Oh, brothers, Wherrett - thou little rippers!

Our latest book group choice was Desirelines - the reminiscences of Richard & Peter Wherrett. Both bros sont morte now - this book was published in 1997. I knew about Peter's lifelong attraction to cross dressing - I think I'd heard an interview with him when the book was published. And I knew that Richard had died of an AIDS related illness - he knew he was HIV positive when the book was written.

What I wasn't ready for was the intensity of the Wherretts' struggle to survive their childhood with an alcoholic, violent, epileptic, cross dressing father! They suffered almost every indignity and shame the 1950s could throw at them. A mother who stayed in an abusive relationship out of misguided love for their father and because her economic situation would have been highly tenuous without the guaranteed full-time employment her husband's pharmacy business gave her. A father who initially scared the life out of them with his mood swings, abusive behaviour toward their mum and unexplained epileptic fits and wounded them with his distracted indifference to their talents and achievements. Inner battles with their sexuality/gender identification - Richard being gay and Peter compulsively drawn to expressing his 'feminine' side via cross dressing - and carrying their 'guilty' secrets for years. Class consciousness engendered by their father's shame at being the only one of 5 brothers not to qualify as a doctor, living next door to a pub at the height of the primitive 'six o'clock swill' and trying to cut it at a private school (Trinity) when their domestic circumstances were shabby and constrained - they lived above their father's chemist shop. A depressive aunt who had lost her husband in WWII, and her marbles progressively in the ensuing years, and so on...

Peter lived the last 2 years of his life as Pip.

Their story resonated with me. Their mum was a dewy eyed, devoted bride with no insight into her husband's 'issues', as my own mother had been. Their childhood neighbourhood, commercial premises in West Ryde, my own father grew up opposite the milk bar his mother ran in North Ryde. Their journey from puzzlement at their father's behaviour, to championing their mum, then to seeing both parents as somewhat pathetic in their choices. Their salvation via reading and recognition at school. Growing into their personalities, charm and personae. The evolution of left politics. Richard Wherrett's favourite EM Forster quote 'only connect' from Howard's End and mine being the same. Wherrett senior growing up in Marrickville (where I lived for 20 years) opposite the town hall (which I have visited often). See the once gracious 'Luscombe' by clicking here.

Desirelines is not a great book, but it is an honest and fascinating one. Peter's contribution is braver and more interesting than little brother Richard's who, having been a cultural hero of the Whitlam years/my youth, turns out to have hidden twee shallows. Peter is a flawed protagonist who undergoes a journey of self discovery and self expression, whereas Richard did really seem to have a charmed existence once he left Ryde. It was Peter who, as the eldest, confronted his father's rages head on and had to say 'enough is enough' and arrange his committal while Richard was discovering divine bohemia and coming out.

Richard Wherrett did give us the unforgettable Elocution of Benjamin Franklin and Nicholas Nickleby though - truly rich and exalting experiences in Australian theatre!

Vive les Wherretts - warts and all! Their memoirs capture a whole panorama of the Australian experience and their journeys toward self actualisation reverberate strongly for me and I am sure for many others. Their lives prove the old adage that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger; their survival and flourishing is an inspiration to us all.

Australians All Let Us Read Joyce

What's in a name? A public holiday by any name should be as sweet. However today, 'Australia Day', is one with which I have particular difficulty. My pommy origins and my anti-nationalist politics make the 'founding' of this nation by British colonialists a very uncomfortable reason to celebrate for me. I notice that there is an increasing inclusion of indigenous ceremony and story telling in the day's events but I know many, many Aboriginal people consider this day 'Invasion Day' or 'Sorry Day'. The legacy of dispossession, disease and despair Europeans have visited upon this country's original occupants is still having appalling impacts in 2010.


So if no celebratory activities were indulged in, how did I spend my day? Well the run up was fine. I am so enjoying Desirelines -the memoirs of Peter & Richard Wherret - which I am reading for our book group, that I read that for 2 hours in bed, until midnight last night. But when today dawned our kitchen renovations beckoned or at least my role as supporting actor to my husband's cutting & nailing of cladding did. We should be up to sarking and undercoating by now, but bugger me, if we didn't find an infestation of termites in our teenage son's bedroom and as a result spend about 6 hours completely reorganising and cleaning the room to make access to (and hopefully extermination of) the blighters possible.

