L.E. Truscott's Blog, page 31

2007 Writing Journal – Part 5

I’m taking a blog break to do another Project October. In place of my normal blog posts during July, I will be posting in nine parts a writing journal I completed as the major assessment piece of my final master’s subject called The Writerly Self.

This is Part 5.

*****

2 April 2007

The CEO tried to fire me today. I’d indicated to my direct supervisor that I wanted to leave and had suggested working another three months in order to save some money and complete all my outstanding projects, and then take an extended break from working to focus on writing. That wasn’t good enough for him apparently. He can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to work here. Trying to fire people who want to leave is just the icing on my cake of reasons for not wanting to be here anymore.

I just spent three pages in this week’s discussion thread talking about how I’m my own ideal reader, but I guess in reality, I’m my own ideal everything. My own ideal boss, my own ideal colleague, my own ideal sister and daughter. Everyone I’ve talked to about this says I have to stop being so nice and start being selfish. Days like today make me very, very eager to give it a red hot go.

I’ll be thirty this year. I started writing my first novel when I was sixteen (it was really only long enough to be a novella) and I’ve been writing in some form or another ever since, poetry, screenplays and novels being the big three, but without much success (although I admit success is hard when I’ve never sent my writing out to anyone, reasoning that it’s not ready, that I’m not ready). I wonder if there is a point at which I should give up and become a teacher. Everyone says I’d make a great English teacher. But I’m not sure if I want to be classified as one of those people who couldn’t do it so taught it instead.

3 April 2007

Okay, so I have finally bitten the bullet and succumbed, acknowledging that my second proposed project for The Writerly Self is not going to satisfy me, let alone the grading requirements of the assessment piece. I suppose I’ll have to hope that this writing journal does meet those requirements. Thank goodness I’ve been writing it as a back-up all along. I guess maybe I knew somewhere deep down that this assessment piece, no matter what it ended up being, was going to be a struggle.

But I’ve already stated my opinion that writing journals are a waste of time. Five thousand words spent on something I’d rather not be writing. Five thousand words that could comprise 25% of the last 20,000 words I need to write to finish my novel. But it’s life, I guess. I spend ten hours a day at a job I have grown to hate, wishing I could be spending that time writing. Sometimes I am lucky enough to have a spare few hours in which I scribble some notes or scratch out a few pages, but it’s rare. I’ve said it all along. Time is the scarcest resource in my writer’s toolbox.

4 April 2007

I wrote about William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in week 4 as an example of a book that effectively manages the transaction between mind and culture and it has snowballed into a full on discussion of the depths and layers of the text, mostly between Jim and myself. It’s great actually, but I think it is also giving me insight into the differences between the male and female reader, as well as the male and female writer. I constantly worry about the authenticity of my male characters, the way they act and talk, but I just bet it’s not something that male writers worry about in the context of their female characters. What is it Jack Nicholson’s character says in As Good As It Gets? Something like to write women, he thinks of a man and then takes away reason and accountability. Okay, so maybe they’re not all as bad as that, but I’ve had first-hand experience of a male writer either refusing or not being able to understand that women characters are more than eye candy. It’s the whole reason I started writing in an action genre.

In fact, this course and the people I’ve met through it have been the genesis of my novel. I actually thought I’d gotten to the point of not wanting to write novels anymore. When I started this course in July 2005, I was exclusively writing screenplays. Now I’m 80% of the way through writing a novel. I still think I’m a much better scriptwriter than novelist but it has given my abilities (or at least my recognition of my abilities) a greater breadth. John Grisham writes both novels and screenplays. Same with Larry McMurtry. There’s no reason I can’t do the same.

Now there’s a strange group of people to think about. John Grisham, Larry McMurtry and me. Sounds like a great title for a book for teenagers. Or a great title for a country song.

2007 Writing Journal – Part 4

I’m taking a blog break to do another Project October. In place of my normal blog posts during July, I will be posting in nine parts a writing journal I completed as the major assessment piece of my final master’s subject called The Writerly Self.

This is Part 4.

*****

27 March 2007

Okay, I think I’ve decided on the replacement for the assessment piece. A journalistic article on the postgraduate writing course, advantages, disadvantages, the opinions that are out there (because I know Jenny Darling hates the idea of postgraduate writing courses, so I’m sure there are plenty more insiders with just as fervent views), etc.

28 March 2007

Jacqui has approved the revised proposal for the assessment piece so now I’ve got to do some Googling. I need to find out what people actually think about postgraduate writing courses.

30 March 2007

Son of a bitch! I did the research. I started writing. I wrote about a thousand words and then I realised that the way in which I was going to reflect on my journey as a writer and The Writerly Self module in particular just isn’t going to work. I wouldn’t call it writer’s block exactly but I’m stuck and I don’t know how to move forward. This is becoming a recurring theme, but I think abandonment is my only option. Judge for yourself. This is what I wrote before I threw up my hands in total and utter dismal failure.

