Actors in the family

Extraordinarily, in my extended family there are a total of four people who are either professional actors, or who aim to become one. In fact, only one of them has achieved this already - and she is quite happy to tell the others how much waitressing and bar work she still does. She has appeared on the (professional) stage in Sydney and Melbourne, and has had television work (All Saints and Bed of Roses, and commercials). She is self-assured, fairly humble, tells self-depracating stories, does not gossip about colleagues, whispers things like "I can't tell you what's going to happen, but it will really be worth watching!" She left school some ten years ago, and has worked mainly to support her acting ambitions ever since. She has great experience as a waiter and bar manager in both Australia and Britain. All the time her aim has been to be an actor, and she has worked so hard top that end. When she scored her first TV role we were all so proud of the achievement - a reward for years of effort. She is still a 'poor' actor, needing other work to support herself.

The other three are staggeringly different people. Two are school leavers, and the other still in Yr 11. They all think they will be able to make it.

No 1 is a braggart and always has to have a better story, a more outrageous incident in which she has been involved. She doesn't seem to understand the whole concept of appropriate beahviour or language - there's a time and a place, and frankly I don't want to hear her crap. She has struggled over the past year with mental illness, and while I haven't seen her in action, so to speak, she can put on an extraordinary display of petulance, for which she apparently never apologises. Since she's 'sick' everyone will understand. How she can cope with a university course and the demands of acting are beyond me, but that's what she plans to do next year.

No 2 has also just finished school, and is planning to work for a year before studying theatre at university. Less of a braggart ( or perhaps he just couldn't compete over Christmas with No1) he is actually a bit of a snob wanting only to perform on stage, and preferably in musicals. Good luck - there's not that much work going around.

No 3 acts all the time, much to her family's distress. She's sick (dreadfully) or upset (a tantrum) or hates everybody (comes as a shock when she can be all smiles one minute and melting down the next). While I understand there are some temperamental actors, those in regular work have, I believe, some talent to make up for the crap everyone else has to endure.

What to do on a rainy day

A rainy day today on the Gold Coast - when I woke just before 5am, and pretty much all day until about 5pm.

Kathy went shopping at Harbour Town, and after dropping her off there, Rowie and I visited the Gold Coast City Art Gallery at Bundall and another at Mudgeeraba, where we saw the Darcy Doyle competition exhibition.

At GCCAG we were able to view a new exhibition "The History of Violence", a study of the convict settlement of Australia some 22o years ago. As a contemporary exhibition by two artists, i was impressed by the variety of the work we saw. Retrospection is of course a wonderful way to view the past, but many of the pieces made quite an impact on us.

A couple of views follow - a "Sorry" sculpture, and bust made with various fabrics (one of a series). All very naughty, really, as no photos are allowed in the gallery.

Thoughts while on holiday... No1

While walking along the beach south from Broadbeach this morning I noticed a strange sociological phenomenon.

A number of Chinese tourists were on the beach at Kurrawa. It is clear that going to the beach is not a normal part of life in China (or at least for this group), because of what they were doing...

1. None of them seemed prepared for the beach, even though it must have been in their itinerary. Rolled up trousers, non-beach shoes being carried etc


2. Going to elaborate lengths to video themselves as 'having fun' - running from a wave, pretending to splash the person with the camera and so on


3. Some of them seemed fascinated by what the 'Australians' were doing: watching dad dig in the sand with a little kid; watching children frolicking. But NOT looking 25m further down the beach where the Kurrawa SLSC Nippers had their surf skis out and were in full holiday practice!


4. And, just little more bizarrely, the Australians being watched by the Chinese seemed to not notice the attention, as if they couldn't see them! It made me think of animals on display in a zoo.

Currently reading

• 'London Mystery Selection No 98'; purchased for 10c at the Dalby Spring Fair


• Kottler & Kottler, 'Students Who Drive You Crazy'; $57 from online Education supplies store


• Christopher, '20 Things You Didn't Know About Everything'; borrowed


• O'Donoghue & Stone, 'Surfing the Menu'; Christmas gift

NYT list

New York Times 100 notable books of 2008

Books to be read

Aravind Adiga ‘The White Tiger’
Venero Armanno 'The Dirty Beat'
Margaret Atwood 'The Handmaid’s Tale'
Margaret Atwood 'Oryx and Crake'
Dean Bakopoulos ‘Please Don’t Come Back From The Moon’
Alex Boese ‘Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments’
Roberto Bolano ‘2666’
S.J. Bolton 'Sacrifice'
William Brodrick ‘A Whispered Name’
Henry Campbell 'Whatever Happened to Tanganyika?' non-fiction
Toby Cresswell '1001 Songs: Rockwiz Edition' non-fiction
Dave Cullen 'Columbine'
Robert Drewe ‘The Rip’
R. J. Ellory 'A Simple Act of Violence'
Louise Erdrich ‘The Plague of Doves’
Joe Giacobbe ‘The Spirit of Racing’ non-fiction
Thomas Glavinic ‘Night Work’
Rivka Glachen 'Atmospheric Disturbances'
Peter Goldsworthy ‘Everything I Knew’
Kate Grenville ‘The Lieutenant’
Kathryn Harrison 'Envy'
David Hill ‘1788’
Tom Holland 'Rubicon'
Kazuo Ishiguro 'When We Were Orphans'
Kazuo Ishiguro 'Nocturnes'
Susan Jacoby 'The Age of American Unreason' non-fiction
Ma Jian ‘Beijing Coma’
Gail Jones 'Sorry'
Jonathon King ‘The Western Front Diaries’
Natsuo Kirino ‘Real World’
Christopher Koch 'The Memory Room'
Carmen Lawrence 'Fear and Politics'

David Lodge 'How Far Can You Go?'
Gabriel Garcia Marquez ‘Memories of my Melancholy Whores’
Ian McEwan ‘On Chesil Beach’
Peter MacInnes 'Australia's Pioneers, Heroes and Fools'
David Mitchell ‘Cloud Atlas’
Rita Monaldi & Francesca Sorti ‘Imprimatur’ (also ‘Secretum’ and ‘Veritas’)
Haruki Murakami‘After Dark’
Haruki Murakami ‘A Wild Sheep Chase’
Gerald Murnane 'Tamarisk Row' +others
Joyce Carol Oates ‘Missing Mom’
Joyce Carol Oates ‘My Sister, My Love’
Flannery O’Connor
Andrew O’Hagan ‘Be Near Me’
George Pell ‘God and Caesar: Selected Essays on Religion, Politics & Society’
Marisha Pessl 'Special Topics in Calamity Physics'
Barry Ralph 'Savage Wilderness'
Ian Rankin ‘Doors Open’
Mary Roach 'Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex'
Philip Roth ‘The Plot Against America’
Philip Roth ‘Indignation’
Salman Rushdie 'Shalamar the Clown'
Miranda Seymour ‘Thrumpton Hall’
Mary Swan 'The Boys in the Trees'
Tom Vanderbilt 'Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us)'
Norah Vincent 'Self-Made Man'
William T Vollmann ‘Europe Central’
Bill Waterhouse ‘What Are The Odds?’ non-fiction
Sarah Waters 'Fingersmith'
Irvine Welsh ‘Crime’
Lijia Zhang 'Socialism is Great!: A Worker's Memoir of the New China' non-fiction