Today in Sydney has been a soggy scorcher (if that isn't a contradiction in terms). Both very humid and with the sort of summer heat that fries vegetation and makes walking barefoot painful (for chubby northern hemisphere types at any rate). Very ungreenly, we had 2 air-conditioners running all day, but we all still quickly became irritable and sweaty and spraying anti termite gunge under the house almost killed the ageing pater familias.

I would like to say my new addiction to posting photos & comments and playing Scrabble on Facebook took a back seat, but whenever the heat and dust (our son had not vacuumed or let me vacuum in his room for months) became too bad I retreated to the PC for a fix. It was interesting to see via their postings that one niece is a champion of 'Don't change the Aussie flag' and the other joined me in 'Invasion Day' unease.

A second shower and letting the local Chinese restaurant provide dinner enabled a dog walk and some semblance of relaxation after 7 pm but all in all I would rather have been reading. Perhaps to satisfy my protestant work ethic it should be something more demanding than tales of the Wherret's evolving sexuality. Australians all let us read Joyce on 26 January? No wait that's got to wait until 16 June!

Pete 'n' Dud (not Shaun & Steve)

Publicity shot for Good Evening

I grew up with Not Only But Also. Like quite a few other audience members at Shaun Micallef & Stephen Curry's Good Evening, I could mouth the words of most of the sketches along with the performers. I thought they made a sound decision not to imitate Cook and Moore and indeed one of the most successful 'transpositions' was the Art Gallery 'bottoms follow you around the room' sketch which was quintessential 'funny, I thought funny' Pete 'n' Dud in its day and which Shaun and Stephen played as 'pretentious, moi?' Sydney queens to great effect.

However not all of Good Evening was that good. Reviewer Jason Blake in the SMH said it pretty well:

Originality and spontaneity are the lifeblood of live comedy, which might explain why it's hard to find a pulse in this amiable, handsomely staged homage to the wit of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

There was a certain clunky, strained quality about much of the program which I think stemmed from the problems inherent in resurrecting the 1960s material of other artists. Moore's Little Miss Britten and '..and the Same to You' Beethoven parodies felt particularly dated. Also, however good a singer and pianist Mark Jones is, he is not Dagenham Dud and it would have behoved Micallef & Curry to use far less of Moore's musical material! The Bedazzled number was particularly overlong and tedious.

A decided success was One Leg Too Few (in which a 'unidexter' auditions for the role of Tarzan) which had already proved its adaptability by having been revived by other comedians in one of the Policemen's Ball fundraiser shows. The interview scenarios (long live Cook's pompous creations of all stripes, especially Sir Arthur Streeb Greebling) and the more situational/physical cabbie sketch also worked very well.

The 'real' Peter Cook and Dudley Moore

I'm glad we went because I am delighted that my kids have seen one* of their comic heroes perform the work of two of mine (and because I caught my 14 year old daughter chatting to Andrew Denton in the foyer praising Hungry Beast - a very proud parental moment for me!) Overall though I think spontaneity and wit are at the very heart of Micallef's comic talent and he is best when he can riff and quip without too many constraints (as he does in Talkin' 'bout Your Generation), or when he has creative control of the whole vehicle (as with the delicious Newstopia). His New Year's Eve special fell quite flat for similar reasons, the guests were just not in his own Dadaist realm.

I am looking forward to Shaun Micallef's future projects - the more autonomous the better I suspect. I will satisfy my appetite for classic Pete 'n' Dud with my 2 vinyl LPs and a CD of the obscene Derek & Clive while occasional viewing of the delightful Not Only But Always teleplay will indulge my need to revere and sentimentalise my childhood memories of this outstandingly clever pair!

* this is not to underrate Stephen Curry whom we had only seen before in the Graham Kennedy biopic. He acquitted himself brilliantly in that and was a complete match for Shaun in Good Evening!

