Too Cool For Cats

Winter has come early to Melbourne this year. freezing cold from the middle of May. By the time winter is officially here we will be quite inured to it – sort of.

I snapped the above photo of the cats this afternoon, both curled up on the bed – in rare close proximity, though not touching.

Lizzie in the foreground looks much bigger than Willy, but truth to tell there’s not much between them in height. In weight, Lizzie is a featherweight, whereas Willy, who looks slim and slight, actually weighs a ton. He’s a solid muscular cat, hence the deceptive heaviness.

As Melbourne has been plagued with rats and mice over the past few months, Willy has been catching one or more a day. Unfortunately, he brings them inside to play with, and more often than not they escape and disappear under the furniture. Lizzie has totally lost interest in prey these days, so doesn’t even bother staking them out, a pastime she took very seriously in her younger days, so there are unknown numbers of rodents lurking somewhere in the house, unless they’ve escaped through the walls as we can’t hear any scuttling.

My attitude has become ‘out of sight out of mind’, as I can’t be bothered fretting about it.

However the thought of another three months or so of winter is kind of depressing, but a good excuse to curl up with the cats and read.

David Mitchell – Superstar Writer at the Athenaeum

I don’t suppose you can generally call a writer a superstar, but the huge turn out at the Athenaeum Theatre last night for noted literary light David Mitchell, gave the impression that wordsmiths can warrant such status.

David Mitchell himself admitted that he envied musicians, who can obtain an instant response from their audience as to the acceptability of their musical offerings, being out there in the glare of the spotlight a lot of the time, whereas writers, having a solitary occupation, rarely receive such feedback . He did mention though that he enjoyed touring and meeting his readers face to face.

He came across as charming, funny and unaffected; he has an appealing and attractive personality that was friendly and cheerful to all those who queued for his signature.

As these sort of events go, not that I’ve been to many, it was interesting and engaging throughout. It started with David Mitchell reading from his latest novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, then Melbourne Writers Festival Program Manager, Jenny Niven posed several questions about his writing process. He spoke at length about his methods of research and the problems inherent in writing an historical novel. All very interesting and wittily expressed by the guest of honour.

After a few audience questions, it was a matter of getting in line for the signing. It was a long queue, but David Mitchell seemed indefatigable. I only took my copy of Thousand Autumns, and was pleased to have it signed, though others seemed to have brought along his entire opus.


David Mitchell has been widely praised for his writing, and I have no arguments with that, as I recall my delight when I first discovered his books when Cloud Atlas was published. I was entranced by the novel and awestruck by Mitchell’s clever sleight of hand prose. At my time of life it was thrilling to discover a writer of Mitchell’s calibre as such beguiling writers are all too infrequent.

The Black Caviar phenomenon continues in Queensland

Black Caviar is aiming for her 13th win in succession and 6th Group One in the BTC Cup at Doomben race track on Saturday (today) . Queensland Racing is expecting record crowds to attend, matching or even overtaking the turnout back in the 1970s for Queensland racing hero Gunsynd aka The Goondawindi Grey.

The weather on Saturday in Brisbane is expected to be fine and sunny, so the track should be good. Certainly better than the present weather here in Melbourne where winter has struck with a vengeance. Oh to be in sunny Queensland!

A field of eight will contest the BTC Cup, a weight for age competition over 1200 metres. The field includes Hay List who proved his superiority to the majority of sprinters excepting Black Caviar, recently demolishing a classy field in the All Aged Stakes with an effortless 3.5 length win. Black Caviar and Hay List have met on three occasions, and the mare has won all three, so I can’t see Hay List getting the better of her in this.

The remainder of the field will no doubt have to fight for third spot. Old troopers Black Piranha and Snipers Bullet who haven’t raced since December 2010, resume in this race. They both have form on the track, but they’ll probably be pipped by super consistent mare Melito or one of the other younger contenders.

It’ll be a must watch race for racing fans all over Australia simply because of super star Black Caviar, but alas it won’t be free to air TV. I’m contemplating going to the nearest TAB to witness the event, depending on the weather.

