DoctorDi

I’m trying not to worry unduly, but I’m feeling very doubtful that the agency news is going to be good. It feels like it’s taking too long. I wouldn’t think this but for the fact that I know two other writers who are signed to this same agency, and I know the timeline from the request for the full MS to the offer of representation was much tighter than the month I’ve been waiting to hear. In fact, one of them heard back in a couple of days. In fairness (and optimism), the agent who requested my full MS did explicitly say it might take a while to get back to me – but what is a while? I’m not sure, but this certainly feels like a while to me…

I’ve been asking Llew to clear out our P.O. Box downtown for a few days now. It’s on the same street as his office, and en route to the ferry wharf, so it should be a simple enough task. But it’s been getting lost in among Llew’s work pressures, which are back with even greater force than they had before we went away. He’s just got his own stuff to worry about, and I don’t think imagines for a moment how much this is plaguing me. I already know there’s one returned MS waiting for collection; what I want to know is, are there two? Have I not heard anything via email or phone because the MS was returned while I was away? It’s ENTIRELY plausible. And that’s what’s driving me crazy.

On the other hand, I was reading your always heartening words of encouragement today and Tuesday, and it occurred to me that I really do feel pretty fulfilled here at DoctorDi even though ostensibly there’s nothing in it except my writing and your reading. Of course I say ostensibly because in the case of my fellow bloggers, we do have the friendships – curious though they are to people who don’t engage in this way – that have built out of reading each other’s writing. And I know other friends of mine, some in Australia and others overseas, read this blog without commenting or letting me know that they do, and that’s lovely for me too, because it keeps us connected. Writing is and always has been an end in itself for me, the act is a force within me – I really don’t want to compare writing to urinating, but it’s that basic. When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go, and not going is extremely bad for you. Well, that’s writing (and reading, like drinking water is to peeing) for me. So I don’t question whether or not I’d continue doing this even if all of you were to stop reading it, because the fundamental truth is that I would, of course I would, if not here exactly, then in a diary or letter or some other field of the written word.

So it’s an end in itself. Okay. This and recent conversations in the context of something else entirely have made me question why conventional publication is so important to me. It’s always been the Holy Grail: a novel, published by a reputable house with my name on the cover. I have dreamed of such a thing for most of the days of my life. That, I know, is because books really are holy to me, and the articles themselves precious. Properly published novels are the gold standard and they always will be. And yet I’m realising being recognised in this way is slowly sliding down the ranks of significance for me until I’m beginning to wonder if it really matters so much at all. When I read Grad’s comment the other day, and responded that it’s enough for me that she thinks this mystical thing will happen, I realised with a jolt that I really did mean it, which means I don’t need the mystical thing after all. I just need Grad. And the rest of you who find what I do here interesting enough that you come and spend some of your all too precious time with me. Isn’t that, finally, what it’s all about?

Yes.

So this radical realisation on my own part is making me wonder about whether or not there’s merit in simply posting my MS here for those of you who are interested in reading it. Or uploading it on a ‘fiction for a fiver’ basis, or something like that, because I think Llew would have a total fit, and fair enough, if I simply published three years of work online. This is particularly because of the amount he’s worked to make it possible for me to spend that time writing it. It would be plain disrespectful to say, ‘Oh yeah, I just posted it on my blog, I decided not to worry about that whole publication thing.’ Anything I decide will be in consultation with him. But I’m just wondering. If all I really care about is trying to communicate something in writing that other people might like to read, then why not?

In other news, Australian writers have had a win, and it’s a biggie: the Government has found in favour of retaining parallel importation restrictions – hooray!

I was supposed to be at a book launch this evening, but I lost my wingman to work – how quickly we return to normal routine – and I didn’t feel up to going it alone after the recent rejections. So here I am, sort of regretting not going because I’m spending the evening alone anyway. I undoubtedly would have had more fun toasting the success of others. But I do want to tell you about this anthology, because I think it’s going to be an absolute cracker. It’s edited by Charlotte Wood – one of the contributing authors, and already known to some of you thanks to her delectable food blog How to Shuck an Oyster – and it’s called Brothers and Sisters.

