In Australia, my homeland, where I burst into tears passing the...
In Australia, my homeland, where I burst into tears passing the Melbourne hospital, St Vincents, where my younger daughter was born, I’ve had so many emotional moments and an unusual assortment of diverting if not outright amusing microphone moments.
The first occurred in Sydney at the Hill of Content bookshop reading at the 3 Weeds Hotel, in Rozelle. Everything was going very well, the bookstore owners were so warm and generous as was our host at the pub. Then the matter of a microphone stand came up. You cannot hold a microphone while turning the pages of the book you’re reading from. There was a rush to put together a microphone stand. Finally, we got one that worked. The microphone was placed inside a beer schooner glass and the glass was perched on top of four copies of LOLA BENSKY. The schooner with the microphone in it was on my right which made reading the left hand side of the pages of LOLA BENSKY a little difficult and made me look cross-eyed. The audience was great though and we could all see the relevance of being in Australia and reading from a schooner glass.
The second event with a microphone mishap was at the Waverley Library in Bondi Junction and was hosted by the Shalom Institute and the Lindfield book shop. It was a largely Jewish event and we encountered another microphone stand issue, or more accurately, another lack of a microphone stand issue. I thought we might be in trouble. Someone had a bright idea and found a vase, and put a glass inside the neck of the vase and the microphone, with its rather large head inside the glass. That large microphone head was a little distracting although I wasn’t sure why, until the following day when I saw photos of the event. I began reading. The microphone was not working. No-one could hear anything I knew we really were in trouble. We Jews, on the whole, can’t fix anything. We look bewildered when something isn’t working and always look around to see if there is man who can fix things nearby. “There won’t be anyone here who can fix it” I said to the audience, who laughed and so clearly understood. “We’ve found someone”, a woman in the audience called out, “And she isn’t Jewish”. The woman was right. The microphone was fixed. It was a great event. The next day I looked at a photograph of the makeshift microphone stand and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
