Mum’s been listening to the series

🔴 She tunes in for a 4:30am repeat I didn’t know about 🔴 She laughed when we laughed at Pop’s polka dot pyjamas 🔴

🥄🥄🥄Mum had a very specific way of stirring her coffee. This is the only time it was captured on tape. Taken from ‘Nan gets back from South-West walk. GOOD’ – January 1993.

 

I dug my chat with Taylah on Perth’s RTRFM. A dude wrote after “It’s good that you reiterated that schizophrenia is not a full time illness. I remember a Mum who would take me to sporting activities, cook dinner and take us for swimming lessons at the beach.”

Nan Pop Justin swingseat 92

Me & Nan & Pop & Jody, Nan & Pop’s, 1992. Transferred from Kodachrome slide. Shot on self timer. Note: fluro green laces in my Lynx.

Get Up Mum radio series

Heazlewood highlights pic

Get Up Mum rolls onto ABC’s RN this week. It’s the sound of the story as well as the spirit. The hiss, the static, the atmosphere of love. Ten episodes air weekdays at 9:20am and are available for high speed dubbing from the Life Matters site. There’s also a hearty feature story on the ABC News page.

Adelaide 729AM, Brisbane 792AM, Burnie 94.1FM, Canberra 846AM, Darwin 657AM, Gold Coast 90.1FM, Hobart 585AM, Melbs 621AM, Newcastle 1512AM, Perth 810AM, Sydney 576AM.

Here is a recent interview with ABC Tassie’s Piia Wirsu. It includes a sneak peak from Episode 6 – “Nan and Jupiter.”

SERVING SUGGESTION: Episodes are ideally heard on an AM radio at the prescribed time. Failing this, you can obtain them from computer where they are best in a beanbag, in the dark, in moderation.

Dig on my mailing list.

 

Fitzroy Writers Festival

Here’s a recent interview on Triple R’s Backstory. There’s a great moment halfway where the CD doesn’t want to play my tape samples (!) so I’m forced to do some ‘Nanlibbing.’

Meanwhile, Fitzroy Writers Festival is bringing back the Get Up Mum Show & Tell by popular demand. Coolness. Come and hear my new Sharp boombox from close range. Saturday April 6 at 11:30am (Fitzroy Town Hall). It’s free to hangout, with a booking. Prize for best Turtles shirt.

JH_table _display

Get Up Mum out May 21

I have a new book coming. It’s a memoir about my childhood. Think Angela’s Ashes meets The Castle. The Melbourne launch is Sunday June 10 at Northcote Uniting Church. I will be conducting a service in honour of my child self. All welcome. Men bring a plate.

For Book Week in 1991 the theme was ‘Book Into The Future.’ Get Up Mum is a time capsule crossed with a time machine. This is one of the first songs I wrote, ahead of its time.

 

Book into the future

Wake In Fright review

I micro-reviewed the Australian classic for The Lifted Brow a few years back.

Image result for wake in fright text classics

204 pages – feels like a short read.

Schoolteacher goes on a dark bender in an Australian desert town.

Mood: Hot, dark and claustrophobic. The hazy mash of inebriation. Trapped in a car with foul men. Face to face with a stabbed kangaroo.

Best sentence: Things half remembered and terribly feared, shrieked at him; tears of mystic terror rimmed his eyes.

Previous review: “A classic novel which became a classic film. The Outback without the sentimental bulldust. Australia without the sugar coating.” Robert Drewe

Funfact: A keen amateur lepidopterist, Cook established the first butterfly farm in Australia on the banks of Sydney’s Hawkesbury River in the 1970s.

Best Australianism: “What the blazes…”

Suggested food pairings: Overdone steak from a hot bonnet. Lashing of cold beer.