Whew.
It’s been busy lately.
Day job. A few school visits. A few radio interviews. The final assignments for my course this year. Long days, late nights, no writing.
It feels like ages since I’ve sat in one spot, even on the ferry, and simply read a book instead of rifling through stacks of paper or scribbling notes.
I have one final exam, and then two weeks of (mostly) writing, although there are a few more schools scheduled, and paid work will no doubt intervene.
I visited a school event this week (hello, Kohimarama) but it was in the evening and the crowd was grown ups. I hadn’t realised, and rocked up with eye patch and my usual props to explain that there really were women pirates in history, just like in my books. Instead of nine year-olds there were all these (lovely) parents standing about having a wine tasting.
Uh oh. Time to improvise.
One of the things I love most about school visits is when I look up while I’m reading and see spellbound faces: eyes wide, mouths open.
There were a few parents like that at Kohi the other night. But maybe it was the wine. Cheers.
Now that I’m hawking around a second book, it’s interesting to see how kids react to the idea of a series of books – they expect such a thing, now, and lobby very very hard to be given a sneak preview of what might happen in the third book.
I’ve even been offered bribes. Ten bucks. Hard to resist, I know, but that’s a lot of money to a ten year-old, so I had to consider for at least half a second before saying “No way”.
A few reviews trickling in now for The Pirate’s Revenge, too. I won’t bore you with them this time, unless they are fabulous or really vile.
Now I’m about to collapse into a bath (cup of tea in one hand, chocolate in the other) and hope to be more like my normal blogging self next week.

I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is – my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy.
~ President George W Bush, CNN Late Edition (no, I’m not sure, either)

Just writing an essay on whether “poetry of the past” is relevant to today’s children.
I begin to detest that word “relevant”. It’s like the academic (and also political) version of “whatever”.
If a poem/book/painting/welfare centre/educational program/cultural argument/concern is not relevant in the narrowest possible terms to educational/political/funding/cultural authorities, you get the big “whatever”. The newspapers will run a campaign to ask why on earth that artwork or youth refuge cost so much. The Prime Minister will raise an eyebrow on early morning TV. An inquiry will be called.
Is history relevant? Is literature relevant? Is art/youth/age/gender/culture relevant?
Air, water, wildlife? People?
Do we really need them, after all?
Prove it.
Can’t?
Whatever.

The aim of poetry is for me simply to keep the child from its television set and the old man from his pub.
~ Philip Larkin, proving relevance

Well, I’m chuffed. Just heard I’ve been awarded a New Work grant from the Australia Council Literature Board, for work on my next novel, An Act of Faith.
I’m classed as an “Emerging Writer” (emerging from the primeval slime, or perhaps obscurity, I imagine) and am the only kidlit writer on that list.
So now, to work!

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.
~ Robert Penn Warren

I wrote earlier that I’d blog about Kate Grenville’s personal history wars, but I’ve changed my mind: there’s a fine discussion happening already amongst those vivisectors over at Sarsaparilla, and plenty of background in yet another Jane Sullivan feature in The Age.
My earlier comments on the dust-up are here and here.

Just back on Waiheke after a whirlwind visit to Melbourne which included a book launch, several school visits, at least six kids’ basketball games (“Go Redbacks!”), a spot of gardening in the country, and not a single antique shop nor garden visit. How did that happen? Ripped off.
Poet (and friend) Judith Rodriguez very kindly launched The Pirate’s Revenge upon the world at Readings in Port Melbourne. Everyone stared at me. My mother didn’t cry. What a waste. Must try harder next time.
My brother got back from Nepal safely on Sunday, with 750 gorgeous photos. About 500 of them include a glimpse of Everest. I’m so jealous. Any hint of that famous plume of snow blowing off the summit and I’m a goner.
There are a few other things that are compulsory for any visit to Melbourne for me: driving discreetly past our house; buying more white and black Bonds t-shirts; and sneaking into my favourite secondhand bookshop, The Old Bakery Cottage in Warrandyte. I did manage all three this time, and picked up a couple of books in a relatively brief and uncharacteristically restrained spree: The Cruel Way, Ella Maillart’s 1930s trek from Switzerland to India; and – at last – Prospero’s Cell, Lawrence Durrell’s Corfu memoir. Those old Faber paperbacks really are the sexiest book covers ever. I still can’t get over the time I nearly bought – but didn’t – early copies of the individual books of the Alexandria Quartet for the whopping price of $6 each. What was I thinking? They are just right, those covers – much more appropriate than my bloody great compendium copy. It’s only been about six years. I’ll let it go one day. When I find another set.
I also finally grabbed Kate Grenville’s The Secret River.
More on recent reading and Ms Grenville’s history wars later. I need more coffee first.