Can writing be taught?

Even as the decades old question continues to be asked, postgraduate writing courses are multiplying exponentially across the world, popping up in the most hallowed of educational institutions. Louise Truscott, a soon-to-be graduate, explores from the inside what many consider to be an unanswerable question.

These days the likelihood of professional success without a university education is almost as remote as winning the lottery. Many companies refuse to interview (let alone employ) candidates without tertiary level qualifications. Mathematicians, physicists and even philosophers get nowhere without at least a master’s degree and preferably a PhD. So why do the merits of postgraduate studies in writing – creative or otherwise – continue to be debated with such fervour and ferocity?

The most obvious answer is, of course, that the vast majority of commercially and critically successful writers – the household names of today – never found it necessary to wander down this educational path. Virginia Woolf was entirely home schooled. Ernest Hemingway refused to attend university after high school. John Grisham studied and practised law for nearly a decade before turning his attention to writing without ever feeling the need the head back to university. Thomas Keneally entered a seminary to train as a Catholic priest but left before his ordination, later becoming a schoolteacher and a university lecturer before becoming a writer.

But for those who know they want to write without the proof provided by years spent in a different and often unsatisfying profession, undergraduate and postgraduate studies in writing seem a clear way in. A would-be lawyer studies the law. A would-be doctor studies medicine. Why shouldn’t a would-be writer study writing?

‘People often seem to think that writers should just be able to do it naturally, without being taught,’ says Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With A Pearl Earring. ‘Why don’t people say this about musicians, or painters, or sculptors? All of us sang at some point when we were children, but no one would suggest that a professional singer doesn’t need to train since they already know how to sing! I should think the same would apply to writers, yet people somehow expect writers to write well instinctively.’

Tim Waggoner agrees. ‘The guidance students receive from an experienced writer-teacher can be invaluable.’

Adding to the credibility of opinions such as these, in October 2005, the renowned and respected Oxford University began offering a Master of Studies degree in Creative Writing, boasting the program would be supported by ‘leading literary figures…prize-winning fiction writers, poets and dramatists’. The press release announcing the creation of the course led with the words, ‘For the first time talented creative writers will have the opportunity to study for a postgraduate qualification in their craft at Oxford University.’

Despite this seeming acceptance of the worthy place of creative writing in universities, and particularly in the staid and sober halls of Oxford academia, there remains a vocal chorus of dissension. Jenny Diski, a prize-winning British writer herself, cynically describes creative writing courses as a ‘marvellous money-spinner for cash-strapped universities’, ostensibly ignoring any possible benefits. ‘The dream of the book that could be written seems to be pretty universal… It’s always been the case that people will find a way to cash in on daydreams. What’s new is that educational institutions are ripping off their students – customers, these days, like any other business.’

Here in Australia there are mixed feelings regarding the postgraduate writing courses. Literary agent Lyn Tranter says they are ‘churning out people who are led to believe they are going to be published’. Fellow agent Jenny Darling agrees, complaining those employed to impart wisdom upon impressionable young (and sometimes not so young) minds ‘seem to have no idea of what’s publishable’.

Jenny Sinclair confesses that she ‘enrolled in a university writing course to give a socially acceptable face’ to her compulsion, even as she rails against the proliferation of ‘writing courses, writing workshops, writing weekends, writing holidays’ and the armies of half-wit graduates…

 

I guess what I’ve written is okay. The only problem is that it’s heading somewhere I don’t want it to go i.e. nowhere near me reflecting on my journey as a writer. Dammit.

Book Review: No Tattoos Before You’re Thirty by Sam de Brito

This is one of those books to which the subsequent life of the author has given tragic and deeper meaning. I bought and read it in 2006 when it was published because I was a semi-regular reader of Sam de Brito’s newspaper column called “All Men Are Liars”. It’s a list of the pieces of advice he wished someone had told him in his youth rather than having to figure it out by himself as he went along. He divided it into two sections, one aimed at his “gorgeous daughter”, the other aimed at his “dashing son”, both of whom existed only in his imagination at the time of writing.

Sam de Brito died at the age of 46 in 2015, leaving behind a young daughter. It’s almost as if he knew he wasn’t going to make it, even before his daughter was born, so he left behind this book to ensure she’d have the benefit of his wisdom. It almost makes you want to cry just thinking about it.

Some of the advice is less vital than other pieces. “Fashion is important, so educate yourself,” he writes to his daughter. Some of it is hilarious. “Never throw a drink in a guy’s face. It’s not high drama. It’s cheap. Walk away. On the other hand, if he’s groped you, make sure the glass is nice and full.” Some of it goes deeper. “Read. Someone’s taken the time to distil their thoughts on life into a few hundred pages, and it’s sitting there for you to experience.” And others are absolutely crucial. “Compare nothing. Be it bust size, salary or your childhood. Comparison to your own will just make you smug or grumpy.”

