interests:
• Carol Topolski – child murder
• Arundhati Roy – twincest
• Rose Tremain – Renaissance wank
• Daphne du Maurier – ex wives are bitches
• Agatha Christie – Okay, she's an exception to the rule, but if I had to write about her it'd just be OH MY GOD I LOVE MISS MARPLE OH MY GOD OH MY GOD SQUEEEE!!!1!
So I was a bit stuck until Valentine's Day, when Dory Previn died at the age of 86. And suddenly I had someone to write about! (Yeah, one of my childhood idols died, but there's always a silver lining, hey?)
Dory Previn is an Academy Award winning* song writer and poet. Not an Australian, but oh well. Previn sings folk music and used to be married to Andre Previn until Mia Farrow totally stole him from her. Her songs are about stuff like feminism, abuse, depression, people dying and how much of a total bitch Mia Farrow is.
My mum got me into Dory Previn. Not on purpose, I just happened to be rooting through her music collection for some Soft Cell and found a mix tape with "Did Jesus Have a Baby Sister?" written on it.
Did he indeed? I wondered, in the style of Dan Brown, and put on the tape.
Did Jesus Have a Baby Sister is about what would happen to Jesus's baby sister (if she'd ever existed). It's not a feminist anthem but it probably should be. There aren't words to explain how epically legendary the lyrics are, and I suggest you go google them up right now. My favourite lines have to be:
"Did she long to be the savior, saving everyone she met?
And in private, to her mirror, did she whisper:
Saviorette! Savior woman! Saviour person! Save your breath!"
EPIC!
Obviously I had to hear more of this hilarious woman. So I kept listening to the tape. Unfortunately Previn's backlist is less about witty takedowns of early AD religious life and more about horrible things happening to people who don't deserve it. I wound up crying at a lot of them which is weird because I'm not a big crier. (The big list of movies I've cried in: The Green Mile, Cool Runnings, CJ7, the end. The big list of songs I've ever cried while listening to: Stuff by Dory Previn, the end.)
One weepy-song is Her Mother's Daughter and oh-my-stars it is gut wrenching. It talks about the life of an old woman who lives a lonely life—"she spends her hours sitting while she waits for advertisements in the mail". When young she was a beauty who dreamed of princes, but her mother (passive aggressive, needy) dissuaded her from marrying.
"Oh mother may I marry now?"
"No, I need you, stay. I beg you darling daughter, I cannot be alone.
If you love me… you will stay."
So. She grows to hate her mother… but she stays. And now, in her old age, she has nothing, no family, no love, just resentment and her pathetic existence—she "listens in on other people's joys." It's so unbelievably sad it makes you want to throw yourself off a bridge. I'm getting depressed now just writing about it. Google that one up too, or better yet, listen to it on Youtube. It blows my mind how fucking incredibly she conveys this woman's feelings—the explosive knot of hate and despair inside the placid, fragile exterior. I mean, how the fuck do you do that? Like, how do you do that and get it so right? So simply and so right?
WHY SO AMAZING DORY PREVIN LIKE SERIOUSLY.
The last song of hers I'd like to draw your attention to is Doppelganger. This one creeps me right out—it literally gives me goosebumps when I listen to it.
"I seem to see this stranger, almost everywhere. I do not wish to frighten you but you should know he's there.
So that if you're threatened, or evil's ever done, you'll know it's him who did it, you'll know that he's the one…"
Not to get all cliché but this one gets right under your skin. Trust me. I've sat bolt upright in the middle of the night, clutching my blankets, to find this song playing in my head. It's the same kind of visceral reaction you get when you watch that bit in The Ring when Sadako starts coming out of the television and you're all like SWEET MOTHER OF GOD NO.
You'll know that he's the one.
I shudder when I hear that line. Every time. Every fucking time.
So. Yes. This Women's History Month let's celebrate the life of Dory Previn, the most legendary songwriter ever. If you listen to her music and aren't moved by it, well, what can I say? You must be a robot. A robot WITHOUT A HEART.
Man, now I'm going to spend this whole weekend just listening to her music.
*Well, nominated. But winning sounds better.
___
RJ Astruc writes AWESOME STORIES that win NO AWARDS EVER but SCREW EVERYONE, SERIOUSLY, IT'S NOT LIKE I WANTED ONE ANYWAY. Her latest novel is Harmonica + Gig, an Australian cyberpunk novel that's basically a big excuse to rant about how much multiculturalism sucks and how much she hates Apple products. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Abyss & Apex, ASIM, Aurealis, Years Best Australian Fantasy & Horror and like a bajillion other places. She received Australian citizenship in 1998 and uses it to live and work in New Zealand.

gillpolack @ 2012-03-10T12:54:00

I'm at the stage where I work and do not feel as if I'm advancing. It's dispiriting, and makes a difficult week more difficult.

