I miss this skirt

I really miss this skirt. It was covered with bees and strawberries. I don't remember seeing it in a while. I wonder where it went! Where do skirts go? At least I still have the puppy.

What's in your bushfire bag?

My mum grew up in Leura, a beautiful little town in the Blue Mountains where Sydneysiders like to go antiquing. (There is also a place that sells Devonshire Teas and the scones are baked inside little terra cotta flower pots. You need to go there.)

The Blue Mountains are beautiful, but they are also dangerous, particularly during bushfire season. Mum can still remember the fires of '57, when her own school burnt down. She and the other kids were sent running, there was no orderly evacuation like we'd have today. Mum remembers racing across a wooden bridge when a smaller child dropped his school-case and turned back to get it. Mum yelled "leave it!" as the bridge itself began to burn.'

For most of my childhood, we also lived in bushfire-prone areas and, every summer, Mum had a "bushfire bag" packed and ready to go for if we ever needed to evacuate in a hurry. Around October each year, with the smoke of the first planned burn-offs in the air, we'd pack the bag. It contained a change of clothes for each of us, some basic first aid, and the family photo albums. We all knew our evacuation plans, and who was responsible for the care of which pet.

The Burning House project is inspired by a similar concept. It asks people from all over the world to list what they'd take with them in the event of a fire.

Take a look at some of the lists here: www.theburninghouse.com. Their lists are not exactly as practical as my mum's, but they are fascinating.

It gives you something to think about, doesn't it.How about you? What would you pack in your bushfire bag? And why?

Poetry bombs

This guerilla artist in Miami has been sneaking into thrift stores and sewing tiny lines of poetry into the clothes. She says she’s doing it “so that poems can be in everyday life.” How lovely! [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vneTvZ-d-44]

I think it would be kind of magical to pull on a new jacket and there, stitched into the inside pocket, is a jewel of wisdom, or humour, or beauty, from one of the world’s great poets. I would treasure that jacket.

It’d be like a fortune cookie that you can wear. Or a tiny message in a bottle.

Golden ticket day off

Today I had a golden ticket day off. An unplanned free day, taken after working all weekend, that belonged entirely to me. No errands, no clients to please, no need to even check my emails or pick up the phone. So I didn't. The day was all mine, and it was perfect. I took a cup of tea out onto the balcony, where Ruby and I read the latest Frankie magazine. Then I made a second cup of tea and kept on reading.

I grabbed a supply of little blue bags and took Oliver, the world's happiest dog, for a walk along the Broadwater.

Waved to the tourists on the Aquaduck as they chugged under the bridge. (Seriously, who doesn't want to ride an amphibious bus?)

When I got to Main Beach...

I sat in the sand and had a club sandwich and drank sparkling mineral water. I read Cathedral, a short story by Raymond Carver, a story that was really an experience and stayed with me for the entire walk home.

Back at the apartment, I wrote a scene for my new novel, in which my protagonist Kevin, an obsessive sommelier who finds magic in wine, got mugged on a train station in the London underground. I also honed the backstory in which Kevin's mother was killed.

Mr B came home from work, carrying a bottle of sparkling wine under one arm and a large box hoisted in the other. Look what arrived in the mail, ready for the book launch party for Airmail in Sydney next month!

I simmered up a super spicy chicken and vegetable red curry while listening to Bob Dylan, followed by dessert of frozen berries blended with yoghurt, honey and mint and topped with shaved chocolate (thank you, Jamie Oliver).

Finally, I settled in for the evening with my darling to drink my bubbles and watch last night's episode of Downton Abbey online.

This was a really good day. A golden ticket day. Thank you, universe.

A mystery in your mailbox

What would you do if you found a mystery in your mailbox? Where would the mystery take you? Just how powerful is the power of storytelling? Is your world real? Or do you only see the shadows of real, reflected on the walls of a cave? What are the rules to a game of marbles?

Find answers (in just two minutes) here:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgGJunx71LY]

Not the answers you were looking for? All will be revealed here. Promise!