And some of the highlights from the advice to his son include the sensible. “Respect cops… they’re the first people you call when the shit hits the fan.” The protective. “Drive a Volvo. At least until you’re twenty-five… Until then I want you in the Swedish shock absorber.” And the advice I hope all men ignore – “Do say, ‘I’m dropping the kids off at the pool.’ …It’s much funnier than announcing you’re ‘taking a dump’.” – after all, does anyone really need to know?

The book is well-written, witty and full of the common sense that those of us in our thirties and older will recognise and that those in their teens and twenties would do well to heed. If you were a fan of Sam’s other writing, then you’ll appreciate this, too. If you haven’t heard of him before, it’s a terrific and – despite its humour – sometimes tear-jerking introduction. If there’s one regret, it’s that we’ll never know to what higher heights Sam de Brito might otherwise have risen.

In a few words: short, stylish and sweet.

4 stars

*First published on Goodreads 8 March 2016

2007 Writing Journal – Part 3

I’m taking a blog break to do another Project October. In place of my normal blog posts during July, I will be posting in nine parts a writing journal I completed as the major assessment piece of my final master’s subject called The Writerly Self.

This is Part 3.

*****

13 March 2007

Uh-oh, more Noam Chomsky in the tutorial links. Between him and Jacques Derrida, I’m starting to feel stupid. I know Melissa feels his ideas are important and persists in fighting her way through, but I’m not as determined as her. It’s funny because she posted her discussion thread today and the sample of her writing that she chose to include was a poem protesting the incomprehensibility of postmodern language. But I find Chomsky’s use of English just as incomprehensible. I’m sure it’s very important work. I just wish he’d say it in simple terms. Really, is there any necessity for complex ideas to be wrapped up in complex (read indecipherable) language?

I suppose it gives his work a voice of authority. ‘I’m smarter than you because I know lots of big words.’ Maybe. Thank goodness I’m not interested in having an authoritative voice. I’d rather just entertain people and make them happy. That’s how my favourite writers make me feel and I’d love to be able to engender the same sorts of feelings in others.

19 March 2007

Maybe they do this to test us, but I find quite often that the tutorial question has nothing to do with the lecture notes or the tutorial links. It has made me a brilliant researcher, though, having to find articles and references on my own in order to effectively answer the question. Google is my saviour. And how weird is this? When I Google myself, I finally have an entry. Just one, single, solitary entry, but still it’s my first, so I feel kind of giddy. It’s a reference on a writer friend’s website, answering a question about how he names his characters, which is to steal them from his friends, a practice I am very familiar with. Just about everyone in my novel is named after people I work with, including the office bully who I’ve made the bad guy and will kill off in the end. Oh, sweet justice!

Hopefully, nobody will sue me. Most people are honoured to see themselves or their namesake appearing in a book. Tara Moss always says her friends want to be killed off in her novels. I’m happy to do the same. But then I also remember Helen Garner, I think it was, saying she had described a character in her book as having big pores and a friend took exception, thinking Helen was using her writing to have a go at her. That’s one thing I always make clear. It might be your name, but the character is not you. It’s really me, as, of course, all my characters are me.

26 March 2007

Jacqui posted the due date for the assessment piece and it’s put me into a bit of a spin. I don’t think I’m going to make it. It was going to be called ‘Everything I Know About Writing (A Short Book)’ and it was going to be terribly witty and humorous. But I’m still unsure of the format. I mean, I can’t just dump everything I’ve ever written into a Word document and hand it over. It needs a purpose, it needs streamlining, it needs… more time than I’ve got. I think I’ll have to shelve it again and consider writing something else for the assessment piece. Crap!

Josie’s lecture for this week began with a discussion of fractal geometry. That woman can take anything and everything and somehow make it about writing. I’m struggling with the link myself. Is it human nature to overcomplicate even the simple things in life? It’s a little ironic that I’m complaining about it because I wrote myself that writing can be everything. I wrote that while working on the project I shelved about twelve seconds ago.

‘Writing can be everything. That’s what makes it so much fun. An apple can only ever be an apple. Sometimes it might look like an apple pie or a glass of juice, but deep down in its heart, it will always be an apple. But writing…ah, writing. There is nothing that it can’t be. Writing can be everything. And to the person who says, “Writing can’t be a rocket ship to the moon,” I’ll find ten people who believe with all their hearts that it can.’

God, I can write utter crap at times.

2007 Writing Journal – Part 2

I’m taking a blog break to do another Project October. In place of my normal blog posts during July, I will be posting in nine parts a writing journal I completed as the major assessment piece of my final master’s subject called The Writerly Self.

This is Part 2.