Southern Exposure

We exposed the kids to Melbourne last week and got reacquainted with the city ourselves. I had very idealised memories from a winter visit to the city when I was a fine arts student in the 80s. The trip was organised by Sydney Uni where I was studying Victorian (the era not the city) art and architecture. We looked at the National Gallery of Victoria collection as well as visiting St Pat's and other C19th buildings. In keeping with the rest of my university days, I was quarantined from the authentic student experience. I was already in my present relationship and was also travelling with a friend who worked at the Hilton and managed to get us cut price rooms there. The whole deal - meals, shopping, sight seeing etc - was pretty swanky. We had a silver service dinner in the Melbourne Hilton's most exclusive restaurant. I got my first and only genuine Italian leather handbag. We went on a guided tour of the flamboyant Princess Theatre and heard about the ghost. We came back via Eaglemont, where the Heidelberg artists had made camp. I was besotted with the whole Victorian excursion.

20 years on I was still anticipating the sense of glamour and sophistication I felt then. (I have visited a couple of times since but for very brief periods only). In the mean time our kids had come to equate Melbourne with an intellectual vibrancy and arty edginess they thought Sydney lacked. We all thought the shopping would be good.

Tram on Bourke Street - view from the Quest apartments where we stayed.

Here is a little summary of the high and low lights of our visit:

• Laneways and arcades - Sydney has nothing like them - they're fantastic, full of original shopfronts and intriguing merchandise, often with real cobbles.
• Clothes and shoe shopping - we were there for the January sales which helped but Myer had a great range of stuff for the 'fuller figure' and I discovered Mountfords which stocks my fave Joseph Seibel shoes, on my last day there. My daughter's favourite boutique Quick Brown Fox has two branches and we spent considerable time there.
• Suzuki night markets - vibrant chaotic, combines Eveleigh craft markets with Paddington markets with performance with food and new age. A must see.
  
• Toilets (public & in retail outlets) a disgrace, filthy and in disrepair, smelt and seldom had soap and often even lacked toilet paper!
• Tram services - a cypher, thank goodness I met up with an old work friend who gave me some tips.
• Food and beverage prices - pretty good.
• Young & Jackson Hotel. Uncrowded and pleasant on a Thursday evening. Saw the famous 'Chloe' again. Very limited wine list.
• Fitzroy Gardens - good cafe, overpriced admission to Cook's Cottage, nice conservatory, signage on statuary and fountains illegible and/or uninformative.
• New wing of the state gallery, known as the National Gallery of Victoria, a bit like a parody of the actual National Gallery in layout but spacious and well lit with an excellent Indigenous collection.
  
• The little penguins on Phillip Island. Touted as award winning eco-tourism. The food and facilities commercial and tawdry, the presence of over 500 Girl Guides the night we visited unfortunate. The little penguins themselves - priceless!
  

I was plagued by a respiratory virus that wouldn't quit while we were away so I am quite proud of myself that I did as much as I did. St Kilda and Heide and going to a comedy venue will have to wait until next time. Came back via Canberra and saw the Musee d'Orsay collection (which we had also seen before, in situ in Paris, in the 80s) and the new National Portait Gallery and thoroughly enjoyed both.

Promise I'll write about Shaun Micallef's 'Good Evening' soon...

Our Stella(r) Attraction

Stella (the puppy formerly known as Odette/Beatrice/Bailey/Stephanie/Margo), December 2009

This is what TS Eliot had to say about 'The Naming of Cats' (from The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats):

The Naming of Cats

The naming of cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.

There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.

But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.

But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

...but the naming of puppies is equally hard it seems. Since we collected her from the RSPCA on Tuesday 29 December, this 8 week old brindle girl has had at least 5 different names. (If TS Eliot's theory holds true for dogs as well as cats she can probably hang on to two of those and invent one of her own). It may have bean easier if she, like most of the shelter dogs we looked at already had a name. We had toyed with adopting Jackson or Dennis and pondered at the couplings that produced Oprah and Larissa, but whatever challenges they presented, naming them would not have been one. We think the name 'Stella' has stuck, but watch this space for updates.

Stella's arrival ensures that we will be seeing the New Year in quietly at home, probably with the lovely (prerecorded) Shaun Micallef. We saw his 'Good Evening' recently; I'll comment on that in a separate post. Happy New Year, reader(s).

Gotta find out who's naughty or nice

It was customary once in the lead up to Christmas to tell children that Father Christmas had been assessing their conduct over the year and good little girls and boys would receive a gift while those who had misbehaved would get a lump of coal. Hence the lyrics of Santa Claus is coming to town, 'he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake' etc.