Aunty Bev's emails

I have an Aunty Bev. Actually, Mr B has an Aunty Bev, but I have adopted her and I call her mine too. She is a corker. And extremely funny, although most of Aunty Bev's best jokes cannot be repeated for this blog's PG audience. She makes delicious dinners and wonderful cakes and slices, of which you will hear more some day very soon. Aunty Bev also reads this blog on a semi-regular basis. Hi, Aunty Bev!

For the past couple of years, Aunty Bev has been learning computer skills, and one of the upshots of this is that she sends me emails several times a week. Most often, these are jokes, or political or religious statements (Aunty Bev is impervious to conversational taboos), or inspiring pictures.

And on occasion, they are simply things of beauty and wonder. Things that neither have nor need explanation. This is one of them, sent to me in an email from Aunty Bev today. I thought I'd share it with you, too.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSKyHmjyrkA&w=853&h=480]

Fathers' Day

It's Fathers' Day in the US of A. Aussie dads have to wait until September for their special day, but I thought I'd give my dad a head start with this post. It doesn't matter how old I get, my dad is always there for me with love, humour, and wise counsel (as is my mother, for that matter, but that's for another blog post. This one is about dads). This is my dad teaching me to ride a billy-cart. Tell me YOUR dad sported a mo, a fro, a purple tie-died t-shirt, navy blue aviators and shoes that defied awesomeness, and I will take it under consideration that he almost might have been almost as cool as mine. So today, randomly and by no means exclusively, I want to list some of the things I love about my dad:

* I love that he and Mr B text each other every other night and play silly mind games with each other, like they are BFFs

* I love that he cares for me like I'm still his little girl, while respecting my independence and intelligence

* I love that he and I fixed up a bike together for my little brother's birthday when I was about nine, and that I got to say "I made the bike" even though I did precisely nothing, except get in the way

* I love that my father would always pretend not to love the pets in our family but, when he thought we weren't looking, he would give them cuddles and treats

* I love that for the first 12 years of my life, I thought there was a song called "Oh-ho me o-ho" because it echoed through the house every morning as my father sang in the shower (this was actually his personal interpretation of "O sole mio")

* I love that, despite zilch in previous experience as a builder - my father was a social worker - he built a dream house in the country for us to live in

* I love that I can go to him for advice, whether it's personal, business or anything else, and he's always smart and always loving

* I love that he makes nearly every family get-together involve a belly-laugh

* I love how wonderful he is to my mother, that the two of them set a ridiculously high standard for marital bliss, and the absolutely brilliant childhood that gave me

* I love that when I do stupid, crazy, impulsive things, he says "I trust you"

* I love that he pretends to like my book Airmail and tells me he is proud of me, even though I know it is the polar opposite of his cup of tea

* I love that French is the language he grew up with, but he speaks it with such a broad Aussie accent that he failed it at school and most of the relatives can't understand more than one in three words he says

* I love that he models the following of crazy dreams: from family, to life without electricity, to worm farming, to photography and publishing

* I love that he has to wear the right outfit for every activity. My dad has a fruit-tree pruning outfit, a block splitting outfit, a stamp collecting outfit and many, many more

* I love that he has obsessions, not hobbies (my mother's phrasing), because I am the same

* I love that when my horse Starbrow died... Starbrow, who had been in my family for more than 20 years and, if I sat in the paddock and crossed my legs, would go to sleep with his head in my lap... I love that when my old horse died, my father's sobs were as ragged as mine

Philosophical cupcakes (and other sweet treats)

I'm brimming over with patriotic pride this week, following reviews of Airmail appearing in two wonderful Aussie publications. The first is a review in my absolute favourite street press, Spitpress magazine. They say Airmail is "a philosophical cupcake; perfect to enjoy in one go with a cup of tea on a rainy afternoon," and that it "will leave its footprints in your mind for days." Poetry!

