Hieronymous the Anonymous

H the bookseller?

I had breakfast in Fitzroy North yesterday. I sat eating my french toast in a small and typically Fitzroy North cafe. It was eclectically furnished with perversely hip waitresses and clientele that ranged from mothers with babies in prams (I got up twice to open the door for them), to middle-aged men with a tuft of chin beard coloured green, wearing all black, including skirt. Outside it was sunny.

I had been wandering around the St Georges Road/Scotchmer Street for the 30 minutes prior to breakfast. Someone had told me that there was a vacant building for lease that I wanted to check out. I looked at it from curiosity, wondering if it would be a suitable home for my bookshop, before wandering further afield to view other alternatives.

The bookshop has been on the agenda for nearly a year now, but it was not something I anticipated doing for years yet. Last week it popped up in my head again. On Sunday I had lunch with the publisher (the Station Hotel) and discussed some of the ins and outs of the book business. That afternoon she took me to one of the biggest and most successful bookstores in Melbourne, where she introduced me to the manager. We agreed to catch up for drinks sometime soon, but not before I got some vital intelligence from her.

Location is key. Plenty of foot traffic, little competition, the right economic demographic - all that spelt Fitzroy North to me. The nearest bookstore is Brunswick Street probably, a good one too, but if you're local it's a trip away. There is a thriving shopping strip in Fitzroy North, and a local population of well educated, progressive professionals. Lot's of kids too, as well as a good smattering of gays. It's a liberal. slightly bohemian, intellectually engaged part of Melbourne. In other words, perfect for an upmarket bookshop.

This is far from a certainty. Best odds are 50/50 I'd guess, and I'd guess I'm being generous with that. It's nice to look though, and no harm done.

Can't get started

Not sure how to explain it. Perhaps it's the women, but I'm romantically un-inclined at the moment, same for months. I go through the motions, but too soon I lose interest in even doing that. I wonder why it is.

It's strange to think but I went through a barren period for years when I was not remotely interested in any woman. I wondered if something had died in me. I wondered if I had been cured of love. I mean I was busy still, I went out, saw women, had sex, and was generally more in the moment than I am now, but it was pretty much for fun only. I remember occasionally getting wistful about the days when I felt so much. I was afraid that it was all used up. Little did I know that in fact I was storing it all up for the big comeback.

When it came back it came back big time, and until recent months was still going strong. No though, nothing. I wonder if in fact I have exhausted something in all my romantic tribulations. I need the rest. Maybe I've become jaded, though I don't feel it. Maybe I'm distracted by other things, and that's a distinct possibility. Or perhaps I find nothing in the current crop to move me - and that feels true too.

I wonder what I want from this. I think I am happy to take it quietly for now, and perhaps there is something revealing in that admission. Not forever though. I want to be swept up again at some point in the future. I want to feel and believe passionately. For all it's a bit yeah-nah. I can't even get interested in the freely available sex.

The remembered and the forgotten

Last night I saw the preview screening of the new Star Trek movie at Crown. It was good. I liked the series but the movies up till now have been pretty dull. This was a lot edgier, and faster paced. I enjoyed it.

I was with the publisher, she'd got the tickets from someone. We had dinner afterwards at one of the nearby restaurants looking out over the dark waters of the Yarra. It rained on and off outside and it looked bleak and cold and wintry. I commented on how just last week I wore shorts one day, but then that was Melbourne for you. Then we discussed outbreak of swine flu and from there the end of days. 2012 I hear.

After dinner we went downstairs to the car park. As we were approaching her car a submerged memory came to mind. Years ago, 8 or 10, I met a woman here and had oral sex in her car. I had forgotten that, but now it all came flooding back to me. Strange to have memories like that. For some reason I mentioned it to the publisher - no sooner remembered than spoken. She looked at me strangely. What, here? she asked as if it was a bizarre place to happen. Then she shrugged her shoulders, your life! she muttered.

I can't remember the woman's name, but I remember what she looked like. She was blonde, about 30 years old. She was willowy but lacked confidence. She had told me soon after I met her that she hadn't been with a man for 5 years. I remember later how she would talk dirty to me and how it didn't seem natural though equally it appeared she enjoyed it. I remember there were words she would use then that seemed odd to me, or perhaps from another era, as if she had read too much erotica from the 1930's.

