Easter 1999

Hello again.

I’m embarrassed.

It’s April 2nd 1999 and I know from keeping my ear to the ground that something called a Hot News Space should have HOT news in it. My news gets lukewarm very quickly for many reasons. I feel like a kid at school who hasn’t done her homework! Listen to my pathetic excuses. . .

I travel a lot so I’m not home all that often, but even when I am:
I see my mother every afternoon at her place.
I also visit my dad in an old people’s home daily, during his evening meal.
I shop for groceries.
I cook.
I tidy up.
I do the laundry.
I garden.
I answer a variety of mail every day of my life.
I walk the dogs on the beach each morning.
I go out for coffee with my husband.
I go to the bank and the post office.
I send e-mails to Chloë in Paris and my sister in Italy.

In fact I’ll do anything but write books and up-date my Hot News Space. Forgive me!

I’ve been to the States and back three times in seven weeks since I last wrote in this space. Great, great conferences in Ohio, Oregon, Indiana, Michigan, Maryland and Illinois, full of eager, keen, switched-on librarians and teachers.

I love these trips. I can visit a State, make a big noise, have people laughing and crying with me over the state of literacy teaching, cause a few heart attacks over some of my ideas, provide longed-for comfort or a few steep challenges when necessary, and then leave. I don’t have the awesome day-to-day responsibilities of classroom teachers whose dedication to the task is extraordinary. Without their good offices where would our children be? Where would the futures of our countries be? Although we owe them enormous gratitude, I don’t think we pause to thank them often enough.

On the writing side of my life I’m working on about five books, as usual, all at once. When one of them gets too difficult I put it aside like a beaten coward and work on another. One of the books, (no title yet) aimed at adults, is about the importance of reading to children before they go to school. I wear three hats, as it were, as I’m writing it: first, the hat of a mother, since Chloë was reading by four and half and I believe I know why; second, the hat of an academic, since I learnt a lot about reading during my twenty four years teaching at Flinders University; and last of course, the hat of a writer, for obvious reasons: I think I understand^I hope I understand by now!^what kinds of books kids like, and why.

On the personal side of my life the best thing that’s happened for ages occurred the week of my birthday (March 5th). I was home for nine days only between two trips to the USA and when I walked into the house Chloë was there: home from Paris for the first time in eighteen months: a total surprise, planned by Malcolm^and Chloë, of course. In brief there was a lot of screaming. It was a slice of heaven. Chloë has resigned from Elle and is now back at UNESCO (in Paris) as a print journalist and is very happy. Malcolm is fine, still looking gorgeous at 54.

My parents are teetering along. My dad fractured a pelvic bone in early March which has sadly diminished the quality of his life for a while, until it heals. He’s a constant anxiety but I love my evening visits. He knows who I am, even by my voice, before he looks up and sees me and smiles. It’s very comforting.

The dogs and I are on a weight loss regime which means walking more than usual. I think it’s mainly an excuse for me not to write. Writing is a ghastly activity: so easy to do badly, so hard to do well. The bliss of up-dating my Hot News Space has been that I haven’t had time to write all day. Besides, it’s Good Friday, surely a day of rest if ever there was one. Any excuse. . .

While I’m travelling I read a lot of books and then forget them: their titles, their plots, their characters. Recently I’ve read two that I’ve actually loved enough to remember: The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver which was superb, perhaps because so much of it resonated with my childhood in Africa; and a wonderful book by Simon Winchester, which in Australia and England is called The Surgeon of Crowthorne, and in the USA: The Professor and The Madman. The children’s book I love most at the moment is Squids will be Squids by John Scieszka and Lane Smith but that needs no publicity: it’s everywhere!

So that’s it. Tomorrow, I suppose, I’ll have to write books again. Sigh.

Until next time, all the best!

Mem Fox