*****

6 March 2007

Yet another discussion thread topic that I have to fudge my way around. Writing a review of a book written by an author whose first language isn’t English would be much easier if I’d ever actually read a book written by an author whose first language isn’t English. I think I came into this course with my eyes wide open, knowing that commercial, mainstream fiction with sex scenes and serial slayers and suspenseful storylines wasn’t going to be a focus, but would it kill them? I mean, there’s a reason it sells so well. There’s a reason I prefer to read it rather than overblown literary tales in which it takes two decades to realise nothing is ever going to happen. It’s always the commercial, mainstream books that I don’t expect to surprise me that, in fact, do. And it’s always the literary ‘classics’ that I read because I’m told I should that bore me to tears. This is the editor in me but most of them could do with some judicious pruning and a severe rewrite. Didn’t they have editors in the olden days?

8 March 2007

I’ve asked Jacqui about an idea I’ve had for the assessment piece. It’s not quite what it should be but I’m hoping it will be approved because the proposed writing journal and the reflective essay-style piece sound terminally boring to me. I’ve always had trouble with the concept of being a writer for hire. I want to write what I want to write. That’s less of a problem when screenplays or novels are expected, because I love writing those. But reflecting on my journey as a writer? I’m just not that self-aware. I find it really hard to trace a path, both in my journey as a writer and my life more generally.

Anyway, my idea for the assessment piece is a how-to book on writing in the vein of Stephen King’s On Writing and Robert McKee’s Story that is anything but helpful. Sort of a comedic take on the idea that how to write is as simple as buying and reading a book. Plus the idea of it being written by an unpublished writer (do as I say, not as I do) adds to the farcical nature of it.

I’ve had it in the back of my mind for ages and want to use the 96 weekly discussion threads written during this course as the basis for it. Surely there would be a traceable path of my journey as a writer from the first discussion thread I wrote to the last. That’s the hope.

10 March 2007

Yet another class with fewer than five classmates, so it seems. There appears to be just the three of us, Melissa, Jim and me. I’ve had classes with both Melissa and Jim before. I think when I signed up for this, a significant reason was the people I would meet, the oodles and oodles of other writers I would meet and learn from, or at least bounce off. But I can really only remember one class that was filled to the rafters with students and that was the very first one, Script Adaptation. I’m not sure if it’s a bad thing or not. I suppose it means I’ve had to work very, very hard at being my own critical friend, instead of relying on others. Possibly this is a good thing, seeing that after I finish the course I will be all on my own again.

Book Review: Texts from Dog by October Jones

Texts from Dog is a picture book for adults. It’s really important to make this clear because its simplicity and pictures might mean it is mistaken for a children’s book. But the first time (and many subsequent times) Dog drops the f-bomb, it is clear that children should not be reading it. It’s a shame, actually, that the swearing prevents it being read by a wider and younger audience because it could have been a book that everyone enjoyed.

Instead, we adults get to read it and laugh out loud. The book has a simple and yet unlikely premise: October Jones owns a bulldog and has bought him a cell phone and “taught” him to text. The entire book is comprised of text conversations between owner and pet, mostly while the owner is at work and the pet is wreaking havoc at home, some while they are both at home but the owner is upstairs and the pet is downstairs. Especially classic are the texts at 3am when October is in bed and Dog has to go outside, texting that he can’t schedule his poos. Tee-hee!

Dog is consumed by his conflict with the neighbour’s cat, his evil arch-nemesis CatCat (“So, basically, a cat?”), and assumes his alter-ego BatDog (“I am the Bark Knight.”) in order to battle against him. But he’s scared of squirrels (“Don’t tell that evil bastard where I live.”). And appliances in the house are out to get him, too (“The lamp in the living room fell over. Now I have to fight it. Matter of honour.”).

There are a couple of references for the serious reader where October lectures Dog on the correct use of “your” and “you’re” (“How’s this: You’re going to get head-butted in your testicles”) and where Dog reviews War and Peace for October (“Tasted like chicken”) but in the main it’s just silly fun.

There are a couple of repeated text conversations and some of them are out of order (there’s a text announcing Dog has tired of playing with Zombie Pigeon and later on there’s a text introducing Zombie Pigeon) but they are minor glitches.

Reading this book won’t change your life but it certainly brought a smile to my face as well as many laughs from my lips. And as a writer, it’s the sort of high concept book that makes me a little jealous I didn’t think of it first.

4 stars

*First published on Goodreads 8 March 2016

2007 Writing Journal – Part 1

I’m taking a blog break to do another Project October. In place of my normal blog posts during July, I will be posting in nine parts a writing journal I completed as the major assessment piece of my final master’s subject called The Writerly Self.

This is Part 1.

*****

26 February 2007

First day of my last subject. I started this course nearly three years ago and it’s both concerning and a relief to finally be nearing the end. One subject at a time was the plan and I’ve stuck to it. But I worry that without constant deadlines I won’t be nearly as motivated to write as often I have been during this time. It’s so much easier to lie on the couch and think about writing instead of actually doing it, especially if there is no reason to do it today instead of tomorrow.