Though she was not my type I was fond of her, and wanted her to find her place. She was of a type I seemed to attract for a time. It seemed I brought something out in her. After her early hesitancy she became excited, daring, both surprising and thrilling herself, though always in the same slightly awkward manner. It was easier for me and I think that inspired her in ways, how I felt, the way I expressed myself, the attitude I generally had. I'm always there, if it feels good why not do it, but it was she who took the initiative. That pleased her too, and I had no complaints.

And so in the car park of Crown I happily copped a head job. I don't remember much of what happened after that, except that a month or two later I heard from her. She was with a man she was in love with, was happy and wanted me to know. I was happy for her. It seemed a common story, I was the catalyst for a lot of these epiphanies while I continued down my individual way.

It had been raining while we were in the cinema. The roads were wet with it, and the night cold and dark. The publisher drove me home by the river and through the back streets to my door. As we drove along we chatted. I looked out at the passing scenery. The river was remarkably high considering how little rain we'd had till recently. It didn't take much. I looked out beyond the river to the buildings on the far side, commenting on a big, bright neon light over there. The Magic Hour it said.

Not long ago I playfully thought to myself that if I ever write my memoirs I'll actually write it about the women in my life. Women I Have Known I thought I'd call it. I figured it was more revealing to see myself reflected and refracted through the myriad small and large relationships I have had. I'm sure there was a story in it, and last night it seemed a strong and interesting story.

I've known a lot of women, probably too many actually. So many that I remember only some of the names, and of the faces many seem to be lost. I remember not so long ago walking down the street as a woman came the other way. She was young with dark curly hair. She seemed familiar in some way, and she gazed at me as if expecting something. We passed in the street without a word being said. It was only later I remembered her - we had spent about 3 weeks together having almost continuous creative sex. She had fallen for me. How could I have forgotten that?*

I have no way of knowing how many women I have been out with in some capacity - close to 200 I would guess, maybe more. I haven't been intimate with all of them, but a good number. So where does this leave me?

Your life the publisher had exclaimed in the car park as if it was something from a book, something oddly shaped and mysterious. Well, what does it mean then? I mused on this on the drive home, all of it, the willowy blonde, the mystery of my life remembered and forgotten, the bare facts of things.

I expect a lot from life and that's why I've done more than most, and gone off in different directions. It's also why I never wanted anything more from about 195 of those women. From the other 5 I wanted everything. I am a romantic, which seems incongruous I guess, but undeniable. I feel deeply when I feel. I believe in all the greatest of possibilities and when in the grip of this romantic hope will strive to make it so. My heart is often tender; I am sensitive and sensual and delighted to be alive - and it is this I hope to share.

Against this is the sheer number of women I have known, and the purely functional approach to these interactions I have occasionally been guilty of. By and large I've acted well, but there have times I have been more ruthless. And there is a part of me that is single minded. There are women who love me - well, that's their problem I think.

All this serves to confirm that there is little rhyme and reason when it comes to relationships. I'm a man, so there are two sides to me, but in the end I am neither fish nor fowl. I expect to one day to be living the perfect life I aspire to - until then I will live day by day enjoying whatever comes my way.

* There is more to this story. This woman was an architect. While I was seeing her I was also seeing another woman, quite different. Each of them would tell me stories from their life, including work. Over a period I began to notice some commonality in their stories. I had a sinking feeling: this couldn't be, could it? What are the odds? I started to ask some innocuous seeming questions until there came the moment when I could be left in no doubt: of all the people in Melbourne, of all the different businesses, I somehow managed to go out with two women from the same office independent of each other. Too weird. But typical in a way also.

Unhappy families

I don't write about my family much. Most of that is to do with an unspoken code of ethics. It's fair game to write about myself in torturous detail, but unfair, by and large, to subject my family and friends to the same scrutiny. That's the big reason. The smaller reason is that my family often drives me crazy.

Today I'm going to break that little rule to reveal some of the strange family dynamics I am part of. This little story is illustrative of the sensitivities, the psychosis, the weird and illogical happenings that are an almost constant reality in my family. As in many families much occurs that would be funny if it were not so ridiculous. Much of my life could in fact come from a Seinfeld episode, my family life most of all.