Speaking of stars of the turf, the 2010 Australian Spring Carnival hero, So You Think, had his first start for his new trainer Aiden O’Brien in a 2000 metre race at the Curragh in Ireland. Though not pitted against the top echelon of middle distance runners, So You Think won the race by 10 lengths, displaying his obvious class and impressing all and sundry. He’ll be contesting harder races in June, so here’s hoping he continues his winning ways.

This post was written mid week, but as Blogger has been down I haven’t been able to post it until today.

Rumble, Shake & Tumble with the Wagons

I just love watching the Wagons band perform live, and had an opportunity today to see them at an in store at Basement Discs. Their new album Rumble, Shake & Tumble, was released today and a large audience was at Basement Discs to celebrate the launch.

As a live band Wagons are dynamic, rambunctious and riveting. Led by the very funny and charismatic Henry Wagons, they gave us a taste of the new record to the tune of four or five songs. Very tasty it was too, full of country rock goodness, and included a great tribute song to Willie Nelson.

Henry was in fine form spruiking the new record for all his worth, and I’m certain many CDs were sold, particularly after he called for pug puppy Gordon to join him on stage. How could you love the guy and not buy his record!

Check them out on My Space and try and get to a live performance during their extensive tour supporting the new album. They won’t be back in Melbourne until mid July when they’ll be doing an extravaganza at the Forum Theatre.

Books and reading

It has been ages since I last wrote about books, so as a break in posts about horse racing and live music, here’s one about what I’ve been reading.

Late last year when I looked through lists of books forthcoming for 2011, I was less than thrilled with what was scheduled. In fact, unlike every other year, this year appeared to have no new books I was particularly looking forward to reading.

It seemed to be a dire and somewhat worrying situation, so much so that I imagined myself having to spend the year rereading my own private library or downloading old classics onto my Kindle.

Now that I have retired from work, I devout several hours in the morning to reading. I like reading in bed in natural light without wearing my contact lenses. I am short sighted so reading without visual aids is no problem and seems to be kinder on my eyes.

So what have I been reading? Lots of different books in fact, many of them new to me as well as rereading many old favourites.


Since Christmas I haven’t actually bought a physical book, until today, when I went to Readings bookstore in Carlton to redeem a gift voucher, which I’d been meaning to do for ages and had forgotten about. I did rather well, coming home with a hard cover of The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier and a hard cover signed copy of Rose Tremain’s The Road Home which I found on Readings famous bargain table. The Illumination is Kevin Brockmeier’s new novel. I was very impressed by his 2006 novel A Brief History of the Dead, so I’m looking forward to reading his latest, which sounds fascinating. Rose Tremain is one of my favourite novelists. I’ve been collecting her novels for years, so to get a signed copy of one of her books is a thrill.



Despite not buying hard copies of books, I have been buying plenty of ebooks, and have discovered some great novels which passed me by last year. I’ve been most taken with Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, A Visit From The Goon Squad, a brilliant novel that I felt compelled to read twice, to see how it was structured and to pick up on all the clues scattered throughout that reveal the whole story. The novel is structured as a series of interrelated short stories, giving different viewpoints on the lives of the main protagonists, and there are many of them, who are somehow or other related to main character Bennie Salazar, a successful music producer in New York. One chapter is in fact a Power Point presentation. The novel ends with a satisfying mental click, accompanied by a silent “Yes!”



The Dervish House, a Science Fiction novel by Ian McDonald is another book I found to be above average and brilliant in its own way. Also sporting a large cast of characters, and following six separate story threads, it is set in Istanbul in the year 2027 and opens dramatically with a suicide bombing on a tram, an incident that reverberates on the lives of several of the denizens of the Dervish House who are indeed the subjects of the six threads, which naturally intertwine as the novel progresses .



Currently I’m reading Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, a South African writer. The novel is set in a future Johannesburg, where malefactors are stigmatised through the mysterious acquisition of an animal familiar, a twisted version of the daemons in Phillip Pullman’s Golden Compass series, and forced to inhabit ghettos. The heroine of Zoo City is Zinzi December whose animal familiar is a sloth. She makes ends meet by composing scam email messages, and on the side uses her special talent for finding lost things for private clients. It’s a punkish, hardboiled urban fantasy with a smart streetwise heroine, and I’m enjoying it immensely.