If you live in Sydney, you can pick up a copy of Spitpress all over town, and I highly recommend you do. Issue 8 (called 'Wired') is out now, and Airmail's starring role is on page 9. For everyone else, despair not. You can read Spitpress online here.

In addition to Airmail, you'll find Cleptoclectics, Frankie magazine editor Jo Walker, Brendan Maclean, Jack Carty’s tour diary from up north, Tunes for Change, Crash Test Drama, The Smallest Gig, Dry July, Photographer Xiaohan Shen, and artist Jilly Cooper AKA Lisa Bowen.

But wait, there's more!

While I was still swinging high on Spitpress' kind words (and before I'd even had time to indulge my sudden desire for cupcakes), fellow Sydneysider Jayne Fordham of 'The Australian Bookshelf' posted her own review of Airmail online.

Jayne's review focused on the characters in Airmail, and I really enjoyed what she had to say. In Jayne's take on Airmail, Anouk is "neurotic and entertaining." GL Solomon’s "rigid life becomes malleable."

Jayne concludes, "The author has created very likeable characters who grow and learn despite the length and will leave you quite satisfied. If you would like a quick quirky read, then Airmail by Australian author Naomi Bulger, is an entertaining read."

You can read the full review here, and if you live in Australia, don't forget to enter her competition to win one of two copies of Airmail.

Vampires of mercy

Exeter, Rhode Island, USA: windswept and remote. As climate and vegetation go, this is about as far from Sookie Stackhouse's steamy Bon Temps, Louisiana, as it's possible for you to get.

But Exeter and Bon Temps have more than one thing in common. They are both beautiful and strange American wildernesses. In the backwaters of Exeter, you can still encounter deep forests, dirt roads, old folks playing checkers in the dust outside the corner store, and folklore that is thick with vampires, ghosts and witches. Just like Bon Temps, Exeter is a tiny rural community, where more than one family has lived for many a generation.

And the two towns have something else in common: they are both home to vampires. The key, however, is that neither Exeter nor its vampires are fictitious. To a point.

Meet Exeter local Mercy Brown. She is young, sweet, and pretty. Like many of her friends, she spends her afternoons carefully stitching together a blue, patchwork coverlet, and her evenings dreaming of being a good wife and mother.

Spent, I should say. When she was 19, Mercy contracted tuberculosis, known as the consumption. She lost weight and suffered terribly from fever and fatigue. She began coughing up blood. Poor Mercy knew what to expect, her sister and mother had already died of the same disease.

Tuberculosis ended Mercy's first life in the depth of winter, on 17 January, 1892. Her grieving father had her body placed in the crypt at the cemetery behind Chestnut Hill Baptist Church, to wait until the earth thawed before he could bury her body in the ground.

But according to the good people of Exeter, Mercy did not rest. Soon after her death, neighbours reported seeing her walking about town.

Then Mercy's brother Edwin fell ill with the same disease.

Many of the townsfolk began muttering. It was not tuberculosis but ‘vampirism’ that was killing the Brown family, they speculated. In 18th and 19th century Rhode Island, vampires preferred to kill in the family, sometimes taking the lives of one sibling after another until all were dead.

I visited Mercy on a sweltering August afternoon two years ago. Her sun-filled cemetery was bordered on both sides by centuries-old dry-stone walls, a feature of New England landscapes that dates back to the region’s pre Civil War plantations.

At first look, her grave differed from those around it only by the heavy metal brace that secured her headstone to the ground – a necessary security to protect Mercy from her myriad ‘fans’ – and the flowers and gifts that, more than a hundred years after her final passing, were a touching sign that Mercy was still remembered.

But it was only when I found the vine-covered stone crypt at the edge of the graveyard, and a small stone with a dark history nearby, that Mercy’s grisly story, made famous by a Providence Journal report in 1892, felt real.

"During the few weeks past, Mr. Brown has been besieged on all sides by a number of people who expressed implicit faith in the old theory that by some unexplained and unreasonable way in some part of the deceased relative’s body live flesh and blood might be found, which is supposed to feed upon the living who are in feeble health.