I got a call at about 8.45 this morning from my mother. She was in tears, which is not an unusual occurrence. She asked me if I would drive her to the airport this morning - she's off to Queensland for a week. "What's going on", I said, "I thought you had that organised." And so she launched into her strange but typical story.

Turns out last night she got a call from her step-family offering to drive her to the airport today. My mum refused, saying she was driving herself and it wasn't necessary. Karen, her step-daughter-in-law, insisted, and they proceeded to have a small and unresolved argument about it. Easier to let it go rather than argue about it, but typical.

This morning Karen rings again. I'm coming over she said, I'm taking you to the airport. Once more my mum objected, but it was a fait accompli. Now this is where it gets messy.

My mum has a little dog she's devoted to, Muffy. She had arranged for my sister, who lives 5 minutes away, to mind Muffy while she was gone. She was going to drop Muffy off on the way through and no dramas. That was plan A. Now we've got plan B though, and my sister won't have a bar of it.

If my mother is easily upset, over-sensitive and a bit of a drama queen then my sister is a bit of the hard faced bitch - and I say that in a nice way. She has her good points - she's loyal, she believes in things, she's a great mother, she's a trustworthy person. She is open and fun with the people she trusts. She has her lesser points though too. She is an attractive woman but has few social graces. She has no gift for small talk and knows it, and so tends to dismiss it as an irrelevancy. She is stiff and closed up to the point of being anti social. Essentially she is insecure in this regard, and covers it by being defensive to rude. She is not an easy person. In reality she feels it very deeply I think, and is conscious of what people think of her and what they possibly say of her.

My sister doesn't like Karen. Or rather, she feels as if Karen is one of those people who regard her as being difficult. This predictably raises my sisters hackles, and makes her prickly. Her preferred way of dealing with this is by avoidance. It's a rare day that you'll find them all in the same room, and that suits her fine. But then something like today happens out of the blue. Instead of my mum bring Muffy over it's now my mum and Karen and my sister digs her heels in. I don't want her coming over here, she says.

This is what led to my mum's tears, this is what made her call me. As on numerous occasions previously mum is upset by her daughter and is left wondering what to make of it. As on numerous occasions previously I am the one who bears the brunt of it. And as on numerous previous occasions it is left to me to explain.

I'm up front, as I always am. You should know her by now I tell her. Sure, it's wrong, I say. That's the way she is though, that's the way she's been forever. It might not be good but you have to accept it. There's no point in getting upset about it, you should know by now.

I've had this conversation a thousand times but it never really gets through. Why is she that way though? And so for the thousandth time I explain. My mother is high maintenance. She's a nice person but very fragile, and very self-absorbed - an attribute she shares with my sister, but which is manifested in different ways. Mum becomes self-pitying, comes the martyr. At the same time she seems incapable of actually seeing things from another persons perspective. She doesn't understand her daughters insecurity; she understands only the pain and inconvenience it causes her.

So, fine, at this stage Karen is coming in to pick Mum up to take her to the airport and she doesn't know what to do with Muffy and so she asks if I can take her to the airport. Hang on a sec I tell her, how does that follow? You want to go to the airport alone, Karen is taking you, and now you're asking me to take you instead. What gives?

Well, she says, if you pick me up we can drop Muffy off without my sister getting upset and alls well. At this point I exclaim how ridiculous that there should be such hullaballoo about something so insignificant. And how bloody typical. This is what you do I said. My sister lives 5 minutes from Mum. Go and drop her off yourself and let Karen take you to the airport, problem solved.

She seems to accept that, but it's not over yet. There's always a last shot. "Why is it that my children never ask if they can take me to the airport?" You can imagine by now I'm sitting on the phone with my eyes going heavenwards in exasperation, good grief. Because, I say, you made it clear that you were going by yourself. Because, I say, it never occurs to me to ask for a lift to the airport (which I would decline) and so it never occurs to me to ask. And because you're only going to Queensland for a week, not on some tramp steamer going around the world.

There are times I feel like I need a holiday from my family, but that seems graceless. I love my mum and my sister, but there are times my patience is sorely tested. For much of my life I have been the intermediary, copping it from both sides. In more recent years mum was become very dependent on the two of us, and at times that feels a heavy burden. I sometimes wish that mum would make more of an effort to stand on her own two feet before coming to us - but then I am in the prime of my life with a history of independence behind me. It seems odd that mum and I are so different on that count, and often wrong. I should take my own advice and just accept the way things are, because no matter how I wish for it nothing is going to change now.