Brothers and Sisters is a collection of mainly short stories (there’s a non-fiction essay in there as well) featuring some of Australia’s best writers, exploring the frailties, challenges and rewards of the sibling bond. It’s a great theme for a collection, because while every family is different, there’s something wonderfully universal about the experience of having a brother and/or sister. Even in the past two days of being back in Australia, I’ve had occasion to recall aspects of my childhood as it pertained to being the second child. My sister is two years older than me, and I largely credit her with the fact that I learned to read quite early. At its most basic, this was an act of adulatory mimicry – I recall wanting, more than just about anything, to be able to do whatever it was she was doing. As I noted in a comment on the Varuna blog only yesterday, I think I chased my way into her books as a way of trying to be part of her world. Look at me, let me play, can’t I join in?! Of course, what I found were other worlds instead, but I think I first started eating up books in the hope of one day catching up to Kate, and finding her in the pages of one.

Listening to Charlotte’s recorded radio interview about Brothers and Sisters this afternoon, my ears pricked with recognition when she and the interviewer began discussing one of the stories in the collection, which goes into the importance of sibling clothing, such as a particular colour that’s perceived as important or best or preferential, and the competition that invariably ensues as each sibling vies for the choice item: the emblem of being anointed, of being the beloved. However inaccurate such symbolism may be in representing the truth of any child-parent-child triangular relationship, the fact that kids slug it out in this way testifies as to its suggestive power. And again this made me think of my big sister. Kate. How she must have loathed my growth spurt when we were two young girls. Imagine for a moment the sheer indignity of being the eldest child when the younger has the gall to grow upwards until before you know it, you become, horror of all horrors, the unwilling recipient of that intolerable usurper’s hand-me-downs. It must have been hateful to her, and as an adult of 37, it’s taken me this long to fully appreciate what that might have been like for Kate, for the development of her identity and sense of self. Now it seems such a small, trivial thing – of course I couldn’t help growing, nor could I help that we were too poor for new clothes for all – but I hazard to guess it was a big, monstrous thing at the time, something with its own obnoxious personality and stubborn heft.

Did such a thing as inheriting my castoffs negatively impact my sister? Of course only Kate could say, and she may not even remember any such thing. Indeed I hope not, and I mainly want to express how grateful I am that she was (and remains) a reader, because without doubt her reading was a critical component of my learning to read. So thank you, Kate, for showing me the way.

And just like that, we’re home. It feels very normal being here, writing a post and letting you guys know I’m back, but I must say the holiday ended far too soon for my liking… Shanghai was very much the home-away-from-home I expected it would be, but the extent of that immediate knowingness exceeded even my pretty high expectations. I loved it, absolutely loved it. We both did. I loved the firewall a whole lot less – I couldn’t access any blogs – imagine how behind I am! – let alone update you here on my own, and the commitments I had on the Varuna blog became a logistical nightmare for poor Simonne, who had to email me comments that came through in response to my final post, and then had to upload each of my responses. Not recommended, but we muddled through. And the final post itself proved contentious – more than I anticipated it would. It turns out I miscalculated a number of things, and I guess I am still working through some of the fallout, which, though not nuclear, certainly changed the landscape somewhat. That all happened while I was away, and the timing was unfortunate to say the least. Next time Llew and I take a holiday, I’m going to try to ensure neither of us has work commitments of any description by the time we take off.

There are so many things, so many impressions and darts of memory, that I want to share with you about Shanghai. Unfortunately it’s occurred to me that I have to be careful. In a practical sense, I really can’t reveal very much here because I’d be doing myself out of paid travel writing work. I know that really, truly  sucks – and I’m very sorry because there’s nothing I’d like better than to give you a full blow-by-blow – but I can’t use previously published material in a travel piece, and even just writing about it here qualifies. So… with that in mind, I will just say it was so incredibly cool,unbelievably friendly, utterly delicious. We met wonderful people. It’s somewhere I could and would live in a shot. Shanghai extended the warmest welcome, and we ran straight into its embrace at full speed.

I don’t know where to start trying to bring you up to date with everything. Two pieces of bad news on the writing front: MS # 1 was rejected by the same agent who rejected it early this year. Some of you may recall she indicated she’d look at it again if I made significant changes; I made significant changes, and she looked at it again, but it turns out she doesn’t much like my story, or my characters, or my writing. I’m still glad I showed it to her again rather than sending it to a new agent – I’ve lost nothing, since she’d already passed. It’s still with another agency, and they too passed on it previously, albeit back when it was a first draft and was woefully unfit to be taken seriously. Again my thinking is that if they pass, well, nothing new lost. But it’s an important indicator to me that perhaps I need to go back to the drawing board before I try anyone else, anyone new, anyone who hasn’t seen it before. I get the feeling this other agency is going to pass, I just feel I’m on another round of rejection, and if they do, then I won’t immediately send it anywhere else. I think I’ll sit on it, and let it rest, and then go back to the drawing board. Meanwhile the beginnings of #2 didn’t make the cut in the inaugural Varuna Publisher Fellowships. I thought there was a chance #2 might outperform #1, but at this stage, both of them are headed precisely nowhere. Unlike me – I’ve just been to Shanghai and back!