Setting aside how annoying it is that the invention of the jolly fat guy doubles the number of omnipotent patriarchal figures judging us at Christmas time, and the fact that material reward has much more to do with Mummy's & Daddy's income than with getting your just deserts, I might just borrow from the conceit and award a few 2009 bon-bons and lumps of coal.

Firstly the coal, well Carl Sandilands obviously . 'Naughty' is too tame a word for him, 'repulsive', 'boorish', 'bigoted' - he can have a whole coal mine and a landslide - though metaphorically I think he's already got those! I'm afraid Kevin Rudd has been a bit bad too. He is showing a marked tendency to voice knee jerk opinions such as those on Bill Henson's work, and ill considered populist policies on internet censorship which earn him a lump of (clean?) coal from me as a reminder to behave better in 2010. Now little miss Kate Moss, you has been naughty with your pro anorexia utterings so you can have coal for Chrissy too - but whether a lot - to keep you warm, or just a bit so you don't fall over trying to lift it - I am undecided.

Who would have something nice under the tree if it was up to me? Well Barack Obama has really had a bit of a bigger present than he deserves with the Nobel Peace Prize but given his humility in admitting he is not in the same category as most past winners he can get a few gift wrapped poll points from me. Generally speaking he is turning out okay and calling Kanye West a 'jackass' alone needs to be rewarded! A personal choice, Nam Le, for giving me the most memorable gift of my reading year in The Boat, I want to reciprocate. Again there has been plenty of well deserved formal recognition, but I have to say Nam Le is a prodigiously talented writer which equals being good, very good. Now a contentious choice, someone usually placed firmly in the naughty camp, John Saffran. John you were hugely courageous to publicly confront so many of your demons in Race Relations and you did it with a mixture of hilarity and poignancy that made the program compulsive viewing in this household. Have a Hannukah trinket on me!

These are just a few names, I will be making a full list and I will be checking it twice! Seasons greetings, reader(s) - doubt I'll blog again till December 26th.

The night I burned our shammy down…

It was last night actually. Call me a stick-in-the-mud, or an alarmist, or both, but I have long been wary of the concept of Facebook. I worry about privacy and about being (more than usually) boring and self absorbed. My sisters have been badgering me and cajoling me for some time with invitations to become their ‘friend’ (too little too late if you ask me) and last night I succumbed. I thought I was just responding to an invitation to look at the tree changer/hugger sister’s latest pix of her renos and chooks but before I knew it I had created a Facebook account. And Facebook accounts are the Olympic flame of on-line record creation – they blaze forever and can not be extinguished – apparently!

Any way, I did not even attempt to undo what I had done. Partly because I thought there was an inevitability about what was happening, like abandoning BETA videos for VHS and learning how to use You Tube (which I did last month). But also because there IS something seductive about all these rellies and chums suddenly appearing in cosy little photographs beckoning you to ‘chat’ with them. Even as I mentally calculated the hours I might spend in this pursuit and playing scrabble with the other sister, I was being lured by the virtual, colourful intimacy that Facebook promises.

Then paranoia struck. There are some people with whom I do not want this added dimension of communication. Bad enough that they send me god-bothering, maudlin chain emails! I began to envisage them now being able to comment unbidden on any aspect of my life, sending me silly games and quizzes and links to photographs of their drunken revels and ghastly social occasions! Then there are people I really never want to have any contact with again. What if they found me on Facebook?

Although it was gone 8 pm and I was trying to organise dinner, I needed quick advice on how to block anyone in these categories. I put the chips on, started the salad and sought advice from those savvy but cavalier sisters of mine. Only one person on my blacklist has a name of the ‘John Smith’ variety so we found and blocked the others quickly. It did command my attention a bit though and I forgot I had put the frypan on for the schnitzel - until smoke assailed my nostrils. Oh, my god, (not the chips) but a tea towel and our brand new magic ‘shammy’ (faux chamois) cloth were alight. This conflagration lacked Olympian qualities though and a few flicks from another tea towel put it out. The ‘shammy’ is ruined. The dinner was very ordinary with dry and overcooked (oven) chips. The salad was unsinged and rather good...

We have to live with our mistakes. I hope joining Facebook isn’t one of mine and that I get the hang of it and use it in moderation. I know I will remain at heart a committed blogger though – it’s easier to get the tone of spontaneity just right when you can draft what you write first!