Week-end paper silliness #2

According to Tim Elliot's review of an exhibition of Latin American art at the Museum of Contempory Art, parts of the catalogue are printed in invisible ink. Words will only appear after exposure to light.

I hope this idea doesn't catch on for other books. It'd be pretty clear I'd never got past page 50 of Ulyesses.

Week-end paper silliness #1

I don't often read the "Open Gallery" column in the Sydney Morning Herald but I'm glad I did last week-end. This sounds like a doozy:

"Another series of photos Incinerator Holiday emerged from negatives found at the Waverley garbage incinerator. When developed they were covered in red blemishes with a texture like rice paper, the blurred landscapes glazed and weathered but compelling."

I don't know whether the artist cropped out the grinning tourists from the foreground or if the original photgrapher was like my dad who only occasionally and grudgingly allowed us kids to sully his perfectly framed piictures of whatever beauty spot we'd driven all day to visit.

It'd be pretty odd to walk into a gallery and find your old holiday snaps up on the wall and called art. But the way these look, you probably would haved thrown them away for a pretty good reason...

Speaking of my Mum

One of the nicest things about having a baby is the outpouring of home-made gifts. A mate made her this hat:






Friends of my mother made this blanket:

and decorated this piggy bank:
My Mum loves to knit and could probably win prizes at country (or even city) shows if she was so minded. Winnie has three beautifully matching hat, jumper and bootie sets, a crocheted shawl, 12 little shirts with individual embroidered things on them including frogs, clowns and soccer balls and a wonderful embroidered cot blanket. It's a joy to look at all these lovely tiny things.

But she has set the bar pretty high. Even though Winnie's other grandmother isn't so craft-y, she made this bear:



Beloved and his family reckon it looks like Homer Simpson with ears. They teased her about it non-stop for days.

I really hope it becomes one of WInnie's favourite toys.

No, it's not me, it's the book

I've spent the past couple of weeks showing Winnie off to her extended family, coping with the worst weather in years and trying to enjoy reading John Birmingham's Final Impact: World War 2.3, the third in the Axis of Time Trilogy where all these twenty-first century military personnel and their ships have gone back to World War II and change the outcome in confusing ways that go bang rather loudly.

The first two of these I manage quite well. The book-enjoying didn't work partly because I started at volume three but mostly because it was all about diferent sorts of weapons being deployed anachronistically described in intricate detail. There were some cute things: the future became fairly common knowledge in this alternate past so for instance people were calling John F Kennedy "Mr President" in 1944 and Prince Harry, a daring SAS officer, called the teenage Princess Elizabeth "Grandma" but mostly I found it a bit of a struggle. I thought my brain was rotting because I could never keep track of the different characters and their weapons and it took me five minutes to find my place every time I picked it up. But then I read antoher book in a day and realised that maybe unapologetic action adventures really aren't for me.

And it's not Mr Birmingham. I mean I quite like his journalism and I did laugh a lot at He died with a Felafel in his Hand although I wish there was some law preventing anyone over the age of 50 from reading it because my mother got some exceptionally odd ideas about what went on in my share houses from him.

Competitive? Moi?

Winnie and I battled a deluge to get to the first meeting of our mother's group this morning.

Until today I thought those people who covered their expensive prams in clear plastic covers were being silly and over-protectve and possibly suffocating their young. But after walking a kilometre in the heaviest rain we've had for two years while trying to hold an umbrella over the open front of the pram so Winnie didn't drown and getting completely soaked myself, I kinda get it.

I also see why there is a baby shop right next to the Early Childhood Centre. Canny move that.

And I'm extremely grateful that they could sell me one of those stupid covers so that next time it rains I can struggle to push the pram while holding the umbrella over my own head. Of course it probably won't rain like that until Winnie's in school now...

Anyway, it felt strange to walk into a room full of sleep-deprived anxious new mothers and realise I was the most obviously bedraggled.

These groups are meant to make you realise you're not alone. That's great but I walked away worried that I wasn't doing about ten things right. Apparently we're meant to spend every waking moment staring into our babies' eyes and show them toys they're too young to see and talk to them all the time, even reading to them if possible. One woman said she read New Idea to her baby and the nurese said that was all right. I was too shy to admit that this week Winnie and I have been reading Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins. Or at least I've been reading the few bits to her that don't involve horny older men trying to get into bed with adolescent girls. Or taking psychotropic drugs. Or just plain silliness.

It's slow going (because I'm reading five pages at a sitting) but I'm enjoying it for it's show-offy pyrotechnic language and flights of fancy connecting odd things like Peruvian indians to the prophecies of Fatima and gun running to post-impressionist art. Robbins uses similar conspiracy theories and covoluted plots as Pynchon and Phillip K Dick in this book but it seems more lighthearted and less ponderous than their work. Could just be me though.

But then

On Monday, with the baby bonus burning a hole in my bank account*, I paid almost full price for Engleby by Sebastian Faulks because I read this review.

It was marvellous - in an icky discomforting way that gets in your head and stays there. The narrator has such a powerful authorative voice (and such good grammar)that it takes ages for you to go "but, hang on."

A couple of days later odd bits of it keep coming to mind just like with Ian McKewan's Atonement. Both of these books bring the world of a vanished genertation of English people back to life really convincingly and both depend on the memories and misunderstandings of fallible people. And with both of them you just go "Oh why did it have to be that way?" Yes, highly technical assessment there I know.

Actually a bit cross with the review for saying Engleby was an expert on classical music because most of his references were to seventies pop and folk band. And his name reminded me more than anything of Burgess's deeply unattractive poet Enderby
who is similarly self-centred and opinionated - and drunk too for that matter.

I haven't read anything by Faulks before. Not sure why but at least partly because I was a bit put off by the "Sebastian" - but now I'm intrigued. I might even BUY them.

* I HATE it when the government I despise gives me stuff I don't really need for doing something I was going to do anyway. Really should send it to orphans in Africa rather than fritter it away on books. Stupid government pandering to my greed. Just becauase I take your money don't expect me to vote for you!