Have I changed as a writer? Absolutely. Without question. I started this course thinking I already knew everything (not sure why I thought this course was necessary in spite of that). But I didn’t. Previous writing studies had given me a practical basis from which to work and I’d built upon that through writing, writing and more writing. But I’d never really considered the theoretical aspects of writing that make up the vast majority of this course. I’ve been able to add depth and layers to my efforts at writing, probably as a result of this study. I can’t say definitively but I’m sure there’s a link. There have been quantitative changes as well as the qualitative. By the time I finish in May, I will have written nearly 100,000 words in weekly discussion thread initial postings and hundreds of thousands more words in the back and forth banter, as well as about 100,000 words for eight major assessment pieces. Never in my life have I been so prolific. Hmmm. Sometimes that’s a problem, not a virtue. I have to learn to be more concise.

I’ve already researched, written and posted my first discussion thread but I wasn’t the first. Melissa had already posted hers. It’s great to see someone else so eager. In some of the subjects, some people seem to treat it like high school, like they’re doing it because they have to rather than because they want to. I fail to see how anyone who approaches writing like that could ever be successful. Or maybe I just hope they won’t be successful.

Anyway, the initial topic was dramaturgy and already I’m wondering if this unit is going to be a succession of subjects that go over my head. I’ve enjoyed being exposed to all the theoretical concepts throughout this course – postmodernism, deconstruction, genre theory, etc – but that’s not to say I truly understand them all. Maybe it’s an awareness of them, rather than an understanding, that is more important.

2 March 2007

I’ve just had a peek at the assessment requirements for The Writerly Self and it’s a bit different from normal. Usually, the discussion threads are worth 20% and the major assessment piece is worth 80% but for this subject the discussion threads are worth 40% and the major assessment piece is worth 60%. This may work in my favour. I usually do pretty well when I am graded on my discussion threads. Plus the major assessment piece for this subject is a writing journal consisting of ‘a record in about 3,000 to 5,000 words of your development as a writer with particular emphasis on the period of this unit’. Already I’m flashing back to the Writing History subject. Although I have a degree in history, I have no desire to write history and that subject was a real struggle for me. The story of my grandparents’ early life is actually an interesting one but I managed to butcher it pretty well. From recollection, I think my tutor said I was too distanced from the subject. I lived with them for eleven years so I’m not sure how I managed that.

Hmmm. This is interesting. I just went to the Swinburne website to look at the Writing History subject outline and I noticed that it and all the other subjects are now graded on a 40/60 basis. I wonder whether a 40/60 basis would have changed how well I’ve done so far.

Anyway, since I know the major assessment piece for The Writerly Self will not be as smooth as if I were writing a novel or a screenplay, I’ve decided to postpone any work on my novel. I’m at 81,000 words and the climax is rapidly approaching. I have it all outlined, but I just wrote a chapter that I am particularly unhappy with. Usually when that happens, I know I need to take a break from it so perhaps the timing for all of this is good. The intention will be to pick it up again in June after The Writerly Self is finished. I hope that’s as easy as simply doing it. Sometimes when I take a break from writing a particular piece, it can be hard to get back into it. Not this time, though. I think I’ve developed a pretty good writing work ethic, treating it like a job rather than a luxury to be enjoyed whenever I feel like it. But like a job, there has to be a certain amount of prioritising. The Writerly Self-assessment piece takes on writing priority number one for now.

Eulogies: The Hardest Writing Any Writer Will Ever Do – Part 2

In 2005, I was studying for a master’s degree in writing. I was also into my eleventh year of living with my grandparents, Alf and Betty. What had been an invitation to stay with them when I was 17 and moving to Melbourne from Bendigo to study a bachelor’s degree had extended into another two-year course, my first job, my second job, my third job and my fourth job. It was during my fourth job that I decided to study for my master’s degree part time.

One of the subjects was called Writing History. Because I had such immediate access to Alf and Betty, I decided to write my major project about them. We had some wonderful conversations about growing up, when they met and their life together. The first eulogy that follows was taken from that project. I was also asked to write a second more personal eulogy, which follows the first. I almost can’t believe I had to write two. And even more unbelieveable is the fact that I actually got up to read the second one myself because I don’t do public speaking, ever, and my debut performance was at my grandmother’s funeral.

First Eulogy

Elizabeth Bell, known as Betty, was born on the 2nd of April 1926, the fifth and youngest child of John and Elizabeth Bell. She was the first of the Bells born in Australia. The Bell family had immigrated from Northern England to Australia in 1922 after the death of the brother Betty never knew, Russell. Russell was hit in the head by a rock thrown by another young child, developed pneumonia in his weakened state and never recovered.

The Bell family that remained, parents John and Elizabeth, daughters Doris and Gladys and son Jack, settled in Wonthaggi, Victoria. Every school holidays the family would travel the eight kilometres to Inverloch where they would stay in the two-room hut the family owned and the children would play on the sand and in the surf. It was a well-rounded Australian childhood, encompassing the beach and the bush.