I feel kind of disloyal airing some of this dirty washing in public, but it's about time I was up front about it.

The great game

Part of the Anzac Day celebrations these days is the big match between Essendon and Collingwood at the MCG. If you've never been to one of these matches then you're missing out on something great. Both teams have great followings and long time rivals. I know as a devout Essendon supporter I despise Collingwood. I've between to about 8 of these games now, and it is always a great occasion, as well as a great contest.

That's the day. Dawn service at the shrine. Then the march with the applauding crowd as the last remaining diggers and their proud family make their way to the shrine. The crowd disperses, to the RSL maybe, to games of two-up around Australia (the only day it is legal), and many more then to the MCG for the big match, or home to watch the telecast on TV. Many have barbecues or parties on this day, and I noticed this morning at the supermarket people busily stocking up on booze and chips and so on.

The game itself has a greater than normal. I soke of the raucous crowd at these contests before, but one of the great experiences in Australian life is to stand amongst 80,000 footbal fans during the minutes silence and to hear nothing but the flapping of flags in the breeze. Across from each other stand the two teams in a line. Around the ground supporters of both sides stand side by side paying their respects to the moment, and to the diggers gone before. And then a cheer somewhere that is joined by thousands of over voices building to a crescendo as each supporter cries his support to his team ahead of the great contest to be.

Though in the fixture this match counts for no more than any other, the reality is that the history and meaning of this day adds so much more to the play. Leading up to the game there is always much talk of the 'Anzac spirit' (which, according to CEW Bean: 'stood, and still stands, for reckless valour in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship and endurance that will never own defeat.').

Now these are qualities that coaches will invoke most weeks regardless of the sport. They are attributes champion teams are made of. Throughout the course of a season though form, fitness and motivation will wax and wane. It is virtually impossible for a team to be up very week, and it's probably unwise to attempt it - you drive at top at top gear all the time then something will burn out.

It's different when it counts though, finals, and matches like this one. It's different for this match not only because it is subject to so much scrutiny, but because there is a premium on it for the day it represents. You can be certain that on this day that both teams will be 'up' for the contest. 

The players from both sides are exposed to the history of the Anzac contribution in the lead up to the game, they meet old diggers to hear their stories, they visit the shrine to understand what it all means. It is a great privilege to be part of this game, and I think the players are very conscious of living up to the Anzac spirit. They want to honour to the memory of the diggers by their efforts. Win or lose, it is important to put in, to fight, to keep on just as the diggers did.

Today was such a game. It would be easy to dwell upon the events of the day, and for me, very tempting - but I'll refrain. It is sufficient to say that this was a wonderful game in the true spirit of the day. An exciting, pulsating classic, with my team coming from behind to snatch victory with secnds remaining. At the end of it in the rain one half of the crowd celebrated like it was final, while the other half trudged away disheartened. There's always next year, and dead-set, next year will be great too. That's the day.

PS Just for the record, we're on the way. This, and the Carlton game, are victories to build a future on.

The spirit of Anzac Day

I don't know of any other nation in the world who has such a day as Anzac Day as it is celebrated in Australia and New Zealand. It is more than a national day - which it isn't here in Oz, more than just a simple day of remembrance. It is a huge day in the Australian psyche, the biggest day on our calendar. When I think of it I find remarkable, and I am deeply touched by the continuing devotion the common Australian has to this day and everything it stands for.

In my own mind I think it goes beyond remembrance. There is great reverence for those old men who march each year who when young fought on our behalf. There is great affection for their memory. Each year there are less of them though, and each year the memory grows bigger. I believe it is our great day of national bonding. This is something we can all believe in regardless of where we come from, this is something we can all share - and do.

A few moments ago I saw reported that there were 3,000 at the dawn service at Villers-Bretonnuex. That's amazing. 3,000 Australians have travelled almost to the other side of the world to attend this moment. At Gallipoli in Turkey the crowd was near 8,000, and has been as high as 15,000. This has gone beyond a national celebration to stretch across the world.

I read a lovely story this morning in the paper. Villers-Bretonnuex, where the service was held this morning, has had a strong bond with Australia ever since the end of the Great War. It was Australian troops who re-captured the town from the Germans on Anzac day 1918. After the war the local Mayor dedicated a memorial to the 1200 Australian soldiers who lost their lives there, which in part says:

Soldiers of Australia, whose brothers lie here in French soil, be assured that your memory will always be kept alive, and that the burial places of your dead will always be respected and cared for...

