A love letter to Melbourne on our decennary.

Happy tenth anniversary Melbourne. Not that it’s how any of us imagined it; of the many favourite things I listed on our second anniversary, I can do two things right now. Two. Three if you include spring.

I’ve just watched my team lose an AFL final, alone, on what should be the first weekend of my cricket season. The main excitement of daylight savings is that there will be more daylight for bemasked, bedistanced park picnics of less than two hours with a single household.

We had a grand old nine and half years to start, nine and a half years that brought me the best of friends, the best of cricket clubs, my own piece of Melbourne airspace, friends that came and went, a tree, a cat - and a plague. The last 6 months have been tough, we know that. We know now that most other people won’t ever know that. Maybe our lockdown isn’t technically the hardest – but can you imagine Melbourne without coffee or books? – but it has been the longest and my god. The Melbourne winters were already long.

Fine, there are more than two things I can do. For starters, I can still get take away from a surprising number of the food and coffee vendors on the original list. The tiny villages along tram tracks and high streets are more tightly knit; I know the names and family stories of the Mexican place, the chicken place, the interesting bottleshop. More local cafes know my name and order, and who even knew that was possible? 

I know my neighbourhood more, and the privilege of living here – though can't quite claim I’ve done all of it. My new-ish apartment building nestles alongside a sadly abandoned anarchist club – of all the times to go missing!  - and around the corner from ghost-signed mixed businesses that are now houses and bookshops that are also houses. Not to mention the other bookshops that hand deliver birthday presents even in harshest lockdown.

It’s been worth it, Melbourne. If you’d told me a decade ago what I would live in nine and a half years for six months of lockdown, I would have taken that deal. Ten years ago I moved here because I loved the place, because things happened, and because the people were interesting. These few months have stripped back some of what I’ve accumulated in the meantime, and reminded me why I chose this.

Happy anniversary, Melbourne. Here’s to the next few decades holding half of what this one did (hopefully the half without a plague).  

Three years in Melbourne.

It still feels new, you know. Perhaps not new enough to write the rhapsody of a first anniversary, or a favourite-things list of a second, but new enough that calling this city my own still seems an act of temerity, even though I chose it.

It's new enough that I still don't know the suburbs. That's a big-city thing, or perhaps an inner-city thing; I know the suburbs I play cricket in and the ones that friends have retreated to as they start to nest. In the meantime I nod wisely when people tell me where they're from, and hope they don't expect me to comment on the commute, or to point in meaningful directions. 

New enough to be home and the heterotopia, the other-place, all at once. New enough to dig and prune and hack, and home enough to plant and water and feed. To take up running, to spread out the word-magnets on my fridge, to plan on cooking Christmas lunch, to ask the landlord if I can hang paintings*. To purge my cupboards and rearrange my lounge and my car lease, which seemed so permanent three years ago. 

Home enough and long enough to start a blog, get some readers, have a hiatus, try again. Long enough to be cross that my city felt unsafe. Long enough to understand most of this, even. Long enough to miss Melbourne friends who have gone or nested or all those things friends do, and all on top of missing my Perth friends and beaches and family. Heck, long enough to have some Perth friends move here, and Melbourne friends move back. Long enough to see London in summer again, and miss that, too - really, there are too many cities and not enough time. 

In the meantime, in the absence of holes through the earth, I choose Melbourne. I still don't really know how to express the way I fit here, but I do.

Happy third anniversary, Melbourne. 

*this will probably mean my house will be sold within the year.

Lydia and Lizzie Bennet: shadows and light between birches.

Denise Levertov wrote several poems about her sister, Olga. In one of them she says:

As through a wood, shadows and light between birches,
gliding a moment in open glades, hidden by thickets of holly
your life winds in me.

I am reminded of this as I watch the Lizzie Bennet Diaries explore the relationship between Lydia and Elizabeth Bennet. If you've not heard of the LBD, they're an on-going and interactive verson of Pride and Prejudice. Dreamt up by Hank Green and Bernie Su, they're told via YouTube, Twitter et al. While certain essentials of the plot are maintained - boy meets girl, boy appears to despise girl, boy tells girl he likes her despite the fact that she's completely unsuitable and has a terrible family - the dilemmas and crises of the original plot are translated into current day USA. If you're a fan of P&P, and have a spare day or so, I highly recommend catching up on the archives.