At fourteen, Betty left school. Her highest level of education was Year 8 or second form as they called it back then. She had never been encouraged in scholarly pursuits and her parents did not mind whether she left school or stayed, so she decided to leave. The only thing her mother did care about was whether young Betty could get a job.

In a town as small as Wonthaggi, jobs for women were as rare as hens’ teeth. Elizabeth decided to send Betty to Melbourne where the chances of securing work would be much greater. Betty left Wonthaggi and never returned.

Her first job was in a fruit shop. She lasted three days. Her next job was in a factory making gloves. She worked there for six months before again moving on. Over the years Betty would work at a variety of places, including the Maryborough Knitting Mills, Kayser, the Metro Theatre, Kodak, the Austin Hospital and Vasey House. It was rarely interesting but it was honest work.

World War II began when Betty was thirteen. By the time Betty was sixteen, her mother, Elizabeth, was so fearful of the war arriving on her doorstop in Wonthaggi in the form of a military attack from the sea that she announced her intention to relocate to Maryborough. Betty chose to go to the country with her mother. They stayed in Maryborough for six months. When they left Maryborough, they did not return to Wonthaggi but settled in the Melbourne suburb of Kew.

Alf Harrison and Betty Bell met in 1946 at a dance. They were introduced to each other by a woman Alf had grown up with and Betty worked with. They talked and danced and made a date for the next week to see a movie. The distance between their respective family homes in Port Melbourne and Kew meant an extra effort was required as their relationship blossomed. Alf often made the trek out to Kew riding his bicycle and on two or three occasions he even did it while pushing Betty’s bicycle, which he would borrow to ride home when the trams were on strike or had stopped running for the night. Alf and Betty dated for over twelve months. In early September of 1947, just after his 21st birthday, Alf bought an engagement ring for fifty pounds and proposed to Betty. She accepted.

Alf Harrison and Betty Bell were married on Saturday the 29th November 1947 at St Andrews Church in Gardiner. The service was attended by Alfred (Snr) and Frances Harrison, Elizabeth Bell, Betty’s sisters, Alf’s brothers, and a variety of aunts and uncles. Betty wore a powder blue dress bought from René Rose on the corner of Flinders Lane and Swanston Street that fell to mid-calf and carried a bouquet of daisies and roses.

A reception was held at the house of Betty’s Aunt Phoebe and Uncle Joe and then Uncle Joe drove the couple in his Baby Austin to the Club Hotel in Ferntree Gully where they spent their honeymoon. It lasted two days. They returned to the city by train on Monday and Alfred went back to work on Tuesday.

Alf and Betty moved into Betty’s mother’s house in Kew. But the distance between the home and Alf’s job proved difficult and after six months, the young couple moved into the Harrison family home in Port Melbourne where Alf had grown up.

By this time, Betty was heavily pregnant with her first child. It was an easy pregnancy, although on many social occasions Betty would break out in itchy hives and would have to retreat home to scratch in relative privacy.

Betty went into labour on the afternoon of the 25th of June 1948. Alf’s mother took her to the Epworth Hospital where she was admitted. Alf was not permitted to visit his wife in the labour ward. No men were allowed into the labour ward except for doctors. Alf’s mother later went home as the baby seemed in no hurry to enter the world. But a daughter was delivered in the early hours of Saturday the 26th of June 1948, although Betty remembered little of it as gas was administered liberally to women in labour in those days.

After the birth, Betty was moved into the maternity ward and her daughter was moved into the nursery. Betty decided to name her daughter Rae Patricia. Rae was for a young cousin of Alf’s she thought of as a nice little boy and Patricia was for herself, a name she liked and thought went well in combination with Rae.

Betty stayed in hospital for ten days, which was the standard length of a hospital stay for a woman who had given birth in those days. Hospital rules dictated that only the baby’s father and grandmothers were permitted to visit, but Alf’s brother, Stanley, was so eager to see Betty after the birth and gain a glimpse of baby Rae in the nursery that he convinced hospital staff he was a sailor on a merchant ship about to leave dock.

After Betty and Rae left the hospital, life settled into routine for the extended Harrison family. Despite the fact that there were only two bedrooms, seven people managed to call it home. Alfred Snr and Frances were in the front bedroom. Alf, Betty and Rae occupied the second bedroom, with the baby sharing her parents’ bed. And Reginald and Stanley shared the enclosed veranda at the back of the house. After Rae turned one, Betty returned to work in order to help save the money to buy a house of their own.

It took three years and the help of Betty’s mother, who sold her own house to help finance her daughter’s. In 1951, Alf, Betty, Rae and Elizabeth moved to Deepdene. They paid £3,500 for the white weatherboard. In 1953, a second daughter was born to Alf and Betty. They named her Linda. In 1955, a third daughter arrived and they named her Jill. And finally in 1956, their son, Kevin, was born.