Other than the books mentioned above, I’ve also recently reread two Michael Chabon novels, the great The Yiddish Policeman’s Union and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay that I admit I enjoyed more on this second reading than I did when I first read it back in 2004. I’ve also read Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguru, Sacred Country and Music & Silence by Rose Tremain, The Silent Land by Graham Joyce, as well as many others that fail to spring to mind at the moment.



Just yesterday I found out that the long lost fourth novel in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series is to be published this year to mark the centenary of Mervyn Peake’s birth on 7 July 1911. The new book, entitled Titus Awakes was written by his wife Maeve Gilmore, from notes left by Peake before his untimely death and was only recently unearthed in an attic by one of his granddaughters. Who knows what it will be like, but as a long-time fan of the Gormenghast Trilogy I feel I had to have it. Strangely, the British first edition will be a paperback, so I’ve pre-ordered the American hard cover edition, as I do love hard covered books. I have however pre-ordered the new UK illustrated hard cover edition of the Gormenghast Trilogy which will be published on 7th July. Having already the old Penguin paperback versions as well as a three volume hard cover set of the trilogy, I reckon the new edition will be an asset to my existing Peake collection, most of which are rare first or early editions.

On the subject of books and writers, I almost forgot to mention that one of my favourite writers, David Mitchell, author of such marvellous books as Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten, not to mention The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet ,will be in Melbourne on 17th May and will be in conversation with Melbourne Writers Festival Program Manager, Jenny Niven at the Athenaeum Theatre. I’ve got a ticket and am looking forward to attending the event. I doubt if he’ll be doing a signing, but I’ll take my copy of Thousand Autumns just in case. He’s in Australia for the Sydney Writers Festival and will only be briefly in Melbourne.

Americana Rose Melts Hearts at the Toff

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing up and coming young singer songwriter, Caitlin Rose performing at the Toff In Town. Hailing from Nashville, Caitlin is the daughter of songwriter Liz Rose, and has certainly followed in her mother’s footsteps writing clever contemporary country songs. I really like her way with words; she’s sassy and somewhat self deprecatory, as exampled in her song Learnin’ to Ride where the chorus goes like this:
” Learning to ride, oh, learning to ride
I get knocked down when I'm learning to ride
A few broken bones for a place to hide
I get knocked down when I'm learning to ride.”

The show at the Toff was the last on Caitlin’s short first tour of Australia. She came as a support for The Felice Brothers, but did a few side shows on her own.

The support act last night was the fabulous Melbourne band Little John. They performed a sizzling, passionate set that almost upstaged the feature act.



They sang a selection of songs from their self titled album and, as always, impressed with their wondrous male choir harmonies, and eerie otherworldly musical arrangements.

Caitlin opened her set with Coming Up, following that with Learning To Ride and Spare Me, all from her debut CD Own Side Now. She explained that she didn’t know that many songs and didn’t know how she was going to fill an hour, having only to play for half an hour while supporting The Felice Brothers.



She coped alright, ably accompanied by her long time guitarist Jeremy Fetzer and pedal steel player Spencer Cullum Jr. In fact she managed to get through fourteen songs in all, most of them her own composition, with a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s That’s Alright.

Caitlin Rose’s voice has been described a cross between Patsy Cline and Iris Dement, but I thought when initially playing Own Side Now, that with the backing vocals of Skylar Wilson on the CD, the two of their voices in harmony reminded me strongly of the McGarrigle Sisters. Whatever, it is quite engaging and idiosyncratic.

There’s a freshness and rawness to her sound, no doubt due to her lack of experience, but Caitlin has been hyped to be the next big thing in Alt Country. Those few who attended her show last night would certainly agree that she shows enormous promise, I look forward to seeing her again in the future and am curious to hear her next album whenever that eventuates.

