In preparation to get writing this last bit of this bloody novel, between adding closed captions to work videos, I did some digging.
How good was 1997 for music.
I mean, seriously, I can play a heap of these songs, and I'm transported straight back to West Hampstead. We're in the days of the best of Britpop.
The year got off to a great start with Blur going into their experimental phase. I love their 1999 song Tender more, but this one has legs.
Then there's the song that every time I hear it, I remember having a friend stay at the flat. She's been on a Contiki Tour around Europe and was used to getting woken up at all hours to this song. If a Contiki Tour wasn't purgatory enough, being woken to Hansen each morning would have had be jumping off the nearest aqueduct. (Said person is now a very senior Doctor - I wonder if they have memories of sleeping on our couch.)
We can't go past 1997 without a nod to Natalie Imbruglia. This is one friend's favourite song - I think he was a little in love with her from a long distance. I still love the song. It was all over the pubs in 1997. Now, I know her cousin. Two degrees of separation.
My theme song for the second half of 1997 was this banger. I will admit to quite a bit of alcohol was drunk back then.
It's hard to believe that Chumbawumba came up with the theme song of 2026. (This is so worth a listen.)
The Verve had one of the biggest albums of the year. Although they will always remind me of my cousin, who also slept on my couch for a few weeks around this time, who used to drink all the milk (bless her) we shared a love of this album. The songs still stand up.
I remember The Prodigy coming out with this and initially hating it. The downstairs neighbours, a group of Aussies and Kiwis, told me to stick with it. It will grow on you they said. Like warts they said. It did. Admittedly, they were more into clubbing than I was. But they were right.
And another one of my theme songs.
I could go on.
1997 wasn't that bad. Fantastic music in a crap year.
And the best song of the year. See below. This is would be my karaoke song if I was ever stupid enough to get up at karaoke.
I spent most of this last weekend at a table in a chapel down the Great Ocean Road reading a manuscript.
My manscript.
87,000 words, that I wrote in 2019.
I barely moved from my position at the back of the chapel. I'd set up ADHD corner - my computer, crochet, my manuscript, computer peripherals - the complete dog's breakfast, bit if you're going to hunker down and read 87000 words, you want to feel at home.
I did it too - got through the whole thing. If you think about it the modern-day novel runs to around 100,000 words, that's around 80% of a book. I had a pen in hand, making a few slashes, making a few notes, but mostly I read, and took in what it was I'd done.
A little surprisingly, I wasn't about to slit my wrists or stick my fingers down my throat. It's okay. Sure, it needs work, but this is, as we Gunnas call it, the down draft. Then you do the up draft, where you sort out all the issues and really knock the whole thing into shape. Then there's the dental draft, or the proof edit.
Structurally, it's pretty sound. I like the meandering through London in the 90s. Although they have to be taken out, I really like the song lyrics at the start of each chapter. I want to make a playlist of these songs to go with the manuscript. Having the songs playing helped me write this.
However, when I got to the end of the manuscript - this book which mirrors my own life, it abruptly stopped.
Far too much happened that year. Okay, my Dad died in the April, Lady Di went in July and lots of other things which threw everything off-kiltre.
It's the year when everything came to a head.
It's no wonder I stopped writing this.
Six years on, a lot more life and some more perspective, I think I'm ready to tackle this again and finish it off.
I have put myself down for the November Gunnas retreat. I want to have the first draft finished by then.
As Dev says, you're always doomed to stop writing at ME-FA or LA-TEE (This is a Sound of Music reference - Doh, Rey, Me, Fa, Soh, La, Tee, Doh. You're likely to give up at that 30% or 70% mark.
It's time to bite the bullet and get this out there.
I can do this.
1997 was an Annus Horribilus, bit it was 30 years ago. It can't hurt me.
Wish me luck. I have four months to knock this out.
Here's the thing. I'm in Australia. We don't have the same stores at the malls over here. It's a bit of a different shopping culture. But that is okay, we'll make these questions work.
I could tell you about the weekend I've had down here at my three-monthly writer's retreat down the Great Ocean Road. It's been amazing. I've got a lot of editing done.
Anyway, here are the questions, brought to you by Sunday Stealing.
1. Target or Walmart, or other superstore?
Fun fact. We don't have Walmart in Australia, and Target, which used to be great, has been rolled into Kmart. I am a big fan of Kmart. Target used to do great clothes, but they have gone downhill (or my standards have got better - one of the other. ) The Woolworths brand has Big W, which is also good.
But yeah, no Walmart in Australia, and Target is mostly clothing and homewares now.
2. Dollar Tree or Dollar General, or poundstretcher/99p store?
Again, it's Australia - no Dollar Tree, Dollar General or Poundstretcher, but we do have what is called the Asian Shit Shop. It is not that any reflection of the people running the stores, who are always lovely, but they are normally of Asian extraction. So, for example, Daiso is the Japanese Shit Shop. I love a good Shit Shop. Great for fire lighters, hair accessories and other things you never knew you needed.
3. Best Buy or any other electronics/appliance store?
Again, we're Australian - no Best Buy.
But, for white goods (fridges, washing machines etc.) it's off to E&S trading or The Good Guys. For electronics you go to JB HiFi.
I refuse to go to Harvey Norman (also known as Hardly Normal) as they did the dirty on their staff during COVID in a very public way and I've still not forgiven them.
A lot of these stores are found on a state by state basis. All same same, but different.