To combat this, I've made a small start on my tax (the same tax I said I'd do two weeks ago) and piled all the loose papers that need dissecting and, as I dissect them, I file them or destroy them. The tax papers will go into a drawer when I'm done with them. That will be a lot of paper dealt with by the end of the weekend. That and my draft progress report (which was half done, but then this idiot virus got in the way) will clear the decks a little bit. They will hardly make a dint in my actual workload, but at least my loungeroom won't look the way I feel.

So - back to the paper war. And the war against my own body.

And I'm taking some time off tonight to visit friends. Because I can. I'm taking a rather nice tomato soup (with a beef and vegetable stock base) and chocolate truffles.

Women's History Month - Kay Kenyon

Kay Kenyon comments on Women's History Month

Ursula Le Guin. There was a time in my life when I wanted to be Ursula Le Guin. I read all her work, and it persuaded me that there might be room for the kind of books that I wanted to write. I loved that she seemed equally at home in fantasy and science fiction, and that she could speak so eloquently on our beloved field (as in her book of essays, The Language of the Night.) I realized soon enough that I couldn't be her, and that was just as well, because I had to find my own voice and of course, my own stories. I was changed by reading The Left Hand of Darkness, and despite everything that is usually (justifiably) praised in that book, the thing I loved the most was the impossible friendship between Genly Ai and Estraven. I can't really claim to have books as deep as hers, but my novel that is most frequently compared to her work is The Braided World. Actually, I'm not sure why. We are not the best analysts of our own work!

C.J. Cherryh. This author's long career is an inspiration to me. When you look at the sheer output of this writer, and the consistent quality of her worlds, characters and plot lines, I for one feel a bit overawed. From the Chanur series when I first fell in love with space opera to the books in the Foreigner universe, Cherryh continues to weave deeply emotional characters into strange worlds and convincing dilemmas. My first novel, The Seeds of Time was heavily influenced by her. At a convention a few years ago, I asked for her advice on a new project I had in hand, one that became The Entire and the Rose quartet. She said that I must immediately develop notebooks and keep track of everything. If I hadn't done this, after four books I would have gone mad. I am tempted to list other favorite books of hers, but the list would honestly be very, very long.

Annie Leibovitz. Beyond favorite women authors, I want to mention another artist whose career and presence I find fascinating. Annie Leibovitz entered a man's field of portrait photography and won international recognition for her original and daring work. Portrait photography is a fascinating art to me. It is reality, but interpreted through framing and lighting and an expert feel for personality. It is especially appealing to me to view portraits of women by a woman. She has created some of the most fabulous images of women, from Yoko Ono to Queen Elizabeth.

My bio:
Kay Kenyon is the author of ten science fiction novels. Her latest novels from Pyr comprise the science fiction quartet, The Entire and The Rose. Book One, Bright of the Sky was among PW's top 150 books of 2007. The series has twice been shortlisted for the ALA Reading List awards and three times for the Endeavour Award. Some of her other novels include Maximum Ice, (2002 Philip K. Dick nominee), The Braided World (2003 John W. Campbell award nominee) as well as The Seeds of Time and Tropic of Creation. Recently, her short story "Castoff World" appeared in The Year's Best SF 16. She is the founding member of a writing organization in Eastern Washington State, Write on the River. She blogs on fiction writing at www.kaykenyon.com.

The Story of Purim - Gillian's version

A very long time ago there lived a rich and powerful king. His name was Ahashverosh, but no-one could pronounce it. Even his friends found it difficult to say. They called him Harry. All his servants called him the PM - standing for Persian Monarch. He ruled over 127 provinces.

Harry lived in Shushan and mostly ignored the provinces, except when he wanted something from them. Mostly it was taxes. Occasionally he collected a concubine or two, but generally he preferred good solid gold. He taxed everything from resources to higher education, although during election time he claimed it was someone else doing the taxing.

The reason he ignored the provinces was because he was too busy spending the taxes on feasts. Tea-breaks just weren't good enough for someone in his line of work, he decided. It was a hard job, ruling. The PM got rid of the tea-ladies and brought in banquet-management. His imperial servants organised the feasts, or delegated them to someone else to organise, who brought in contractors to do the job. Harry never remembered to invite them. They weren't too happy about this, but there wasn't much they could do except grumble, pay more taxes or give the job to someone even further down the hierarchy the next time. They couldn't even vote for the Opposition, since there wasn't one. Eventually a lowly branch of servants called D.o.P.E. came to exist, standing for Department of Private Entertainment.

