The Scrivener's Fancy

One Pay at a Time

I recently let my head go and bought a brand-new book entitled Spent: Memoirs of a Shopping Addict by the spectacularly named Avis Cardella. I was drawn to this work because if there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s a meaty tale about a woman spending like a loon, and ending up surrounded by snowdrifts of bills that are not only unpaid but are in envelopes that she has been too terrified even to open. The excellent Christina Schwarz novel All is Vanity, about two females ruining their lives through misplaced ambition and excessive spending respectively, I’ve turned to often in order to give myself a lift of the spirits, in the way that others might turn to the Bible. Imagine my excitement then, when I spied Spent, a true-life account of this spellbinding predicament. My excitement did, though, leave me with no choice but to go against my every usual instinct and pay the full retail…

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Truly, Madly, Wheatley

It was inevitable that Glenn Wheatley would make it on to Australian Story. His story has it all – rags, riches, highs, lows, a great soundtrack and a lot of embarrassing stock footage. And, of course, there was Glenn’s Big Lie. The appalling deception that he wilfully perpetrated on the Australian people. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘John Farnham’s last tour ever.’ I think it was after the fifth time he said those words that the authorities finally came down on him. He also did a couple of extra months for tax fraud.

It wasn’t until Story showed a few seconds of footage of Glenn at the helm of Melbourne’s EONfm (now Triple-M) back in the mid-eighties that I remembered he’d actually been my boss for several years. Like, I assume, many who were there, I’d lately been feeling a bit nostalgic for the old EON days, what with the current ads that dust off winged…

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Food for Thought

I’m so depressed. My question with MasterChef has always been ‘Who watches this crap?’ and now I have my answer: it’s nearly a fifth of the Australian population. I can’t believe that last Sunday almost four million people watched two blokes cooking. It makes me worry that when I’m old my grandkids will ask awkward questions like ‘What did most Australians watch when you were younger, Grandad?’ And I’ll have to say, ‘A show called MasterChef.’

‘Starring that bloke from Halo?’ they’ll ask.

‘He was Master Chief. This was MasterChef, a cooking show.’

‘Bullshit,’ will come the reply.

‘No,’ I’ll explain, ‘Australia was in a crisis. There was a financial collapse, fossil fuels were running out and countries weren’t addressing the climate change crisis, so, just like Woody…

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The Bells! The Bells!

A few weeks ago (funny how many articles begin like that) … anyway, a few weeks ago I attended a literary speed-dating event at The Wheeler Centre, a huge and ancient building that stops Melbourne Central from spreading beyond Little Lonsdale Street. It was once a Roman amphitheatre or something. These days, though, it’s where writing happens. They sent me an email. I don’t know how they got my email address, but perhaps they were alerted by the folks who offer me things like ‘CilaisSoftTabs--_someFueIlForTheSexMacihne’.

It was a free event, and they were short on men. Yeah, all right then, I thought, I’ll help you out.

Preliminary instructions were sent: everyone was to take along a book they really dig. Or a book you figure might help you pick up.

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