After the war an appeal by Victorian school children raised money to re-build the shattered school in Villers-Bretonnuex. Ever since the French school children have een taught to honour the memory of the Australians who fought there, just as they promised. In the school building in Villers-Bretonnuex there is a sign that says: Never Forget Australia. It is a lovely and heartwarming thing.

All these years later the French school children of today are looking to return the favour. Upon learning of the devastation wreaked by the fires of Black Saturday the school children of Villers-Bretonneux organised an appeal to raise money to help re-build the ruined school buildings of Robinvale here in Victoria. It is a lovely, almost poetic, thing.

It's that spirit which we really come together to celebrate today.It is on days like this it means much to be Australian.

Writing today

Quiet night after a quiet day. Been raining on and off, nothing heavy, but pleasantly different from the usual lovely, sunny, rainless days. It was a productive, small day for me. In the afternoon I did some cooking listening to an audiobook. It rained outside while I chopped vegetables and stirred things. As always Rigby watched me keenly as I went between fridge and stove and bench. I made curried parsnip soup and pears stewed with vanilla and butter which I had for dinner tonight.

In between times I wrote. For once it was not business related stuff, nor was it this thing. Instead I went back to a story I started maybe 5 years ago and have been working on intermittently ever since, through many different iterations.

I have been thinking of this story a lot lately. It is probably the biggest story of my ouevre. It's the story that seems central to my ambition - if I can get this right then much else might flow from it. It is the keystone of of what I hope to one day achieve.

Every day I get older. With every year passed there is much more in me. Insight grows, and the words to describe that hopefully are refined. I am ever conscious that I am honing my skill, and conscious that I am not there yet - but that I am progressing.

In this latest version of the story - The Berlin Coat - I have brought much more of myself. To some extent I have eased the brakes. Previous versions have been austere, and in fact I have spent a lot of time previously tightening things up. The tight core of the story remains, but I have allowed myself to digress from that, much as I occasionally do here. I am hopeful that the true meaning of the story is better revealed by doing this, and that the reading experience is richer.

It felt good today, the words fine. The come to me in more measured doses now, and it feels right.

The Fire Within

I ventured into the city last night to see a Louis Malle retrospective at the ACMI. I've been a regular visitor the last few days. On Sunday I went travelled in for dinner and a show at this years Comedy Festival - Jason Byrne. On Tuesday I saw Judith Lucy, an old favourite, who is reminding me more and more of Dame Edna each time I see her (she wouldn't like that perhaps, but they share the same kind of acerbic observational wit that the Dame - or Barry Humphries - is the master of). Last night it was a couple of old French movies.

Fong was late so I stood in Fed Square waiting for her, walking up and down and watching the city commuters stream towards the trams and trains carrying them home, and others like me visiting for the festival or a drink in a bar or a movie. As always Fed Square was busy with people criss-crossing it from all directions, and many others sitting waiting for friends to arrive.

While I waited the bells of St Pauls began to peal loud and long across the way. The sun was dipping over the horizon and the city lights began to glow in the growing dark. I looked across at the cathedral as the bells rung out, thinking how pretty it was, and noticing for the first time I could remember the checker-board pattern of coloured stones high upon it, like the Croatian flag. It looked grand in the twilight and I thought if I was another place then I would take a photo of it to take home with me. It is only that I live here that I overlook it.

After a hurried meal Fong and I entered the cinema. It's a fine cinema but last night it smelt like a toilet - not bad, just a little antiseptic. Because we had hurried to eat we were near the last people in, and so had to sit near the front, right up against the screen.

Curiously enough the first thing on was a very old documentary short from Jacques Cousteau. It must have dated back to the early to mid fifties, a cultural curiosity now, a scratchy print about undersea geogology and the men who sail from one exploration site to the next.

The first film was The Lovers, starring a young Jeanne Moreau. It was fine until the last 35 minutes, at which point it became very silly. When the lights came up I overheard a woman in front of me say "Wasn't that beautiful?' to her friend. I couldn't believe that. What she thought beautiful I thought unrealistic and just a little twee.