Oof. Nearly there. I worked on my story all day and night yesterday – no runs, no swims, no breaks, and I was still at my desk at midnight and back again at 7:20 am this morning – and filed at 9 o’clock. That’s what I call a load off. I immediately ran outside for some fresh air and kept right on running, and now I’m satisfyingly damp and salty, the scent of the Pacific still detectable in my hair. That’s better, my body groaned.

I’m not quite done. Because we fly out first thing tomorrow morning, and because my service provider doesn’t have a roaming option for broadband, I’m a little uncertain about my capacity to get online from the ‘Hai, so at the very least I have to write my final post for the Varuna Alumni blog and send it to Simonne in readiness for next week. Hopefully I’ll be able to find an internet cafe without too much trouble – it’s an international city of 18 million, after all – and post comments from there, but I don’t want to risk the post itself. Speaking of the Varuna blog, Llew appears to have been right as usual. When he read it on Sunday prior to my sending it over to Simonne, he was underwhelmed, casually dismissing it with, “It’s not as good as your other ones. I can’t relate to it.” This naturally set me to a manic panic, but he assured me he thought this was just because he’s not a writer so couldn’t possibly have had the same experience. “But you related to the other two,” I pressed, at which point Llew clammed up as though I’d asked if my bum looked big. So I sent it, it went up, and it’s generated a fraction of the response of the first two, which fills me with regret and an intense, long dormant urge to bite off all my fingernails. Ah well. You win some, you lose some. But you can see why I’m anxious to end on a high note with this final post. I have errands to run for the next couple of hours, and then I. Am. Into. It.

Anyway, the title of this post refers to something I discovered while writing my story yesterday, which is that England’s Alnwick Castle has been the family residence of the Percy family for the last 700 years. Leaving aside the fact there’s something preposterous about that, I’m personally intrigued by this little factoid because my maiden name was Percy. I always knew it was an old English name, and that there are Percys in line to the throne – way down the line, way, way down – but I’d never really looked into it. After going to the castle’s website on an entirely different mission yesterday, imagine my surprise to find this phenomenal spread is owned by…what? Relatives of mine? I find that highly unlikely. And to deter all comers, they’ve helpfully attached a family tree, including only those in the line of inheritance. Unsurprisingly, they forgot all about me.

Oh, the fantasies I used to have about a Little Lord Fauntleroy-style rescue from my life, so there’s something quietly hilarious about the near-and-yet-so-very-far fact of this shared name. Apparently my Nana Percy used to say there was some connection with the English toffs, but given she used to bang our heads together when we fought as children, and raised her ten kids in a tiny two-bedroom house in Bangalow, northern NSW (well before Bangalow became trendy and artistic), and from dim memory didn’t even own a full headful of teeth, I don’t think we can trust the veracity of her account.

In fact, one line I was repeatedly told as a child is forever burnt into my memory:

“In Bangalow, there were the poor, the very poor, and the Percys.”

Alnwick Castle, we hardly knew you.

Another hectic day here at DoctorDi HQ, but my story is coming together. Research, research, research. More on that in a moment. It’s also another perfect day, so I have had a quick run and a swim, and I’m pleased to report that the water temperature has increased by what feels like a solid couple of degrees. How does this happen overnight? I just don’t know.

