New season, new life

From time to time I have touched on the relationship between the weather and my writing habits. Regular readers will be aware that I have a particular fondness for the dark times of the year, and stormy or rainy and overcast days, which I find conducive to thinking and reflection, and hence writing.

Such times could not be further from my mind today. It is sunny and relatively warm, and we are entering a different phase of the calendar with Spring almost upon us. At this moment I sit at a café in Carlton revelling in the slightest breath of fragrant air, which is floating in through the open doorway. Spring is a time of renewal and new life, and it makes my heart glad. In the spirit of the seasonal vibe I am in the throes of launching a new business venture, one that takes one facet of my writing in a new and entrepreneurial direction. If you are curious, you can check it out here.

​So with the green shoots already appearing on the branches of the street trees that grace the boulevards of inner-city Melbourne, I open my heart and welcome the new season. It is good to be alive!

A little harmless Melbourne harlotry

​I just finished reading Madame Brussels: This Moral Pandemonium, by L.M. Robinson. This slim and delightful volume describes the life and times of one of Melbourne’s most infamous brothel-keepers, and provides an insight into the inner workings of this fair city at a time when the streets were figuratively paved with gold (all the while being literally unpaved and little more than treacherous open sewers and outflows for overflowing cesspits). 

If there is one take-home lesson from this book, it is the fact that the great and the good certainly liked frequenting the brothels and ‘bagnios’ of Melbourne, which were generally located at their peak in the ‘Little Lon’ part of Lonsdale Street. Reading this book made me feel that I have missed out on something, not being a brothel-frequenter myself. Or perhaps it is too easy to romanticise the trappings of the flesh trade when looking so far into the distant past? It certainly seemed to be the socialising environment of choice for some of the most powerful and superficially ‘upstanding’ men in Melbourne. I wonder: are there current establishments where the business of the city is conducted out of the public eye in a sex-soaked atmosphere? That is, places that exist additional to the list of the obvious candidates - the well-known clubs - of course. 

Am I terribly naive for wondering this out loud? Probably. Let us just hope that the strip clubs of King Street are not the only remaining vestige of the burlesque in Melbourne. Such places seem only sad, and they appear to be lacking in anything approaching glamour. Never mind: I am sure that the rich and powerful are still procuring sex and socialisation somewhere out of the public gaze. 

I assume that I will never know, being the snow-white innocent that I am.

Regardless of all that, I am always excited to stumble upon fragments of the history of Melbourne. I find that it grounds me more firmly in my time and place, which is here and now. Through some strange alchemy, it helps me to inhabit the ‘now’ when I become more aware of the ‘then’. And to this end, the good folk of Arcade Publications, the pubilshers of Madame Brussells, have made a mission out of just such alchemy. Check them out here. (I hope they don't mind, I stole the image of the book from their website.)

My 2012 Melbourne Writers Festival

That time of year is nearly upon us, and once more a Melbourne Writer’s Festival programme of events is to be unleashed upon the adoring public. 

I am going to a handful of events this year, including a session on micro-fiction (I am really interested in this - fascinated by it, in fact. It’s so deliciously obsessive); a second session on the role of the journalist in information-saturated times (is this an exhausted topic, yet? Apparently not…) and, most importantly, a full day fiction workshop with author Patrick Gale. I have high hopes for this latter event. (Mind you, I haven’t read any of Patrick Gale’s fiction yet - probably should have a dip in at least, prior to the workshop. It seems only polite to do so.) 

I will undoubtedly attend some other events that I haven’t decided on as of yet. The programme is pretty rich with incidental sessions and short events.

On the more distant horizon of late September is another event, one of the IQ2 Debates - specifically: Is Western Civilisation in Terminal Decline? This should be a recipe for a night of harmless belly laughs and jolly japes at the Melbourne Town Hall. (I really hope Western Civilisation isn’t in a terminal decline - after all, I haven’t picked oranges in Spain yet, or crushed grapes with my feet in a monastery in Bordeaux. In fact, there’s a lot of the West that I like the idea of, and haven’t ‘done’ yet.)

What are your festival picks? Let me know via the social interwebs.​