4. Book/music store?
I love a good independent book store - nothing better, so in Melbourne, that is Readings or Avenue Books, or The Hill of Content in the city, or The Paperback Bookstore.
We also have a decent chain bookstore - Dymocks, which you can get everything at, and bonus, they're Australian owned.
I love Waterstones in Britain, and when in Paris, there is only one Shakespeare and Sons.
Bonus question! Where do you want to stop for lunch?
At my local centre, I always head to Roll'd a chain Vietnamese place. Vietnamese food is incredible.
If you leave me to the elements, leave me to water. Earth and air and fire all have their charms. The stability, the movement and the heat all have their charms, but for me, I need the water. I need flow. I need the peace and fear, the changes, the erosion, the unprecedented power that can destroy in minutes, yet meander to a trickle moments later. Leave me in a field where a gentle misty rain patters over my body. Leave me on a rugged beach with the full force of the ocean paces away. Leave me by a river where I can watch the day float by.
I’m sitting here listening to the Southern Ocean. The waves, body height, slamming into the shore. The sand, once boulders, macerating into grains, the wind blowing foam into the atmosphere.
Why does this feel so calming, despite the destruction going on around me?
It it because we are more than 90% water? Is it something inherent in my make up. Is it part of the human spirit to want to be near water - to immerse our souls in a body, hurling, breathing, roiling, to take us over? Are we on the look out for the seventh wave, the one that will wipe us out? Do we look for the whales which may be passing.
Tonight was no different. I'd done a quick supermarket run to get Ben's beer. Who's Ben? Ben is one of the catering team at the retreat. I walk into the dining room at lunch and dinner, Ben, without asking, puts a beer in my hand. I've not asked for this, but who's to say no when you're given a beer? In return, I bring beer to Ben at the start of the retreat so I'm not drinking his.
Anyway, I got the beer, and some other necessities, then did the bad thing and went into the book shop.
Book shops are evil places. Whoever put the book shop next to the supermarket needs to be severely dealt with, but that too is another battle for another day
I'm well known in there.
I took my purchase up to the counter.
As I often do, I struck up a conversation with the girl behind the desk, as I often do.
"So, what are you reading?"
It sounds like a pickup line.
"Me. Well, on my kindle I've trying to get into Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men. On paper, there's the new Steve Toltz, which I'm struggling with, and on audio, for my sins, I'm getting into a John Boyne, even if it isn't quite politically correct."
"I've always wanted to read him."
"He's fantastic. But he's a TERF. I have to separate that his work is amazing from the fact that he doesn't align with my beliefs."
TERF you ask? According to Google, a definition for it is as follows:
"TERF stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. It refers to a specific group of feminists who believe that womanhood is strictly defined by biological sex and therefore exclude transgender women from women's spaces, rights, and the broader feminist movement."
We got into a bit of a discussion about this. We both agreed we'd rather face a trans woman in the loos than a bloke. That we couldn't see what the issue was with sport, with maybe a look at a case-by-case basis at the elite levels - seriously let kids play sport and be done with it.
I said that I loved Boyne's work. That A Ladder to the Sky was fantastic and I'm thoroughly enjoying The Hearts Invisible Furies. I find him hilarious. I also love how well he draws queer characters. Boyne, himself, is gay, which is why the TERF thing is a bit surprising. The way he deals with sexuality is an absolute treat.
And then again, we read George Orwelll, knowing full well he was a rapey, thieving bastard. Evelyn Waugh was allegedly a cunt. There are plenty of horrid writers out there who we read for the love of their books, but not for them.
And don't get me started on JK Rowling...
"Anyway, I love the writing of John Boyne, even if I'm not fond of some of his viewpoints."
"And that's fair. I'll get him out of the library - that way he doesn't get a cent, but I can see what he writes."
She had a very visible Pride badge on her lanyard. It is Pride month, after all.
"Are you queer?" she asked me.
I was a bit floored by that. Having been asked this a few months ago, it tripped me up then too.
"Am I queer? I'm not sure how to answer that. Umm, maybe,"
This is where I defaulted to the last time I was asked this question. Unlike the last time where I was with a trusted friend and I landed on the fact that I'm probably a pansexual but have never explored it - or maybe I'm sapiosexual, as nothing turns me on like a good mind, you're not going to go into your sexual identity in the local book shop.
"You know," I told her," I might be queer. If I am, that's great. If I'm a boring old CIS gendered heterosexual, that's fine too. But one thing I am, 100% of the time, is an ally."
I have a vivid memory of my childhood of being told by my grandfather that watching television makes you lazy.
He might be right.
Yet ever since then, some decades ago, to counteract the laziness, I've always knitted and crocheted in front of the telly.
That way I am always doing something in front of the telly, negating the feeling that I am being lazy.
I'll thank my grandfather for that.
The only problem with this is that sometimes I get consumed with my handicraft projects. I find them relaxing - but nothing else gets done.
So, tonight is a no crochet night. There are things to do.
My neighbour is taking care of Lucifer this weekend, she's been over collect the keys and receive instructions. She has four cats, so she knows what she's doing.
The place needs cleaning. I want to get the ironing out of the way. And I need to start a batch of biscuits for our caterers at the retreat because I've been promising them a batch for a while.
So, no crochet tonight.
The biscuits are in the oven. I'll ice them tomorrow.
I've started the ironing.
The floors will get done tomorrow.
The cat might forgive me for leaving him in the capable hands of my lovely neighbour sometime before Christmas.