So. Research. For this story and the past two in the series, my research is taking me right around Europe, and I am getting very, very hungry for some more Continental travel. I know, I know, I’m about to head to the ‘Hai, so even talking about it makes me horribly greedy, but I really do find myself poring over certain information pertaining to all these countries and thinking, “What I wouldn’t give…” – nothing whets one’s appetite for travel more than discovering where one most assuredly is not. I love Sydney, I love my home, but there’s a whole world out there. All that history, literature, art, music, architecture… all those people, all those lives. People unfairly think of Sydney in particular and Australia in general as a lifestyle mecca/cultural vacuum. It’s not true, but I can see why the label sticks. Most of the best of our architectural heritage was criminally destroyed, not by the ravages of war but the shortsightedness and poor taste of state politicians and developers. It’s sunny here, a fact some cultural elitists brandish at us with ill-disguised disdain, as though good weather were any sort of impediment to the creation of good art. Still, it’s true we don’t have a visible history of venerating our artists and intellectuals. Some suggest we all but drive them from our shores, but I don’t think that’s true either. I’ve met far too many vastly talented people throughout my life in Sydney to give that idea more credence than it deserves. I’d also suggest that particular hostility is rarely a one-sided thing. Some expatriates do a mighty fine job of coming over all sneery and patronising about Australia from the safety of their Manhattan lofts and London pied-a-terres. It’s like a kind of cultural peer pressure. Say it’s a vacuum, or you can’t join the Euro Club, say it’s a wasteland, go on, admit it, say it, say it, say it, damn you, infernal colonial! Kill the pig, cut his throat, spill his blood. You know the drill.

I don’t think there’s anything contradictory in my love of country and my insatiable lust for elsewhere. So there.

The week has started with whales: a pair of spunky spurters, offshore and looking to be heading south, which at this time of year means they’re wildly off-course. As in, heading completely the wrong way. Maybe they came inshore a bit earlier in the morning and were only just finding their way back out… or maybe they were male whales and refused to ask for directions. Whatever the case, I was very glad to see them. Llew let me know they were out there when he started walking to the ferry (upon reaching which he texted to say there were dolphins and pelicans harbourside – I mean, really, it just never gets old!), so I dragged myself out of bed to catch a glimpse of them before they went under. Some people, I know, awaken feeling bright-eyed and almost frighteningly full of zing, whereas I am always slightly resentful and peeved. Even though I generally find my pep in due course, it does take me a while to wake up. I’m quite grizzly until that moment arrives, and coffee is usually involved in my resurrection. But this is the amazing thing about whales. They cheered me so much that I just wanted to get out there with them, so I went for a nice long run, jumped in the surf, and was at my desk with my cup of coffee just before 9 o’clock. It’s a beautiful day, and they did motivate me to enjoy it.

I’ve spent the remainder here at my desk researching my last story before the Shanghai Surprise begins. And here it is already after six. My word these longer days go faster. Oh, and before I forget, my third Varuna post is now up.

My sister-in-law was supposed to come over for brunch yesterday, but Llew had to go into the office all day – actually, what am I saying? He was there all night too, getting home after 10 pm on a Sunday – so instead I was left to my own devices. This turned out to be a very good thing, because I was and remain pretty shattered, and I needed that stillness we were talking about a little while ago. Hence I slept in until a thoroughly shameful hour, then decided to wander over the headland to Freshwater with nothing more than my book (I’m appalled to admit I’m still reading Lilian’s The River Midnight because I’ve been so under the pump), parking myself at the Pilu cafe, the low-key little outdoor annex that’s opened up beside the main (very good with special occasion prices to boot) Pilu restaurant, surely one of the great sites of Sydney. Really glorious. So I sat back with Lilian’s vilda hayas, a coffee and a toasted sandwich, lamented Llew’s absence, and then decided I’d just have to struggle bravely on without him on this occasion. Yes, it was terribly hard work as I’m sure you can imagine. I stretched my stay until they closed by ordering another coffee, then walked back home for some more sunshine and reading in my courtyard. Truly I can’t remember the last time I was able to just read my book for virtually a whole day like that. It was wonderful. Blissful. I shan’t be leaving it so long again.

It’s not often I feel moved to post on a Sunday afternoon, weekends are generally my time away from the computer, but this past week has been so patchy I basically feel I owe you one before a new week begins. Friday I’d arranged to see an old PhD colleague and friend for lunch as he’s on school holidays at the moment (W’s become a high school teacher, and my god it just sounds like the most stressful job imaginable), and we changed our meeting place because I was veering quite close to his suburb on my passport reclamation mission. Even just rocking into the Chinese Consulate gave me a shot of adrenaline. The scene was one of organised chaos, and most of the people pressing toward the head of the queues were Chinese. I was instantly transported; immediately, I was the Other. It’s a feeling some people really dislike but I flat-out love – out of my comfort zone, away from the familiar, deep in the unknown, it’s one of my favourite feelings, and it’s a big reason why I love travelling so much. I love being rendered agog. Look there, and there, and there, sights and sounds, flavours and scents, people and places I’ve never seen before…I don’t think there’s anything like travel for a pure energy surge.

