Notes of Substance

[My daughter cried when she read this. It's just a moment in time, not for ever. Read the postscript...] ************   The last time I received mail from the Collingwood Football Club, it was a package from beyond my father's grave. My 2016 season's cap and scarf arrived in a padded envelope in early November, 2015. Meanwhile, my dad's ashes sat in a box in a funeral director's home. He had paid for my membership as a present before he died. But suddenly, this last week, I'm just not sure I can stick it out with the 'Side by Side', and this is truly disturbing, on a very personal level. The recent behaviour of Collingwood President Eddie McGuire, in the now infamous MMM commentary segment about Age journalist Caroline Wilson, has made my Maggie loving blood run cold. Ice cold. It's not just the disgraceful comments made by McGuire, and others, about holding Caro underwater and rallying the crowd to join them, but the way the Club has handle

It’s always a bonus to win something. Whether it’s a book, or a raffle, or a movie ticket. I recently won myself a ticket to a masterclass at the Emerging Writers’ Festival , thanks to the crowd at Writer’s Bloc . A chance to indulge myself in a world where I could learn about owning my own words, and selling them! I was so keen, that I gave up a day’s paid work to attend, even though this made me financially worse off. I don’t care! I won a writing class! And anyway, I can now see this as my ‘enjoyment tax’-more on that later. The Masterclass-Freelancing for Life addressed how to make a living out of doing what you love, with topics such as finding your voice, avoiding pigeon-holing, balancing corporate and creative work, invoicing, using internship opportunities and marketing. Here are a few take-outs from the day. Reflecting on the freelance life, Emerging Writers' Festival, image (C) Anna Sublet Keynote First up, we had Clementine Ford, who spoke to a room fu

(I'm walking with my glasses on, writing. Don't look up cos the world is not clear. Head down, emotions contained...)   End point (c) Anna Sublet All that remains is packaged in a box, tied with a ribbon and adorned with a fresh apricot rose.  That's beautifully presented, says mum as we navigate the box sideways into a funeral home bag.  It's heavier than we expected it to be. Like a brick. The funeral director guy tells us it's like a 2 kg pack of sugar. In a suction package that you need to break open. That's if we want to divide him up... I have visions of him exploding like flour, flying over clothes and disappearing into parts of the room where the substance will lie, unaware, insentient, ever-present but diminishing from view, slowly. When they burn the body, most of it vapourises, I'm told. Back into oxygen the body goes. There must be a chemical reaction I could reduce this to? Something plus something equals something. X2