Betty’s mother, Elizabeth, later bought her own house in Richmond and moved out, enabling Betty’s sister, Gladys, who had been stricken with transverse myelitis, a paralysis of the nerves of the spinal cord in the same family as multiple sclerosis, to move in, but only after extensive renovations were completed for that specific purpose. Betty cared for her sister for over twenty years until Gladys was finally forced to move into a nursing home for round the clock care. But it didn’t stop there. Two years later I moved in to begin my eleven years of living with them. Betty devoted her entire life to caring for her family, five generations of them.

On the 29th of November 2007, Alf and Betty celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary surrounded by their four children, fourteen grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and a large group of friends. Last year, they celebrated their sixty-eighth wedding anniversary.

When I interviewed them both in 2005 for the history project, Alf and Betty freely admitted to still being in love after all that time and nothing changed after that. Nothing will ever change that.

Second Eulogy

I was very lucky to live with Nan and Pa for eleven years. I moved in when I was seventeen so I could go to university. And then they couldn’t get rid of me. But Nan was too polite to say anything.

That was the English in her. She was very proud of her English heritage. She had that English rose skin that everybody would like to have. She loved watching English television comedies and dramas. She was the first in her family born in Australia but she was as English as anyone born in Australia could be.

She was a very young nanna but she did a lot of traditional nanna stuff like knitting and cross-stitch. She liked reading and crosswords. She liked drinking tea – tea with breakfast, tea after lunch, afternoon tea, tea after dinner. But she was also a very modern nanna. She was elegant and fashionable. She made tracksuits look stylish. She loved to go out with friends and she loved it more to stay in when the entire family came around.

But most of my memories of Nan are about food. If reality television cooking shows had been in existence thirty, forty or fifty years ago, Nan would have easily won every competition. There was nothing she couldn’t do as long as she had a packet of French onion soup mix. During the football season, she made egg salad sandwiches every Saturday morning for Pa to take to the game. Both the times she went to hospital to have her hip replacements, she spent the week beforehand cooking and stocking the freezer because both Pa and I were terrible cooks.

Nan made the best corned silverside, the best pickled pork, the best meatloaf – her meatloaf was my favourite. She also made the best crumbed lamb cutlets, crumbed lamb brains, ky si ming, roasts, rissoles, vegetable soup with perfectly cubed vegetables and perfectly clear broth, the best pikelets, the best fruit cake, the best banana bread. It’s a lot of bests. Because she was the best cook I ever knew. And I got to eat her food every night for eleven years.

Except for one night. Old friends June and George were over from Adelaide, staying in the guest room, and Nan had spent all afternoon hand rolling chicken breast fillets with ham and cheese and baking them in the oven. But as she was taking the dish out, it slipped from her hands, crashed to the ground and splintered. There was hot chicken and glass shards everywhere.

We probably would have still eaten it if not for the glass shards, that’s how good a cook she was. That’s how I will always remember her.

Book Review: The Sheep-Pig by Dick King-Smith

This is the final in my series of reviewing books I have already seen the movie adaptations of. The Sheep-Pig is, of course, the basis for the wonderful Australian film Babe. It tells the story of a piglet won at a fair in a weight-guessing competition by Farmer Hogget. The farmer calls him Pig but his mother called him and his brothers and sisters Babe, so that’s what all the other farm animals call him, including his adopted mother, Fly, the collie dog.

Fly is a working dog and soon Babe wonders why he can’t be a sheep-dog, too. She explains it’s because he’s a pig. “Why can’t I learn to be a sheep-pig?” he then asks. And when he saves the sheep flock from being stolen by sheep rustlers, Farmer Hogget begins taking Babe along when he and Fly round up the sheep. Eventually, Babe takes over many of Fly’s duties and she’s very proud of her adopted son, proving that a little pig can do anything he wants to do.

This is clearly a children’s book but there are beautiful messages running throughout it. Babe is the politest book character you will ever meet and he treats everyone with respect, even the sheep, even when Fly constantly tells him that they are stupid and don’t deserve his good manners.

If Animal Farm is the book you read in high school with a focus on the underlying messages, then The Sheep-Pig surely has to be the book you read in primary school doing the same thing. It is sweet and understated but its beauty lies in its simplicity. It is an easy, quick read for an adult and not that much more difficult for children.

However, some of the dialogue reflects the English countryside the book is set in and the special local linguistics, which I found needed interpreting and might challenge the younger reader. Examples include “theseyer” which I think means “these here”, “bain’t” meaning “isn’t”, “dussen’t” for “doesn’t”, “gennulmen” for “gentlemen” and several others. But it’s only in the dialogue and doesn’t bleed into the prose.

Perfect for children old enough to have longer chapter books read to them, it’s also a good length and level for children venturing into reading chapter books by themselves (I’d say eight or nine but I’m not a parent and I dare say it would depend on the individual child). It’s also a chance for adults to venture back into childhood for a morning or an afternoon (that’s all it will take to read it) and close the back cover with smiles on their faces.