Harry mostly wasn't worried that he didn't pay for the feasts himself, or even organise them. After all, he was king and he had dreadful insomnia. He also poisoned lots of enemies. A small banquet here and another there were but tiny reward for the dreadful impositions of duty.

Archaeologists were never invited to the feasts either. They weren't worried by this. For one thing, they were too poor to pay taxes. For another, they had a dreadful habit of waiting till any big event had been over for a thousand years or so and then digging it all up again. Whenever Harry threw a feast, the archaeologists threw a sort of pre-university academic gathering, where they would get drunk and tell everyone else exactly how they would go about the excavation for this particular dig the moment funding was found.

They were always writing letters to American universities asking for sponsorship and proposing conference papers. Each of these letters was carefully written on clay tablets and passed from hand to hand until it was so smudged with corrections that they had to start all over again. Sometimes someone got sick of this and they tried sending a tablet after only five or so drafts. There was never any answer anyway. Ancient Persian archaeologists thought too much about the big picture and forgot local chronology. Local sailors had no idea where America was, or even where it would be. When no-one answered their letters the scholars became huffy and pretended they didn't really need the funding anyway and the conferences were poor excuses for true Old World academic meetings.

One day Harry decided to throw a drunken orgy along with one of his banquets. He carefully staged it just like a real media event. The archaeologists used this as an excuse for yet another boring academic gathering. They were discussing the possibility of resequencing recent events to see if they made more sense. Someone suggested replacing Ahashverosh's ancestors with Arthur and Woden to improve his lineage, but that had been done three times already and it never worked. The servants (other than the DoPEs) had a stop-work meeting to discuss conditions and ended up giving each other seminars on how to organise 99% demonstrations.

This feast was to be Harry's best yet: it made the third page of the pre-Murdoch press. It even beat the coverage of Abbott's bathing suit.

Vashti, Harry's queen, also gave a feast. It was much more sedate. Pottery was used so the archaeologists dismissed the midden-heap as boring. Ancient Persian archaeologists preferred crumpled gold to shards of pottery: no-one has ever been able to work out why.

The king got pretty drunk at this feast. He'd killed all his enemies so there was no poison floating around. This meant he could drink lots of wine. Ancient Persian wine was pretty potent. After two glasses he sung a little song he made up for himself. He flattered himself it had a nice little melody, might have won a Grammy if someone had remembered to invent them. This song has fortunately lost itself in the mists of time, possibly due to its strong sense of embarrassment at having ever been sung at all.

After everyone had applauded him and he'd had a few more goblets of strong liquor and he'd been encouraged to sing his shy, lilting melody a few more times, he was very drunk indeed. He looked for his queen and couldn't find her. He looked under his throne, which was a stupid thing to do since it was solid. He looked everywhere. He even asked a DoPE if he had seen her. Finally he thought she must have gone to sleep after her own banquet. He had forgotten she had a banquet. He wondered who she had invited. He decided to ask her. He sent the chief eunuch to wake her up. After he found out her guest list, he thought, he could get all the gentlemen of his court to tell him how lovely she was and how good he was at choosing a bride.

His eunuch took about three hours to find the Queen. When he eventually crawled back into the King's presence, his face was miserable. He grovelled just as hard as he could. With his head so far into the floor his voice couldn't be heard, he excused himself as the bringer of bad tidings. The king made him grovel in apology for mumbling. Then he got him to tell the message all over again. The eunuch was terrified and purple splotches began to cover his face. Harry was fascinated by this phenomenon. It didn't help him find the Queen, though. "She refused to come," muttered the eunuch, and grovelled himself out of sight before the king could come to his senses and have him killed.

The next day Vashti did come. She walked up the 953 purple and red plush steps to the gracious throne and had a private interview with the King. The King was livid. Vashti walked gracefully back down those 953 steps, a slight smile on her face.

Harry sent out decrees to all parts of his kingdom in all the languages of his realms. They stressed the need for wifely obedience. More than one hundred and seventy-five clay tablets were used for the various drafts. It went up and down the Persian hierarchy no fewer than thirty-one times in its search for perfect wording.