This is one of the deftest adaptations of a well-known story to a modern setting that I've seen, well, ever. It's presented not so much on as through the internet - it manages to be multi-dimensional and interactive without losing its integrity as a story. The characters' interaction with followers does not occur through self-conscious fourth-wall breaking, but is instead woven in.* There are various challenges here - how do you keep characters in ignorance of one another's actions when they follow each other on Twitter? - but the way in which the writers meet those challenges could well turn up in textbooks some day, and is no doubt being used in classrooms and lecture theatres as I blog.

What I really like - possibly love, even - is the way LBD explores unfamiliar angles of these familiar characters and this story I've read countless times. Lydia Bennett is, I think, the best example of this. Lydia's never seemed much more than a shallow, pleasure-seeking creature who is eventually punished by the gods of narrative for her addiction to instant gratification. Previously I thought of her as a minor character, written to add light and shade to Elizabeth Bennett's story. This is the first version I've seen portray Lydia with more depth, but they do so without betraying the character presented in the novel. Lydia is Lizzie's light and shade, but what LBD brings out is that Lizzie is also Lydia's - it is painfully, heartbreakingly clear how much she is reacting against Lizzie's story in an attempt to create her own, and how oblivious Lizzie is to this, or to how much influence she could have on Lydia.

While much is due to the writing, Mary Kate Wiles is also to blame. She suggests Lydia's vulnerabilities and insecurities without overacting, and allows us to see Lydia's pain even when Lizzie can't. Lizzie's prejudices have always been clear in relation to Darcy, but what the LBD bring into relief is the impact of Lizzie's prejudices on Lydia.

This may be P&P heresy, but I'm currently more interested in the exploration of Lydia's sad (tragic?) ending than Lizzie's happy one. I and the rest of the internet know that Lydia is heading for a fall, but thanks to the modernisation, we don't know how that will manifest.  It could be anything from leaving college to falling pregnant to (according to some fanfic) Wickham leaving Lydia with a mysterious corpse. It could also be what happens in the original; Lydia is committed to an imperfect relationship. I've never minded that much in the novel and in fact have often felt sorrier for Wickham than for Lydia.** I might not be sure what will happen in this version of the story, but now that the LBD have made me care about Lydia, I am sure that I'm going to mind what happens to her a lot more in all of the versions, including the novel.


*Blending good story-telling with a marketing strategy; these folks are good.
**This may be the influence of the BBC version. 

A few of my favourite Melbourne things.

It's our second anniversary, and I have had what may well be the quintessential Melbourne weekend: cocktails vs wine and slow-cooked lamb at Maha, a late-night movie at Cinema Nova, a café opening across the road from my house, parma at my local pub while watching the AFL Grand Final, cricket training and the Complete Works of Shakespeare at the Fringe Festival.  In no particular order, here are some more Melbourne things I'm rather fond of:

Coffee 

◦ Proud Mary ◦ Mitte ◦ Seven Seeds ◦ Campos◦ 

◦Brunswick East Project◦ Sensory Lab ◦

Hardware Société (yes, that's actually tea).

