Christmas doesn’t feel far off now that spring, and hayfever, are in the air. (Finally, after a wet, extended winter!) In this months newsletter:
a poem I wrote from a plant’s point of view. It was for my own pleasure and encouragement, and hopefully yours
two new history books for someone on your Christmas present list.
Facing Change
I’m currently working on the second draft of a novel. Baron Lindqvist, from last month’s story, is one of the characters. Read the short story here if you missed it.
The first draft of the novel has some excellent bits, I think, but it’s not fun facing the confused mess in other parts. I remind myself it’s a good thing I can see the shortcomings, or how would I fix them?
After a therapeutic spot of spring gardening, I wrote this little poem, about the discomfort of change and growth. I know plants don’t think, but this isn’t science, and imaginative shifts are fun. Besides, it might be therapeutic for you too, if you’re going through uncomfortable transitions of your own.
Plant Thoughts
Tip me upside down
Knock me against a rock
And loosen the soil;
Slide me out of the old black plastic
Too small to stay here
Though it did well for a while;
I’ve got pot-bound
Whirly-rooted
Too well-rounded;
Dig your fingers in the whorl
Cut the gnarls away — ouch! —
And splay the roots
To grow down, grounded,
Then up.
© Alison Lloyd 2022
History for your Christmas Stocking?
Bushrangers…
A former colleague of mine has just launched a new book, Justice in Kelly Country: the story of the cop who hunted Australia’s most notorious bushranger. Turns out diplomat and author Lachlan Strahan is descended from the policeman who hunted Ned Kelly. For non-Australian readers, Kelly was an infamous Victorian bushranger, or bandit. Lachlan, on the other hand, I remember as a lovely man, and an excellent writer. This week he’s launching Justice in Kelly Country: the story of the cop who hunted Australia’s most notorious bushranger.
I haven’t read the book — it wasn’t available until yesterday. But here’s an abbreviated excerpt from the beginning:
As their exhausted horses approached the Ovens River Bridge, Strahan and Shoebridge fell into an almost sullen silence, each man hunched down in his coat and preoccupied with his thoughts… Strahan’s head snapped up at the sound of a horseman crossing the bridge from the other side of the river. He reached for his Webley revolver but already knew he wouldn’t be able to pull it out in time.
‘Bail! Throw up your hands or I’ll blow your brains out,’ yelled Ned Kelly.
… Something very much like this could have happened to my great-great-grandfather, Senior Constable Anthony Strahan, a mounted officer in the Victoria Police by the time this meeting allegedly took place. I use allegedly because I’m relying on a family memory passed down from generation to generation. Anthony was certainly entangled in the Kelly Outbreak, right to its heart… But that’s as far as this fiction will go. I’ll tell the tale of Anthony Strahan’s life as plainly as I can… This book is about resuscitating Anthony from the weight of the Kelly legend and recovering his story as he tried to build a life in a frontier society while undertaking a tough and often thankless job.
If anyone you know likes thoughtful Australian history, Justice in Kelly Country should be a good read.
And bold women…
Another new book caught my eye for its great title and matching newsprint cover. Bold Types is a history of Australian women journalists.
Again, I admit I haven’t read it beyond the sample available online. The introduction is a tad polemical, in the #MeToo vein. But the adventurous women featured in the book, and the historic events those women wrote about, provides double interest to the main chapters. I didn’t know, for example, that the first female correspondent for an Australian newspaper, Anna Blackwell, reported on the German attack on Paris in 1870:
The train by which your correspondent quitted the capital was delayed three hours on the road by the enormous crowding of the line, train after train… It really seemed, as the long lines of laden wagons went by, as though all France were being drained for the last scene of the sad drama in progress. All night, before I left Paris, the bleating of sheep and lowing of cattle filled the streets.
Sounds as if Ms Blackwell would make great material for a novel herself. But I had better get on with my current one…
Wishing you a springtime of bold and healthy growth, in your garden and your life!
Alison L