I can’t wait.

I was out of the consulate quickly as payment and collection queues were brief. I had some time before I was due to meet W at Better Read Than Dead, a great bookstore on King St in Newtown, so I went back down Missenden Rd to Parramatta Rd, crossing the street to the Deus Ex Machina cafe. Llewie spied the cafe when he dropped off the passports early in the week, so I thought stopping in for a coffee was the least I could do. I actually intended to blog while I was there, but administration management ate my homework. Anyway, what a cool space. A converted warehouse with soaring ceilings, the cafe smells just wonderful, a mix of coffee, warm bread and pastries and hearty home-cooking, and the atmosphere is warm, a kind of non-threatening funk. I was sorry W and I had organised to meet elsewhere, and next time I’m over that way, I’m definitely eating here. All the food delivered to the communal tables made my stomach groan, and it was all really reasonably priced. If I lived or worked anywhere near the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, I’d be scooting down to the Deus cafe every day if for no other reason than their coffee is excellent, but the truth is the place has much to recommend it, including the fine machines for sale next door.

It was a pleasant walk back up to Better Read Than Dead, and I found W browsing philosophy and politics titles just inside the door. He’s much more familiar with Newtown, and quickly decided we’d head to the cafe at the Berkelouw Bookstore, which ended up being upstairs in another artfully converted warehouse. We settled in there with good Caesar salads and cold drinks and proceeded to talk for four hours straight. I must say, it’s one of the things I really miss about postgraduate days: great, challenging conversations just as a matter of course. Now I work alone, and I miss the ease with which I used to be able to strike up a conversation that tested my intellectual chops at every turn. Exchanging ideas, debating different theories, really thrashing out the meaning of the things you have read and thought and wondered about. One thing that academia really has going for it is that these pursuits are considered valuable and important. Outside a university environment, I’ve personally just found it harder to find a similar outlet for certain interests of mine. I’m no longer surrounded on a daily basis by those who share them, and so I find those conversations harder and harder to begin and maintain. Everyone keeps talking about Master Chef instead, a TV show that became something of a phenomenon in Australia over the course of its first season, and while I love cooking, I’d rather sink my teeth into a difficult debate than a serve of reality TV. It’s just the way I am. Luckily Llewie loves a good verbal stoush, and we have great conversations, as we do with all our good friends, but I guess there’s still a difference between that and really being able to put all that theory into practice. W and I and everyone like us spent long, difficult years studying the ideas of others while pursuing our own, and to me it’s very much like a dormant bilingualism – the second language starts to die if it’s not used. So it was great to see W and tune my mind into that other frequency. I think I stumbled a number of times as bilingual people do when trying out their second tongue after a long spell using only the first, but there was a lot of satisfaction and pleasure in discovering over the course of the afternoon that my second language hasn’t abandoned me altogether, it just needs to be put to more frequent use.

Wow, that’s better! I’ve filed my story and all’s well (yesterday I was sick with anxiety over whether or not I’d done a good job – I’d been recommended to the editor by my Volunteer Reader, and the idea of letting down VR made my gut twist), which is a huge relief and just a load off because it required a lot of work, a lot of research, as have my other big jobs of late, of which the last in a three-part series is due next week. So I haven’t quite cleared the decks, but I can breathe again for what feels like the first time in weeks. Without doubt this has been the busiest Sept/October of my freelance career. Financial crisis? That old thing? We just threw it out and now it’s business as usual.

Anyway, I feel a million times better having had the okay, because I went for a 10 km run, jumped in the water and even caught a couple of waves for my trouble. Then I came back to my desk – scene of my recent 12-15 hour days, and I know a lot of people put those hours in all the time, but man, I didn’t move from out behind this big old block of wood – and drafted my next post for the Varuna blog, and now I am finally back here for what feels like a breather. Hey, gang, how you doin’?