It was funny watching the movie my mind at one point wandered onto the subject of art. Great art, I would suggest, represents an essential truth. It resonates because there is something in us that we recognise as we listen or watch or look upon it, even when it is hidden deep inside us, even when we cannot name or describe or even understand it. It is innate. Lesser art, like this movie last night, psuedo-esoteric/romantic bilge falls short. It works for some people obviously, but not all. One man's truth is another man's fiction.

The second feature was much better. La Feu Follet (The Fire Within), is based on a novel by the French author (and fascist) Pierre Drieu La Rochelle - a fascinating and important figure despite his Nazi sympathies. It's pretty bleak, a recovering alcoholic living in a clinic and estranged from his American wife decides to end it all. As a last gesture he travels to Paris where he meets up with friends and past lovers on a kind of farewell tour. This involves a lot of typically French intellectual discussion which I found interesting, but which Fong thought self-indulgent.

The primary failing of Alain is his inability to feel. He is charming and good looking, boyish in both looks and manner (Marice Ronet, very good). He has led a notorious life to this point, and to those who look upon him with love there appears no reason why he should not be happy. Life seems empty and cheap to him, which is why he became an alcoholic. He drank to feel, and perhaps to dull this sense of emptiness.

At times watching it did seem an indulgence. There is a meeting with one of his old drinking buddies who has now reformed, married and has kids. He is a happy and content character. He tells Alain tht he is stuck in adolescence, where he has grown up. There is more he tells him, the great pleasure in loving, of being husband and father, the quiet satisfaction of his career. Watching I felt like adding my piece, he's right, it's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be...

In the end though there is more than that. He doesn't want to go back to the old dissipated and meaningless life, and yet he really can't feel, can't live the bourgois life of his friends. There is something dead inside him, that's the tragedy he recognises full well and expostulates sadly upon throughout the movie. In thend I was watching and thinking what a terrible way to be.

The end is finely done to a point, both artful and blunt, though the farewell note is a tad melodramatic. I enjoyed it, very bleak, but it got the brain cells going on a dark Melbourne night.

Nowhere to hide

Three months in and it has been an interesting, and occasionally frustrating, venture into the world of self-employment.

I went into it with a particular skill-set and knowledge, not to mention years of experience. That was my product - me - the expertise and insight I had built up over the journey which I was now looking to market to prospective clients. From that perspective it seemed quite simple, but as I have come to realise - and which I should have known - it is hardly as simple as that.

I would argue that with the benefit of the training I have recently undertaken, with the wide reading and self-education I have put myself through, with the investigation into different aspects, that I am at the pinnacle of my expertise. I am the sharpest I have ever been. I know more than I ever have, and am better able to apply it in a practical context than ever before. The product is good, and getting better.

Having a good product is not enough. I have been forced by circumstance to do things I have had no previous experience or exposure to. While I am an expert in some fields, I am an inexpert novice in other areas that have become vital to my success. I have been made to scramble, to learn, ultimately to act to make things happen.

I had a general knowledge of web marketing before this - I am now much more adept. Previously I had been the victim of telemarketing, now I use it to promote and market my business. While I have always had a creative streak I have been forced to hone it in creating the brochures and presentation packs I leave with my potential clients - my graphic design skills have gone through the roof. On top of that I have had to adapt my manner, my patter, to be more like that of the salesman. I am the suitor after all, and the customer is always right.

There have been the small disasters along the way. The month long project I had lined up in Brisbane was indefinitely postponed a couple of days before - and disappearing into thin air was the 20k I had counted on. At another organisation I had cultivated the relationship with some key people to the point that I was on the verge of signing off on a significant and ongoing relationship. Then on Monday I found my contacts had been made redundant and all bets were off.

This is the present environment. Out of uncertainty, fear, most businesses will not commit to new projects or initiatives. Of those already in motion there is much wariness and scrutiny. Everything is cut, reduced, cancelled.

It is my argument in these tough economic times that there is no better time to act. If you must cut - as many businesses must - then plan to do it rather than to act rashly. If you have already cut then let's review the gaps that has left - if you reduce the capacity of the business then the business cannot perform as it did before without managing it. Above all, I urge, make the changes now that will carry your business forward and ready to blossom when bad times turn to good.

It has been an interesting psychological journey also, sometimes invigorating, sometimes terrifying. Having taken this course I have come to conclude that only a certain type of person is suited to  working at their own business.