Wherever the decrees were understood, an awful lot of wives walked down the steps of the house with slight smiles on their faces. Fortunately, the wording of the decree was obscure, obtuse and largely incomprehensible. Nineteenth century historians were very angry when they discovered this. The Persian Empire would have fallen at least 200 years earlier, Toynbee calculated, if there had been a complete breakdown of all marriages at the time. Mind you, he couldn't understand the decree.

The king was pretty pleased with himself after this, and he threw a party. The archaeologists waited anxiously in the rubbish dump, ready to examine the tailings. The tailings never arrived.

What had happened was the king had looked around for Vashti and found she wasn't there. The PM, being a King and no ordinary mortal, got sick of his 861 concubines fairly quickly. Then it dawned on him, he needed a replacement. He set up a Royal Commission to investigate the matter. The Royal Commission acted with extraordinary speed for a Royal Commission due to the king's temper.

They were too slow.

After their untimely demise, the PM was forced to try other measures. He got in touch with his Chief of Protocol, who referred him to the Military Chief of Staff, who referred him to the Taxation Branch. The Taxation Branch could not be found. So the PM asked his personal valet, who referred him to the advertising manager who decided to set up a complete list of all applicants, and then to hold a beauty parade. The PM was to choose his own bride.

The plan was modest. To gather together the largest array of beautiful virgins ever seen, and to sell the leftovers as slaves. The list was entitled Virgins and Maidens of Persian Satrapies, or VAMPS. The advertising manager sent for his favourite consultants, whose normal work was in the Ancient Persian equivalent of King's Cross. The list of VAMPS was considerably shorter by the time the King discovered that they couldn't be trusted. So the eunuch found a florid young man who had migrated to Persia from the ancient equivalent of California. He had degrees in pre-Keynesian macro-economics, technology transfer and advanced sandwich making. He was massively enthusiastic about wife-hunting and set up a huge media-campaign. It worked so well, this campaign, that, over two thousand years later, the Australian Greens used carrier pigeons, runners, and clay tablets for their election campaign. After all, they were environmentally sound. Unfortunately carrier pigeons were nearly extinct by then, and the climate wasn't suitable for clay tablets. The campaign worked anyway. Back in Ancient Persia, the consultant managed to amass a vast number of Ancient Persian virgins for the king to consider.

To cope with the sudden onslaught of data, the archaeologists set up a research group to keep American academics informed of the King's affairs. This was known as TIMEWARP, or Transatlantic Information on the Monarchical Eastern Women's Affairs Research Program. The Americans took 2,500 years to find out about it.

The shyest and most demure girl in Shushan at this time was the niece of a man called Mordechai, who was Minister for Security (or Persio, as it was known). Mordechai had taken care of his timid relative since the death of her parents, many years before. Now that she was adult, he had great plans for her. Hollywood! Either that or The Guild. Either way, lasting fame and glory, and her virtuous modesty untouched. His first worry had been her taste in clothes. If only she could be persuaded to wear a little less basic black. Let her eyes show, or something. Hard to have a career, even on The Guild, if no-one could see you. All these fond dreams were rudely shattered when Esther became a VAMP.

Hege rather liked Esther. He didn't know she was related to Mordechai. Mordechai couldn't tell him of the link, or stop Esther from being rounded up with the other virgins, because he had a dreadful sore throat. It was thought that his Secretary had put something in his mid-morning cup of wine. As everyone knows, all Ancient Persians sang at every opportunity. What not many people are aware of is that Mordechai sang rather like a dying chain-saw, and that was on a good day. So the hero of this tale was sulking in his office when Esther was taken to the palace. He couldn't sing, so he was teaching himself how to mutter. A useful and pleasant past-time.

Esther had weeks of being bathed in myrrh and other exotic scents to ponder upon the advice Hege kept on giving her. Hege's most useful piece of advice to Esther was simple: to have a bath before the presentation. That way the king might stop and speak with her. It was traditional that the king walked down the line of beauties as quickly as possible, you see, just to get away from the smell.

On the day of the parade, Esther adorned herself simply, as befits a young maid. When the king stopped in front of her as Hege had predicted, demure little Esther shyly raised her long lashed eyes, and sang her tiny song straight from her heart.

(Tune: "Big Spender")
The minute you walked in the joint
I could see you were a man of distinction
A Real True Royal,
Good-looking, half-divine.
Wouldn't you like to know what's going on in my mind?
Now let me get right to the point,
I don't dress like this for every king I see.
Hey big kingy!
Give a little crown to me.


Harry was enchanted.