So the good news is we’re going to Shanghai (cue desk dance). As Darkling Deb said, it’s just like Thredbo. Llew and I are just up and leaving town for a couple of weeks. As in, we leave next Friday. I didn’t really believe it would happen, but then we just got online the other night and booked our tickets and now we’re going. I’m heading to the Chinese Consulate tomorrow to pick up our passports. It’s starting to feel real. It’s been soooo loooong since we’ve been anywhere together. Three long years since we had an overseas holiday, or really any sort of holiday at all. We did go to WA for a week for the Surf Lifesaving Championships about two and a half years ago, but that was a surf club thing for Llew’s rowing crew, and I was sick, freezing and convinced I had hypothermia the whole time. Thank god we were near wine country. I managed to self-medicate with three straight days of dedicated wine tasting before we flew home. But even that was many moons ago. I’ve aged since then. I need a holiday. We both do.

Shanghai. Shanghai is one of those cities I’ve always been busting to see. I’ve always been fascinated by hubs of grubby iniquity, and there’s nothing like an opium den to really pique my curiosity. Not that I expect I’ll actually get to see one, but that’s where they used to be. I know the deplorable reality of drugs, they’re not glamorous, and they destroy lives, but still there’s always seemed something, dare I say it, romantic about an old-fashioned opium den… I don’t know when or why I first thought, “Cool, I’d like to get me some of that” of Shanghai, but it’s one of those towns that’s always been high on my hit list, and one of the only ones in my top ten I’ve not yet seen. Also still to come: Havana, Cuba (I’m riveted, always have been, and can’t believe I’ve never clapped eyes on the place) and Cairo, Egypt (not only home to the pyramids, but also the great city that graciously spawned a very old and dear friend I never get to see because she’s, you know, an actual Egyptian). But Shanghai is only 10 hours from Sydney, so this time, Shanghai it is. I’ve heard some dicey things about that People’s Republic firewall, but I’ll definitely be trying to blog direct from the Bund. Won’t that be fun?? I really think it will.

In other news, the tenants upstairs have moved out, and we took the opportunity to beg the body corporate to do something about the lack of sound-proofing between our two apartments. Finally the owner came round, although it took some doing, and for the past two days I have listened to the thump, crash and chatter of workmen overhead, thinking, Gee, I hope the underlay’s not down yet, because that’s as loud and clear as ever… It pains me to say the new underlay and flooring is now down, and there’s been no improvement whatsoever. I gaped at the workmen yesterday when they did the sound test between floors. I was trying to proof my story and wanted them all to die. And then one walked past me holding a roll of what looked like yoga mat material, and I pointed at it and said, “That, that’s it? That’s all?”

“It’s very expensive,” they assured me.

“Oh, I’m sure it is.” Yeah, they’ll get that right, don’t you worry. No mistake there. “But it hasn’t done anything. It’s no better at all. Not. At. All.”

And then I started pulling out tufts of hair, standing on the upstairs landing already seeing into the future, when the new tenants move in and I’ll be able to hear their every conversation, argument, phone call and sex act. Tears sprang to my eyes.

“Sorry,” they said.

I tried to speak but just had to turn on my heel and walk away. And now I’m down here listening to them finishing up and all I want to do is scream my head off. I’m confident they’d hear it.

I thought I’d better pop in here and post some sort of progress report before you all get sick of the silence and give up on me. I’m afraid it’s going to be a Manic Monday, team. I’d already conducted three lengthy phone interviews by 10:30 this morning, and now I have the fun, fun, fun of transcribing them all, as well as the interview I recorded (still loving 1300RECORD, by the way) Friday afternoon. And I still have another couple of people I need to speak to by the end of the day. Then I have to write the damn thing. I’m filing the story Wednesday, and life will get back to normal once I’ve met that deadline, after which I promise I’ll stop neglecting you.

In the meantime, my second post for the Varuna blog is up for the week. I’ll be back here at DoctorDi on Wednesday 14 October – we have so much to catch up on!

Many of you who read DoctorDi and the comment streams therein have, like me, come to know and love Grad, a.k.a ‘Graddikins,’ she of the Nantucket Grey kitchen and Sultan’s Palace powder room. I’ve just popped in to The Curious Reader because Grad’s gone all quiet in recent days, and I thought she might be saying something sweet that would lift me out of my self-involved petty doldrums, but instead I found my Graddikins heartbroken. There’s nothing to say except how very sorry I am that today she and her family are saying a last goodbye to her daughter’s sweetheart, or as Grad tells it: Robert Sanchez, Soldier, Patriot, and Friend, who was killed in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan on October 1, 2009.

May he rest in peace.