I’m flying to Melbourne tomorrow – hopefully some of yesterday’s 250 bushfires have receded. There I’ll be eating evil but delicious things, looking at gardens, hanging out with my family, reading at lots of schools, rummaging in bookshops and antique stores, having afternoon tea, picking up the kids from school, cheering at basketball games (“What’s that noise?” asked one of Conor’s team-mates last time I was there – “That’s my aunty”), bushfire-proofing my little place in the country, launching the new book, driving nonchalantly past my dream house to make sure all is in order, and possibly not blogging.
But someone’s emailed to complain that the podcast of the interview with Radio NZ’s Lyn Freeman has moved. The new link is here.
Oh Lord, I’d better pack. Ciao.

Now my second pirate book is out, people ask me constantly about Johnny Depp. Honestly. I’ve never cared about those Caribbean pirates, nasty lot that they were. What’s the Caribbean ever done for anyone? Well, OK, if you’re a British pop star you have holidays there and, sure, there is the cricket team. And Bob Marley. But through most of history, especially since European contact, it’s been a place of misery and greed.
Now I accept that there are pockets of the Mediterranean that have also had their moments. But isn’t it much more interesting? Phoenicians. Greeks. Romans. Venetians. Sophia Loren.
Mediterranean pirates, like my imaginary ones, got caught up in all sorts of fascinating regional and religious conflicts, wore better clothes than Blackbeard (at least if they were Knights of Malta or Barbary captains) and God knows they ate better.
This evening on the ferry I finished Chris Stewart’s third book on his Spanish life, The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society (lovely read, too), went to the shop to buy pesto and cannellini beans; drove home past the olive groves to our little Spanish-inspired mudbrick home overlooking the grapevines; helped myself to some Turkish extra virgin olive oil (organic), Greek olives, and crusty French bread while I made spaghetti (Italian import) bolognese (with rosemary, bay leaves and a splash of cab sav).
Sadly, while I ponder my pseudo-Mediterranean existence, it’s hailing outside, the wind is whipping right off Antarctica and heading straight towards the island, ripping the apple blossom off the trees. They’ve had the helicopters hovering over the vines down south to stave off the frost.
But if only I could top off the day with a Maltese pastizzi, or a Moroccan orange syrup cake and a glass of mint tea, I could at least pretend a little longer.
Where would we be without the Mediterranean? Even Johnny Depp lives there.

I’ve been shedding a tear today over the death of Peter Norman, one of Australia’s greatest athletes and all-round lovely bloke.
It was Peter Norman who stood on the dais at the 1968 Mexico Olympics with the American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, as they raised their gloved fists in a silent but dramatic black power salute. I was seven – my dad was over there and the three things I remember about the Mexico Olympics is that Ron Clarke collapsed, my dad had a blood blister that took up his whole heel after his race (the kind of gross detail kids never forget), and that photo of the three men on the dais.
Oh and some kid called Raelene Boyle sprinting down the home straight within spitting distance of the great Irena Swezinska.
Look at that photo of the protest now, and you see how young, how vulnerable and how brave they were. I remember watching Peter race, later, and remember him for some reason as being much more muscular and powerful than that skinny lad standing steadfast with the world glaring at him.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos were ostracised and sacked from the team after that incident. They were both at the funeral today:

Carlos said that Norman deserved to be as well-known as Steve Irwin. “Go and tell your kids the story of Peter Norman,” he said.

My parents certainly did.
Read the full story here.
Or watch a video about Mexico and the men, here.