I guess the primary quality needed is enterprise. It is refreshing to sit in the chair and to know that you cannot rely on anyone else but yourself. There are no off days, you don't earn a salary just by turning up. Nothing happens until you act - until you pick up the phone, send the email, knuckle down to the next piece of work. This is an unfettered life, you live directly by your successes or failures, and so you feel it directly all the way through. That's why it's invigorating sometimes, and sometimes terrifying. You must take the first step, and keep going, knowing that you walk the tightrope with no safety net below.

For this reason you must also have strength of will, self-confidence, faith. It can be mentally exhausting managing all this, knowing that there is no-one else you can turn to for help. The buck stops with you. There are days when it takes an act of will to push through the doubt and uncertainty that inevitably visit. And at times when your expectations are disappointed you just have to take a deep breath and plough on. At the end of the day you need that steely self belief to keep on going.

Doubtless there are other qualities, not the least some kind of intelligence, and hopefully common sense. And perspective - you're in for the long haul.

Having journeyed this far I have found it a richer and more rewarding experience than I would ever have considered. The future is fraught, and I have to scrap every inch of the way, but there is something satisfying in that. There's nowhere to hide. I am not one of many as I have been at the different places I have worked, I am myself, alone. I'm the man, literally, and I feel that I have been used more completely than ever before. I am tested all the time, made to act, now, and as if every facet of my self is engaged in the journey ahead.

In a funny sort of way I feel like a bit of a pioneer, and raw from the experience.

I don't know where things go from here. I have been offered a job - a real job - elsewhere, but would be sad to end this. This is mine and mine alone, it is me. And while potentially I can do very well from this that seems secondary to the strong sense of being my own man and master of my destiny. I can feel the wind in my hair even while I'm wondering how to get some of these recalcitrant clients to sign on the dotted line.

The end of the story

Not long ago, John Updike, one of the great writers of the last 50 years, died of cancer. While every death is a tragedy in some way, Updike was on the verge of 77 and had led a productive, feted and successful life. It was sad to read of his passing, to know the author of so many great stories and essays would be writing no more - not in this lifetime anyway.

Updike is one of my favourite authors, and had a marked impact on my own development as a writer. I happened upon him when I was still yet to hit 20. A couple of years before I had discovered Hemingway, and in an experience not uncommon felt as if a bomb had gone off in my life. Like so many others I was seduced by the saw and vigorous masculinity of Hemingway's prose. Like so many others I went through a stage where I sought to emulate him, only to realise at some point there could only be one Hemingway, and I was better off being the first H rather than the millionth Papa.

At was at about this point I came across Updike. I can't remember what it was exactly, perhaps the first Rabbit book, perhaps some of his stories, but in any case I found myself seeking to read more. Unlike my Hemingway episode this was much quieter.

Though Updike is a fine stylist he marked out a territory far distant from Heminqway's. While Hemingway wrote of big themes set largely between and during the wars, Updike carved out a niche writing of the quiet suburban follies of the cultured, well-meaning and restless middle class of east coast America.

At this distance it seems to me it was a combination of writerly intelligence and insight, combined with recognisable scenarios - often tinged with the illicit or erotic - that captured me. I could believe in the world he created. I could empathise with his characters in their occasional waywardness, their confusion and frustration. It helped that though I read from far distant Australia that came from a similar mileu. And both then, when I was much younger, and now, when I am hopefully much wiser, I could feel the crackle and pop of the erotic he wrote of with such pleasure - and which I read with such pleasure.

For me Updike was a master short story writer. I read a few of his novels, and though I found them enjoyable enough felt that the incisive insight of his stories was diminished in the longer form. Of his stories I would count perhaps ten of his in my top one hundred of all time, and over the years have returned to them again and again.

Now JG Ballard is dead to (also of cancer). Though he's not the name Updike was he was very good writer. His stories and novels were always original and slightly skewed from the 'normal'. Whereas Updike wrote of the quotidian suburban existence, though with a slant, Ballard wrote of what could be perhaps in an alternate existence, or what might be if we turned some of our basic assumptions upside down. His was a unique perspective. Strangely enough, I've just finished reading one of his books.

Both very good writers, though very different from each other. I think we may be witnessing the death knell of a generation of great post-war writers.