Food 

◦ Movida ◦ Cumulus Inc ◦ Cookie ◦ Mamasita ◦ Bar Lourinha ◦

◦Longrain◦ Easy Tiger ◦ Hell of the North◦ Gingerboy◦ Brunetti's◦ 

◦Movida Aqui◦ ◦Maha ◦ Chin Chin◦ Gumbo Kitchen◦ Taco Truck◦ 

◦Los Amates◦ The Commoner◦ The Gem◦ North Fitzroy Star◦ 

◦Pizza Meine Liebe◦ Cutler&Co◦ La Luna◦ Boire◦ Huxtables◦ 

◦Beatbox Kitchen◦ Josie Bones ◦ Gigi Baba◦ 

◦Loafer Bread◦ Camy Shanghai Dumplings ◦

Movida Next Door

Drinks 

◦ The Attic◦ Black Pearl◦ The LuWow◦ Gin Palace◦ Bar Americano◦

◦The Black Cat◦ City Wine Shop◦ Melbourne Supper Club◦ Siglo◦

◦Atticus Finch◦ Polly's◦ Bennetts Lane Jazz Club ◦

Places

◦ MCG◦ Manchester Unity Building◦ Royal Exhibition Building◦ 

◦Westgarth Cinema ◦ BMW Edge ◦ St Patrick's Cathedral◦ 

◦State Library of Victoria◦ Readings Bookshop, Carlton◦ Cinema Nova ◦

The house called Milton.

Everything else 

◦ The Wheeler Centre◦ Melbourne Food and Wine Festival ◦

◦ trips to Perth being exciting ◦Can't Stop the Serenity ◦ visitors ◦

◦ Melbourne Writer's Festival◦ trams◦  Rose St Artist Markets◦  

◦daylight savings◦friends old and new◦ 

Spring.

The Long Earth: what might have been.

The Long Earth is a great idea – humanity suddenly gains access to a potentially infinite, mostly unoccupied string of Earths, each a sidestep along the potential outcomes of all the possibilities that formed this Earth. It’s not time travel (sadly) and it’s not alternative universes (exactly), but it is a fascinating fictional exploration of a number of the scientific ideas about how Earth and all its ecosystems got to, well, here, and what might have happened if we hadn’t. It's also got great SF cred: a collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (disclaimer: I don't recall reading any of his works, although I might've) should, by rights, produce an exciting, slightly comic and very human story with a cosmic scientific awareness to back it up. 

Unfortunately the authors seem a little too fascinated with their own great idea – there is a thread of a plot (a quest, of course), and attempts at creating suspense, but these are sidetracked by the temptation to show off the world and all the work that went into it. It’s as if they couldn’t bear to cut out any of the interesting creatures (look, a flying octopus! - no, really, there’s a flying octopus) or ideas (a cult of comedic atheists!).

The exploration of the idea is the strong point of The Long Earth. It doesn’t stoop to stereotype in looking at how the world changes, but has plausible and interesting considerations of the impacts on social, economic and political structures, as well as the practical ways that people would react and adapt. These are all at higher levels though – countries, cities, police forces. Up close to any of the characters, they seem concocted from the basic fantasy recipe book: for the perfect loner hero, take one orphan, add quirky upbringing and secret talent, stir and allow to develop for ten years. I tried to drop my expectations of a Pratchett book before coming to this one, but was surprised that the usual depth and dexterity of his characterisation was missing from so much of it. 

The thin deus-ex-machina quest attempts to anchor the story as we wash back and forth through recent history and across the multitudes of Earths, various side stories spinning off as we pass. Often I was more interested in those side stories, but some never develop, and others work away behind the scenes, their resolutions mentioned chapters later, in passing. Some seem to exist merely to fill narrative gaps: we’ll need bronze here, so we need a forge there, so let’s introduce this guy back here. Tick.

My main frustration with The Long Earth is that it is an ok story about this well-constructed and original world, when it could have been a great story set in this world. A rip-roaring quest, an intense exploration of family and social dynamics in times of change, a series of inter- and over-lapping short stories (ala I, Robot) shifting between that and more... the breadth of worlds provides an awful lot of scope. Instead it’s a thoughtful, reasonably interesting, semi-scientific exploration of what made our Earth what it is, (with an unfortunate and unoriginal diversion into the origin-of-elf-stories trope) let down by some unnecessary weak points*, not quite knowing what story it wants to be, and an incredibly weak ending. It’s barely an ending at all, in fact - it turns out that this is only half of the story and I have been suckered into breaking my GRRM rule.** After a flaccid attempt at resolving the quest enough to finish the book, but leave things open for a sequel, the story just stops. Seriously. I’m trying not to include any spoilers here (the book is only a few weeks old, after all) but there is no ending, no climax, no great revelation or cliff-hanger. It. 

Just. 