The movie is extremely faithful to the book, although an extra character and storyline or two were added to make it long enough for a feature film, but it retains all the charm of the original book. I think it’s old enough now to be called a children’s classic and there’s not a zombie or spy in sight, just a farmer, his wife and an assortment of farm animals who are more than we’re led to believe farm animals can be.

In a word: charming.

4 stars

*First published on Goodreads 8 March 2016

Sensationalism and selectivity; now for the facts about the WiseOnes program for gifted children

Timna Jacks, the Education Reporter for The Age, wrote earlier this week about “a school program for gifted students…offering vaccination exemption forms and urging students to avoid Wi-Fi in schools”. As sensational as the claims were, they also demonstrated a concerning amount of selectivity.

The WiseOnes program has been available to gifted students in primary schools around Victoria for nearly two decades, teaching multi-disciplinary units with exciting names such as Ancient Egypt, How to Mind Your Money , Astronomy, Fibonacci Maths, Basic Engineering and Morphing Dirt to Diamonds. Students need to give evidence of their high thinking ability, which is not related to reading, writing or spelling, and need to “qualify” at a minimum of the 93rd percentile to participate.

Unfortunately, the founder and owner of the program unwisely decided to use the business’s website to convey her personal beliefs about the effects of vaccination and Wi-Fi. However, those beliefs are not shared by the licensees and teachers delivering the program and having contact with the students. The licensees and contracted teachers are all VIT registered and highly experienced.

By conflating the personal views of the founder with the content of the program, Timna Jacks has done a great disservice to the licensees and teachers who have worked with students in small groups providing extra intellectual and educational challenges. The losers will be the children if schools elect to discontinue the program.

Here are a few facts:

The WiseOnes program curriculum does not contain any reference to anti-vaccination or anti-Wi-Fi doctrines.
Vaccination exemption forms are not offered directly to participants in the WiseOnes program.
The WiseOnes program has been thoroughly presented to each school that chooses to offer it. The parents receive a full written report at the end of each unit and are also invited to attend the final session and work with their children.
The program’s founder, Pat Slattery, does not live in a caravan. For a short time, she did move into a caravan over concerns about electromagnetic exposure from a smart meter. She has now moved into a new home.
The program’s founder is not responsible for the delivery of the WiseOnes program at any of the schools currently using it. It is delivered by licensees and accredited teachers contracted by the licensees.
WiseOnes licensees were urging the program’s founder to remove all references to her personal and widely discredited disbeliefs from the WiseOnes website long before Timna Jacks’s article was written and published.

Patricia Truscott, a WiseOnes licensee with responsibility for delivering the program in more than a dozen primary schools, is appalled that the original article and subsequent discussion fails to distinguish between the founder’s personal views and the program’s real purpose and content.

“I am a life-long educator and I am shocked and extremely disappointed to be associated with this controversy,” she said. “The students enrolled in the programs are seeking additional educational stimulation and that is what I, my teachers and my fellow licensees provide. We want to reassure all parents and schools that we do not support Pat’s views and we certainly do not disseminate them to their children. I’m more than happy to speak directly to any principal or parent who has concerns about this.” You can read a statement from Patricia below.

It is a genuine shame that a successful and rewarding education program now runs the risk of collapsing under the weight of uninformed opinion.

*In the interest of full disclosure as the author of this article, I am the stepdaughter of Patricia Truscott and have previously been exposed to the content delivered in the schools, which I have found fascinating and entirely innocuous. I have also taken the test that the children sit to determine their level of giftedness, simply because I was interested. My stepmother is the most passionate teacher I have ever had the pleasure of knowing and that includes all the teachers who taught me throughout my primary, secondary and tertiary education years. I want everyone else to know that, too.

 

Statement by Patricia Truscott

You may have noted that there was an article in The Age online and in print.

I was invited to Brandon Park Primary School to prepare to start the program, as the principal had told me that parents of incoming preps were asking whether or not WiseOnes was used in the school.

As is reported in the articles, a parent saw a post (since removed) regarding some of Pat Slattery’s private thoughts and personal questioning and urged the school to axe the program before it had even started.

It was stated in the online article, “WiseOnes is used by a small number of schools as a resource to help gifted students succeed and does not contain any reference to vaccination or Wi-Fi.” The print article has quoted Pat Slattery as saying, “None of this is in the curriculum.” This is totally true.

The curriculum, which is Pat Slattery’s Intellectual Property, is reported on to each parent each term; with comments from the teachers who are VIT registered and experienced. Schools receive copies of these reports. Pat’s thoughts in no way reflect the opinions of the teachers.

WiseOnes has been a very successful program for nineteen years supporting school communities, families and gifted students in schools. STEM topics have been taught throughout this whole time as well. Nothing has changed as regards the details, the delivery or the reporting of the program.

The moral of the story is that a person’s private thoughts and personal questioning should never be placed on a professional website.

Parents who have any concerns can ring me, Patricia Truscott, on 0407 313 657 and I will certainly address these concerns with you.