Factionalism was particularly rife in the Persian government. Hege was Centre-Left, and very powerful. Mordechai's power was mostly personal. This was a shame, because very few people really got on with him. Though he had an older brother with a great deal of charm, and a young sister who was as sweet as they came, he couldn't sing, and, when they'd taken care of that, the man insisted on muttering. But he was clever, and had managed to find out about a plot against the PM's life. Mordechai and his intrepid band of Persio men foiled this plot, without much fuss or bother (as one does). The matter was written up in a Departmental Minute and it was sent to the King. It unfortunately went to the Taxation Department instead, and was filed under Shushan region 15, section 9501, subsection 33.56392 by mistake. Life went on as usual.

Haman, who was of the extreme right, found great favour with Harry at this time. He was a notable person in many ways. Even before he entered the Megillat Esther, he was responsible for a variety of noxious conditions. They included ads on cable TV, indigestion, job redesign, one day cricket, and tourists who persist in telling you how to find your way home. He also invented iOUphones, Judge Judy and Mitt Romney.

He was promoted to chief minister. He used his newfound power constructively. First he ground people's faces into the dust. Then he laughed at them for having dusty faces. Also, he offered people flat rate taxes. When they enthusiastically agreed to it, he raised all taxes to 99% of income.

He liked giving banquets in honour of himself. Only the archaeologists and the DoPEs were pleased. He made everyone bow to him, but Mordechai wouldn't. Mordechai muttered to himself and claimed that his sore throat and a stiff neck had given him a very rigid spinal column.

Haman didn't do things by half. When he planned his revenge on Mordechai for his disrespect, he didn't just plan to unstiffen his neck. First, Mordechai's mother would die, Haman decided. Then his brother was added to the list. He tried to poison them with a cunningly ethnic food fair.

When this didn't work, his ambitions grew. He added Mordechai's sisters and his cousins and his aunts and even his mother-in-law to the list for slaughter. Then he went around trying to find a tune for the words, "If sometime it must happen that a victim must be found; I've got a little list, I've got a little list, of Mordechai's relations who should all be underground. They never will be missed, no never will be missed..."

Haman looked at this list for a couple of days and decided it was very unsatisfying. Mordechai was Jewish, so Haman decided to kill the whole race. It was much easier to include everyone than to risk offending someone by leaving them off. He invented a couple of useful acronyms to cope with the problem. Both of them later became very popular. The first acronym was YIDs, standing for Yucky and Irreverent Dissidents, and the other was SDI, or Sudden Death Initiative. This latter was Haman's name for his special technique of ridding the world of his enemies. It went at the top of every list he made. It used the latest technology - the drawing of lots and the sending of fast couriers - enabling him to co-ordinate his effort in a way previously unheard of. Because the couriers reached every corner of the immense Persian realm, it was also called Far Wars.

His advisors wrote SDI on their lists, as Haman told them to, but in their minds it stood for Some Damn Idiocy. They grumbled to themselves that there was no-one to fight against any more, and envisaged thousands of shiny pebbles in space raining down on anyone who dared to claim that there was no-one to fight. At the bottom of every list Haman wrote in the biggest, boldest letters he could get his scribe to muster up, "NB gallows for Mordechai to be particularly high." Then he went to bed, perfectly happy.

Next day he cast lots, or Purim, and settled on the 13th of Adar as a suitable day. He told Ahashverosh that all the Jews were breaking the laws and ought to be punished. It was necessary, Haman claimed, to make sure the bringer of justice was a disinterested and upright man, such as himself, for example. The King, deceived, handed over Haman his ring, which meant Haman could do what he liked in the matter.

On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, ran the decrees, all Jews in the realm were to be killed and their possessions were to be given to Haman. It was a very tidy, simple little decree.

The scribe who worked on it was a Persio agent. Mordechai was not very happy to get the news. He suggested that it would be a good idea for the Jews to stage a protest. The Society Contrary to the Abolition of Residents of Eastern Demesnes, or SCARED, had a meeting to discuss the matter. They contemplated a stop-work, a strike, a street-march, and a sit in, but eventually settled for sackcloth and ashes and wandering through the streets of Shushan, groaning loudly.

Esther was very embarrassed to hear that her uncle was roaming the streets, looking like a fool. It was bad enough that he was a Public Servant, but to wear such stupid clothes! She sent him linen and silk and cloth of gold. He sent back a message saying he'd rather die than wear such things. It took Esther a while to penetrate this deep and meaningful statement. In fact, it took a leak from Tax, which asked if she wanted any of the loot.