Stops.

*you’re in a fight with something that can step between worlds and is attacking you from those different worlds, but though you can change worlds yourself you don’t, even to run away – if I’m picking up issues with fight scenes, they must be pretty bad.

** Which is: Never start a series until the author has finished it and any sequels associated with it. I thought about calling it the Robert Jordan rule, but 1. he died, and it wouldn’t be very respectful, and 2. RJ had the end in mind, whereas GRRM has wilfully started multiple series without knowing the end, which I think is potentially fraud.

Cities of the heart.

Disclaimer: I unashamedly romanticise places. 

I’m in love with a few cities, the latest being Budapest. (Etymologically, two cities for the price of one.)   The  realisation that Budapest was my latest source of fernweh started me wondering about exactly how I get attached to these places anyway: I was there for all of twenty-four hours, and now I want to live there.  Not that I wonder at loving Budapest: the castle, the river, the churches, the crazy bars, the history sloppily stacked in corners, and the requisite amount of grunge - some places (Vienna) are a bit too clean to be lovable.

How hard could Hungarian be, really?

Jerusalem is the first city I loved; the first city I spent time in outside Australia. In Jerusalem I heard it said that everyone has two homes: where they were born and Jerusalem. The city of David is as old and complicated and beautiful and modern and mundane as you might expect, and even now I feel a pang remembering the early morning mist on the hills, the domes and parks and ugly apartment buildings. And more churches, of course, but it was the city itself, its totality, that took a piece of my heart.

I wonder if this happens to other people, metropoleis occupying emotional territory. I am a little uneasy at attachment to things inanimate, but then a city – especially a lovable city – is anything but inanimate, and is, after all, composed predominantly of people, piled up. Their history, their homes, their businesses, their weird and wonderful ways of getting around each other and the odd corners of the earth they have made home.

The internet, as ever, manages to reassure me that I am not alone, although love here ranges from tourist gush* through people growing to love where they have washed up, and all the way to stories of people who arrive in, say, Istanbul, and never leave.  My affection (urbanophilia? philopolisia? philocivit-something?**) is fairly specific: it’s given quickly and irrationally, and leaves me with a hankering to live there. I want to know these cities, learn their sounds (Melbourne’s is the flick of tyres across tram tracks),  and their ups and downs and ins and outs in a way you can only by living in them.

London was next; Paris and Rome are lovely in their ways, but the romantic idea of living in them did not stick.  Venice, beautiful and all, was high maintenance right from the start. London, though, felt like another home again – comes of reading too many English books, no doubt, but this was the city that taught me the rewards of wandering, and looking up, and that I could be quite happy, just me and a city. Cold and wet and grey and brown, but something about the stone and the vapour trails and the random greenery stuck.

Chronologically, Melbourne and I met next. Choosing a city makes one’s affection a little fiercer, particularly if, as with Melbourne, it lives up to expectations.  With cities, monogamy is enforced - you have to commit, uproot, transplant; otherwise you’re just visiting.  It's hard, but of course everything is easier after you’ve done it once, and for all its difficulty, moving teaches that you can survive it, and that it’s rewarding.

Oxford, then; another case of indoctrination, perhaps. Oxford surprised me by feeling more familiar than London, but over a week there I learnt how many of the authors I’d read as a child lived or worked or studied – or all three – in Oxford. Oxford and its country are a sort of watermark in any number of stories, and explicit in so many that there is a Wikipedia article on the subject.  This all makes me rather nervous in describing it, although I did try, once, in, let’s face it, some tourist gush.

Perth is still there, the hometown – I am no cosmopolite and don’t think I could be, since it would mean I’d have to love all cities or none. Every time I travel, and every time I return, having lived away a little longer, I see Perth differently. I finally bothered to look up, last time, and to be in its beautiful places the way I am in the beautiful places of other cities. It will always be a measure, in a way: no weather will be as good, no beaches will be as beautiful, and nowhere will ever be as isolated as the city I love because it was the shape for so much of my life.

* my words are, naturellement , much more than gush, and I much more than a tourist

** Latin fail: darn modern education

Future Australian Captains: let’s not have any.