"Mr. Brown, having no confidence in the old-time theory, and also getting no encouragement from the medical fraternity, did not yield to their importunities until yesterday afternoon, when an investigation was held under the direction of Harold Metcalf, M.D., of Wickford."

Mercy's neighbours, it transpired, believed she was a vampire, feeding upon her family members. With Dr Metcalf in attendance, they removed Mercy from the crypt and cut her open.

To their horror it appeared that Mercy’s body had moved in her coffin. Moreover, her body was not as deteriorated as they expected, and she had unusual colour in her cheeks. Dr Metcalf examined Mercy’s heart and liver. Her heart, when cut open, still retained fresh, red blood.

Mercy was not the first vampire case in Rhode Island, a State which by then was rumoured to be the vampire capital of America, and the locals knew what to do. Let me prepare you, this is horrific. And true.

They cut out Mercy's heart and burned it on a nearby rock, an action they believed would prevent her from walking again.

As if that were not grisly enough, they saved the ashes of Mercy’s heart, mixed them with water, and gave them to her ailing brother Edwin to drink. Drinking the ashes of a vampire’s heart was supposed to cure their victims. Edwin died two months later.

I left Rhode Island after two weeks with more questions than I'd had at the start. I'd visited the resting places of several ‘girl-vampires’. Victims, I believe, of a society trying to confront the spread of a disease that was both selective and deadly.

But while I left with a sense of unease, there was also wonder. Rhode Island folklore can be taken both ways, just like the chilling – or loving – inscription on the 1889 tombstone of yet another of its abused vampires, Nelly Vaughn of West Greenwich, who died at 19:

“I am waiting and watching for you.”

Sookie Stackhouse + literary snobbery

Embarrassing admission: I am addicted to the Sookie Stackhouse novels. This did not start at Book 1, with which I was nonplussed. "Pshaw," said I, nose in the air, "this be too juvenile a style for moi." Instead, I stuck to the TV series, True Blood, that was inspired by the books.

But everywhere I turned, online and offline, I was being told "Sookie will win you over, Sookie will win you over." I began to wonder if I may have been indulging in a teensy bit of literary snobbery (No! Could it be?), so when a friend offered to lend me the True Blood Omnibus (the first three books), I figured I'd have a go.

(This poster went up in my neighbourhood in SoHo before the first season of True Blood came out. We were all, like, "Waah!?")

Within three days, I'd read all three books. After another generous loan, the next two books were very quickly read. Not able to wait until I met up with my friend again (sorry, Ruby!) I made a trip to my local Borders bookstore, during the 50 percent off sale before it closed.

I purchased Book ELEVEN at the airport on Monday morning and, thanks to some lengthy flight delays, finished it that same night. I now wish to urge Ms Charlaine Harris to hurry up and finish the next one. While I'm at it, I'd also like to take the opportunity to state that I am most definitely of the Team Eric persuasion, and hope she will bear this in mind as she writes.

(Interesting fact gleaned in literature classes: when Charles Dickens wrote The Old Curiosity Shop in instalments, he was inundated with letters imploring him not to kill off Little Nell. It didn't work then, but this reader is hoping Ms Harris will be more open to a heartfelt plea.)

So I have my friend Ruby and the lovely ladies of the Book Lover's Hideaway group on Goodreads to thank for slapping me out of my snobbery, encouraging me to try a new genre, and unintentionally giving me permission to get lost in what amounts to pure entertainment.

Most often, my reading choices are like fine dining. I want something clever, something unique, something that challenges me to think differently or face difficult issues, or transports me to a depth of emotion or experience that I could never have conjured in my own imagination.

There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but my foray into Sookie's world has been like sinking my teeth into a spicy meatball pizza at Arturo's on West Houston, and washing it down with a bottle of rough chianti, after a year-long diet of fois gras and alpine riesling. Lip-smackingly good!

ps. I am so inspired by Sookie that I will shortly blog about my own experiences hunting down the REAL vampires of America. Stay tuned...