Esther was tempted by the gold, of course, but nobly put her life above such wordly considerations. Esther washed herself very clean, and put on a lovely gown. She looked her very best - modest, timid and demure. Harry was so impressed that he granted her a favour. Vashti hadn't even been able to get him to pay the food bills.

Esther knew the PM very well. So did the archaeologists. They held their collective breaths. All their hopes were realised - Esther invited the King and Haman to a banquet.

Banquets don't just happen overnight, even when you are the Queen of Persia and have a whole army of DoPEs to do the work for you.

The weather was hot and sticky. Summer seemed to go on forever. The king's insomnia was getting worse and worse. He began to get bad headaches from all the filing he had to do. He'd have to invent a new government department to cope with it all, he thought. In the meantime, he spent long, sleepless nights dreaming of filing cabinets. Finally, at three o'clock in the morning, he sent for someone to read to him. Harry was torn between having something read to him that was interesting, or something that was so boring that it would put him to sleep. He compromised. One of his secretaries started reading him the tax returns for Shushan region 15, section 9501, subsection 33.56392.

It wasn't what he thought it would be. When he found out that no-one had bothered to reward Mordechai for saving his life, he waxed exceeding wrath. In fact, he called Haman out of bed. Haman was puzzled, but hopeful.

The PM led into his subject indirectly. The filing cabinets walking beside his bed when he had dozed off three nights before, had inspired him. He commanded Haman to spend 50,000 shekels of the enormous bribe which had got him the use of the signet ring, to set up a bureau to take care of the filing. He called it the Cabinet Office. Then he tackled the more important issue.

"What would you give someone deserving of the highest honour, if you were the King of Persia?" Harry asked. This looked promising. Haman listened for the sounds of the gallows-builders doing overtime and rubbed his hands with glee. He listed everything he could think of, but the centrepiece of the honour was to have "this worthy individual" astride the king's mount, adorned with cloth of gold, and wearing a crown.

Haman was not at all pleased to find himself, the next day, leading the King's horse. On it was Mordechai. On Mordechai's head was the king's own crown. To add insult to injury, Mordechai muttered the whole time and Haman had to pretend he was listening. The only good thing in Haman's whole day was the sight of the gallows, reaching higher and higher. He consoled himself with the thought of a private banquet with their Majesties, that evening.

The banquet wasn't really worthy of the name. It had only forty courses, and so few guests that Haman was able to monopolise the conversation. However, even the garbage bags were made of cloth of gold. The archaeologist wept tears of joy. Haman, while he was chatting away, managed to put a couple in his pocket to spend later.

Esther was in despair as the evening progressed. She had planned to reveal Haman's plot and the threat to her own life, and to allow the PM to see the villain's guilt written all over his face. If only that villain would stop talking long enough to let her get a word in edgewise!

Mordechai stood behind the curtain in agony. He was tempted to try to sing a little something, to get the King's attention, but, after a woeful attempt, his voice faded entirely. Harry heard the strange sound and was worried. Esther dismissed the noise as a falling logger in a part of the National Estate. The King relaxed.

She sat back and listened to Haman talking for another hour or two or three.

Then whispered quietly to the King that she was doomed.

Harry's face paled and he demanded an explanation. Esther told the King that she was Jewish, and that the crimes Haman had accused her people of were pure fabrication. She petitioned her husband for her very life.

Harry was bewildered. He went into the garden to think. What to do? His chief advisor, a murderer? While he was thinking, he sang an ancient song to himself, a song of puzzlement and betrayal, a song so old that not even the people of that time knew from whence the tune had come.

Alas Haman you do me wrong
To treat me thus discourteously
For I have honoured you so long
Delighting in your company

Haman was all my sooth
Haman source of wisdom clear
Haman, you played me false
When you tried to kill my Esther dear


While the PM was in the moonlit garden, Haman had tried to get out of his dilemma. He had seen his life was threatened, and had come close to where the Queen was sitting, meaning to throw himself upon her mercy.

The King re-entered and didn't realise that it was upon her mercy that Haman was advancing to throw himself. He vaguely remembered seeing a nice new gallows, fifty cubits high, in the very best part of town. Haman was sent to these gallows at once. He said nothing, for he was gagged until he was out of the King's presence. It was Purim. Haman died bitter, but, being Ancient Persian, he couldn't resist writing his own funeral dirge. Very original, he thought, as he waited for the hangman.

I was a crooked man
I walked a crooked mile
I made some crooked sixpence
Into a crooked pile
And with my crooked dough
I led my crooked life
Which now must finish
Due to Kingy's crooked wife.