1 Corinthians 13:9. For we know partially and we prophesy partially...

And we never bloody learn, apparently. For goodness’ sake, one Test ago we (meaning The Press and a few bloggers) were agonising over whether Clarke’s appointment as Future Australian Captain (FAC) made him unpopular and  whether or not he is now popular enough to have a bandwagon. If he does, 329 runs and beating India will get a lot of people on it.

For the last six? seven? or so* years, Clarke has had to work in the blinding intensity of the public focus that came with that early anointing. Despite all the afore-mentioned angst, it has taken mere days for David Warner to emerge as the next FAC, helped along by Mickey Arthur. Do they not have the Future Saffer Captain issue in SA, or is Arthur already peddling the official CA let’s-anoint-someone-who-does-well-in-the-focus-groups? The perception of favour didn’t help Clarke on the field or in the press, whatever it did for his bank account, and it may well have hindered him in both.  My favourite theory as to why Clarke was hard to connect to, coming across in press conferences as bland and party-line, is that he was well aware of the damage that could be done to chances at captaincy with a stray comment or controversy.

The perception is that Clarke has had a number of controversies, but once you eliminate the FAC status, speculation about form slumps, and stories that do or don’t match his allegedly-bogan background (they usually involve money and subtle snobbery, reverse or otherwise), you’re left with a relationship that went wrong (he who is without sin, etc) and a fight with Simon Katich which he didn’t start. Katich, let’s remember, left a burgeoning cricket career in WA to further his own chances, so he’s not exactly the shining cricket purist himself.**  Clarke hasn’t (that we know of) been in fights in nightclubs, talked to bookies, had dodgy drug test results or in fact done anything except perhaps be a bit too controlled in press conferences and too much / not enough of a bogan to fit stereotypes. I was actually rather relieved when he took a bit of personal leave because it showed that he was, in fact, human.

We don’t know, and never will, what harm Clarke’s status did to any other potential FACs in the team.  For all Steve (we are not worthy) Waugh’s team had a miraculous collection of talent, it also had a number of blokes he could turn to in the field for thoughts on the game and its state at any given time.  How many of the next generation never bothered to develop the mythical and terribly clichéd cricket brain because they never expected to be captain, with the golden boy constantly in front of them?  How much of Katich’s angst came from that frustration?

Look, I don’t love Clarke.   I was pretty cynical about his declaration at 329, thinking he must have known that would play as humility. He has since said that wasn’t the case, and he was focussed on winning, so we’ll go with that. To be fair, no good captain would put their own milestones ahead of the team’s, and, love him or no, I do think he is a good captain. I can’t quite decide whether the changes in opinion come from a greater freedom to be himself, an improved PR firm (no streaks in the hair, I note, and Channel 9 playing Western Sydney backyard cricket footage), some stunning cricket, or all of the above.

Passing the FAC mantle on to David Warner, though, is not good for Warner, the team, or the next generation of cricketers. Surely they should all aim for captaincy, at least at first, and think they have a chance? Why saddle a talent like Warner with all that expectation and extra focus? Does he not have enough to do, working out how to be a T20 star and a Test opener? Why make him also work out, all at once, how to: 

• comment on the current captain’s form in press conferences, 
• balance relationships in all of his dressing-rooms, 
• deal with people calling for his head at the slightest slump in form, 
• shut off the glare of the spotlight, and the positive and negative things that go with it, 
• enjoy the fruits of his success without being called a tosser, 
• respond gracefully when the person who called you a tosser calls you insecure for wanting respect,  
• and, somewhere in there, have a life? 

He'd learn those things eventually anyway, being an Australian cricketer, a Test opener and playing in the IPL. Shouldn’t we be rewarding his talent with room and respect and space to grow?  We have Warney to satisfy our national quota of cricket stories in the social pages, not to mention some fresh international imports thanks to the BBL - how about we just let Warner be Warner, and worry about who will be captain next when we actually need one?

* vagueness due to Wikipedia blackout, cricinfo not having FAC appointment as one of its stats

** YES I’m still bitter.