Set List

1. Coming Up
2. Learnin’ To Ride
3. Spare Me
4. New York
5. Own Side Now
6. For The Rabbits
7. That’s Alright (Fleetwood Mac cover)
8. Shanghai Cigarettes
9. Sinful Wishing Well
10. Answer In One Of These Bottles
11. New song (untitled)
12. Faithless Love
13. Things Change
14. Marie Rosie (according to the set list I picked up from the stage)

Autumn Racing Carnival 2011 – Sydney Cup

RIP Hot Danish – a sad loss to Australian racing

The Autumn carnival winds up this Saturday with the  running of the 3200 metre Sydney Cup and three other Group One races at Randwick – the Champagne Stakes for two year olds, the Queen Elizabeth Stakes for middle distance/staying types and the All Aged Stakes a sprint over 1400 metres. A nice variety of races in fact.

For once I can watch them on the home TV, as for the last few Saturdays I have been out and about fulfilling social obligations, and racing coverage has been hard to find.

Last week’s Sydney meeting was turned upside down by the weather and the state of the track , though not really unusual for Sydney during the autumn, was rated heavy going. This resulted in long shot mudlarks taking out the major events. Sacred Choice (8/1) who in similar conditions during the spring in Melbourne defeated Typhoon Tracy, won the Doncaster Mile. More Joyous failed to fire and ended way back in the field. The Oaks was taken out by the runaway Absolutely (30/1) with the game Shamrocker relegated to second place and Pinker Pinker running  third. Atomic Force (10/1) was the winner of the Galaxy.

I sincerely hope that the weather is kind this weekend, though it’s still a tough call on most of the Group One races with any number of runners having claims.  Let us consider first the Champagne Stakes run over 1600 metres.  Sires Produce Stakes winner Helmet looks the top pick for this, though second placer Uate may turn the tables on him this time, considering the extra 200 metres to be run. Consistent filly Pane In The Glass is also worthy of consideration as is the Bart Cummings trained Salade.

The Queen Elizabeth Stakes, a WFA competition over 2000 metres, has a decent field of tried an true old stayers like Zavite, Cedarburg, Vision And Power (if he gets a run) and Wall Street as well as the talented three year old Retrieve and mystery English horse My Kingdom Of Fife, a last start winner. Sacred Choice is backing up in this and could win again if the track is rain affected.

Run over the same distance as the Melbourne Cup, though not having the same prestige, the Sydney Cup is nonetheless a staying handicap of historical import. It was won by the mare Jessicabeel last year after earlier winning the Chairman’s Handicap , so I give the Gai Waterhouse trained mare Once Were Wild a very good chance to win this year, having followed a similar path to Jessicabeel  by winning the Chairman’s Handicap  two weeks ago.  The current favourite is C’est La Guerre who rarely wins but does like the Sydney way of going, followed by stable mates Mourayan and Muir who recently won the Adelaide Cup over the distance.   French bred  horse Laristan (a lovely grey beast) is also fancied in some quarters, as is Hawk Island.

The All Aged Stakes will be run as a sort of memorial to Hot Danish who sadly was put down last Sunday due to an incurable and crippling leg infection. A favourite in Sydney this bonny, almost black mare was around for years gamely running with the best. She scored her first Group One victory in the All Aged Stakes last year.

The field assembled this year is first class. Hay List the second best sprinter in Australia and possibly the world, will start favourite. As it’s over 1400 metres, not his pet distance of 1200 metres, there may be a chance for one of the others to catch him. Rangirandoo, for instance , who recently won the George Ryder Stakes, old favourite Heart of Dreams who has returned to racing this autumn in fine form, and Shoot Out who was disappointing in the T J Smith, but may show marked improvement second up. Melito is sure to figure somewhere in the finish, recently running second to More Joyous in the Queen of the Turf and Triple Honour who scored third place behind Black Caviar and Hay List in the TJ Smith is also a chance.

Though the autumn carnival will be over in Sydney after this weekend, the Adelaide and Queensland winter season will keep the ball rolling for another month or so. The resumption of Black Caviar in the BTC  Cup on 14th May is a highly anticipated event.